US Navy has something like 5,400 "years" of combined nuclear reactor use without a single incident. And those reactors are on MOVING ships and submarines.
Good point but i believe the concern about nuclear power is that its susceptible to sabotage. Chernobyl pretty much led to the dissolution of the soviets
42 years in the nuclear industry and I have experienced the ridiculous uphill battle that the peaceful use of nuclear power has fought. Great example of how fear and ignorance can have such a negative impact.
if you want to see the truth, follow the money. a lot of 'green peace' NGOs are actually funded by investors/hedge funds who have stakes in oil/gas/renewables. they set up these environmental groups to put pressure on politicians and brainwash the local population. everytime they shut down 1 nuclear plant they know they have to replace it with gas,coal, and renewables. except usually renewables replace about 10 % and the other 90% is gas/carbon. this is what happens in Cali, NY, all over the world. so the environmental groups are not really environmental and the hedge funds get richer from these schemes while people suffer from elevated electricity costs and more pollution. I encourage everyone to research a bit more on their own and theyll see exactly what im saying with factual evidence.
Yeah that could have been real useful to him to check out his ideas about Armageddon, and FF "destroying the universe" or 33m tsunamis. He is more full of shit than Al Gore.
Oliver was trying to remember how to use the Dewey Decimal System and he was going to pause the interview so he could run to the library, but Jamie had it ready
@JD begs the question, has Stone been notoriously stubborn about technology for like, decades or something? That really seemed to surprise him, genuinely
I'm from Slovakia, we have a nuclear power plant, I live 40 km away..... 😅 We don't think of it as unsafe, it's cheap energie source. My neighbours work there and from his words they have to pass many tests, checks to make sure all is safe, the plant has to meet safety standards. However, accidents can happen. That's life.
Because you're not American.. Being from Slovakia, I'm sure you're no stranger of Propaganda. Which is why a lot of Americans are "deathly", wrongly-so , afraid of Nuclear Power. (At least, in their backyards) They've mostly been lied to.
Nuclear plants are designed with MULTIPLE redundant safety systems. Chernobyl happened only because the guy in charge that night forcibly bypassed these safety systems, and because it was during the Soviet Union , none of the staff felt like they could speak up regarding his actions to stop him. All to try and get an overdue safety check completed (ironically).
It's the horror of a plane crash or a nuclear meltdown that makes people nervous. Stellan Skarsgard doesn't make an HBO miniseries about a fender bender.
Also these are war fighting machines put under immense stress and battle rhythms yet there has been zero and I mean zero nuclear accidents in its nearly 70 year existence. Wake up people.
It's true, but I think we've been significantly held back by our reliance on naval reactor design. Most of our power plants are just scaled up versions of what we use in naval applications, where there are all kinds of reactor designs that would be better for large scale power generation applications where they aren't surrounded by sea water.
At Uni, one of my Tutors served over 10 years on a Nuclear Submarine. In every lesson he would incorporate his submarine stories into the lesson - really liked him. Anyway he said that Diesel powered submarines were better than Nuclear powered submarines for one reason - on a Diesel submarine you can turn the engine off - which is very important when you know other Subs in the area are trying to hear you!
@Kevin John oh yea I agree there are so many awesome new designs out in the industry. I feel like our fleet could go for a upgrade too. Interesting that you bring it up since Admiral Rickover was probably responsible for that fact you brought up.
@Gary Phisher that's fair but the disadvantage is you need air to make diesel work kinda hard to do under water. I always felt a natural circulation reactor would be a more ideal design for the subs
Thank you so much Joe! You've had on some great guests, Oliver Stone is my hero. I've gotten near a college education listening to you - the College of Thought. I am looking forward towards a life as a parent.
I volunteered in Iwaki, 45km south of Sendai to help those displaced after the tragedy there. The reason that plant exploded was due to governmental mismanagement during the design/building process. A US company helped to build the plant along the ocean coastline. The normal design of a nuclear plant in such a spot has the water cooling pumps (used to pump salt water into the main chamber when a meltdown is imminent to cool it down) are placed inland and are surrounded by a high concrete wall specifically to protect them in the case of a tsunami. The government officials in Japan didn't like how the pumps and walls looked (not kidding) from the surrounding area and insisted that the pumps be placed on the ocean side of the reactor and the wall made shorter or they would pull the contract. True story.
