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What is the future of nuclear power? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Nuclear power is kind of a hallmark of the modern age. Finally,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: all that nerding out to understand the nature of matter
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and how the atom was put together led to some
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: real applications, and wow, did things get real. Nuclear physics
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: gave us nuclear weapons and the omnipresent threat of total annihilation,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: but it also gave us nuclear energy an incredible way
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to generate emission free energy from weird little rocks. Later
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: this week, we'll dig into the policies and politics of
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: all that, whether nuclear power is a net good or
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: bad for the environment, and talk to a journalist who
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: explored the new pro nuclear environmental movement. But today we're
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: going to dig into the science and make sure our
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: next conversation is well informed by the science. How does
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: it all work? What about salt reactors and pebble fuels?
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: What is the future of nuclear technology? Genium? Welcome to
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Powerful Universe.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Hello. This is Kelly Waider Smith. I'm a parasitologist who
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: also studies space, and we are recording this episode on piden.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I will
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: judge anyone who says nuclear instead of nuclear.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, I mean that's fair. Yeah, or nuclear yeah? Ye,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Judge away, man, Judge Away.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I heard a lot of them Texas when I lived there.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Nuclear power.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Oh man, how long were you in Texas?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I went to Rice in Houston. Yeah, and that's where
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: you know one of our presidents came from, and he
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: said nuclear every single.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Time Bush went to Rice.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: No, but he's from Texas.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, got it? Okay, right, But one of.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: The Bushes went to Rice with me? I think with
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: George P. Bush, son of Jeb Bush, was a Rice
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: with me. Yeah.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Oh were you two BFFs?
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: No?
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Definitely not. Oh all right, I mean just that he
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: was very political and I very much wasn't. I don't
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: know the guy at all.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, got it, got it. What is the most that
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: you've ever leaned in too? Celebrating a particularly nerdy holiday?
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it counts as celebrating a holiday.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: But during the pandemic, some of our friends and neighbors
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: challenged us to a bake off competition who could make
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the most interesting cake with movable parts, which was a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: big engineering challenge. And when we showed up at their house,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: we had to measure the width of their door to
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: see if our cake would fit. Because I made this
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: enormous landscape with a boat that would go down a
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: river and a windmill with pieces that turned. I think
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I took like a week off of work and I
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: bought all the marsh mellows and all the rice crispies
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: at the grocery store to make this ridiculous landscape.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah did you win?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, we absolutely destroyed them just by sheer size.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: You know, I was going for like, this thing has
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: got a pop. So yeah, it was pretty impressive. I
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: gotta say.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a good way to pass the pandemic.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Did you take a picture?
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: We have a picture somewhere. Absolutely. And then it had
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: other weird downstream consequences because nobody could eat that much
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: rice crispies, and so we ended up throwing a lot
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: of it away, which led to a huge explosion in
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood rat population. And then we ended up discovering
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a rat's nest literally, like a mom and ten little
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: rat babies near our garbage can. And when you discover
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: a rat's nest, the mom will just abandon the babies.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: So then we had like ten cute little rat babies
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and they starved to death because the mom wouldn't come back.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And you can't feed rat babies. I don't know if
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: you know much about rats, but like they have to
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: be nursed, and also they can't poop on their own.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Like rat babies are a whole thing. And so then
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: we felt really bad about that, and that's why we
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: ended up adopting rats.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: That story was a roller coaster ride, Daniel. There are
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: some real highs and real lows there, I know.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And because we had such a good experience with having
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: pet rats, the kids were able to convince me to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: get a dog. So the reason and we now have
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: a dog who is an integral part of our family,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: is because I went all out celebrating this crazy engineering challenge. Bakathon.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, it is kind of incredible the way
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: small things in life can lead you down completely different paths. Well,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: your story is way more wholesome than mine.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's yours?
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: I was born on Molday. So Avagadro's number is what
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: six point two three times sent to the twenty third
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: or something like that, but October twenty third, and so
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: for my junior and senior year of undergrad I had
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: chemistry themed birthday parties, and it would be like, uh, yeah, it.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Sounds really fun. Why didn't I get invited?
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: If I had known, you man, you would have been.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: But it was, you know, like how many electrons are
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: in beryllium? Wrong drinks?
