Nuclear Physicist Explains - The Rise of Generation IV Reactors? 

Yes, please explain the different Gen IV reactor concepts. That would be a nice video series.

If I remember correctly, France abandoned research on Generation 4 reactors a few years back--maybe in 2019?--and I thought at the time, "Now this is a truly stupid idea! France should be ramping up funding, not ending it!"

Awesome summation Elina! Yes, please do individual videos on each of the Generation IV reactors.

well Elina, you can explain as much reactor generations as you like. Since you are the friendly scientist and explain things so well, i'll watch it all. 🙂

Elina, an excellent video. Yes, to answer your question, please do other videos on the Gen 4 reactor types - the general public needs to be informed that nuclear power is the answer to our energy needs.

Yes!!! I’ve wanted someone knowledgeable to teach us all how the new designs are better. Not just disaster porn looking back

As more of a geology enthusiast, I'd love to hear your take on Oklo, and how natural nuclear reactions occur. Love your channel! Cheers!

I would absolutely love videos about the different types of generation IV reactors currently under development. I really appreciate your channel, I must say. I'm in the middle of transitioning careers, and I'm heavily considering pursuing energy as a sector of focus in part because of you and your channel.

I really appreciate you Elina you are doing a great job

I'm happy that we have such a cool nuclear physicist here in Sweden, since the environmentalists have shut down several reactors and pushed for only wind and solar power. We desperately need new reactors, preferably of the generation 4 kind. I hope that you nuclear scientists make good progress in your research.

My Dad worked in the 1st gen Calder Hall reactor in the UK in the late 50’s early 60’s. He then worked in the AGR on the same site until he retired in the 80’s. He worked in the control room and I always smile watch Homer in the Simpson. 😀😂❤️

A very well designed and presented video. Yes...I would like to see videos on the different "new" Gen4 reactors.

Thank you for this! I like your teaching style and look forward to the next one 😊

Yes! Thank you! I needed to know more about this! For myself and people I have discussions with =) Whom seems to gently become more open to listening to information about nuclear reactors. Sentiment (at least in the Netherlands) seems to gently be shifting.

Great video. Useful, informative, and really well explained. Thanks for all the work you put into these.

Thanks for a wonderful lesson. For me as an interpreter at a nuclear power plant that was really valuable, informative and intelligible.

This was the lecture I've needed. Thank you for helping me to understand the basic differences between the reactor types. Gen 4 and smaller, mass-produced reactors have fascinating possibilities. Thank you. On another topic, have you considered posting a table of contents for your videos, with timestamps linking to the different chapters? I would have found it useful with this video.

Very enlightening! I look forward to getting more updates/results from the actual experiments and trial operations of the countries you've mentioned.

Wonderful video; thank you for making it!!!

Just discovered your channel and love the content so far! Yes, please do a breakdown of the different Gen 4 systems. 😃

Great!! This is just what I have been looking for!!

Excellent job on this video and please do more ! Any and all information on nuclear energy, uranium, uranium miners and any thing else that is connected to the nuclear industry. Thank you, you really did an outstanding job and you were so straight forward with the information.

Subscribed!! Excellent and brief explaination.

Thanks for the overview. That was pretty informative.

Excellent video Elina, this was very useful and provided me with a good base to start my Research project!! Would love to see more of these informative and accessible videos on this particularly interesting sector of the scientific world- Thanks again for all your great work!!

Very good video! Thanks for posting this.

Love your video Elina. Very interesting as always. You are so gifted at making quite complex nuclear concepts understandable to the masses with your charming Spanish accent. If possible, could you work in a little more of how minor actinides are transmuted in fast reactors and what they are transmuted into?

❤ your videos as usual Very informative. 😊

Great video as always, I particularly like the balance you bring to the discussions, good points and bad of a given approach. I'd love to hear your views on the EPR reactors since we're building a few of them over here.

Thank you, this was very helpful.

Fascinating. Really well explained. Liked and subscribed.

Love and like your explanarion, very informative indeed. Take care always.

Very nice. You were very knowledgeable & fluent and the talk could be understood easily by anyone. Thank you

Thanks for your video !!!

Loving the shirt! 👍 Excellent video, as always

I would love a dive into the types of Gen4 with the different pros and cons of each. Thanks for your clear and accurate information.😊😊

Great video, thank you!

