I'm a huge fan of anything that is fluoride salts.
I did most of my PhD work in lanthinide
doped fluoride salts,
Salt belongs on the rim of margarita
glasses, not in nuclear reactors.
The right place for fission products is in the fuel rod.
I'm very interested in molten fluoride salts.
You have basically
a glorified trash can filled...
Maybe not glorified.
...filled with molten fluoride salts.
The fuel is its own working fluid.
Not only does the liquid waste
effectively disappear, right, because it's either burned
primarily or recycled and burned secondarily.
Say, liberated or something.
You can't say burn, you can't say burn. Do it again.
Why can't I say burn?
Objection.
I'm siding with Stephen.
Yeah, I know you said burn today in your presentation, Mark.
You can increase the burnup, the fuel usage, by 7 times.
You can't say burn, people!
We are not going to say burn. Burn.
No, no!
Burned. Burned.
Burned.
People think it is combustion.
People love combustion when it's in their own house
and it's private and it's a campfire.
And we've got this odd holiday in the United States.
It's called July 4th, where we burn everything.
And in the UK they've got Guy Fawkes Day where they-
Oh, they've got Guy Fawkes Day.
I thought this was settled.
I thought everyone could be on board with that.
We're not going to say burn
because they’ll conflate combustion.
Everyone, maybe, but not Stephen and Mark.
Burned is kind of
an informal bit of lingo.
With a bit of a wry smile.
That true, Mark?
Is it true that it's with a wry smile?
Look, there's a number of cute phrases in nuclear
science and engineering that come from those heady days
back in the 1940s, where in just a few academic terms
we went from discovering that fission existed
to building nuclear chain reactions
to building giant production reactors...
not of electricity, but you can't be too picky
in wartime.
And then finally, only a few years after that,
a few budget cycles really...
You had working nuclear reactors
powering electric grids.
It means that the words can come hot and heavy.
You're working that fast and making that much progress.
You're saying, basically, NUCLEAR POISON,
as a term is okay.
Because you're in a rush.
That's not a real poison.
Who's really gotten poisoned from Xenon?
How about Barns?
Barns is the most wonderful,
dearest unit of measurement.
A legitimate S.I.
unit of measurement that was based on a joke.
Uranium was found to have a very large cross section.
So they said, Wow, this is as big as a barn.
As big as a barn. Right.
Anyway, if we can have Barns we can have burn,
and if we can have burn, we can have poison.
And look nuclear energy
is going to be more popular the more we embrace its quirks.
Not hiding from some feared public
Most Canadians actually think
that nuclear power is high carbon.
We might not have been informed, but when we hear that you can
“burn uranium”, that's going to help
put that subconsciously.
People are into hydrogen now.
They think we're going to burn it
and they think it's going to be low-carbon.
Look, it's
about winning people's heart
on nuclear as a thing.
And then they will
independently realize or decide that it's clean.
So for example, in France, until recently,
the French thought that nuclear was high carbon.
They also didn't like it.
It's kind of an overlap.
If you don't like it, you think it's bad.
You know what’s also bad?
Carbon emissions.
So you just lump all the bad things together.
Once people decide they like nuclear, heck,
they may attribute it with positive properties
it doesn't even have, just because they like it.
People are going to either broadly like it
or broadly dislike it.
And they'll apply
correct and incorrect good qualities to it
if they like it, and correct and incorrect
bad qualities to it if they don't like it.
Not going to be able to change that.
But we will be able to win the hearts and minds.
But gas and coal companies don't say
they burn their stuff for combustion.
They have websites that don't use language like that.
It doesn't work though.
It doesn't work.
They're not going to convince anybody.
Because ultimately they are literally lighting
fire and flame.
And people know it.
To use a colloquial term,
like burning, is metaphorical.
And I think it's metaphorical
with a smirk, with a tongue in cheek.
Smoke, people think the steam is smoke, Stephen!
That's because they haven't learned
to love a good tobacco pipe
where smoke and steam are good.
We're ganging up on Gord.