- [Host] Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this episode.
This was humanity's first introduction
to nuclear power, the atomic bomb.
- And this is a nuclear power plant,
which you may know from all the times
that they've broken down in history
and scared the crap out of people.
Hello, HBO's Chernobyl.
- But you've actually been lied to about nuclear energy.
And in order to understand those lies,
we first have to talk about where the energy comes from.
- In 1938, scientists discovered nuclear fission.
They did this by slamming an atom of uranium with a neutron.
It would divide into two
and release a large amount of energy.
Not only this, but during the nuclear fission reaction
up to three neutrons are ejected,
which can trigger further fission reactions of more atoms,
meaning more energy is released.
This is known as a chain reaction.
- During World War II,
America would use the same technology
to create the first atomic bomb.
But it wasn't until 1955 that the same scientific principles
were used to create the first nuclear power plant
that generated electricity.
- In the 1970s, psychologists started to map
people's anxieties about nuclear destruction
and the past cold war, onto nuclear power plants,
which were now cropping up around the world.
Then came the 1979 thriller, The China Syndrome,
a movie about a fictional nuclear reactor meltdown.
Which was released on March 6th, 1979.
And just 22 days later,
a real partial nuclear reactor meltdown
happened at Three Mile Island.
Talk about free advertisement for your movie.
The coincidence of a Hollywood film
and this cultural nuclear reactor breakdown
coming together really shot into the mainstream
this negative connotation with nuclear energy.
From the release of this movie to 1988,
67 planned nuclear power plants were canceled.
In 1986 Chernobyl happened, which was caused by human error.
As the temperature of the reactor core became too high
and an explosion created a nuclear cloud across Europe.
I scream cried while watching Chernobyl.
I remember thinking to myself, okay,
is nuclear energy a truly invisible horror?
Right after that, in 1989, we got The Simpsons
where we see people diving into nuclear waste.
And our favorite idiot, Homer,
who we all picture as a safety inspector
at a nuclear reactor.
As recent as 2011, we have the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
And all of this combined made it really hard
to not be afraid of nuclear energy.
- But when you look more into it, you find that
no one died at Three Mile Island.
And most epidemiological studies found
that it had no detectable health consequences.
After 30 years, only 51 people died from
the incident at Chernobyl.
And scientific studies found few health risks
connected to radiation exposure after Fukushima.
- Take this recent In a Nutshell video
linked in the description.
It shows how using coal, oil, natural gas,
and biomass has killed 100 million people
in the past 50 years.
This was due to pollution created by
the byproducts of burning fossil fuels.
- The World Health Organization explains
that it's safer to work in a nuclear power plant
than in a big city office,
as the urban air pollution of ozone, sulfur dioxide,
carbon monoxide, and nitrogen dioxide
causes 7 million deaths annually
- Only 0.005% of the average American's
yearly radiation dose comes from nuclear power.
This is 200 times less than a cross country flight,
a hundred times less than what we get from coal,
and about the same as eating one banana per year?
Wait, so if I'm scared of nuclear energy
I also have to be scared of a banana?
But like peanut butter and bananas on toast is my culture.
Also being gay, I hate holding bananas like this
'cause it just reminds me of getting bullied.
- [Host] There's also this study, showing that a CT scan
of the abdomen involves about 10 times
the radiation exposure that the average
nuclear worker gets in a year
- Or that living in a big polluted city
increases your mortality risk by 2.8 times
that of a Chernobyl cleanup worker.
So what is happening?
Is nuclear energy dangerous or safe?
- But just before we get to that,
we wanna thank today's sponsor Skillshare.
The first 1,000 people to use the link in our description
get a free trial of Skillshare premium membership.
So go check it out because it goes fast.
Skillshare's actually how I improved
my own animation skills to animate this channel
with Greg's drawings.
I also taught myself Photoshop using Skillshare.
And it's just an amazing way to continue
to learn and grow your brain.
- Skillshare is an online learning community
with thousands of classes for curious and creative people.
You can explore new skills or deepen current passions.
Like this course that I took for beginner birders,
where it actually taught me
to correctly identify mourning doves.
It was so exciting.
It turns out that their wings make a specific type of noise.
Eek!
I'm obsessed with birding.
Or this class about electricity generation,
where you can take a deep dive
into solar, wind, and nuclear energy.
And actually understand the physics
and mechanics of generating this electricity.
This was integral for me making this video
- It's curated specifically for learning,
meaning that there are no ads.
And they're always launching new premium classes.
At the cost of $10 a month with an annual subscription,
which is amazing.
- So you can help our show
by clicking the link in the description.
And the first 1,000 people will get
a free trial of premium membership.
This genuinely is how you guys can support us
here at ASAP Science.
Now let's get back to the core of this video,
about the nuclear reactor's core.
These reactors use low enriched uranium
and controlled chain reactions to heat pressurized water,
which in turn heats other water in a secondary circuit
that causes steam to rotate a turbine,
which is linked to a generator that creates electricity.
Cool water from a river or ocean can be pumped in
to cool the water in the secondary circuit.
Or, sometimes cooling towers are built.
Like these iconic bad boys
that we all know and love from The Simpsons.
- Current research has found that American opinions
haven't changed much on nuclear energy since the cold war,
which is weird because it feels like culture has shifted.
Kids no longer learn to hide under their desks
in preparation for nuclear war.
Now they learned to hide under their desks
for preparation of a mass shooter.
In fact, 54% of Americans still oppose nuclear energy today.
So let's talk nuclear power plant safety.
A Harvard study found that newer generations
of nuclear reactors, particularly what is called
pebble-bed reactors, are designed so that
the nuclear chain reaction cannot run away
and cause a meltdown.
