about climate if we care about dealing with emissions we need to build nuclear so they don't build coal or burn other fossil fuels I want to build an advanced reactor in the next decade so that we can build them all across the planet toput this simply a nuclear reactor is not an app this is not the kind of idea that can be fueled on pizza and lines of code the risk is proportional to the reward
You know Congress defined it, they have politically motivated definitions that are like any reactor after a certain year I think usually when people say reactor literally couldn't meltdown so there are some light water reactors that have some of those safety characteristics what we call passive safety
Yeah. But how many are not? Ah see more than you think. Um and um and not all those people went to hack reactor afterward and got their CS just later. Um so the point is that's not a good starting place. That's that's adysfunctional belief that your major determines your future. Um you want to guess how many undergraduate majors we
And Taylor just called him up and said, Hey, I'm 11 years old, and I was wondering if you'd consider donating it to me for the nuclear fusion reactor I want to build.This is the way this kid's life works, right?
And ended up there. reactor . And he mastered all these technical fields, and eventually got it to work, got neutrons, and was recognized for it.
- The following is a conversation with David Kirtley, a nuclear engineer, expert on nuclear fusion, and the CEO of Helion Energy, a company working on building nuclear fusion reactors and have made incredible progress in a short period of time that make it seem possible, like we could actually get thereas a civilization. This is exciting because nuclear fusion, if achieved commercially, will solve most of our energy needs in a clean, safe way, providing virtually unlimited clean
the human failure rather than the engineering failures of those systems. That in Fukushima specifically, That in Fukushima specifically, there were multiple nuclear fission reactors on the same site that successfully reactors on the same site that successfully kept running through the tsunami, totally successfully, the tsunami, totally successfully, and were only later shut down for more political reasons.more political reasons. But the old one, the oldest of them that had been on site for long periods, them that had been on site for long periods, and maybe, maybe too long, I think some experts have looked at this in the past
friend who's been pro-nuclear and she's been trying to convince us and it hasn't worked but you know seeing this film and seeing these the next generation reactors and the people behind it made us you know really interested and inspired and I think now we actually changed our minds and that was a really big deal Imean I think it's a big deal for people that changed their minds but I think also at these environmental film festivals there's a lot of disaster porn
seconds so someone just start to get a little bit motivated um so basically there's kind of two types of emailers right there's reactors and there's batchers so most of us probably fall into um the reactors category so that's when you're kind ofconstantly nibbling on email throughout the day right it's very notifications driven and you're kind of constantly
They couldn't do it, even incrementally. reactors . So we can actually cut our water use, because we're so much more efficient at converting high-temperature energy to electric power.
Considering those benefits, there's no question that thorium power offers the most economical avenue to bring on line massive amounts of new generating capacity without adding to reactors . That was the Clinch River Project, which some of you may recall.
Considering those benefits, there's no question that thorium power offers the most economical avenue to bring on line massive amounts of new generating capacity without adding to reactors instead of, for instance, coal plants, because, if you want to do something about global warming, basically what-- the whole rest of the world doesn't matter unless we
They can also take that spent fuel and turn it back into fuel so that the stuff we are worried about putting in Yucca Mountain can be just be put into the, the fourth generation reactors and put to work.And of course there's no carbon dioxide with managing what comes out of this.
As far as we can tell, the trajectory of the digital society is more copying, not less, forever, and there is no legislative measure short of maybe turning off all the nuclear reactors and plunging us into the dark, that we can use to shut down copying. So digital businesses, the businesses that are really built around the digital economy, don't assumethat copying will slow down. These are the businesses that profit no matter what happens with copying. One of the most inspiring things about Google's history, to my mind, is by
You know Congress defined it, they have politically motivated definitions that are like any reactor after a certain year I think usually when people say a reactor going it was like what can we get going it's gonna work right now and that we can put in a submarine and it's gonna work right now and it was, like, a light
You know Congress defined it, they have politically motivated definitions that are like any reactor after a certain year I think usually when people say water reactor that made perfect sense but in the past sixty years with all the developments and materials and everything else that's happened the fact
Considering those benefits, there's no question that thorium power offers the most economical avenue to bring on line massive amounts of new generating capacity without adding to salt reactor experiment under Alvin Weinberg, who was the director of Oak Ridge at the time.
are also very safe. I think there's a perception that nuclear fission reactors are unsafe, they're dangerous. fission reactors are unsafe, they're dangerous. And if you just look empirically at the statistics, look empirically at the statistics, that the fear is not justified by the actual safety data. by the actual safety data. Can you just speak to that a little bit?
And up on the upper-right, we see some of the centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium. Nuclear reactors also produce plutonium. And it can, with considerable difficulty-- it's a technological challenge.