Oliver "Misinformation about nuclear is just the tip of the spear." Joe "Have you seen an Orangutan fishing with a spear?" Oliver "What? No, I just meant that..." Joe "Jamie, pull up the spearfishing Orangutan for Oliver"
As per usual with humanity, our tools and resources aren’t really the problem more often than not, it’s how we use them and a lack of care and respect for them
Looking forward to seeing this documentary. The French and Swedes have developed some very safe and excellent nuclear power plants. The US Navy has an incredible history of safe operation of nuclear reactors on board its subs and carriers. The Soviets did not have the same safety protocols unfortunately.
It's a shame France has had 100's of nuclear spills since they started using nuclear and have no idea what they are going to do with all the nuclear waste that is sitting in decaying storage containers
And yet ROSATOM is a world leader in safe nuclear energy with unique innovations in MOX fuel and fast neutron reactors. HBO did not do justice with that show.
In fairness, Hank Scorpio ran a nuclear power plant that didn't seem to have the problems that the Springfield plant had; and he even had Homer working there.
I think the sketchy safety record of the nuclear industry is the biggest factor. Also the hysterical Western propaganda about Chernobyl and the big cover up that happened over 3 mile island and Fukushima
Yeah but not many have been bombed or destroyed. Look what depleted uranium shells did to the soldiers and their kids. And that was (depleted) uranium. Some of that farmland will never be farmed for at least another 100 years.
@@workingshlub8861 trust me your going to have a whole fleet soon enough. I know you have major worries I'm Allie to China my friend 👍 I'm just stating that we rarely have destruction of such vessels and Russia, China, UK and even AUSTRALIA have nuke subs so its an Endless cycle of destruction. Nuclear is deadly. If the sodium alone hits water.....wow!
On the nuclear topic you guys should talk to Bret Kugelmass of Last Energy building small modular reactors without needing to construct large containment structures. He brings the mindset of a tech founder to the energy space and has a lot of data to share.
my entire life I've heard the nuclear power luddites suppressing progress that would create more energy for more people safer than anything else - it is great to hear a change from that camp. let's hope it spreads.
@@bhorny1 Theoretically, the average nuclear waste created by one person for an entire lifetime would vacate as much space as a can of Coke. A handful of dedicated bunkers created exclusively to house depleted fuel rods would last us for centuries to come. Really is a bummer that it’s so nasty for such a long time though
@@replexityYeah that's pretty bad, if it wasn't for the decay lasting so long it would be great. But the waste it produces makes it one of the worst sources of energy.
Yeah, I respect Oliver Stone but I had to rewind that bit because I thought I misheard. Sure Chernobyl took some dramatic licence, but anyone who says "it's a complete fabrication, we asked Russian scientists" needs to get their head checked. I thought they actually did quite a good job of showing that it was poor technical practices and chain-of-command issues that caused the disaster, not the inherent dangers of nuclear energy
Yeah, that part was kind of stupid. Even if he had asked ukrainians it would be a bit dubious version. The fact that he questioned the Russian version so little....
@@r.daneel.90 Russian version? He said Russian scientist, not Russian ministry for information. Would you expect every American scientists to be a propaganda bot too?
I am training as a Equipment Operator in a Nuclear Plant right now. I’m glad that people are realizing that nuclear is much safer that most people expect.
Ridiculously more energy density than any other fuel millions of times more which is hard to wrap your head around. The advancements in fuel recycling are also super interesting.
Reactors can power their own cooling systems or use their backup generators. Reactors have containment buildings that can withstand jets crashing into them, and militaries aren’t stupid enough to create exclusion zones in territory they’re trying to control
How exactly do you imagine that happening? I’m quite confused how people think these things are made of paper, when the entire purpose of the containment structures is to block high energy radiation which requires extremely dense materials.