Even in the event of a complete failure
of the reactor's machinery.
And that with the advent of modern reactors,
such as the pebble-bed reactor,
and careful selection of plant sites,
nuclear accidents like the one in Fukushima
are actually not possible.
But some people think that emphasizing safety
actually just emphasizes fear.
Airlines don't advertise how safe they are
because then you would just be thinking about
crashing the whole time you were on the plane.
And the fact that you need to look
next to the stranger beside you and be like,
I love you, I'm sorry, goodbye.
While you're screaming, and the plane's shaking,
and you have to cover your head,
and apparently your legs break on impact.
- So maybe nuclear energy should use the airline's approach
and stop explaining why they're safe,
and start unapologetically explaining how great they are.
Nuclear reactors, such as Diablo Canyon,
which will be closed in 2024 due to cost upkeep,
accounts for roughly 9% of California's energy
but occupies fewer than 600 acres.
Honestly, that's wowsers to think of that much energy
coming out of that little Diablo Canyon.
There are currently 56 nuclear power plants
operating in the US that provide the country
with roughly 20% of the electrical supply.
That's more than half of the US's low carbon electricity.
The NASA Goddard Institute predicts that
nuclear power has prevented 1.84 million deaths
that would have occurred if the energy
was produced by fossil fuels.
This is 370 times more lives saved
than have been lost to any nuclear power plant issues
in the last 40 years.
At this point, I feel very lied to.
But, what about the nuclear waste?
- 97% of the waste created by nuclear plants
is classified as low or intermediate level waste.
All the nuclear waste in the US is often compared to
the size of a football field piled 50 feet high.
The world nuclear association describes that
the waste is encapsulated in highly engineered casks,
in stable vitrified form, and is placed at depths
well below the biosphere.
Such long-term geological storage solutions
are designed to prevent any movement
of radioactivity for thousands of years.
So even in the event of an earthquake or a natural disaster
these repositories will keep the waste
from reaching the surface and releasing radiation.
In addition, 96% of this waste can be recycled
to make new fuel and byproducts.
- So the nuclear power industry
puts their waste in monitored concrete casks,
deep into the ground, but the coal, oil,
and natural gas industries release their waste
into the atmosphere.
Where it causes pollution
and kills thousands of people a year,
and like all the birds.
And these greenhouse gases contribute to
the sixth largest mass extinction that we are currently in,
and to the climate crisis that we are currently in.
So is it safe?
Well, nuclear energy is definitely safer
than the fossil fuels that we are addicted to right now.
- The fear of nuclear energy is getting in the way
of us having an honest discussion of how it can work
with renewable energy to get us to a zero carbon future.
As stated, the US gets 20% of its electricity
from nuclear power plants.
France gets 70% from nuclear.
Impressive research at MIT analyzed 1,000 scenarios
of getting to our zero carbon future.
And all the cheapest paths involved nuclear
helping renewable energy, get to where it needs to be.
- Focusing in on America,
there is a scenario where you can get to
a zero carbon future with just renewables
and leaving the existing nuclear power plants on.
But this is specific to America
because America is rich in renewable energy opportunities.
It's got the windy Texas, the super sunny California.
Many other parts of the world do not have the ability
to rely on renewable energy in this way.
It's for this reason that the UK has put nuclear
front and center for how it's gonna get to
zero carbon emissions, 'cause they can't really
rely on solar and wind in the same way.
China is also currently building nuclear reactors
due to their increasing consumption of energy.
- Now, up to this point, we've ignored
a really important part of this conversation.
The economics.
Explained really well in this real engineering video,
linked in the description,
nuclear power plants are extremely expensive to create.
Since 1996, only one nuclear power plant
has been made in the US.
And likely due to the cost, not fear.
Take the crappy scenario in South Carolina
where a $9 billion nuclear plant wasn't finished.
And now the people of South Carolina are paying for it,
even though it's releasing no energy.
- But innovation in the nuclear power space
could make reactors that are smaller
and much more cost-effective.
We all know that we need to scale up renewable energy.
And there have been amazing strides made across the Earth.
But we can't allow our irrational fear
of nuclear energy to stop its ability to innovate.
A great start would be to look at
the climate platform drafted by John Kerry and AOC,
which included a plan to create cost effective pathways
for developing innovative reactors.
The biggest lie about nuclear energy
is the way it's been depicted towards us in culture.
Whether it's from The Simpsons,
which honestly made me honestly scared about nuclear energy.
That lie is real.
I feel like I was so scared about nuclear energy
until I started to do all this research about
the climate crisis and realized that we probably need it.
- I think the biggest takeaway from this
is that we need to stop the infighting.
We're all against the fossil fuel industry.
And we wanna save this planet.
And we wanna get to net zero carbon emission as a society.
And it's a great option for us to come together.
- Whenever we talk about nuclear energy on our channel
the comments are heated.
It's like a cold war, okay.
People who are pro-nuclear are like,
if we don't use nuclear
we're gonna become tree hugging lefties
and like marry a solar panel.
And people who are anti-nuclear energy are like,
if we use it we're all gonna die.
And I'm just like, okay, we need to stop this infighting
because we need to be talking about
the dangerous fossil fuels that we know
and are currently killing all of us.
So where do we go from here?
We want your help with this.
This is not a simple answer.
So please, in the comments, let us know what you think.
Have you been scared of nuclear energy?
Is nuclear energy something that you believe in,
something that you're against?
We will be there and we will be responding to you.
- And maybe we'll be talking about
the new nuclear fusion reactor as well, which is so cool.
So check out the links in the description
and we'll see you there.
- Thank you so much for watching
and we will see you next week for a new science video,
or maybe a climate change video.
Peace. - See ya.