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And it was.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Because you know, no one knows that.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Nobody knows that, because it's chemistry, it's all exceptions.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. And you know, my friends didn't
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: know chemistry very well either, so it was we had
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: a really great time.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: But this is high school, so you're what drinking soda
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: or punch or.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Something undergrad undergrad?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Undergrad. Oh, so these were fun parties.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: These were fun parties. We were all of legal drinking age,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: and we were careful, we watched out for each other,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: but way less wholesome than a cake with a waterfall.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Well, it does sound like your parties are maybe the
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: only way to make chemistry fun.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Ah, we did have a good time. The Benzene ring
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: and I me and my five friends, six of us total,
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: because there's six carbons in a benzene ring.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And today on the podcast, we're going to be exploring
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: how small decisions can lead to big consequences that also
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: involve chemistry. Nuclear power is incredible because these tiny, little
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: weird rocks can lead to incredible influence on our economy.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I am always impressed by the way you bring our
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: tangents back to the topic.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Not always easy, but I'm like, wow, we could do
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: a whole episode on Kelly's Weird college Parties.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: I think our listenership would go down pretty fast at
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: that point. But Okay, so today we're talking about nuclear power,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: and I'm really excited to be talking about these sort
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: of advances in nuclear power technology now because when Zach
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and I wrote Soonish, which came out in like twenty seventeen,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: we did some research on advanced nuclear fission reactors. And
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: I always have to pause before I say fission and
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: fusion because I memorized it in the opposite way initially,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: and so now I will always pause and have to
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: think through it.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: But anyway, well, you've got nuclear right. At least you
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: didn't say nuclear fusion.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: There you go, that's right now. I'm gonna avoid saying
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: that we're too out of a concern for messing it up.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: But we had a chapter on fission and a chapter
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: on fusion, but I haven't thought about this in about
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: the decades since we researched the topic, and so I'm
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: looking forward to your coverage of what the new and
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: exciting things are in the world of advanced nuclear reactors.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if we're going to talk about nuclear power, we
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: need to understand how it works and how it's changing,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: because it's not a stagnant field, right. Nuclear reactors today
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: are not the same nuclear technology your grandparents grew up with,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: and so there's lots of promising directions, some with more waste,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: some with less waste, some with greater risks, some with
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: smaller risks, and so it's crucial to understand the whole
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: spectrum of possibilities in order to have an informed conversation
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: about nuclear politics, which we're going to have in the
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: next episode. So I was curious what listeners thought about
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the future of nuclear technology. What have they heard about
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: in terms of advanced nuclear reactors. So I went out
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: there and I asked our group of volunteers what is
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the most promising advancement in nuclear power technology. Here's what
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: they had to say. If you'd like to play for
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: a future episode of the podcast, we really really really
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: really wanted to hear your voice on the pod right
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to us to questions at Danielankelly dot org. So think
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: about it for a minute before you hear these answers.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: What do you think is the most promising advancement in
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: nuclear technology? Here's what our listeners have to say.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: Just for Kelly, I've heard of biologists working on microbes
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: to solve our nuclear waste problem.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Somehow they eat the nuclear waste.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: No idea how it works, but heyo biology.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: There are a few promising advances, but the most promising
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: comes in the form of superpowers from what used to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: be just ordinary bug bites.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: But where I would like to see more study is
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: in medical applications such as radiation treatment for cancer.
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: Not running redundant systems through the same conduent.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I think the most promising advance is the potential to
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: use what used to be waste as fuel for a
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: whole new set of nuclear reactions, using or repurposing fuel
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: that has been expent. Reusing the nuclear waste as opposed
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: to story without a doubt, fusion decreasing the waste.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: People have probably paid a lot of money in PI
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: to make me think of thorium, So I'm going to say.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: Thorium SMRs, which are those small modular reactors micro nuclear
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: energy where they're able to go much smaller nuclear power stations.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: I guess to me what seems most interesting is the
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: liquid thorium salt reactors, which kind of can use up
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: the material really well from what I understand, or have
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: beneficial byproducts, and are also seemed a lot safer.
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: The very teeny tiny amount of nuclear material that's necessary
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: now to create vast amounts of energy, which means it's
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: not as big of a risk of a meltdown and
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: things like that.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: Perhaps the reactors are more efficient, more manageable, less likely
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: to melt down in the case of an earthquake or
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: tsunami or other natural disaster.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: As usual, a lot of fantastic answers. We're not going
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: to be talking too much about fusion today, but if
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: you want to hear more about fusion, a little while back,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: we recorded an episode on whether or not there would
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: be enough fuel available to run fusion plants, and we
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: go through the science of fusion reactors there as well and.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Throw cold water on that whole industry.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Well, I remember we were optimistic at the end that
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: you know, once we got fusion going, maybe we'd get
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: the technologies needed to make like deuterium and trinium more available,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: but maybe maybe maybe, But all right, but now today
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: we're talking about fission reactors in particular.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, and so let's dig in first and make
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: sure we killing everybody understands the difference between fission and aufusion,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: because they're closely related but very very different. Right. So,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: fusion is what powers the universe, it's what makes stars bright,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: it's where all the energy on Earth comes from. It's
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: really almost ubiquitous in the universe. Fission is much more
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: more rare. A fusion is basically when you take light
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: elements hydrogen, helium, things lighter than iron, and turn them
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: into heavier elements, so you stick them together and energy
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: is released. So, for example, if you take hydrogen and
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: you stick it together to make helium, energy is released
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and the mass of that helium is less than the
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: mass of the hydrogen's combined, so energy is released there
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: in fusion. So that's fusion is you take light elements,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: you stick them together, and energy is.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Released, which sounds easy but requires super extreme conditions to
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: make happen, which is why it's been so hard to
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: make a fusion plant exactly.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Those nuclear i do not want to stick together. They
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: have coolombic repulsion. You need high density, high pressure, all
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: sorts of stuff to make that happen. If you make
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it happen, it releases energy and that helps it happen.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: So it's this cool ignition process where the energy released
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: from fusion helps make the next round of fusion happen.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: And you have a sort of similar chain reaction going
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: on in fission. But fission is the other direction. Fission says,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: take a heavy element, break it open to make it
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: a lighter element, and energy is released. In that case,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you might wonder a whole lot a second, didn't Daniel
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: just tell us that when you squeeze light elements together
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: to make them heavy, energy is released. Now he's saying,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: if you break elements apart to make them lighter, energy
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: is released. And yeah, those do sound contradictory. And the
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: difference is whether you're starting with light or heavy elements. So,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: if your elements are light like below iron, specifically, fusing
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: them together releases energy, making them heavier towards iron. If
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: your elements are heavy, like uranium, something heavier than iron,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: breaking them apart, bringing them again towards iron releases energy.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: So basically, anytime you're taking a step towards iron, which
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: is like the middle of the periodic table, you are
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: releasing energy.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Can you remind me? Inside of stars is that where
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: we get iron and everything up from that? What is
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: the breakof there?