I lived in CampHill when this happened. The state police drove around in their cars and told us to stay in our house for at least a week do not come out for any reason. I was closer than 10 miles from that reactor failing and have no more radioactive material in my body than you do.
People out here in California think that their Tesla's charge from clean energy have no idea that it comes from coal fired plants to the electric plant. We definitely should have kept our nuclear program going..
I may be remembering wrong from another documentary, but I'm pretty sure they can already use the waste to create more useable energy and early nuclear plants were designed to do that
Well thing is it’s really not “using the waste”. The reality is that current nuclear plants are crazy inefficient. Not at producing electricity but in undergoing fission production. The most cutting edge nuclear plants only operate with about a 7% probability to fission all fuel. As a result this means that the supermajority of material you pull out of a nuclear reactor is the fuel that never underwent a fission reactor (U-238, U-235, Pu-239). Because we are pulling it out of the reactor it is technically classified as waste as it’s still mixed in with all the waste products that were created after nuclear processes were completed. It’s interesting to note that the actual fission product waste and materials transmuted while in the reactor makeup only about 1.5% of material and Plutonium 239 is 1% of this. Plutonium 239 is also a fissile fuel that can be used in FSRs or Fast Spectrum reactors.
@@vihreelinja4743He’s not entirely wrong. Historically in the early days of fast spectrum reactors that didn’t have breeding technology Uranium 239 was transmuted offsite and then brought to these reactors. But it wasn’t ever really waste as it was seperated in contained quantities to minimize the amount of reprocessing and centrifuges that were needed. Also today there are some reactors that use nuclear waste, it’s just not the waste that people typically think about. More specifically it’s old decommissioned nuclear bombs they take the Plutonium 239 out and run it in a fast spectrum reactor. BN-800 in Russia is a good example of this. Historically you also saw more of this after the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the 1980s as the US and Russia began to reduce weapon stockpiles…..
Surprised Joe didn’t ask about the Santa susana field lab sodium reactor accidents in the San Fernando valley / simi valley area. He used to live in Bell Canyon, and lived probably closer than most ever did. I live within 5 miles from the site. It happened in the 50-60’s and since it was a military lab we didn’t find out about it till the 90’s
There were lots of really stupid tests conducted in the early days of nuclear power, before the health effects were understood. They used to test nuclear bombs with fully manned naval ships well into the damage zones. There's videos of it online. Doctors also used to prescribe highly radioactive water and other radioactive elixirs as medication.
IIRC, there was some article or study about how the average person has "The Simpsons" as one of their key sources of information regarding nuclear energy.
@@rpe7418 the ☢️ Nuclear Power Industry have done an extremely pitiful job of being honest and open about all aspects of Nuclear Power to include the part about the waste and where it has to be stored and why. And that aspect will never go away. It literally cannot. Corporations are too flawed to do anything any better than what they are doing now.
@@willia3r I think most of us are aware that nuclear waste must be stored for thousands of years, but don't understand that the amount is relatively small. Somewhat humorous take here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aDUvCLAp0uU.html
@@tbayley6 I beg differ on the _”most”_ part. Also, have to take note of the term you used _”relatively.”_ The standards differ from person to person. And in the case of nuclear waste, the standard probably vacillates between the corporate suits and the Government folks.
We have literally solved the waste problems over a decade ago. They don't store it in Simpsons style nuclear barrels. Like almost everyone thinks. The containers they put the stuff in now, you could drop it out of a plane from 30,000ft and it wouldn't leak. That's not even mentioning if we had simply invested in the research the LFTR reactor would be turning that nuclear waste into more fuel and the output waste from that is a material needed for batteries they use for space travel and is EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE TO PRODUCE any other way. What you don't realize is the hippies who were a fringe minority were actually unknowingly doing the bidding of big oil.
Yeah, it was amazing well balanced and the fact that he is promoting a show purely to show one side really gives everyone a full scope of the situation.
Japan has really ramped down on their nuclear since Fukushima. They're leaning heavily on gas imported from the US now. I don't agree with it, but after all Japan has been through I kinda get it. People think of the Godzilla thing in terms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it was actually in response to the Castle Bravo incident.
