NRDC's Matthew McKinzie vs Michael Shellenberger: Nuclear Power debate 

The pro-nuke argument presented here no longer holds up in light of evolving battery solutions that effectively moderate solar, wind & hydro shortcomings, as have TX residents (& shall the above mentioned NYers, soon) eagerly embraced (after HI, Australia, & CA). That is aside from nuclear's never addressed exogenous costs due those being well hidden by the Price-Anderson veil of ignorance that gives the nuclear industry a "pass" by allowing it to evade otherwise legitimate insurance, risk & health mitigation, & decommissioning costs, in addition to the much more visible, yet always vacuously addressed waste containment & disposal problems. The "perfect" out of sight, out of mind nature of nuclear contaminents is what allows the estimated 400+ tonnes of subterranean river waters to wash freely into the Pacific Ocean, over the melted cores at Fukushima, from Day One, or the mysteriously disappeared spent fuel rods that were blown sky high from Units 1 & 3 (not U2 that was vented, at deadly & enduring risk, by the "Heroes of Unit 2" who were subsequently disgraced & drummed out of TEPCO by the "managers" whose orders they defied, unlike their more cowed U1, 3, & 4 brethren), or the Unit 4 spent fuels fire, to continue to be ignored by all but the most technically informed & observationally diligent, helped along by the ever present blinders wielding global nuclear cabal (hi guys!). Notwithstanding are Hanford & Chernobyl, by no means "in the clear," which "seepage" issues continue to be "successfully" swept under the rug by those who continue to massively profit from tax subsidies & true costs avoidance. Oh, and let's not even bother to attempt comprehension, let alone assess or assign responsibility, for the Chernobyl-level near miss when a spent fuel container at SONGS, mistakenly caught on the edge of its receptical, came less than ½" from slipping off & tearing wide open, in August, 2018. Quite the oops! moment, on its way to "temporary" deposition in thin shelled casks that are nominally considered as inadequate. And when will spent fuel pools, that contain 95% of contaminent potentials that go into a nuclear plant, ever be defended by Phalanx weaponry from light aircraft crashing into them? Oh, and the list DOES go on! Shall we COUNT further, as the above poster suggests? Hint: Renewable Baseload Power. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iJunxkln578.html

@@Crunch_dGH How do you feel about the ash piles left by the coal burning that really powers electric cars? Please apply consistent analysis.

@@Crunch_dGH The pollution and human exploitation in Cobalt and Lithium mining say something different. Yes renewables need storage. A MSR (molten salt reactor) can be fueled by the spent fuel from current LWR (light water reactor). Thorium is the basis of many of the designs (it too is from the 1960's). As a fuel it is way more abundant than u235 . The MSR was built and tested with all the necessary required engineering. DOE is doing pilot plant testing on two designs and Canada is also doing one. I can see that you are full of conspiracy theories, none of which are true. Just endless rabbit holes to nowhere. You do a poor job of stringing different stories together as some "GREAT" conspiracy against the "people". Please seek help. Rational people who look back over history will see that the doom and gloom predictions of nuclear are just wrong. I grew up when atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons was the norm. Nevada nor the atoll's have been turned into lifeless waste lands nor are the people genetic freaks. Hell, Russia now has tours (before the pandemic) of Chernobyl. Life has taken over what man abandoned. No three eyed fish. Nuclear power won't directly kill you, electricity can and will though. Besides look at the power outages China is having with 70% of their electricity generated by coal! Why? Because the PRICE of coal has shot up to historic highs. Climate change induced storms have flooded the coal regions of China and caused dams to collapse! Hydro power is down because of it. There is talk that the Three Gorges Dam is under threat because of all the upstream flooding. Climate change is irreversible at this point. All humankind can do now is, do the most we can to STOP burning fossil fuels, plug the wells and seal our current gas infrastructure gas leaks!. We need to start scrubbing the air for CO2, use what we need and sequester the rest underground. It just takes electricity. Nuclear power electricity can handle that while at the same time do seawater desalination to help replenish our dwindling freshwater supply. Did you also know that we can also make synthetic fuels for jets? Without the need for fossil fuels. Nuclear generated electricity will, power all those needs for today and into the future. All those industries run can and do run on electricity.

