The fears and the facts around the world’s most contentious energy source
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What happened to the promise of nuclear energy? This once seemingly futuristic and clean power source has fallen by the wayside, with countries even turning off their nuclear reactors during an energy crisis. Let’s dig into why people are so afraid of nuclear energy, and if their fears are realistic.
Go watch Cleo’s video on recycling nuclear waste: https://youtu.be/IzQ3gFRj0Bc
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Johnny Harris is an Emmy-winning independent journalist and contributor to the New York Times. Based in Washington, DC, Harris reports on interesting trends and stories domestically and around the globe, publishing to his audience of over 3.5 million on Youtube. Harris produced and hosted the twice Emmy-nominated series Borders for Vox Media. His visual style blends motion graphics with cinematic videography to create content that explains complex issues in relatable ways.
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43 Comments
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What did Johnny do in the four weeks of research? I feel like all content of this video came from Cloe 😅
Why the Wonder Woman suddenly keeps appearing in the multiple channels that I'm following
After months of shelling and power disruption the NPP in Zaporozhiye had functioning fail safes which prevented any disaster from occuring. I think that kind of flipped the switch in my head that realistically there is a tonne of sagety protocols that are more than capable of preventing a disaster.
You mention how tech hasnt't advanced for nuclear technology. As much as they have limited scope for research, hasn't Russia continued building and improving power plants, including in other countries? How do they compare to Western plants? I'm assuming historically there was some exchange of ideas on this since both powers had access to nuclear power around the same time, or did they just come up with the same process on their own once they both started enriching uranium for bombs?
One failed because of corruption and negligence and the other happened because of nature because of an unavoidable natural disaster. There's been more accidents and more deaths because of oil refinery accidents, not to mention that nuclear waste is not as bad of a problem as we think it is.
Maybe because deaths in fossils fuels are of poor people but in case of nuclear disasters, rich people, the people in power gets affected
Nuclear energy has definitely been given bad rap through the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. I am however looking forward to nuclear fusion, hoping that it might be better than fission and more acceptable to the general population.
Here is the issue based off history it just takes a few ppl to literally accidentally endanger or kill millions. If an accidents happens at a coal plant its not gonna ruin the surrounding land for hundreds of years or possibly give thousands of ppl radiation death. So yeah go watch threem mile and lets just move away from nuclear energy
The other major argument I've seen against it is the belief that power plants equals bombs. That if we get rid of nuclear completely we will also eliminate the chance that someday some country will nuke another.
Thanks for the amazing video Johnny. The only thing it hasn’t answered for me is the situation of the radioactive waste water at the Fukushima nuclear plant. As far as remember it, there are huge amount of waste water stored in temporary storage and the government is trying to release it in the ocean. The government is claiming it’s safe to do so, but it’s hard to find any second opinion on this matter.
One important thing for me is the time required to plan und build new plants.
Compared to it building time of photovoltaic and wind can be really small and so we constantly can remove coal or gas.
Nuclear would take 10+ years and we would lose some amount of coal and gas.
For me the smaller but way more frequent steps are more important then the one big step.
Human error; shortcuts taken, combined with investors demanding their profits, (and lobbying Congress to "look the other way), and de-regulation.
Capitalism is great. But it shouldn't be in charge of nuclear power❗️
Canada 🇨🇦 seems to run a tight ship.
The previous thumbnail was better
What happened to nuclear power? Hippies. Hippies happened. Perhaps when the Boomers die of old age, we will be able to have nice things again.
I believe Fission is slowly dying because Fusion is going to take its place sooner than we thought it would.
I’m going to say again. STEAM Engine is the most advanced and most important engine in the world. Think of the most advanced nuclear plant; it’s a steam engine that use nuclear fission as fuel, as source of heat to boil water. The most widely used coal powered electricity generating power plants? It’s a steam engine that uses coal as fuel. What about the advance solar thermal energy plant? Again steam engine using suns heat as fuel. What about the most advanced nuclear submarines? Again it uses steam engine that use nuclear power to boil water.
Nuclear plants are fairly safe, they need to be well-regulated to make sure that we don’t do dumb things like build a plant with backup generators that are not elevated in an area that gets hit by tsunamis (Fukushima) or that inexperienced staff are conducting tests over night (in the case of Chernobyl). Now, even if we could mitigate all the risks so that no accidents will ever happen to cause a meltdown, what do we do with the spent nuclear fuel? It will remain radioactive for thousands of years. How do you contain that radiation for thousands of years? If we could figure out a way to drastically reduce the half life of the chemical reaction that causes radiation, I’d be a huge supporter of nuclear power generation. But unfortunately, for me the used nuclear fuel presents too much of a risk. We only have this one planet, if we contaminate it, we have nowhere else to go. Radiation is much worse than carbon pollution…
Legalize nuclear bombs☢☢☢
I find it amazing that irrational fear has stopped us from using more nuclear power. We could have avoided the major effects of climate change if it wasn't for a political movement of fear.
