Decarbonize: It would more helpful for those of us wishing to learn more about nuclear power and/or nuclear weapons if, instead of using Mr. Zeihan as a backdrop to point out what he doesn't know, you would instead use your channel to educate us about we you STATE you know about these 2 topics. Consider building your own Brand instead of trying to tear someone else's down. Just a thought!
I put out a video on decarbonization about once a week. This week was a field trip to a company developing a wave energy convertor (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nR-O0Bemp_k.htmlsi=BavQyaAnDvyaz9JW). I've got an entire series on aviation. If you want to know where I'm coming from, I'd start with the transmision playlist: ru-vid.com=PLg6cLUnYMLDNhBWCglJKWrFOZmV90T5IH&si=vHDNmZhrStusKtVx The Zeihan videos are a bit of a sideline. I enjoy his discussions of geopolitics and his style is great. But whenever he would do a video on energy technology or policy he was consistently wrong. So I did one video on his discussions on EVs and Hydrogen. And it's just become part of my channel: when he says something stupid on issues I know about, I'll pop out a short video. I haven't done one on nuclear yet. I'm pretty much on the fence there. Generally I think it's worth considering if you don't have good solar and wind resources. But if you do nuclear, you have to go big, like France. If you build one plant ever 20 years, Zeihan is right; it's going to be a mess. SMRs don't make sense until you're shipping thousands of them. For the US it doesn't make a lot of sense because we've got such great wind and solar resources.
@@Decarbonize11 I disagree. It’s all about cost structure. Based on the current way we do this nuclear isn’t as competitive as renewables at present, that could change.
It definitely could change, but in terms of cost structure, renewables and nuclear are similar with a high upfront cost and relatively low operating costs. I believe that the value of certainty that nuclear brings over renewals will be lower and lower over the years as storage gets cheaper and cheaper. But like you said, we’ll see.
I’ll focus on the information and ideas, thanks. I find PZ’s videos very helpful. The self-proclaimed nuke specialist agreed with PZ’s overview and supplied some clarification & extra detail. Thanks to both, but especially to PZ because he had the genius idea that the world would want a cogent summary of the state of nuclear power in the world. And, I gotta thank myself too for having the common sense to seek more information than a short RU-vid video before I make any life/death decisions on nuclear power. PZ gives me a GREAT place to start inquiring about many issues, nuclear power included.
I like to get the take on several views of geopolitics, with Zeihan's being one of them. I like to see alternative views with things to back them up. Excellent video kind sir.
While it is probably true that Zeihan is not an expert on nuclear power or nuclear weapons, what he IS an expert at is explaining complicated topics in ways the majority of people would be able to understand. For that, I'm grateful. Truthfully, there are Very few people who can do that well. While he may not be an expert in every topic he discusses, I suspect he has Forgotten more information than most people have ever known, including the guy commenting on the video.
I agree that explaining complicated topics in a way that the majority of people can understand is a rare and wonderful gift. That's my goal, and I'm working on getting better at it. I have a PhD in physics from MIT and definitely understand the topics that I comment on. I also do research and provide links to all of my claims, somewhat Zeihan doesn't do. And when he talks about energy policy or technology I can tell you he definitely isn't an expert and isn't doing research, or he wouldn't get so many things wrong. He does do a good job of explaining complicated topics in a way that the majority of people believe he understands that topic. I can't attest to his knowledge about topics other than those that are connected to physics, but this is my fifth video explaining things that he gets wrong on energy.
I have to agree with Peter Elliot. I've been watching Zeihan for about 3 years now, and Zeihan is definitely agenda driven. He's inconsistent over the long haul, and he definitely gives the vibe that he is carrying someone else's water in order to help support a narrative. He devolves rather quickly into ad hominen attacks when people raise legitimate issues with what he says. I watch Zeihan for a combination of entertainment and info that leaks out by reading between the lines.
@@peterelliott2914 People say that, but PZ was the only one who was saying that Russia would invade Ukraine in 2022. That's a really big one. You gotta admit.