@@Crunch_dGH what about the other shortcummings of solar the amount of extra deaths from solar the amount of toxins released and the amout of radioactivity release to name a few does the battery solve these too. not to mention the space needed

@@jimrobcoyle Transition to green means away from black. Doesn't happen over night How is that not obvious? Hint: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iJunxkln578.html

And that we shouldn't have New Nuclear because it fixes the issues with Old Nuclear.

He also refers to the cost and time in which the NRDC has contributed to by fear mongering to the public and increasing regulation of nuclear. Both are genius self-fulfilling prophecies but if you can see the circular reasoning you will see right through it. Unfortunately most people are more motivated by fear than reason and the people who want to manipulate know this.

Yeah, his argument essentially is: - Nuclear was great - We stopped building - Nuclear aged and plants became worse - We tried to build new plants based on old designs, most got cancelled or got their funding cut, thus failing or falling behind - Old plants failed because they were old - We should not build new plants based on new designs because old plants failed - please don't look who we work for and invest into, we have no interest in telling any lies

Anti nuclear McKenzie ia a pyscopath,people like him are a danger to humanity, put him down.

that are made by slaves.

It would take 51.4 billion 350W solar panels to power the world! Put another way, this is the equivalent of a solar power plant that covers 115,625 square miles. For wind It would take 1.49 million wind turbines to supply the world's energy needs, if we only used extremely efficient turbines (i.e. ones that create 4 MW of power at 40% capacity). This would require 5.85 million square kilometers. All this is not including how much power it would require to power the worlds transport needs... So you see, New nuclear is the clear answer! The only argument against [nuclear energy] is a political one, that people won’t accept it, or people won’t want it. I don’t think there are any engineering or physics challenges that can’t be fairly easily addressed, and that includes the cost, if the will is there to do so. With time running out fast we must have a pragmatic way of thinking regarding nuclear, not an ideological one. One of the reasons people give for not wanting new nuclear power is so called "nuclear waste" So called "nuclear weaste" is actually spent nuclear fuel that has valuable materials that can be utilize to generate energy and provide benefits to society. By using a molten chloride fast reactors (MCFR) you can destroy everything you don't want like transuranics actinides, spent nuclear fuel and plutonium. But at the same time make new u233 by having it wrapped in a thorium blanket as we do this. We can then use the u233 to start new (LFTR) that will run on only thorium forever.

And the waste spewed into the air from coal, oil, and gas! Some of which is RADIOACTIVE!

Just over two years later, the solar/wind/battery solution is already being proven, primarily by Tesla, though agree that solar panel disposal remains a major problem, though not as daunting as nuclear waste sequestration, by long shots. Btw, Re: Fukushima Nuclear Containment Disaster. What about: 1) The unknown/unreported (but videoed at distance) tons of spent waste twice (U1/U3) blown sky high &, so far as any public reporting goes, have yet to be located, let alone recovered? Note: The reason U2 didn’t explode was because, seeing & reporting the critical buildup of explosive pure hydrogen in the containment structure, the “Heros of Unit 2” countermanded erroneous management orders & vented the gasses by removing a building panel (video records have been scrubbed from the web). 2) At least 400 tons of subterranean river waters flowing directly through the 3 melted cores, unabated & directly into the Pacific, since they occurred? 3) The proposed 2023 dumping of “diluted” high tritium contaminated waters collected since the accident aside from “assumed” equivalent amounts NOT collected that have been flowing into the Pacific? P.S. I provided the world’s first Level 5 cyber security to SONGS (1of2 with unrestricted access to all plant locations -what revelations!), plus led cysec development & implementation for SCE, in general, for 13 years.

Such a silly argument. Recycling does exist.

He lost me when he use "lived experience" as a basis for data. No one with a physics degree should utter those words as a foundation of a scientific argument.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

There are those who go where the facts lead them, and those who start at the conclusion they want to arrive at and pick the facts that protect them from having to change.

Same here in Hungary at Paks.

All that "thermal pollution" is great for fishing.

@@erikkovacs3097 The drive to reduce "thermal pollution" from the condenser cooling water from thermal power stations is threatening pockets of endangered manatees with freezing to death.

@@gregorymalchuk272 It's a bullshit term. Heat is not pollution especially in the ocean.

Wow thats huge. If we could do that in the next 12 years, we'd be golden. Could you share a source for that info? I'd love to share that with people.