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's about iron. So inside stars you mostly have hydrogen.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Hydrogen fuses to me helium, and then that fuses to
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: make neon and carbon and oxygen and heavier stuff silicon, nickel,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: all the way up to iron. And that whole process
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: keeps the star hot because every step along the way
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: releases energy. What happens when you start fusing iron. If
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: a star is really big and really hot and has
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the high enough temperature tofuse iron, that cools the star.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: It takes some energy because it costs energy to fuse
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: iron together into heavier stuff that cools the star and
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: kills it. So that's the end of a star's life
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: when it has enough iron in it that that iron
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: starts to fuse and cools the star. So you can't
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: really make stuff heavier than iron in any substantial quantities
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: inside a star. To make the stuff heavier than iron,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: uranium platinum, gold, all that good sparkly stuff. You need
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: other kinds of events collisions of neutron stars and supernova
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: for example, very briefly have the conditions to make those.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: It costs a lot of energy to make those very
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: heavy stuff.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, interesting, all right, So fusion really hard to do
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: unless you're in the sun. Fission much easier to do
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: using big stuff.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So find some uranium, shoot it with a neutron,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: for example. The uranium will break apart and it will
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: release more neutrons, and those neutrons can hit more uranium atoms,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: which can release more neutrons. So if you have it
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: set up correctly, like your fuel is dense enough so
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: there's a high enough chance for that neutron to hit
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: another uranium nucleus, and the neutrons are at the right
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: speed to make that happen, Like really fast neutrons are slow,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: neutrons might be more or less likely to make the
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: uranium nucleus break up. We'll dig into that in a minute.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Then you can get a chain reaction. If it's a
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: runaway reaction, like the fuel is very very dense and
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: things are growing exponentially, you get a bomb that's a
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: nuclear bomb.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Don't do that, folks, not in your basement.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: If you manage it so that the rates at which
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: one nucleus is spurring the fission of another nucleus, you
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: regulate it to be steady, then that's a reactor. It's
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: releasing energy, but it's not growing exponentially out of control.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: And why is uranium the sweet spot on the periodic
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: table for stuff you want for your fission reactor.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: It's not really that sweet. It's just something that's around
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: and for a while, is pretty cheap to mine. As
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: we'll hear about, there are lots of things that are fissile.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: It's just a question of what's present in the Earth's crust,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: what's cheap to mine, what's not already being used by
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: other industries. And so uranium is actually not a great
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: source for fuel because most of the uranium we find
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: in the Earth's crust is an isotope that's not great
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: for fission. It's uranium two thirty eight. Uranium two thirty
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: five is pretty good for fission, but most of what
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: we find in the ground is uranium two thirty eight.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Less than one percent of natural uranium is the kind
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: we want so as we'll talk about there are other
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: options like thorium that are maybe even better for nuclear fuel.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Let's dig in then to uranium a bit more. So
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: you said, we mostly find uranium two thirty eight, but
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: we need two thirty five. How do you get it
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: from two thirty eight to two thirty five?
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: So what you do is just enrich it. Like remember
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: chemistry lab when you have like a pilot goo and
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: you need to separate it out into the elements of
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the goo. You can like boil it and one will
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: boil off, or you can, you know, try to make
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: them settle or something. There's lots of different tricks in chemistry,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and what they typically do, because one of them is
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: heavier than the others, they use a centrifuge. So if
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: you remember, like hearing about Iranian centrifuges as they're trying
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: to purify uranium, that's a typical strategy because they have
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: different masses, is use a centrifuge, and so you can
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: enrich your uranium. Run these centrifuges more and more and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: filter out the two thirty eight you get a higher
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and higher fraction of two thirty five.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: I've always been unreasonably concerned about USB sticks after hearing
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: the story about how the virus that messed up the
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Iranian centrifuges was brought in by somebody who just had
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: a USB stick that had the virus and then when
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: they stuck it into one of the computers, it spread,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: which is like amazing, And I'm sure there's a lot
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: of other things I should be way more worried about,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: and of course, like nobody really cares about what I've
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: got going on in my office. I remember thinking that
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: was just like such a cool story, and now every
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: time I see a USB stick, I think, h's on you.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool story about engineering, like cyber espionage,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. But are you running a uranium centrifuge
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: and your science form?