1, 2, 3 and 4 please

Excellent video. I would definitely like to see a deeper dive into the different reactor designs. The pros and cons. A look at the different emphasis each country puts on different systems. Can CANDU reactors be considered gen 4 since they can use natural uranium? Are all small modular reactors being developed considered gen 4? Is the traveling wave reactor considered gen 4? Also can the new passive safety systems be adapted to gen 3 reactors? Thanks for your videos.

Thank you" was trying to find some videos like this regarding history of reactor designs

Thank you for your work. I would like to know more about the funds we need to develop Generation IV reactors.

Superb summary. I appreciate the straight talking and also the energetic pace of delivery keeping it interesting. The last point about learning through use is very important. Here in the U.K. it’s all taking too long with insufficient rapid prototyping.

Great explanation, more videos on Gen IV would be really cool

very good and very interesting! thank you.

Amazing video as always. Yes I think it would be so helpful in order to understand better all the reactor types if you did separate videos for each. Thank you for the amazing knowledge delivery.

Excellent summary on the state of nuclear power!

Well done! 😊

Thanks for the video. I enjoyed it very much. Also may be a subject to discuss is your reaction to the release of treated water from Fukishima nuclear power plant

Loving this! I watched as Wolf Creek (Gen 2) was built in Kansas it was part of a concept called SNUPPS (standardized nuclear power plant system). The concept was focused on standardization and repeatability. Experienced the normal legal challenges and delays that all plants did in that generation. IIRC, there were two units built to this model. I'm so looking forward to distributed nuclear generation! ❤

I love this channel ♥️

Hi Elina, your channel is gold! Love your content! I was wondering, under which generation of reactor would a pebble bed reactor fall and how common is its use?

Hi there, thoroughly enjoying your videos. i worked in the UK at Hunterston A and B nuclear power stations in Scotland for 30 years in various engineering capacities. I noticed you didn’t mention the UK’s Magnox and AGR gas cooled reactors. Both had negative void co-coefficients where raised temperature acts as a negative feedback thus limiting runaway reactions. This seems similar to the goal of self regulation of the reactor power using the methods now envisioned for the gen 4 reactors you discussed. Another advantage of gas cooling is that the control rods would fall in under gravity in an emergency shutdown rather than having to be motorised. Handy in a case of loss of electrical power. I’m not a physicist so appreciate your ability to explain the physics side of nuclear fission in layman’s terms without losing your audience in the complexities of the physics. You are right that fission is totally confused with fusion in the eyes of the public. This has been a major problem with the publics perception of the nuclear power industry. People equate fusion with the atomic bomb, a basic mistake that has held back the industry for years. Regardless of the inane green arguments against nuclear power it is the only real sustainable power source we have for the future. i think this is now beginning at last to be realised in the UK and hopefully we will return to building a renewed and substantial nuclear power capability. Keep up the good work. The more transparency and education we have the better. Thank you.❤

Looking forward to new reactors here in Sweden.. :) Was at Ringhals a few weeks during school, loved it.. But chose another career.. Would love to see enw reactors though.

Excellent 👌

Nice explanation...🌍👽

Great video, thanks! If there’s one piece of positive feedback I have, then maybe it’s easier to follow all the branching of stuff if you put like keywords up on the sides of the screen? Like ”now we’re talking about this thing, which is related to that”. I’m just viewing this as a leisure, not as a formal lecture. But it might be easier to follow. But also… Fantastisk tröja, och fortsätt göra fantastiska videor! 👍

Elina, thank you. You're my kind of scientist. I wish there were a million Elinas out there: humanity would have conquered the energy crisis in a heartbeat. Please keep up the good work. And yes, I would like to hear more about Generation IV reactors.

i loved it! sure we do! see u soon!

By far my new go-to nuclear education site. Yes, please, explain next Gen. IV, please :)

Thanks Elina for the explanation!! Good to have people like you out there providing information instead of news organisations or activists. Which to me are quite biased. Keep em coming!

I'd love to see your explanation of the Gen 4 reactor types! :D

Thank you and well done presentation. I hope the rare greenie who can think and question is watching.

I could get behind Gen 4 reactors. Waste has always been my major issue with nuclear (Mainly because I don't trust how some countries treat their waste). It's hard to convince me humans can make a safe space for tens of thousands of years. In that lapse of time, language and signs will possibly have evolved in a way few will be able to understand the warning signs.

Yes, you are a friendly nuclear physicist!. As your T-shirt says. Great job in explaining the generations. Have you covered H3 reactors ?.