Progress in nuclear power will come whether the nrdc agrees with it or not. They steered the USA away from full deployment, but France is not the USA. The french followed through with the plan, and now have great energy independence and value. The whole world is watching, and the American talent has traveled abroad to further the technology.

Shellenberger doesn't mention them either, that's the bigger shame.

McKinzie should have tried to put some numbers on how much grid scale battery storage he thinks is needed to compensate for intermittent wind and solar generation. However i guess with fracking producing abundant natural gas in USA at the moment it will be fast ramping gas generation which balances the grid mostly. One of the best arguments in favour of nuclear power stations is that they make the most economical use of our planet's limited resources when you take into account amount of fossil fuels used in mining & refining to build things. If you wanted to go all electric it would make sense to built nuclear so as to leave the Lithium for EV car batteries rather than grid scale lithium battery storage. It is a pity that there wasn't an existing nuclear power station which had a large scale pilot plant making methanol or petrol to prove what could be done. I guess fossil petrol is just too abundant and cheaper.

this is not the best video, too much rhetoric, seriously claiming that solar causes slavery destroys all the other otherwise good arguments

@George Mann so what kind of world is where "solar is based on slave labor" and "increasing solar's proportion as source for energy with respect to other sources doesn't increase slave labor"? I mean, sure, we can find alternatives where we don't need cognitive dissonance, e.g. maybe neither is true?

Come git yer Walmart solar. Definitely maybe not made for slavery, we paid those workers a good 5 cents an hour!

@@ashnur the CCP is reportedly using forced labor to make panels, what is that if not slavery?

These ,for nuclear solution, are half truths. Every country in the world with Nuclear industries is a dangerous idea. And that is how you stop CO2. Every country in the world, with Nuclear industries??????

It would seam that cost only importanr when not building intermittent power.

but you can be a pure enviromentalist wanting the best knowing it will never happen or a realist enviromentalist and see that unless it is afforable people and business will never build it. I wish goverment would build them and but the have a short term view election to election. Its a sad situation

@@brianwild4640 Even if you a Pure Environmentalist, you have to ignore several billion square meters of land that need to be covered in panels to provide enough power.

@@nuanil hey I totally agree I am not on the purest side they live in a fantasy world

​@@brianwild4640 you just need to think of lawyers who know full well their clients killed the guy, and yet do everything to make them walk free. It's the same.

I mean, if we're talking about critical race theory or something like that, it makes sense. In a discussion about public policy over energy policy, it has no place.

@@hewdelfewijfe It doesn't make sense anywhere, "lived experience" is a euphemism and made-up phrase that means anecdote or unsupported by evidence at best and fairytale or religious revelation at worse. Especially when applied to dogma's that CRT uses to support its divisive and harmful prescriptions.

I have high hopes for MSRs and want substantial investment and support for them in all western countries. However, in the meantime, I want people to decriminalize nuclear power in general and allow for current technology of nuclear power plants to be built, using the suggestions of Shellenberger of how to build them at cheaper price. More standardized, build up experience of construction personnel. Why use any effort on current reactors? Because MSRs aren't provenly economical. They probably will be. But they aren't. Never abandon the principle of using the best thing available right now to better the world right now. Otherwise it would be the same as greens saying we don't need nuclear because in the future we might revolutionize renewables tech. No. We look for better tech in the future, but we don't gamble upon it, no matter how promising it looks.

@@meltingzero3853 We had a working MSR in the early 1970s. China will have their first demonstration MSR next year and will take the global in nuclear technology, and may dominate for decades.

@@peterm.eggers520 "We had a working MSR in the early 1970s." -- We didn't. We had a small scale prototype of only the core. That's a far cry from a commercial reactor. I'm optimistic that ThorCon or Moltex or someone could build a commercial prototype reactor in 10 years if you give them enough money, but 10 years away is not now. We should give money (with proper oversight) to these startups so that we can get three, but we are *not* ready to do massive buildouts of MSRs right now. We are ready to do massive buildouts of conventional pressurized water reactors right now.

@@hewdelfewijfe The small prototype was in the late 1960s, the one in the early 1970s was "proof of concept". Conventional nuclear reactors are much more expensive, take over a decade to build under ideal conditions, and have to be positioned next to large water sources for cooling. Modular molten salt reactors will be mass produced in shipyards.

@@peterm.eggers520 conventional nuclear doesn't need a decade to build. Look at how quickly France used to build them.