Interesting comments - and thanks for the corrections of Zeihan's ideas. However, he was NOT all that wrong - in details .... yes .... but in his general broad assessments he was just veering a little off track. Keeping in mind that Zeihan's apparent skill is is BROAD BRUSH assessments not in the nitty-gritty detail of nuclear (in this case) engineering. In the two major points he made - you both agree. The major divergence is that you point out that China is now ahead in developments, which counters his opinion that the US is maintaining the "theory" advantage. Finally, I regret (on your behalf), the rather snide, ad hominem remark you made at the beginning - about his nuclear knowledge - quite unnecessary and it detracts from your content.
I agree with you that the important point of disagreement is that China is not a technology laggard, but rather a leader on nuclear power. The details were mainly there to support the important point. He believes that China is a paper dragon, so he fits his narrative to match his worldview, and facts are irrelevant. I doubt that he knows the pros and cons of a light-water pressurized reactor versus a sodium cooled one, but that's not important. That he thinks the Chinese are building a copy of the Three-mile island plant or that they don't care about safety is. If the remark you were speaking about was "unlike Peter Zeihan, I don’t talk about stuff I know nothing about", I agree it was a bit snider than required, but this is my fifth video correcting things Peter Zeihan says about energy and the green transition. Since I started following him I think he's had one video on that topic where I didn't find a fundamental error before I got out of bed. Feel free to check out my playlist of Peter Zeihan videos for examples of what I'm talking about. ru-vid.com/group/PLg6cLUnYMLDNTs_WVOVz_PHP6FronuX4M&si=MIQNaAwWSllStaR_ I do prefer making my non-Zeihan videos, but RU-vid likes my Zeihan videos much more. So I'll keep making them, but next time I'll try and keep the snide comments in check. But no promises.
askance on his predictions for China - but not my field - so I shall watch with interest. Likewise the comments regarding Germany - which I find way too dire - not allowing that the Germans are immensely adaptable. On power production - there was a recent article by an (US) engineer regarding drilling for thermal energy ..... using electricity to form a plasma to do the actual drilling. His estimates (I'd guess probably optimistic), was a costing of one tenth that of conventional drilling (to 6,000 ft) ... 350 C. Apparently the hole does not have to be lined (?) as the plasma forms a glazed lining. Do you know anything more on this? Geothermal therefore zero radiation risk - regardless of whether it is light/heavy/high pressure/ liquid sodium etc.
@@m.h.gpaterson8632 I remember seeing the video about using a plasma drill for geothermal. It’s an interesting idea and work following up, but history shows that most of these interesting ideas don’t work out. The problem with geothermal is it only works in places where there’s hot rock and water or you do enhanced geothermal where you Frack the ground, which has the same problems as for natural gas. The plasma drill helps you get deeper but it doesn’t help with the fracking.
Sodium cooled reactors have a lot of problems. Molten salt reactor have just as many problems but different and we have little experience with these problems
I agree, but it still might be worth pursuing them, as the Chinese and Bill Gates are. It just means no one should count on them working and the level of care needed is very high. For now, I'm putting my money on solar, wind, storage, and transmission.
Rolls-Royce, which has provided the power units for Britain's nuclear submarines for decades, has been trying unsuccessfully to interest the UK electricity industry in small modular reactors for the last 10 years or more. No design is anywhere close to applying for the required regulatory licence yet, so actual deployment of a commercial prototype is still at least 10 years away. To therefore suggest that such reactors are going to be any kind of panacea for a transition away from fossil-fuel generation within the next 20 years is just naive fantasy... .
PEBBLE BED REACTOR PEBBLE BED REACTOR PEBBLE BED REACTOR I heard about these 20+ years ago. I asked my brother in law, who a nuclear physicist at Los Alamos, why we're not making them. He said he didn't have a clue. US spends $850 billion a year on the military, $20 billion on new energy research.