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, why would I admit something like that
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: to you, Daniel on air? That's ridiculous, But you wouldn't
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: be a good spy at all. But yeah, I mean
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: the story there is that like this virus messed up
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: their centrifuges because there was concerned that Iran was turning
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: two thirty eight into two thirty five so that they
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: could start making weapons, and by messing up that process,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: by messing up all of their super expensive centrifuges, we
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: at least managed to slow them down.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: And so you need to enrich uranium because you need
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: dense enough source of the good stuff uranium two thirty five.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: If you don't have a dense enough then it makes
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: neutrons when it splits, but then those neutrons don't find
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: other two thirty five nuclei and it just peters out.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: So you need to be dense enough. You need to
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: enrich it up to like two or five percent. Doesn't
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: have to be pure uranium two thirty five at all,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: like two to five percent, But this is still kind
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: of a problem because you end up mostly just burning
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the U two thirty five, and the U two thirty
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: eight is just sitting there, and it sits there and
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: makes heavy elements which are bad. So this is like
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: really not a great mixture. A lot of the waste
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: comes from U two thirty being in the reaction, not
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: being part of it, and then getting converted to toxic stuff,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: so it's not like a great situation. But what you
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: need to do to make uranium fission happen is to
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: enrich your fuel. So you have like two to five percent.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Then you also have to engineer the speed of those
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: neutrons to make things work.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: So if you want the neutrons to be going quickly
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: so that they're bumping into the two thirty five, why
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: would you want to slow them down. It seems like
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: more neutrons is you know, that's better, that's more energy.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like fast neutrons are good, right, The
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: whole point is to get energy out. Well, the thing
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: is that you two thirty five is a little personicity,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Like if you shoot fast neutrons added sometimes they will
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: just go right through. They will not make it fizz.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: What is the very many fission? They will not make
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: it fission. Can want atom fission? That seems weird.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: They will not fission it. I don't know.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I will not stand for that anyway. YouTube thirty five
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: likes slower neutrons. YouTube thirty eight likes faster neutrons. But
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: uranium fission doesn't make enough fast neutrons to sustain fusion
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: with two thirty eight, So you got to use the
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: two thirty five, and you've got to slow down the
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: neutrons untill they're in the sweet spot for making other
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: uranium nuclei go. So you've got to moderate the temperature.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: So you hear a lot about neutron moderation, and so
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the way they do this is they use water. So
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: you have like these fuel rods and then you have
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: water around them, which is also good for cooling them
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: and extracting the energy, but it slows down the neutrons
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: to keep the reaction going. It's a little counterintuitive, but
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: this stuff is a little bit sensitive.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: I thought the answer because my memory is great. I
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: know I wrote about this about a decade ago, but
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: I thought the answer was going to be you don't
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: want the neutrons to go too fast because you don't
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: want the reaction to go too fast and overheat. But
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: that's not the answer. Was misremembering. Okay, so you've got
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: the water. The water is heating up. How does this
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: create energy? Does the water turn into steam and turn
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: a turbine or is the energy being collected in some
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: other way?
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so not directly. The most popular technology is called
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: a pressurized water reactor. You have uranium rods surrounded by water.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: The water moderates the speed of the neutrons, also keeps
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the core from overheating, and then you've got to extract
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: the energy from that water, so it heats up the water.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: How do you get the energy out of the water,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: typically a turbine. Right. Also, that water becomes radioactive, so
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: you want to buffer yourself from that. So typically there's
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: like a heat exchange or with that water well then
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: heat up other water. You have like these two corkscrews
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: that interwove with each other. It's sort of like electrical inductance,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: but with heat or just basically a radiator. You have
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: this water pass near other water and the hot, nasty,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: radioactive water heats up the clean cold water, which then
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: boils into steam and then turns a turbine. So that's
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the most common steps, and this is called a light
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: water thermal reactor, sometimes known as a pressurized water.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Reactor if I'm remembering correctly. The reason that light water
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: thermal reactors are the most common kind of reactor out
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: there isn't because we were super careful and we looked
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: at all the possible reactor designs and there was definitely
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: none that could be better than this, but because we
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: sort of happened upon one design because it fit really
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: well in our submarines that we wanted to have nuclear
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: powered Is that story correct.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that story is correct. In the fifties that were
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: exploring lots of different technologies, some of which we're going
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: to talk about thorium and other technologies. But this was
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: a good fit for the military because one of the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: waste products of this reactor is plutonium, which the military
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: wanted to produce anyway for their weapons. Also, if you're
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: on a ship or a submarine places that the military
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: wanted to put nuclear power, water is plentiful. It's not
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: so hard to find water. And so these light water
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: thermal reactors were explored for the military, and the government
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: basically stopped funding all these other directions. The government's decisions
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: early on determined like what was explored and what was
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: made economically feasible. No private industry was like involved in
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: developing nuclear technology. This is definitely like a public investment
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: by the government.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: All Right, well, let's take a break, and when we
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: get back, we'll talk about some of the risks of
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: this particular kind of reactor. All Right, we just finished
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: talking about how light water thermal reactors work. Let's talk
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: about some of the risks of this particular kind of reactor.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Go for it, Daniel, You're turning to be the negative Nelly.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to order them, but you know
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: it's called a pressurized water reactor. So let's start with
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the pressurized water. You got this water that you want
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: to keep liquid because you want to keep flowing. It's
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: easiest to control if it's liquid, it's a more efficient
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: heat transfer. If it's liquid, you got other things like
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: control rods, graphite you want to dip in the liquid.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So basically, you want to keep this stuff liquid. But
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: it's also really hot. So how do you keep something
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: liquid if it's really hot. Chemistry tells us you need
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to keep it at high pressure, right, Basically, build really
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: strong vessel and force the water to have high pressure
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't turn into steam. We're talking like one
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: hundred to one hundred and fifty atmospheres of pressure, so
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: really high pressure stuff. This is kind of dangerous because
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: very high pressure. Right, if you lose containment, you know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you can imagine like a rivit pops and steam shoots out. Right,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: it's super hot, it's super high pressure. It's going to
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: burn somebody. Also, as soon as you lose pressure, you're
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: losing your coolant. Right, This water is crucial to keep
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: in the core from overheating, right, we don't want the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: core to turn into a bomb. We don't want the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: energy from that thing to like melt the reactor itself.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: So you've got to keep the temperature at a certain
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: level so it doesn't melt down. That's literally what melting
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: down happens. But as soon as you lose containment of
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: your water, then you're losing your coolant and boom you
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: have an overheating and a meltdown. This is what happened
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: a three mile island. Like one of the water hatches
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: jammed at Fukushima. One of the water pumps was knocked out,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and in Chernobyl the water boiled off. And so this
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: is really important to keeping this whole thing going is
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: keeping this very high water pressure and that's not easy
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: to do. And if it fails in any way, boom
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: you have a disaster.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: So one, you have to worry about the boom, but
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: do you also have to worry about when the water
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: gets out it's a steam. Can that steam travel great
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: distances or does that tend to settle near the plant?