Yep i know what you mean, i feel like i need to go have a wash from listening to it..

Not, but fossil fuel is finite, and we need it for other materials.

The so-called "climate crisis" is based upon manipulated data, or data that had key metrics intentionally omitted by both NASA and the NOAA in order to fit their warped narrative. Remember in the 70's when these same climate scientists were talking about "nuclear winter?" So now they change the name of the "crisis" to change the game. It used to be "global warming." That was a falsehood too.

@@paulbradford6475 No one was talking about global cooling. It's a myth based on like one article in Scientific American or something with no basis in peer reviewed papers. Nuclear winter seems to have been a genuine mistake, and the proponents of it, including Carl Sagan, admitted that they got their models wrong after the Iraq oil fires.

Re: Fukushima Nuclear Containment Disaster. What about: 1) The unknown/unreported (but videoed at distance) tons of spent waste twice (U1/U3) blown sky high &, so far as any public reporting goes, have yet to be located, let alone recovered? 2) At least 400 tons of subterranean river waters flowing directly through the 3 melted cores, unabated & directly into the Pacific, since they occurred? 3) The proposed 2023 dumping of “diluted” high tritium contaminated waters collected since the accident aside from “assumed” equivalent amounts NOT collected that have been flowing into the Pacific?

Fortunately even the loons in California recognized that closing Diablo Canyon would be a blunder they can’t afford.

Good metaphor

He tackles an equally important point: Nuclear should no longer be the other N-word. That means clearing the name of Uranium/Fission. Advocating for Thorium is perhaps more important, but these are not mutually exclusive tasks.

@@tenetgg not thorium but molten salt reactors aka liquid fueled reactors instead of the usual solid fueled reactors, the fuel type doesn't matter as much.

I think there is a great reason he doesn't do that. The world needs power now. MSRs are promising and all, but it's not a technology we already have, and can provide power with. We should accelerate it, but the way it is right now, we need to provide power to the world by building reactors that we know how to build right now. The problem Shellenberger is addressing is that the energy crisis is not a technical challenge. It's a political crisis. As long as the green movement isn't stopped from spreading propaganda about energy, people cannot build cheap, reliable, plentiful power right where they are. There's no reason to believe that the technological fix of the MSR is going to change that circumstance. The green movement will find a way to propagandize against it, and nothing will have changed. From my estimate, Shellenberger will eventually also advocate for MSRs instead of current reactor tech, once the tech is developed on an economical scale. But until then, I think the reason why he doesn't bet on that is that he sees how long it's going to take until we have that tech going for us. China, who is at the forefront, rolled back their plans to develop MSRs for strange reasons which Shellenberger commented on in one of his TED talks. The reason Shellenberger doesn't advocate for advanced nuclear in my opinion is that he thinks the energy crisis is a political crisis first and foremost, and that it needs to be addressed as such. To say "Greens, please don't hate us anymore, we have MSRs soon which is not a problematic form of nuclear anymore" is to say nuclear is even a problematic tech to begin with. It's the best energy technology we have, period. Least dangerous, greenest, cheapest if not politically sabotaged. Before MSRs even enter the room.

Shellenberger is right when he says: There are no significant problems with conventional nuclear. It's the best that we have by far. All of the problems are basically fictional (excepting the real connection to nuclear weapons, which concerns me more than it concerns Shellenberger). We could trot out better nuclear power plants, but those same fictional problems would be attached to new nuclear too. Also, I think Shellenberger underestimates the potential values of new nuclear tech, but Shellenberger is right in the sense that we should be building as much as we can of conventional nuclear because next gen is not yet ready. At a minimum, we need a few more years of R&D and we need demonstration commercial plants to be built for next gen nuclear. It could be a decade or two, depending on amount of funding we give these startups.

@George Mann i agree factory/shipyard building is the way to go, no more big onsite only builds they just don't work anymore, plus at least the ship built ones can be easily moved around once built no need to stay in one place as long as they can connect to the grid heh

You're exactly right. The debate has to be extended to include the vast benefits of MSR's.

First and foremost, Gen II and Gen III reactors are fine. MSRs will be even better, but only once they are proven, working and economical. Yes, let's accelerate that. But they don't fix the issue with nuclear because there is no issue with nuclear the way it's presented by people like McKinzie.

One question no one seems keen to answer is, why was IFR technology defunded, and the technology mostly shelved. Did Blackrock and Vangaurd have something to do with this?