I would watch any content you make that teaches me about your field of expertise.

Thanks for the video! I would appreciate you quantifying the reduced waste, what it is comprised of, how long it needs to be stored for etc. I'm also interested in how other products are burnt in the new reactors please.

Excellent! You are interesting, highly educated and very informative. Only problem is they all far to brief. More please and thank you.

Amazing!

Very engaging

I’d live to see some details about designs of Gen4 reactors. Which coolants, which core designs, which kinds of fuels, how do passive safety and negative stability features work, etc

Cool, you got us more interested...

What an information dump my head is spinning 😄 Sounds like Gen IV is a great leap for a new nuclear era. Yay! 🎉

You kind of left out an interim stage, the thermal spectrum MSRs, these will be the first gen. IV reactors to market. The main feature that they share with breeders is the high-temperature output, this is a huge advantage not just for fuel utilization but for energy storage. 700c output allows for the separation of the nuclear core from the power conversion equipment with a thermal storage buffer. None of the storage or power conversion equipment needs nuclear certification, saving a fortune. As a bonus, the power plant can load follow even better than natural gas. Terrestrial Energy looks like it will be first to market, as they are very far along in the Canadian licensing process. Others that are not far behind are Seaborg, Copenhagen, Thorcon, Moltex, and others.

Plus one! Please inform me of the Gen IV reactor types. Please include stage of development and plus and minus of each type. Thank you for educating me in this important field!

Nice video! Maybe next time showcase a specific gen 4 reactor design and talk about how these features are implemented in that reactor.

Really interesting

Very nice presentation. On the Gen 4 reactors, you mentioned the advantage of using reprocessed spent fuels from previous generation reactors. Are there facilities for doing this reprocessing, or would they need to be built as well? And what would the problems be in reprocessing such dangerous stuff? I know in Little Valley, NY that there was a reprocessing plant that was shut down. There were area contamination and clean up issues there in the shut down, and I suppose during the operation as well. And some shady things involving plutonium also occurred that I had heard yrs ago from the grape vine, as in "special" fuel rods that ended up in operating commercial reactors. Just wondering.

Excellent video Elina. Don’t forget the UK, which is producing the Moltex flex reactor. Moltex energy are also producing the stable salt reactor waste burner in Canada, which will use their WATSS waste to stable salt technology to recycle CANDU nuclear waste. The main advantage of the stable salt reactor design is there is no pumping of active fuel through pipes, valves, heat exchangers and a chemical processing unit. Instead the molten salt stays in vertical tubes, and fission gases bubble safely out at the top where as I understand it most of them decay into something else. This design reduces the cost enormously. Also they are planning to store heat for up to a week, so that they have plenty of energy to generate electricity when there is no wind or sun to drive renewables. That heat storage mechanism is called grid reserve.

I've been playing a game called Terra Invicta, which is set in the near future and has a lot of information about fission power (and space propulsion) in it. These videos help me actually understand what all the words mean.

a full explainer on gen 4 would be great, possibly with a video explaining all gen 3 currently in use so we could understand everything better

Elina a discussion of gen 4 reactors with some images explaining how they produce electricity would be great, I see you have started this, thank you.

Yes, more videos about each gen4 reactor please! Love watching your vids. Hope, soon nuclear energy will be not so scary for people and science will dominate stupidity. Thank you for your work.

This information and these discussions need to be shared more. We need to be educated to reduce the NIMBY fear of Fission. Fusion would be nice, but why are we decommissioning so many fission facilities before it's necessary? More research and RND needs to be done because that is the best way to improve technology. Great video!

Hi Elina. When speaking of safety systems perhaps at some time in the future, you mentioned the possibility of dropping the core into a coolant to avoid a meltdown. Wouldn't dropping something so hot into something so cold cause an explosion due to the sudden change in temperatures? Great video as always. Have a wonderful day, take care!

Thanks Elina! That was a lot. Im gonna have to rewatch. Please make more videos about gen 4 reactors. Did you say that there is a gen 4 design that can produce hydrogen? If that's true it may be a good way to increase the use of hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles. I wish the gen 4 reactors could come online faster. We really need to ditch fossil fuels

It's been awhile since this was posted, but it was a great rundown of past, current, and future facilities. I love my actinides, they have amazing properties. Most people watch TV or cartoons for entertainment, I like to learn. Still, nuclear sciences are very dangerous, never forget Marie. Without her and her husband, we would know so little.