My understanding of the sodium cooled reactors is that you generally do not shut them down as restarting them is a big problem. An issue the early russian submarines with those types of reactors had. The reactor could not be shut down in port. The US's problem with reactors is the left and media who have attacked them for decades. And a reason Rickover was so fanatical about reactor safety. If there was just one accident the press and congress would shut down the program crippling the Navy's submarine program, and their ability to counter the Soviets. Peter gets ' the Jones Act' wrong too. (reference 'whats going on with shipping channel')
The book Thorium, Cheaper than Coal discusses a molten salt reactor that the US ran for 5 or 6 years at Oak Ridge Tenn. until sometime in the Nixon administration. It discusses the concept of small factory built units. The book is very convincing. The idea is a reactor that could be shipped in a container and attached to common coal generating plants. Last time I looked the new US. budget took all the nuclear power money and moved it to wind and solar. No wonder we are stymied in efforts to develop nuclear power. Read the book.
per my understanding, the Nixon administration had limited "science" funds and applied it to the space program - the inherited Vietnam conflict also absorbed much government funds. Likewise, decades later the Clinton administration opted to fund the orbital ISS rather than more fundamental science at SSC nuclear research facility in Texas. the fact that State of Texas had shelled out almost half a billion toward the project was icing on the cake.
Actually, the SMRs are mobile. See the Danish who are building Thorium Molten Salt Reactors using our US Aircraft Reactor Experiment (ARE) technology from Oak Ridge designed by a group led by Alvin Weinberg, former Oak Ridge National Laboratory. That Thorium design was “walk-away safe”. So, your information is incorrect. A former Thorium reactor is entombed near my office building at Wright-Patterson AFB.
@@Decarbonize11, the 1950s/early 1960s design was built by General Electric as a Nuclear Engine to rival what the Navy was building and fielding for submarines like the USS Nautilus. The Air Force used a version of a Convair B-36. There was information still being used from that program when I worked at General Electric Aviation. PNNL is taking another look at this Thorium technology. The Danish design fits into a 40-foot shipping container. Some scientists of the 1960s and early 1970s were believed without evidence of the corrosion issues that the post-Reactor disassembly debunked. Today, purification of the water used has made corrosion even less of a problem. Inconel and Hastalloy metals used in today’s jet engines were fine for use even in the early 1970s. Elysium’s Thorium tech has additional advantages, designed by Ed Pheil. thoriumenergyalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ElysiumIndustries_ThoriumEnergyAlliance-2017-8-21.pdf
@jeffking8890 If you're talking about copenhagen atomics, they don't currently have a licensed product, just a design that's ready for preliminary testing. So I believe what I said was correct. I wish them luck, but we've had lots of thorium, molten salt and SMR concepts, but we still don't have reactors that can be built into the grid.
@@Decarbonize11, yes. I was referring to Copenhagen Atomics, which has reported, “ it is already producing and testing full-scale test reactor prototypes at its headquarters.” Testing would mean powering on the reactor. The Oak Ridge Thorium Reactor has the ability to be started and stopped in a single day. Oak Ridge ran a 60 MW reactor for nearly a decade. So, you are partially correct that there are no commercially capable reactors. The Idaho facility hasn’t said much of their operations which I understand. There is open-source reporting of “operations”, but the is no commercial operations or licensed Thorium Reactors that are mobile at this very moment. The technology advances are coming. The US is technically behind after shelving Thorium Plant for the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) types creating Plutonium. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan missed the chance to create a better power source than a Coal Plant.
Better than a coal plant is a low bar. To make sense today it needs to be better than wind+solar+long distance transmission+ battery storage. I'm thinking of doing a series on nuclear, which would include at least one video on thorium and other reactors that don't use pressurized water as their coolant/moderator.
Peter Zeihan has a couple of themes, and one of them is that China is about to collapse. He describes China as a laggard in commercial nuclear power, when in fact they have the most advanced civilian nuclear program. I wouldn't call that nitpicking. I believe that anyone (including me) that puts videos up on RU-vid needs to be OK with being fact checked. If anything is incorrect in this or any of my other videos, please let me know. Even if it's a small thing. If you think my video is nitpicking, I don't expect you'll return. And that's OK.
DoD to Build Project Pele Mobile Microreactor and Perform Demonstration at Idaho National Laboratory - April 13, 2022 ... DOD Exercises Option on Second Micro Nuclear Reactor Design - Sept. 13, 2023
This is an interesting project, but Zeihan and I were both talking about civilian commercial reactors, not military ones. I even mentioned that I was excluding subs and aircraft carriers, which are SMRs and mobile. For forward operating bases, the obvious use case for a micro reactor, I think solar is going to be easier to manage in a war zone. Easier to hit, but not quite so destructive when it's damaged.