And that can often be overlooked. those reactors . But I think it's an uncertain future just purely because of costs and time scale.
able to actually power facility like that before you had mentioned using last gen waste as next gen fuel does that limit at all where these next gen reactors can be built do they have to be built next to waste sites from former sites or can they be dispatched in other locations yeah it's pretty small the fuel part is only five percent of the cost of nuclear electricity so even
You know Congress defined it, they have politically motivated definitions that are like any reactor after a certain year I think usually when people say these reactors were designed in kind of the 1950's and 40s they had very large margins in there and then after they've kind of sharpen the pencil with a lot of
Phillip Taubman: Speak up a little bit, please. selling reactors than they are in the proliferation issue.
But if someone else was flying me out, I might try to tag on a shoot. That is Chernobyl Nuclear reactor number 4. I did all the research, writing, filming, and editing myself.
process in a nuclear fission reactor ? - In a nuclear fission reactor , you put enough of this fissile material, uranium or plutonium, together such that as these unstable molecules, these unstable atoms crack open and break apart, they release heat, that the component parts of those are actually quite hot. And so not only are the component parts that the uranium breaks into, and it's a whole spectrum of different atoms and atomic nuclei,
By the way, they never have to this day had a reprocessing facility for reprocessing plutonium, even their current plutonium waste from their heavy water reactor at Bushehr, to make weapons fuel out of that. They have no plutonium route to the bomb under the JCPOA.
- Not they, but the Obama administration, He's right, under the JCPOA, poured concrete into the calandria in order to prevent them from using that reactor to reprocess plutonium. So there's a distinction between Arak and Boucher.
It gets some from-- and that isn't counted here. And this is a reactor that ostensibly can have all its cooling systems removed and it won't melt down.
know these really young idealistic people who have kind of come up with these really innovative designs call it nuclear 2.0 we wanted to develop a new type of nuclear reactor that can consume existing stockpiles of nuclear waste we need to be building reactors all over the world as soon as we can if we care about climate if we care about dealing with emissions we need to build nuclear so they don't build coal or burn other fossil fuels I want to build an advanced
new innovation so it is I think we're in a really interesting spot in that way we're trying to use computers you know now with computing power you can actually model an entire reactor used to be you really couldn't do that and so you know using Python and using modern scripting and computing capabilities to really turn this around much quicker and much cheaper so um yeah it's a really unique space okay so you have the perspective of innovator Tyler I'd like
central technical risk is a new materials development program for another company maybe it's a you know complex simulation and finding kind of the optimum topology of reactor layout so kind of each individual concept and company kind of has their own you know set of technical milestones that's that would be most helpful in the like in the investment space I think there's a variety of interesting things that are happening there with the rise of a lot
and the nuance, the detail, the layers to each of the characters, and especially I was looking for in character very much like this one, who is not a reactor towards a man, but is really in the forefront and is the one moving the action forward as are my lovely costars and producers.
So what a thorium reactor is really fissioning is Uranium-233, which you breed, and then, you
They couldn't do it, even incrementally. So they ran a reactor way back in '54 at a red-hot temperature.
They couldn't do it, even incrementally. A current reactor is what, 300 degrees centigrade or so?
They couldn't do it, even incrementally. So the first reactor designed-- second one designed was about 1.4 meters in diameter.
They couldn't do it, even incrementally. And a molten salt reactor , per se, in 2020.
Or use a nuclear reactor in the outer solar system.
And this was a reactor that was-- they tried to melt it down.
So this was a reactor that we developed that does have these kind of advance passive safety devices or designs that are a
The nuclear regulatory commission just licensed the first new nuclear plant in the US in 34 years. It's a two-reactor plant in Georgia. It's conventional light water uranium reactors , which is basically 40 year old technology.
It's like we're driving Ford Fairlanes that have been suped up to run at higher rpms and have a new pair of whitewalls on them. That's our current reactor fleet. So here's the real risk, and Boris referred to this.
Considering those benefits, there's no question that thorium power offers the most economical avenue to bring on line massive amounts of new generating capacity without adding to a liquid-fueled thorium reactor .
was a nuclear reactor it was a fusion reactor at very very early times the temperature was so high that you
Here's basically a concept for a fourth generation reactor that's small; 100 megawatts. This Integral Fast Reactor potentially could for a small town besides providing local electricity also desalinate water locally, provide hydrogen locally if that turns out to be useful. There's many people at Google who love storing.
There's another connection to nuclear power that is the one that actually troubles me the most, and that's the weapons connection. Because most nuclear reactors require that we enrich uranium, in that uranium-235, the kind that can undergo fission easily. And once you have enrichment technology, you can easily produce weapons-grade uranium, which is exactly what's happening right now in Iran.
It gets some from-- and that isn't counted here. We have two reactors under construction in North America, two in South America, and a handful in Western Europe.
It gets some from-- and that isn't counted here. advanced nuclear reactors that would be safer, that might themselves quote, "burn up" nuclear waste.
It gets some from-- and that isn't counted here. Small modular reactors are probably a little more promising.
It gets some from-- and that isn't counted here. These are small reactors that typically, oh, are in the range of 60 to maybe as much as 300 million watts of power, mostly on the smaller side.