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: If you have any loss of containment, then the clouds
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: can travel great distances, like what happened at Chernobyl is
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: these clouds of radioactive dust and steam and all sorts
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: of stuff drifted over Europe and like caused cancers all
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: over Europe. It was really bad. Yes, it's terrible.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: This pressurized containment problem. Is that only a problem for
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: light water thermal reactors or is this a problem for
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: some of the other reactor types we're gonna talk about
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: It's only a problem for light water thermal reactors. For
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: these pressurized water reactors, and there's lots of designs inspired
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: specifically by avoiding having high pressure liquid, and we'll talk
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: about some of those, but this is by far the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: most common, Like something like eighty five percent of all
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: reactors in the world are pressurized water reactors.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: All right, so the pressure part is not great. Let's
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: move on to another risk.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So the U two thirty eight that's mostly what's
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: in your fuel rods, is not burning, it's not undergoing fission,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: but it does get hit with a lot of neutrons
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and it breaks down into other stuff. It can make
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: things like plutonium, right, plutonium two thirty nine, for example,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: or plutonium two thirty eight. Two thirty eight is short
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: lived and very very toxic. It has a half life
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: of eighty eight years, but two thirty nine has a
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: half life of twenty four thousand years. So you got
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: sort of two different angles here. One is you're making
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: weapons fuel, right, Plutonium is excellent for making weapons, and
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: you're creating stuff that has like thousands of years or
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes millions of years, like neptunium two thirty seven has
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: a two point one million year half life. This stuff
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: is toxic for a long long time.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: So how big is the weapons risk? If you run
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: one of these plants for a decade, does that give
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: you enough plutonium to make a big bomb or do
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: you need to run it for two hundred years or
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: does it depend on a lot of other factors. How
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: much weapons grade radioactive material is produced?
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Not a lot, but you don't need a lot to
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: make a few bombs, right, And in order to have
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: like geopolitical deterrence, you don't need a huge number of bombs.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Like North Korea started out with like three, four or
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: five bombs, but that completely changed the politics are dealing
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: with North Korea. Right, one bomb dropped on Soul is
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: a huge impact. And so yeah, you can make a
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: weapons significant amount of plutonium without a huge industry. Absolutely.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: This is one of the things that's so frustrating to
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: me about nuclear power is it's so clearly a technology
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: that would be you know, great in this world where
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: we're dealing with climate change, if only humans weren't so humany.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, there's two sides to this,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: as we'll dig in when we talked to Becca later
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: this week. Like most of the stuff, when you make it,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: you just keep it on site at the reactor, you know,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: drive it all around. But there's this question of like
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: where's it going to go long term? You know, like
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: can we just bury it in the ground, Can we
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: put it in Yaka Mountain? Should we launch it into space?
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Isn't that a terrible idea? And you know a lot
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: of people are concerned about that, and the environmental is
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: very concerned about that. On the other hand, you have
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: to remember that this stuff has a finite lifetime, right,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: This stuff will decay away into something non toxic after
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: hundreds or thousands of years. But if you're making really
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: terrible forever chemicals with fossil fuels, that stuff is poisoned forever.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Like literally you come back to Earth in five billion years,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it'll still kill you. And so we should remember that
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: a long lifetime is still shorter than an infinite lifetime.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Speaking of sending nuclear materials to space, once there was
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: a piece of I think it was polonium that was
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: being sent up, and the rocket blew up and the
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: radio active materials sort of scattered over the Soviet Union.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: And then the Soviet Union also sent up a bunch
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: of tiny nuclear reactors to power some of their satellites,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: and one of those satellites went rogue, and the nuclear
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: material that powered that reactor scattered over northern Canada. So,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: you know, sending the stuff into space could go wrong
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: and scatter it over a big stretch of land if
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: anything happens to that rocket. These are complicated problems.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Basically, each time you do a launch, it's a potential
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: dirty bomb, right.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you gotta be really careful about this stuff.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Nobody wants dirty bombs. I don't want clean bombs or
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: dirty bombs, but I definitely don't want dirty bombs.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, thumbs down to dirty bombs. We both agree.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: And there's another factor to this waste, which is the
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: waste produced in the actual reactions is not that large.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: The total amount, the volume of waste produced worldwide in
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the history of the industry is not huge. It's like
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: a football field size, But that's not all of the waste. Like,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: in order to get uranium out of the ground, you
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: have to mine it, and there's a lot of waste
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: produced in that mining. Some of that is also radioactive
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: and toxic and much much higher volumes. So when you
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: hear people talk about the waste from nuclear power plants,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: guess the actual waste from the reactions is quite small
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and very toxic, But there's a much larger volume of
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: waste produced in the processing to get the fuel to
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the plant. That's not always considered in those conversations.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: And what do we do with that waste?