Lol changed titles again
Extracting energy from nuclear means reckoning with the byproduct and hazards that come with immediate disposal. There is no good solution to mitigate the production of hazardous byproducts and introducing back into the environment once producers lose their accountability. That and, despite the relatively low death toll associated with the production of nuclear power, the potential to irradiate an entire landscape and make it inhospitable for millions of years. I suspect the reason there is so few accidents associated with the power source is because it is not as commonly used or accepted, making the statistics disproportionate. Exacerbating climate change with non-renewables is no better option than irradiating landscapes but the same true vise versa, making it disingenuous to call it a clean source. That's my take on why we should figure out a better source or take serious time develop a better system to process it.
The original thumbnail was way better.
So obvious, people fear what they don't understand. And we all know how dumb Americans are… Sad
Politics happened. Money and greed baby, root of all evils.
Im thinking the main reason is that when you "burn" uranium, you don't burn oil
The data collection for power created per deaths can be greatly misleading. Whether be tampering numbers to dismiss fault and the ability to follow and accurately attribute a death way later in time to an exposure will statistically alter the data collection.
Nuclear can be a great source but comes with great risk. Its all about probabilities and we dont have the tech down yet thats why accidents have happened.. and when they do can be catastrophic regardless of any opinion or bias
Johnny harris you are wrong on so many of your videos its almost like you are a woke liberal or something
Nuclear costs more than anything else due to over-regulation.
I would have liked to see more cost breakdown. How much of that supposedly high cost is the cost of regulatory compliance, and how much of those regulations are based on irrational fear?
I remember your friend from Vox.
Now looking into smaller modular nuclear energy is starting to take off its gonna be interesting
Like I said on Cleo's video…"Thank you for doing this one. There has been too much lying and misinformation regarding nuclear power/waste for far too long. Not only can nuclear been the viable transition from fossil fuels to renewables, it can also be a fundamental pillar of an energy system that needs to grow much more for us to do the great things you mentioned in an earlier video."
This is fantastic. Im learning more from Johnny then school ever teached me.
In your very stylishly-casually presented data, you seem to completely ignore the rise of cancer cases related to nuclear accidents. Instead of looking at deaths attributed to nuclear energy per watt, consider looking at the spikes in cancer cases. around the area and time of the accidents. This will paint a whole different picture imho.
Theoretically, there is a type of nuclear fusion that could occur without creating significant radioactive waste: the fusion of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and helium-3 (He-3). This process does not produce neutrons as a primary product, and thus would not induce significant radioactivity in surrounding materials. Wouldn't it be nice if countries joined forces to figure this out with the excuse of developing a safe alternative (long-term) to their current nuclear weapons?
This was a wonderful collaboration video, and I ALWAYS LOVE to see collaboration videos between fantastic youtubers. Pertaining to Nuclear power generation you both barely scratched the surface. The amount corruption contained within this subject is just as high as any industry that has the potential to generate a massive amount of money. When nuclear reactors were designed initially there were multiple reactor designs that brought immediate benefits as soon as the power plant was built and then designs that were upgradable over time that with proper planning and investment would be more beneficial in the long term. Unfortunately, the designs chosen were the most wasteful, expensive to build and produced waste that would be suitable for use with nuclear weapons. There were other mitigating factors, however greed and fear of massive accidents are the main reasons why nuclear didn't take off. Greed in the case that fossil fuel companies didn't want nuclear to be able to actually compete with them so they hamstrung it at every possible turn feeding the fears of it.
Today however, nuclear power generation has been proven to be safe and there are designs that make it just as expensive or rather inexpensive as a solar farm and yet produce far more energy with its production. The newer reactor designs have a recycling function that re-uses the fuel until it practically becomes inert, is cheaper to create the power plant as well as easier to secure against attacks and can be improved and upgraded as time or advancements progress. If the U.S. were to invest around 10-15 billion dollars it would be possible to have around 200 safe, secure and powerful nuclear power plants scattered across the United States with at least two of these plants in each state give or take. There are several proposals for safe, secure and powerful nuclear power plants for the U.S. on youtube if you look hard enough.
Thanks for the video, it was wonderful!
All the points they make are valid, to explain that public opinion is wrong to say that nuclear energy is more dangerous, polluting and expensive than other energy sources. But they are ignoring the incentives of energy producers and the versatility, low entry barriers and good publicity that renewable energies have, which make them much more attractive to invest in solar or wind, than a mega nuclear project. For a world that is more dynamic and adaptable to changes, more decentralized sources make perfect sense. If I see smaller thorium plants in the future, they will be incorporated when nuclear loses the stigma
For anyone further interested, I recommend looking into the „World Nuclear Industry Status Report“‘s, who were really interesting for me when I looked into this topic about a year ago.
You guys didn't address or brought up the Godzilla issues with Nuclear Energy?
How is coal power killing people what is this rubbish
Nuclear energy is not that unpopular in the US. Most of the US rather have nuclear energy than solar or wind power. You just have a lot of climate change activists/cultists, NGO's & private interests groups that advocate against nuclear energy
France also already does recycling of most of its nuclear fuel !
Great information. Perhaps a less than great format however.