My dad worked at a nuclear power plant in lousiana. There was a spill. My dad was never the same. The money they gave him got him and his family still in poverty.
@@MrNelahem im not apart of his family. He is my biological dad but didnt raise me. Its okay to not understand but to call a thing u dont understand weird make u weird to me.
My grandfather was a foreman for a nuclear power plant. One day my mom asked him about meltdowns or something and he said "If I told you the truth you would never sleep again."
My concern is if the grid goes down for more than a week then most nuclear power plants will go into meltdown without backup generators running water over the rods.
It’s not the nuclear facility itself that people are afraid of, it is how it is handled. I grew up in the Tri-Cities Washington state, which is the most contaminated place in the United States. Because we have a nuclear site called Hanford and it was grossly mismanaged and as a result the entire area is contaminated.
My understanding of the danger of radiation damage to the body is that ionising radiation actually damages the genetic material, so that even when cells die and are replaced as the body repairs itself, the replacement is with cells that also carry the genetic damage which can ultimately cause cancer. Similar mechanism as repeated sunburn causing cancer, your body repairs the heat burn but its the damage to the genetic material that causes cancer down the track. Thought this would be worth sharing for nuance. That said, I am 100% for safe nuclear power!
I don't think that's correct. It's not like when you damage the DNA of a given cell, it replicates that damage to other cells in the body somehow. I think your worst case scenario at the cell level is that you damage the cells copy of DNA to the point where it can't repair itself and the cell dies. If this happens to a large number of cells in a given organ, you can certainly die from it, but I don't think there is radiation damage where you live, but you have life-long damage to your DNA or something like that. I don't think its right to say that the DNA repair mechanisms get broken, they just get overwhelmed.
If radiation worked that way super powers would be a plausible result of the mutation. I'm told radiation _can't_ cause super powers so I have to assume radiation doesn't work that way
I think radiation only damages cells that are dividing and that's why it's used against cancer because cancer cells are always dividing rapidly out of control.
You're correct, but tons of behaviors (that many think of as "normal") do the same thing. Eating anything over 30% of your food intake from ultra processed foods (barring athletic lifestyles or heavy labor), will pretty much ensure people get fatter, dumber, and weaken their genetics. Most people are literally doing this everyday, along with a string of other disastrous health decisions. So we've already passed that point by our own volition... I don't get why we'd be hesitant at this point.
Regarding "backup" energy. 12:32 "the point is when they [renewable wind and solar] run out, what they need is gas backup." That goes for gas too. When you run out of gas, you need gas backup.
The Platoon movie commentary DVD Dale Dye former Marine in the movie and technical advisory to Oliver Stone. And commentary from Oliver. Both commentaries are fantastic. As expected ones from the left and ones from the right. It's very interesting and dark from both. Semper Fi bros.
As an electrical engineer in the nuclear industry I am very happy this conversation is being had now. We need Nuclear energy to transition off of fossil fuels and become energy independent
My biggest concern is spent fuel storage. Don’t we just bury that shit in the ground? What happens if we start really going hard with nuclear and the amount of spent fuel increases dramatically? Do we just bury it and that’s all we can do?
As someone who's worked in various types of power plants, refineries, SAGD oil extraction sites and natural gas plants I firmly believe we should be going into nuclear and not running away from it. The safety systems in place now are far more advanced and if protocols are followed it makes leaks or contamination of any kind almost impossible. Wind and solar should be something we use and on residential property to help lower energy costs but scaling it up is not working anywhere its done. The best renewables are Geothermal and Tidal with Hydro being added in some areas but with weather patterns changing even that is less reliable.
Great conversation. I still wish someone would do a deep dive interview into the mechanics of each of his films. I know he's been on Rogan two other times and a couple of other podcasts, but there's never been a deep examination of each movie that explored the involvement of each aspect of the filmmaking process. The construction of so many of his films incorporate each element of cinema at it's optimal level: story, performance, editing, cinematography, music, etc. JFK literally checks all the boxes in each of these categories to such an extent that very few can ever match. That is cinema at it's finest. More insight into that process would be interesting. Later on in this podcast they're talking about octopus', and while it's interesting, it's such a missed opportunity to pick the brain of such a formidable talent in his field. It's like talking about favorite cereals with Einstein.