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that waste we store on site near the mines,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: and like that's dangerous also when you're polluting water tables
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: and so yeah, oh.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no easy answers. Okay, all right, so let's
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: move on. We've now talked about the benefits and risks
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: of the light water thermal reactor. Let's move on to
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: some of the alternative designs that have sort of different
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: problems and different benefits. Let's start with the boiling water reactor.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: So the most obvious things they do is to focus
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: on the pressure of the water. Can you make a
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: design for a nuclear reactor core that doesn't require high
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: pressure water. So there's a boiling water reactor that says, hey,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: let's just let the water boil and turn into steam.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: That makes the heat transfer less efficient, so you have
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: to build it larger so you can have like more
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: of this steam and the water of course is less
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: dense because now it's steam, but it lets you lower
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the pressure down to like seventy five atmosphere because now
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: you can just have the water turn into steam and
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: then you use that steam directly to generate energy, basically
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: what you were saying earlier. So instead of having this
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: like weird heat exchanger system where the hot water boils
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: other clean water, you just use the dirty water directly
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: to make your steam.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: So that seems clearly better than the other method. Is
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: there a downside to this reactor?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Downside is now you are using irradiated water and steam
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: to generate your energy, and so it's a little less
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: contained like now involved in these turbines and stuff like that,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So you haven't decoupled the energy production and the electricity production,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: so there's some risks there. Also, it has to be larger,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: and so for example we're talking about later the benefits
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: of small modular reactors. Those require technology that has very
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: dense fuel and very small reactor core, and you can't
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: do that with a boiling water reactor. You need a
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: large core because this steam isn't as dense and the
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: heat transfer is less efficient.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: I think I'm still a little confused about the decoupling thing.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Is the point that you're going to at some point
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: also need to replace the turbine and now you have
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: a radioactive turbine and that's the problem.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, so about what percent of our reactors right now
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: are boiling water reactors.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: These are like fifteen percent, so a good number of
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: these and this has proven technology, right. I mentioned this
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: because some of the stuff we're talking about later is
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: like a little bit more speculative. But these are reactors
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: that are running, we know how they work. We have
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: people out there in the world with experience running these reactors.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: It's not speculative, it's not experimental technology. This is like
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: it's been proven. And then the last piece are heavy
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: water reactors like five percent of the reactors out there,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: say well, let's just take the pressurize water and replace
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: it with heavy water. So heavy water is not just
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: like water that feels heavier. It's water where some of
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: the hydrogen has been replaced by an isotope of hydrogen.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: So instead of just having like a proton as for
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the hygen, you have like a proton and a neutron together. Basically, deuterium,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: one of the important fuels for fusion, can be used
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: as an alternative moderator in your reaction and a heavy
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: water reactor.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: And you had told me in that fusion episode that
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: there's not a lot of deuterium. Is that right? Is
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: getting enough deuterium one of the difficult things of running these.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Reactors, Yeah, exactly. Deutarium is not free and it's not
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: that easy to filter out. I mean, there's a lot
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of it out there, but it's a little bit rare.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: And so heavy water is an excellent moderator because it
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: will slow the neutrons down to the speed that U
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: two thirty five needs it, but it never captures them right,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and so if lets them fly through. Basically it's perfect
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: at converting fast neutrons to slow neutrons without ever gobbling
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: up the neutrons, and so you can actually run a
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: heavy water reactor without using enrichment. You can have a
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: much lower density of you two thirty five in your
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: fuel for a heavy water reactor. So there's pros and
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: cons there.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, so it's good to use more two thirty five.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Lets you use less two thirty five. Usually you need
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: more two thirty five so the neutrons can find other
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: two thirty five nuclei. But here heavy water converts all
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the fast neutrons into exactly the right neutrons that U
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: two thirty five needs, so that even if you don't
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: have an enriched fuel, those neutrons will find enough two
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: thirty five nuclei to get the reaction to keep going.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: But two thirty eight is the stuff that turns into
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: the nasty byproducts, right, yeah, exactly. So now you've got
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: the same kinds of waste and you have the same
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: confinement issues as the light water reactor.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you still have to keep high pressure here because
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: you have the same issues. You want to keep the
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: water liquid, et cetera. So the heavy water reactor is
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: one variation on the pressurized water reactor. It's not a
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: boiling water reactor.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you still have the same problems with waste
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: and the same problems with pressure, but you don't have
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: to start the process by enriching the uranium as much exactly. Okay,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: all right, so we've gone through the main kinds of
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: currently existing nuclear fission reactors that are out there. Let's
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: take a break, and when we get back, let's talk
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: about some of the more advanced designs that are being
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: researched at the moment. And we're back, all right. So
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: we talked about the most common nuclear reactor designs that
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: we've got at the moment, and now we're going to
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: talk about some more advanced designs that are being researched.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: So Daniel tell us about gas cooled reactors.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so these are super cool ha haha. The idea
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: is to use something like helium to cool your reactor.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Helium is excellent because it's a noble gas. It hardly
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: ever reacts, It likes to ignore everything, so it's basically inert.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: It's a very high heat capacity, so it will absorb
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of heat. So take your water out and
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: replace it with helium. But the water also is doing
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: two jobs. Right. The water was not just keeping your
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: reactor from overheating, it was also moderating the neutron speed.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: So they were just right forgetting the U two thirty
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: five to do its thing. So now you need something
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: else to do that moderation, and so they use graphite,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: either rods of graphite that you insert between the rods
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: of fuel, or you can take the uranium and code
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: it in graphite. Graphite is awesome because it will moderate
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the temperature and it's like almost indestructible. You cannot get
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: a nuclear reactor up to high enough temperatures to melt
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: this graphite. So, for example, you cot your uranium in graphite.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: It does the moderation and it's basically impossible to have
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: a leak or a meltdown or to lose containment because
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: the graphite is really going to wrap it up forever for.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: This hot stuff that's happening. Do you have a container
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: of water that makes the steam that turns the turbine?
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Is that where the power part happens.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So the uranium is wrapped in graphite, that whole
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: thing is surrounded by helium. Then the helium has a
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: heat exchanger to water and then that water turns turbines.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: We should do a whole episode about like why we
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: still use steam driven turbines, Like we have this incredible
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: modern age technology, and in the end it's basically a
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: steam engine. Yeah, I think that's super fascinating. But yeah,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: so uranium surrounded in graphite covered in helium, and then
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: the helium heats water, which turns the turbine, which generates
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: electricity which powers your phone.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I've got graphite in my pencil, and when
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: I go and I draw something and I shade it in,
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: I always have to like brush away the graphite because
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: it's all like dusty and stuff. Do you have a
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: similar problem with like the uranium pebbles rubbing up against
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: each other and graphite becomes a powder. Do you have
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: to worry about that powder?