@Decarbonize11 3m45s+ in the video you stated only the core components. I was just presenting alternatives where mobile reactors are being pursued.. ..even if via military avenues (first?). Putting one on a FOB makes less sense than trucking diesel via lengthy vulnerable supply lines, so solar & battery backups make more sense, but there are applications. Even there, given the inherent secrecy necessary, the specificities of the reactor designs of both carriers and especially subs are intentionally vague & 'different' than what's publicly presented. No need to take my word for it, common sense would deduce that. That said, 'IF IF IF' a mobile reactor were going to be attempted (again), it'd most likely need be done via a military or civilian government program (like NASA or akin) for terrestrial applications.. then segued out to marine applications, but via a different design than our spear tip vessels utilize. Such as to say, I wasn't necessarily 'attacking' what you were saying so much as doing to you what you were to him in pointing out that different approaches are being pursued. In PeteyZ's nuclear series, he addressed thorium and SMRs. My reply to these was that he didn't cover (likely intentionally) the more advanced breakthrough technology regarding nuclear energy: MSRs. But Kirk Sorensen had probably the best retort to Zeihan's nuclear coverage that I've come across yet. No offense. I found this interesting to watch.
Of course mobile nuclear reactors are possible (the navy has been doing them for 70 years) and shipping is an interesting use case. But the nuclear industry has a history of over promising and under delivering. So for this video I only considered what's close to commercialization, because that's what Zeihan was talking about. Even NuScale, which has a design that's been licensed by the NRC can't find any customers. So I think it's unlikely, but not impossible, that a design that's in proof-of-concept stage for the military will ever see commercial operations. If so, it won't be for a long time. Natrium, the sodium reactor that I mentioned in the video, is actually building a commercial reactor, so that's interesting. But even that design won't get a second reactor for years and won't hit scale until the next decade, if ever.
Interested in a lot of things Peter has to talk about but I have no interest in anything he has to say about _newkular_ energy. There is no such thing, dude. If he can't handle the word.... Sorry Pete. Catch up on the English and maybe be can talk.
Probably some new subscribers from the "hater" section. That's one way to get some: stick to RU-vidrs who are more famous than you, provoke debate or drama and some of the viewers will associate your "side" and may convert to subscribers. I wouldn't morally commend the strategy, but it can work.
@@ShinyCopperpot my motivation is to correct incorrect statements. I believe that anyone who puts something on RU-vid has accountability for the accuracy of what they say. if someone finds an error in what I say and they make a video about it, that’s great. That helps me get better. For my regular videos, I spend about a week putting them together, and about half of that is research. And I put all the links to what I gathered in the description. So if someone disagrees with me, it’s easy for them to see why I said what I said.
It doesn't matter that much since nuclear is fading out anyway: in the year 2000 nuclear provided ~20% of commercially available electricity in the world, in the year 2020 that % was alreday below the 10%, and in 20 more years won't be even in the 5%. The reason nuclear energy has no place in the modern world is because is utterly unprofitable: is not a problem of safety, nor of technology, is just that is too expensive to deploy, operate and later retire and therefore doesn't make sense to even try. That's why the largest nuclear operator in the world (EDF) was withdraw from the stock market in summer 2023: you run more than half hundreds reactors, for over 60 years in the industry, yet you're unable to profit a dime, nor retire the aged facilities nor building new ones in time and budget... Anyone thinking that salt molten reactors or SMRs or fusion will change the things a bit is just being delusional or a paid shill... Nuclear energy is just not competitive against renewable energy and is essentially done...
I agree. I wasn't suggesting what we should do, just pointing out what's happening. If you look across my channel, I rarely mention nuclear and have no videos other than this one focused on the topic. Solar and wind and faster, lower risk, and cheaper. As storage gets cheaper the only remaining argument for nuclear goes away.