I want my oven directly heatet by molten salt too

@@noli4444 Who doesn't?

What’s wrong with the Shellenberger guy? Just curious

Nice summary that shows the bird corner of the 6th Mass Extinction is way ahead. This would be what-about-ism w/out the reference to improved blade design. The real whataboutism wd be expressed by the cat-lover who refuses to keep her 20 cats inside to prevent the 40 small-game deaths they cause daily… “But the windmills…”

Cool thing about Thorium is that it can be derived from the TAILINGS of current mines! Too easy!

Had Germany spent its money on nuclear, even at Vogtle prices, instead of renewables, then they'd have already converted all of their grid to electricity.

Rare earth mining and refining is an incredibly dirty and toxic process. The reason why 95% of it comes from China is not because of cheap labor, or they have all the deposits. It's because China is the only place in the world that cares so little about the environment that it allow it without the necessary environmental safeguards which would raise costs.

Sounds logical, but their costs would go up dramatically and might make the initial investment much more difficult. Maybe splitting the costs of any unreliable generators?

no, they dont exist. because for starters submarine reactors use high enriched uranium fuel that would NEVER be allowed to be used in any kind of civilian project. so that's a nonstarter.

@@mikez2779 Naval reactors use high enrichment to operate for years without refueling. hey can run on low enrichment.

Us naval small modular reactors are on generation 16 or so. Civilians are trying like crazy for generation 4. You can't know why...

Over the last 2 years I've taken an interest in nuclear "debates" and this is a classic. Created a Nuclear Debate playlist recently... ru-vid.com/group/PLKfir74hxWhO14QQAMRFYI1HaNI8xUFeG

Your best antinuclear Pro "limited renewables" carbal, like Mathew, show their ignorance just like the Sierra Club's hypocritical stance. He pretends there is nothing new happening in Nuclear power in the last 10 years - LoL this is shear paranoia and disinformation. Liquid metal Thorium ion molten sodium fluoride salt burner energy converters, like Indonesia's planned ThorCon 7×500MWe units. Their footprint of 65m×180m=1.17Ha (a couple of football field) provide 43kW/m^2 that's over 25,000 more productive than the Mickey Mouse Solar farms that are gobbling up our precious tropical rain forests which are the world's lungs. Mathew prattles on in his deliberate disinformation; Indonesia's ThorCon PPA agreement will cost ThorCon $1.20 per Watt to construct in AN Asian Shipyard and deliver. Indonesia's costs are to prepare the sites and link up with the local grid while the pre-profit running & maintenance cost is less than $40/MWh while the cost to consumers is proposed to be less than seven cents per kiloWatt.hour. Mathew find me a country with Solar panels or wind mills that can beat that price for 24/7 continously and only require a fortnight of a reduction of power while refueling once every four years? And these units are flexible; as a base loader, or a load follower, to accommodate your Irratic, unreliable, unrecyclable, Mickey Mouse expensive Solar/wind farm. Mathew, as you probably have been well informed, but continually remain in a state of denial over; Thorium MSRs unlike the 50yo light water reactors (that only use 4% of their Uranium), are walk-away safe; can be used to burn up 99.6% of what you call nuclear waste leaving just 4grams of a kilogram of their fuel, being Caesium137 and Strontium90, both having half lives of about 30years so exceedingly easier to securely store for just 300years instead of current nuclear waste needing 10,000years. Mathew, Stop spreading the Sierra Club BS, (they appear to have a vested interst in fossil fuel standby plants) and get on board walk-away safe Thorium MSRs.

Reading a sctipt wirh garbage information good? Some cherypicked data, some all out wrong.

@@MrVaticanRag The best of a class need not be good. Do you know any anti nuclear advocate who is better? There IS some material science needed for molten flouride salt reactors. We have not yet tried them at high neutron flux. What is this "Liquid metal Thorium ion molten sodium fluoride salt burner energy converter" you are talking about? I have heard of cooling with salt or liquid metal for high temperature designs, but not both.

@@matsv201 If you look at the intersection of: those who understands how molten salt fuel nuclear reactors work and are against nuclear power, it is almost empty. So you can't expect much out of the few who are willing to speak. Best can be less than good.

@@urbankoistinen5688 Well.. if you look at the intersection between people how know how pretty much anything works from economy to nuclear physics... intersecting with people who are against nuclear power, its still virtually empty

Used to donate to Greenpeace. We all make mistakes.