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Graphite is really complex stuff and there's lots of different
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: forms of it, and so the kind that's in your
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: pencil is like a very very soft kind of graphite.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: You can also make a very very durable, very hard graphite,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and that's the kind they use. So nobody is like
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: going to be drawing portraits of people with graphite pebble fuel.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: But you're right, there is some graphite dust produced, and
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: we do have to worry about that. But this is
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: very cool technology. They call it pebble fuel. Basically, there's
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: no meltdown risk here at all. It's really amazing.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: So why don't we have these yet?
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Then, so we do have some of these. There are
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: seven of them that have been ever made. It's sort
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: of experimental. It's a little tricky because in order for
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: it to work, you have to have very highly enriched fuels.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: They call these h al EU highly enriched fuels, and
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: that's like five to twenty percent enrichment, and so this
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: is much more enriched than the typical stuff. But it
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: allows for very small, very dense reactor core, and it
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: allows for small, modular reactors. The idea is like, don't
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: build this like huge plant that takes an enormous amount
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: of space and produces energy for like half of California.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Shrink the reactors, make them like the size of a
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: shipping container, and then you can produce them at scale,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: so now they become modular. Every reactor we've ever built
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: is basically a one off bispoke design, which is one
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: reason why they take like twenty years to build and
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: to regulate and to check and to verify that it's
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: actually going to work. Right, if you had a plant
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: to pump these things out, and you knew every single
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: one was the same, you could develop once the technology
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and then pump them out. And the idea is that
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: you could distribute them to lots of places where otherwise
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: there isn't the market for nuclear energy remote places, rural places,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: so you'd have fewer bigger plants and more small plants.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: That's enabled four technologies to have a very small core.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, awesome, you've got these cheaper modular reactors. You still
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: have to worry about bad byproducts being made with those
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: uranium pebbles eventually, right you do.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: The pebble fuel itself is fascinating because you can use
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: it over and over again. It doesn't use up all
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: the fuel immediately, so the pebble remains in the core
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: for like three years, and then they circulate it in
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: and out several times to burn it up, so like
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: a single pebble, you can use it for decades and
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: then in the end, all the fuel is still encased
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: in your graphite, right, so all the bad stuff is
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: also inside the graphite, so basically it comes out already sealed.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. Do you not have to worry about the
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: helium because it doesn't get radioactive the same way water
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: does because it doesn't react.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: To stuff exactly, it's inert.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Awesome, Okay, so it makes less bad waste that's also
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: easier to clean up while not having this explosion risk.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And so this is very promising and there's
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: a bunch of private industry developing this technology. It's like
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: exploding right now. And I talked to a nuclear chemist
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: here ECI and asked, like, is this real or is
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: just just like private industry hype? And she said, no,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: it's real. The tech has been demonstrated. We know this works.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: It's really just a question of getting it regulated and
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: getting the economics to work.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: All right, So it sounds like it's all upsides for
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: this particular reactor. Are there any downsides?
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: So you know, this is a newish technology. There's still
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: developing it. There's only seven that have ever been made.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Two of them are operating now in China. And in
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: some cases there were issues, like there's a reactor in
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Germany where they had exactly the problem that you were
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: talking about. The graphite pebbles were rubbing against each other
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: and they made dust, and the dust is radioactive. It
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: has caesium, has strontium. It's not good, and so there's
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: always risks there. But you know, people are working on
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: this technology. It's new, it's promising, it's definitely not perfect.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, awesome, So let's move on to the last kind
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: of new reactor that we're going to be talking about today,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: which is liquid metal salt, which is definitely the most
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: awesome sounding of the reactors.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: I know, it's super cool and it sound that is
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: much more dangerous. And the idea is, let's avoid again
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: having very high pressure water. That seems bad, so let's
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: replace the water with something else that doesn't need to
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: be super high pressure in order to stay liquid. So metal,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: for example, metal is a very high heat capacity. It
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: can remove heat very quickly, and it doesn't need to
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: be a super high pressure to stay a liquid. Right,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: It's not going to want to turn into gas because
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: this boiling point is much much higher, and so you
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: can have, for example, liquid metal flowing through your reactor
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: at basically one atmosphere. It's still super duper hot, but
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: now it's liquid metal instead of liquid water, which you're
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: forcing to stay liquid. It's like very happy to stay
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: a liquid.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Wow. So if the reactor cools off, is it hard
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: to get that metal to be liquid again or no,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: you just get the reaction going and it melts happily.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: That's actually one of the safety mechanisms, right, is they
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: have a plug at the bottom made of metal that
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: melts at a slightly higher temperature, and if the core
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: or ever overheat past a certain temperature, it melts the
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: plug and all the metal just drips out and then
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: it cools, and now you have this big solid so
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: it's not like exploding everywhere. It can't melt down anymore, right,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: because the fuel also is dissolved into the metal. In
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: the case of the water, you have like the water
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: flowing around the fuel rods. Here, you take the uranium
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: directly into your liquid metal. The reaction is happening within
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: the metal, but if it ever overheats, it breaks the
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: containment and just drips out and then cools, and so
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: it's all good. So it's much safer.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: That's such a cool passive solution. Like if something catastrophic
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: happens and all the humans need to leave it sounds
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: like it solves the problem on its own with no
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: humans there to help. That's fantastic exactly.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: So the pressurized water reactor needs active containment, and this one,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: if it fails, it just basically cools itself down, so
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: no risk of overheating or melt down. And it's liquid
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: metal or salt, because you can do the same thing
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: with what we call salts in the periodic table, you
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: know whatever. It's just another l element which, if you
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: heat it enough, turns into a liquid and has all
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: the right chemical properties you can dissolve uranium into it,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: has the right boiling and melting points, et cetera, et cetera.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: So they have these experimental reactors using liquid metal or salt,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: and this is one of the designs that was explored
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: early on in the history of nuclear power and then
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: ignored because the military wanted to use pressurized water reactors.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Oh boo. Okay, so we've talked about the benefits here.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Does it have downsides?