@@Decarbonize11 I agree, and I would add that storage isn't even that imporatnt anymore. In the past there was this principle of "base load" which did mean that you need a bare minimun of prodction of electricity to be provided at any time, and oftenly in countries with nuclear nuclear was being use as the provider of that base load since increasing or decreasing the production of electricity in nuclear power plants is expensive and requires time. But with intermitent reneawbles seems that that the is just having deployed around x2.5 times your theoretical peak demand, having a a mix of sources (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal... ) and a good energy net is enought to ensure a stable and reliable service. Is true that sun doesn't always shine and wind doesn't always blow but across a continent is verey rare to not have some of those providing energy across several counties. That's the way is working here in EU where production and demand of electricity is constantly flowing between countries. Also, aside from conventional batteries, water storage has a huge potential. In Spain in the iland of El Hierro (in Cannary Islands) 100% of the renewables comes from wind + solar + hydro storage. Here tha last nuclear reactors are scheduled to start closing from 2027 to 2035 as happened in Germany.
The key difference between the EU and USA is that we don't have enough long distance transmission to make that vision work without significant storage. My first video is about exactly that issue. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kw9_Q_qm0Es.htmlsi=icCAyghoiTDdvwtH
You and Zeihan really are not seriously saying anything different. I just am hearing intellectual arrogance on your part because you can't handle him talking about nuclear power. I suspect that you are jealous of Peter.
I don’t mind that he talks about nuclear power, just that he gets so many of the details wrong. If you don’t care about the details, that’s your right. But I do. And I freely admit I’m jealous of Zeihan. He’s very good at this RU-vid thing, even if he’s not so good at using Google.
The reason I started and continue watching Zeihan is because I think what he has to say about geopolitics is interesting and I learn from him. And I’m certainly not an expert about those matters and I never comment on them. But in areas of energy policy and technology he talks about issues I do know a lot about and he gets much wrong. I always provide references when I correct him, so it’s not just a matter of opinion. I’m the case of this video, he portrayed the China nuclear program as backwards, using the same technology that we used 50 years ago, which is demonstrably wrong. He also stated that they didn’t care about safety, ignoring that they have the second or third largest fleet of reactors with no major accidents and no documented minor accidents (I’m sure he would say the CCP would cover up anything they could, and I would agree with that). These aren’t small things, but negate the point he was making. In some of my other criticisms of him, he draws the right conclusions seemingly by chance, as he gets so many of the details wrong. My favorite was when he said we couldn’t scale green hydrogen, but we should look at ammonia, even though it requires hydrogen to make it. Two minutes on Wikipedia would have made this obvious. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XieLdE30rfo.htmlsi=luKuy2kkGLA_VQOk
You call that “not saying anything different”? He basically refuted all of Peter’s arguments. Now whether that’s true or not, is another story entirely. But you can’t say they agree with one another in this vid
It's funny that the biggest complaint I've gotten about this video is that I'm nitpicking, but I never mentioned this, which definitely would have been nitpicking.
The book Thorium, Cheaper than Coal discusses a molten salt reactor that the US ran for 5 or 6 years at Oak Ridge Tenn. until sometime in the Nixon administration. It discusses the concept of small factory built units. The book is very convincing. The idea is a reactor that could be shipped in a container and attached to common coal generating plants. Last time I looked the new US. budget took all the nuclear power money and moved it to wind and solar. No wonder we are stymied in efforts to develop nuclear power. Read the book.
My focus is primarily on technologies that are ready to deploy (e.g. wind, solar, HVDC) and less on interesting research projects (e.g. fusion, SMR fission, thorium and sodium reactors). It's not that I don't think they'll work, but we need to focus on making real changes now, and that's wind, solar, transmission, lithium batteries. My next video is on wave power, which is close, but not ready yet. Floating off-shore wind is very close to commercialization and definitely interesting. There are some battery concepts that may be a few years to start scaling. I think it's great what Bill Gates and the Chinese are doing with sodium reactors and what Helion, CFS, and Zap are doing with fusion, but none of these ideas will be ready for scaling for at least 10 years, and we can't wait that long. If they (and thorium) work out, we can include them in the mix, but we can't wait for them.
Dr. Ben Miles just released an good overview of Thormium reactors. I think he does a good job of balancing his level of hope and skepticism. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t4EJQPWjFj8.html