I would litterally sleep next to the reactor shielding because it was a good hiding spot and never got any rads from it. Radioactive energy is not scary for the people just the operator but thats only of there is a steamline rupture.
We could have been using perfectly safe low pressure Thorium molten salt reactors for the last 50 years if the US Navy hadn’t been handed the reactor development program to further the nuclear submarine program.
@@killdizzle china wont stop buying food over ending a mineral lease. We shouldnt be giving them rights to strategic natural resources. Minerals are finite, fish are not.
My very intelligent and thoughtful 22yo son is completely pro nuclear. I am too, given it’s in the right hands. This concept and frame of thinking is a mindset and requires at least the ability to grasp the pros and cons or benefit vs risk, however elementary. But isn’t that always the case? …anything can flourish in the right hands! ✌🏼❤️
@@jaredleicht1656 why does it need to be built next to someone's house exactly? i dont understand why this propaganda point is used as if all power plants have to be built directly inside of a suburb.
@@jaredleicht1656 I wish! Instead we have carbon power plants 20 km from here running day and night, the air is so dirty you can see the sickly yellow-red layer dense over us arriving with the plane. So I repeat: I wish they built it next door
You cannot expect a private company to take on ANY sort of risk unless the government forces them to do so or pays for said risk. Same goes for literally anything regarding a private enterprise - They have to compete against the WORST actor, by being even worse than their competitor - that's why that hate "government regulation" - because they yearn to be the very worst (which means the most profitable at any cost to the consumers/workers). Which is why regulation like a high minimum wage allows good actors in the economy to pay their workers a living wage without having to worry about being undercut by the very worst of the worst.
@@JoeyVol You were right ... until min wage ... artificial minimum wages just cause unemployment as has been shown countless times in history ... Thomas Sowell gives a good explanation ... you just have to look at the migration of companies between states in America or between countries across the world ... the MARKET needs to decide wages ...as soon as governments step in you introduce inefficiencies and waste ... and that makes everyone poorer
@@JoeyVol The main problem is liability limited companies (thanks UK) ... if the liability was unlimited companies wouldn't need regulation ... they would be VERY careful
It's real easy, as long as you don't have to worry about cleaning it up. Still waiting for them to clean up Chernobyl, and Fukushima. As long as you're ok with leaving huge messes for other people to clean up, it's all good.
@@StoutProper cover-ups? If there was ever any problem with one of those nuclear reactors, one of our satellites can see it from space. It's impossible to cover up a radiation leak.
I've read that the French Nuclear reactors are the safest - but apparently they own the patents on what makes them the safest, and often overcharge for others to use them. They will lower the price if you hire French companies to build yours though!
In Washington state south of the Capitol on the way out to the coast, there's an abandoned nuclear plant that never went into operation because of public outcry. People cited Hanford as a reason not to move forward with the nuclear plant. However Hanford was a nuclear weapons manufacturing site, and had nothing to do with nuclear power.
Between the new club and having to do podcasts and fitting in his workouts in between he's running himself ragged. Notice how the podcasts have gotten shorter since the new club opened?
The concern some people have isn't with nuclear power itself but the inevitability of plants running on slashed budgets and cutting corners on maintenance schedules to reduce cost (which inevitability those savings line someones pockets instead of improving safety)
Doesnt C02 green the environment, and create more trees? I dont actually know but I heard that before, but I also hear people saying its terrible. So what information is correct??
I recently listened to a long form interview with Robert Kennedy Jr. I thought for the most part that he is a reasonable man who has some decent policy ideas. Where he really lacked was in energy especially Nuclear. He is still very much against this even though there are so many positive examples like France. Mr. Stone is right when he says so many including himself fall for the headlines and then never really dig deeper into enunciating ourselves about so many subjects.