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's mostly upsides. The only downside
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: here is that we don't have as much experience, so
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: it's not as proven like we've been using pressurized water
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: reactors for decades we know how they work, we know
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: how they fail. Liquid metal and salt reactors are just
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: much more experimental, but they have a lot of other
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: potential upsides. For example, you can use other fuels than
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: just uranium. You can use for example, thorium. Thorium is
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: awesome because it's not fissile on its own right. You
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: need to start off with some neutrons to hit the thorium,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: and then the thorium will convert into uranium two thirty three.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Urinium two thirty three is another isotopic uranium. It's much
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: better for these reactions, and then you don't produce any
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: weapons half life. You can also use thorium reactor to
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: burn fuel from other reactors. So you take like the
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: byproducts of a light water reactor, you can put it
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: into your thorium reactor and it will burn it. It
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: will use up some of that fuel. Remember that we
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: talked about light water reactors mostly burn the uranium two
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: thirty five. The two thirty eight turns into all this
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: other stuff. You can take all that stuff and put
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: it into a thorium reactor and it will burn it.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: It will burn the nasty stuff and turn it into
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: not nasty stuff.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: It turns it into less nasty stuff. Exactly. The waste
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: here has much shorter half lives, so you can take
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: stuff that starts out with millions or thousands of years
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: of half life and turn it into stuff with tens
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: or hundreds of years of half life. So that's really good.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: And it can't make plutonium, so there's no weapons byproduct.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: And thorium already is a product of rare earth mining,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: like you're digging for a zinc and cadmium and all
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: sorts of other stuff you need for fancy technologies. Thorium
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: is a waste product. We're already producing huge amounts of
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: thorium in our industry, so thorium is a really an
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: excellent direction for nuclear technology.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: You said it's a waste product, so it's stuff we're
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: currently just throwing out.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and with huge deposits of it. India has
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: massive access to thorium, for example, and so a lot
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: of it. Countries around the world, China, India are developing
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: these thorium reactors, again more experimental, so there could be
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: things we don't understand about them yet because we just
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: haven't spent thirty years watching them fail, but it's definitely
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: a good direction.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So we've talked about some new designs,
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: we've talked about the old designs. Let's back out and
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: take a big broader picture. I feel like I'm hearing
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: more about nuclear reactors as the impacts of global climate
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: change are sort of becoming more day to day and
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: bearing down upon us. And so what do you think, Daniel,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: do we need advanced nuclear reactors to deal with global
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: climate chain.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's going to be part of the future.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, currently nuclear power provides like five to ten
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: percent of the worldwide energy use. It's like twenty ish
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: percent in the United States. Some countries like France, it's
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: a much much higher fraction. A lot of those reactors
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: are really decades old, like the United States has really
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: old reactors, as our rate of turning on new reactors
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: is dropped basically to zero. But nuclear power is also
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: very attractive for lots of reasons, like it's very constant.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: You turn on nuclear power plant, it's going to pump
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: out energy day and night, rain or shine, wind or
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: no wind doesn't really matter. And so on one hand,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: that's great to supplement things like wind and solar, which
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: do fluctuate obviously day to night and windy to not windy.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: What you actually want, though, to supplement renewables is not
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: something like nuclear that's hard to turn on and off,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: but something you can turn on and off very quickly,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: because you don't want to be running a nuclear power
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: plant when you already have too much energy on the
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: grid from solar. You want to shut it down then
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and then turn it back on during the night. But
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: nuclear power plants are hard just to turn on and
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: hard to turn off, so they're very constant.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: One of the things I really loved about atomic Dreams,
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: and one of the things that we don't end up
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: getting into in our interview with Becca, is that you
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: can take those times when you don't necessarily need the
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: nuclear power and you can do things like run a
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: desalination plant, which would be very helpful in California that's
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: having all these issues with fresh water. So there's things
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: that you can do to make up for the fact
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: that nuclear power is not easy to turn on or
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: off to you know, still make it beneficial.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And it seems like definitely part of our
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: portfolio in the future. The UN has all these different
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: pathways to limiting the warming of the planet to one
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: point five degrees, and every single one of those pathways
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: includes nuclear power and expanded nuclear power on top of
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: what we already have. So I think it's an important
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: quiverent in our arsenal. It's definitely not perfect and the
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: definitely issues with it, And boy do I wish we
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: just had fusion around the corner.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: That's the man.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: But you know, we're in an imperfect situation. We have
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: imperfect options. And next time we'll talk all about the
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: pluses and minus and whether nuclear power is good or
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: bad for the environment on the whole.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: All Right, So in the next episode we're going to
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: be talking to Becca, and in particular, we're going to
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: be talking about how public perception is impacting the rollout
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: of nuclear power, things like fear from the reactor meltdowns,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: what to do with the waste, problems with licensing, etc.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: So we look forward to seeing you on Thursday for
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: that conversation. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by
• 48:33
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• 48:36
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• 48:36
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• 48:39
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• 48:41
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• 48:44
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