@@gordonmcdowell - The greens in Germany, Japan, and here have committed involuntary manslaughter in bullying the govts to prematurely shut down nuclear. This was a knee-jerk reaction to Fuk-u-Shima - incredibly stupid in Germany, since it’s not an earthquake zone, and they chose to burn brown coal instead. Apparently, all they’ve done so far to correct the mistake is to keep the last 2-3, out of 12 since Mar 2011, open until next spring. Japan can defend their mistake a little better cuz ‘fear & all’ - but the fatal mistake made by all of us is caused by our legacy brain decision-circuitry that locks into a quick binary choice as the default based on survival factors in the Paleolithic environment. We make the quick choice and now our bureaucracies discourage reconsideration. To Japan’s credit, they appear to be moving toward restarting their nukes. All three countries should cooperate in a total restart of as many of the dozens of reactors as possible. The real INSANITY here is that these premature shutdowns represents a waste of the burned carbon already embedded in these reactors - extending their useful lives means truly green energy, superior to any other existing method of producing electricity. A tragedy for the whole world. I see comments that omit the need to immediately bend both the energy production & energy consumption curves toward 1. quick reductions of 2. the worst forms of GHG pollution - rather than prioritizing CO-2 and allowing for procrastination between now and a target-zero date of 2045, 2050, whatever it is (not counting the ‘exemptions’ claimed by India & China - nonsense like “we’d like it to be 2060, but it might be ‘65 or ‘70…”). For almost a decade now, growing increases in pollution from methane & similar powerful GHGs have been identified. The short-run harm from these is many times that of equal volumes of CO-2. The same thing applies on the consumption side. They’re talking billions to remove CO-2 from the air, when anaerobic reduction of organic matter to biochar (pure carbon, no O2) can be sequestered in farmland for hundreds of years, while improving soil health & productivity. If we believe humans are at existential risk, then relatively low-cost local solutions near available organic matter, eg, food waste, scrap paper products, dead wood on forest floors, clean-up from hurricanes, tornadoes & other violent storms, war-zone destruction, etc, is cheaply converted to biochar. Some biochar solutions also have double benefits. Eg, a heavily-polluting industry - production, distribution & retail sale of residential charcoal (typically burned on seasonal warm afternoons when the added pollution has the worst impact on ground-level air quality). Shifting the retail-dependent charcoal industry to producing biochar for wholesale to farmers, nurseries, organic waste recyclers would increase the industry efficiencies in production & distribution and, for the transition funds invested, remove more carbon more quickly than by direct air capture of CO-2 (noting also that the O2 from the organic matter made into biochar is NOT sequestered).

Yeah, so I'll have to say, I will diefinitely go with the one who hit the point of argument which is already contentious in the first place. Rather than go with the dude who is calm yet not able to address the issues clearly. Getting away is like passing your test paper with scribbles in it, and the teacher's ddnt notice because the bell already rang.

search why there were meltdowns and apply the knowledge why France didn't have one.

200 is more than zero and 2 million is more than 200. A lot more.

"That slide also says there were no malformations (birth defects) which is too very wrong." -- There is no evidence for this claim.

@@jeffmay5024 The best scientific sources put the total death count from Chernobyl at a few thousand, not a few million. The only "source" that suggests a few million is a discredited paper from Russian Greenpeace or something which assumed all increased death rates were caused by radiation and attributing them to Chernobyl, including those with no possible link to radiation. You're being scammed.

The first chart is “deaths per TWh”

...yeah. Hmm. Wonder what 2h of Shellenberger would feel like.

@@gordonmcdowell I can't stand the manner he arguments in, even if he sometimes makes solid points. Even this video was too much Shellenberger.

@George Mann I agree except for one thing, it is happening, the only question is how much we will pay to make it so. Its one of those things that have always been theoretically possible. Its the economics thats a problem.

@@ashsilverwizard3275 It's so expensive that it's impossible. The grid will collapse first. We're seeing grid problems throughout the western world now because of renewable shenanigans.

@@hewdelfewijfe We basically have to hope you are wrong, there is something called wrights law that could indicate a light at the end of the tunnel. To find economics based reasons for hope look up Ark invest, they seem to think it is possible.