Rfk jr just asked why the insurance companies won't insure the nuclear plants... They won't insure something they believe is impossible to insure as it would men paying out FOREVER. Nuclear is like selling out tomorrow for today. It's not the way forward
@@kloverdevi8409 Well we have Nuclear plants now safely and again France is the perfect model for doing Nuclear the right way. We aren’t in the 60’s through 80’s anymore. These things run cleaner and safer than ever before. RFK needs to speak with some of the engineers and techs who build and operate these plants and stop living in the Jane Fonda disaster movies.
I think it's crazy how many people are head over heels over the hype for electric cars but are scared to death of nuclear power. You aren't going to power these freaking cars with coal and natural gas and actually make an improvement to pollution output, and you aren't going to do so without outrageously cranking up the price of electricity for everyone. We should save convenient, portable fossil fuels for transportation with a healthy mix of electric cars FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT THEM and turn around and make the power grid nuclear. That includes making more natural gas powered vehicles once you liberate that resource from the power grid. That would actually secure our energy situation going far into the future while reducing pollution on both the transportation AND the electricity generation fronts. We need to take REALISTIC steps with the quality of peoples' lives in mind. Instead we have our boneheaded government gobbling up hype from industrialists and throwing all our money at an even more unsustainable fantasy that we're going to turn the transportation system all-electric. It's so dumb.
I'm not a fan of Bill Gates but when I saw the docu-series episode about Thorium reactors I couldn't understand why nobody was talking about this. A) They are air cooled so they don't explode and B)They can use the depleted rods from existing plants giving the U.S. about 300+ years of fuel. Build hundreds of them, decentralized all over. Jeez
@@magician_aleks2726 Unfortunately corporate america and the government are on the same page on this one. There's not a lot of profit in abundant clean energy.
Also interesting that the reactor company Gates invested in was just about set to run a small scale test of their design in China when the U.S. government imposed trade restrictions that put an end to that.
I think you maybe want to avoid building nuclear on fault lines if you can. Otherwise, it's one of the best options for areas with big populations and power draw. It's pricey to set up and some pretty scary waste is produced by it, but it's clean energy at massive scale as far as carbon emissions.
It's ridiculous how , when everybody has a phone in their poket with access to all human knowledge, yet almost no one looks up how clean and safe nuclear energy is compared to all the other forms of energy production
140,000 and 328,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines. It would take about 1,500 Nuclear planets to provide America with 100% clean energy. So the solution is right here, but they need to continue to the Climate Change SCAM for control, power, and to steal 100's of billions in our tax dollars. FACT.
It's amazing how people completely ignore that one single plant could melt down with an attack or natural disaster and cause a catastrophe that is 1,000,000x worse than 400 years of burning coal and oil. And that safely storing the waste for 30,000 years would cost well more than any savings. Nuclear power is incredibly irresponsible, no matter how clean it runs when it's functioning. We are giving 30,000 years of toxic waste to our descendants to deal with. Completely immoral and irresponsible.
You would think they would learn to research and not trust scientists funded by governments and/or private investors that profit off the studies showing Co2 as a bad thing. Like how the phrase "carbon footprint" was coined by British Petroleum. Who is the beneficiary of subsidies for wind and solar manufacturing, and at the same time fuel prices are high because of the push to net-zero? The protesters against fossil fuels also have some interesting financial backers too. I wonder why
@Hank Hill Something bad can happen with anything. In reality more people have died from wind turbine accidents than nuclear meltdowns. Problem is people think dying in a nuclear accident is 1000000x worse, even though it's not rational.
Because it was a military experimental reactor. The 3 killed were military operators. There have been several other small military accidents, like the criticality accident at Los Alamos in ‘45. Heres another accident rarely heard about, but there are hundreds just like it: “2010 the new Connecticut 750 MW gas power plant exploded occurred in Middletown, Conn. The plant had been under construction from September 2007,and was scheduled to start supplying energy in June 2010.. The initial blast killed five and injured at least fifty; one of the injured later died in hospital, bringing the total death toll to six.” Yep another gas plant, pipeline, coal mine, oil train blew up, burned down a town, and it happens regularly. No Simpsons episodes about those. But people are dead anyway. Commercial N power never killed anyone in the US from radiation.