Great video Elina, very easy to understand and enjoyable to watch! I live in Australia, nuclear power is for some reason frowned upon. There's a big push for wind and solar to move us towards Net Zero. Due to the cost to setup enough wind and solar and the infrastructure required, people have started to ask why nuclear power power is not considered. Nuclear proliferation plays a part in the decision, but if its a matter of being able to power the country sufficiently, providing a reliable base load, nuclear is really the only option moving forward. Gen4 reactors sound great, such a shame they are so far away from being available. A Gen3+ reactor should suffice, the government just need to get their act together and spend the money.

Yes please for the explanation of each Gen4 type separately.

Great video, here some nitpick: 12:13 correct me if Im wrong but Im pretty sure you meant the reduction of reactivity in the fuel and with that the drop in power production (stop heating up) as I don't see how it would suddenly cool below the coolant's temperature :D (maybe just my english failed me :( ) 15:40 CANDU already can use natural Uranium it does not necessary requires fast spectrum, also MOX (plutonium uranium mix) can be used in PWRs

awesome video elina, could you please do a detail video on thorium reactors and its practicality. could we say thorium reactors would be generation 4 reactor or better. Thanks!

Hi Elina, can you make an educated guess about how long we would need to wait until we see the first gen4 reactors running? I would like to know if there are still big hurdles to be solved.

It would be great to see a video on how arduous the processes to streamline a design and have it approved from a regulatory body.

Thank you Elina for a wonderful clarification of things I didn't know. The conclusions I come to are that Gen 4 is no single design like the previous three are and it's a conglomeration of different approaches to address the deficiencies of the previous three. Each manufacturer will address these deficiencies in their own way and all of them are still in the R&D stage, with the earliest operational apparently after 2030. There may be some features that all Gen 4 designs will have, but Elina didn't make this specifically clear. For instance, I'd hope that all of them have the most important improvements, such as a passive system for core meltdown. This is not one of the better videos from Elina. Although valuable to us non-experts, in some sections, she is vague and also repetitive. I wish for instance if she could've simplified and listed those features that are universal to all Gen 4 designs, but I understand that there's too much complexity in doing that. For instance, even with passive prevention of core meltdown, there are probably much better ways than others, and so there's no single way to do it. My final conclusion is that it would be foolish if we wait for Gen 4 reactors to come online before we get serious about building the new green energy infrastructure (speaking for the USA). I'm still convinced that the best way to do that is with hydrogen technology (whether or not BEV are more preferable than FCV). I say that because is that (10 we are out of time as human life and ecosystems are being lost, with nonlinear feedback already starting, and (2) hydrogen is the only technology currently available to handle the enormous amount of energy storage - electric, thermal, daily, and long term - we need and the enormous infrastructure necessary to transport and distribute all that energy. (See link below.) Hydrogen storage can be done with above ground installations using high pressure gas storage vessels. The electrification of space heating and the tremendous demand from industrial thermal would require a humongous extension of the grid, and hydrogen pipelines could reduce that burden, especially because they are much cheaper and require much less land area for the same power. What would a US green hydrogen energy economy look like? academic.oup.com/ce/article/7/5/1148/7330997

We are getting a 4th gen in my home state of Wyoming. I believe ours is going to be a molten salt. I think the salt part is for storing heat to supplement "green" energy.

Please make a video series about each gen lV reactors!

Please cover the nuclear waste controversy in Japanese sea, keep up the good work and thank you!

There are a couple of Gen 4 reactor HTGR in the Shidao Bay power plant since 2022.

Lovely! What about space reactors, we have a few blown up in (Higher) Earth Orbit. An since we're at the subject, could the Van Allen Belts have been made more radioactive by that test of a nuke in the upper atmosphere. I believe they nuked the upper atmosphere before the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts... I've always wondered about this. Thank you, the way you structure your presentation inspires confidence and trust in the info presented!😌👽🤖😸🤓

What an amazing explanation, the nuclear energy is in a constant evolution, and far away from the Hollywood vision of the dirty unsafe energy. I'm in love 😅

I already enjoyed the Illinois university professor 4 years ago about gen 3 and 4 and safe they are. But I loved your documentary about it, specially the technicalities. I think the standardisation of modular nuclear reactors built in assembly lines. Remove thousands of kilometers of high power lines and place several smr near the bigger cities.