@@ashsilverwizard3275 solar and wind could be free, and it wouldn't be cheap enough. The extra transmission costs alone are already more than the solar cells or wind turbines.

@George Mann I agree with all that, but with the politics being what they are its basically full steam ahead with solar and wind. I am basically looking at the picture this way, given that its being pushed so hard, what are the factors that might make it work in the end.

We won't get to 2000 ppm but double what we have would be good. Fossil fuels are too valuable to be burned as fuel when nuclear is an option.

You should look up Ocean Acidification - we're 20 years away from total collapse of the ocean food chain due to the pH level of oceans changing. If you don't have an issue with polar ice caps melting, increased flooding/drought, perhaps you'll have a problem with no seafood except jellyfish.

@@alasdairlumsden670 Ocean Acidification is another bogyman. ocean pH varies by region a lot more than the supposed pH drop CO2 has caused. A good red pill on oceans is to look at the current coral cover of the Great Barrier Reef. It's the highest in over a decade and expanding nicely. Let's go Brandon!

@@williambaikie5739 I'm curious to know your views on vaccines?

Actually, a doubling of current atmospheric CO-2e would result in a significant decline in avg. IQ - iirc, on the order of 5 IQ points - well on the way to “Idiocracy” (loved that film!) Murphy’s law, meet the Peter Principle, the law of unintended circumstances, and Mr. Dunning-Kruger…🎃

really? I wasn't able to catch Shellenberger on any lies McKinzie? I was shouting "BULLSHIT!" at my monitor after every second of his sentence... not to say about his argument of "lets not bother with new nuclear until this new nuclear drops from the sky and proves us its safe and cheap and ready to go..." which is utterly laughable to say the least...

They haven't done it yet and there are many political hurdles left to overcome.

@@chapter4travels these are not the first Thorium MSRs. Do a little deeper research - eg on who the chief Nuclear Engineer is. There are no unsurmountable outstanding problems remaining, thank you. .

@@MrVaticanRag I've been following Thorcon for years and a huge fan and supporter. But the reality so far is a couple dozen MOU's but nothing concrete. (yet) As far as I can tell it's all political as usual. If you know something different, I'd love to hear it.

@@chapter4travels are you following this site? Can you follow Bob's Indonesian? You may care to brush up on this site?. The world needs to supplement it electricity options by following Indonesia's sensible choice and contracting some inexpensive 500MWe liquid metal Thorium ion molten sodium fluoride salt burner "ThorCon" energy converters to be used as base load supply running almost nonstop between a 4 yearly maintenance and fuel recycle break not exceeding 5 days. Indonesia's initial agreement for just 7×500MWe is expected to cost ThorCon $1.20 per Watt and to be sold to Indonesia at a pre-profit cost of less than 4cents per KWh and will be expected that it will be sold to consumers for less than 7cents per kiloWatt.hour. The only cost to Indonesia's PLN will be for connecting to the local grid and preparing the 65m×180m landing sites. (Compare ThorCon's 43kWatt/m^2 footprints with wind or Solar farms 30% efficiency and maximum output of < 100Wp/m^2) These ThorCons run at a useful high temperature but walk-away safe near ambient pressure and will consume over 96% of the radioactive fuel until virtually only Caesium137 and Strontium90 (half lives 30years) require storage for about 300years. (See 5th training session on how it functions) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-q3v3L5FQSJI.html

@@MrVaticanRag I understand that, I said that I'm a big supporter, what I said is they have no concrete commitment from Indonesia, just MOU's. Thorcon can't raise investment funds on MOU's.

Okay live in your on fantasy world

@@thefoundingtitanerenyeager2345 I don't remember, but I'm for a mountain of batteries and mass produced optimized nuclear reactors. That way, cheap energy. But the only way is if it is freaking industrial (like they do with gasoline). A fantasy is expecting oil to last forever. The fantasy is also thinking that paying for something you have to buy *every day* would be cheaper than something you'd have to buy every ten years. Same goes with the so called enviro costs. Much less mining and refining for a single EV battery pack than for all that oil and gas. It's also a fantasy to think that we should outlaw gasoline... Ever! Think about it, we don't want govt's telling us what to do, or the EV might suddenly not work when we say something _bad_ on the internet. There's also EMP blasts and CME to be prepared for (fossil fuels are perfect for those times of grid destruction). So, it's a fantasy for an advanced civilization to rely on only one or two energy choices.