Nuclear Now (2022) Movie Script

1
We've been trained
from the very beginning
to fear nuclear power.
And with it,
our terror of radiation.
It was in our subconsciousness.
There was the original sin
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It became a collective trauma,
with schoolchildren responding
to nuclear alerts,
and the need for
fallout shelters,
having been told more than once
that civilization
could be destroyed
in a few moments
with little, if any, warning.
There were movies in the 1950s
already picturing
the doom of man
from radiated sea monsters...
and all kinds of
genetically mutated creatures.
No doubt it was the outcome
for us who were severing
Mother Nature
from human nature
with our technology.
It was a horrible vision,
bigger than any child's
basic fear of death.
It was a death of
everyone and everything.
The end of the world almost
happened in October 1962
during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But President Kennedy and
Premier Nikita Khrushchev
of the Soviet Union
mercifully backed down.
Young people began
protesting "The System"
that produced cruel wars
and nuclear weapons,
along with various injustices
and the destruction of nature.
A counterculture emerged,
offering a broad critique
of American society.
Industrial capitalism
and corporate America
were seen as the enemy.
Earth Day 1970 marked a visible
shift in global consciousness.
Drawing huge crowds,
it became a key rallying point
for environmentalism
and the counterculture.
It created broad public support
for anti-pollution measures.
And within this atmosphere,
the government's push
for nuclear energy
was suddenly suspect.
Licensing and construction of
nuclear reactors was ramping up.
And the fear of nuclear energy
plants in your own backyard
merged into an army of other
pollutions fouling the earth.
We realize that with these
multi-national corporations,
we're going to uranium mining
and uranium milling.
We're going to have possibly
nuclear power plants.
We're going to possibly have
high-level
nuclear waste disposal.
-No one in the world
wants nuclear waste.
-We have to have either oil
or coal or whatever,
but certainly not nuclear.
And, as with
all emerging technologies,
there were setbacks.
It was the first step
in a nuclear nightmare.
As far as we know, at this
hour, no worse than that.
Three Mile Island wasnthe
only famous nuclear accident
in the United States ever.
Thousand gallons
of radioactive water
escaped into the reactor
building... Yet no one was harmed.
But the public was shaken.
Close all windows and doors!
And the breathless news coverage
with no acknowledgement
of the lack of casualties...
Officials of Metropolitan Edison
conceded some workers
may have been contaminated.
...stoked their fears
into a sense of urgency
and even panic.
But in a twist of history,
it happened just as a
fictionalnuclear power disaster movie
was in theaters.
-No, please,
let me answer the question.
Misinformation about
nuclear's true potential
and safety spread rampant.
-If there's one accident,
it could just devastate an area
like southern New York State.
Nuclear power would produce
over 32,000 cancer deaths
per year in the United States.
People don't think well when they're scared.
Fear is a mind-killer,
and all these fears
traumatized young people.
And as momentum built
toward anti-nuclear sentiment,
a second, potentially-avoid able disaster struck.
We were recently
stricken by a disaster...
the Chernobyl
nuclear power accident.
It deeply affected
the Soviet people
and disturbed world opinion.
I too once believed the
environmentalists were right
and that nuclear power
was dangerous.
We were, in our way,
terribly miseducated,
subconsciously cross-wiringnnuclear
war with nuclear power.
And then, as nuclear energy
was being quietly shunted
to the side as an aberration
in our scientific development,
another physical revolution
snowballed into
the public consciousness,
completely eclipsing
the nuclear controversy:
Climate Change.
It was as bad or even worse
to the imagination
as nuclear extinction had been,
which in a way we had accustomed ourselves to.
But here now was a monster
that could, in fact,
deliver the end of the world.
Climate scientists
were now warning us
that humans were destabilizingnthe
world's ecological systems.
In 1988, the congressional
testimony of Dr. James Hansen,
a leading climate scientist,
rang the alarm
loudly and clearly.
-We have already reached
one tipping point.
And we are going to lose
all of the sea ice
in the Arctic
in the summer season.
Among others, he clarified
that we were burning
more and more fossil fuels
and dumping too much carbon
into the atmosphere...
mostly gases like
carbon dioxide and methane.
These gases were raising
global temperatures
and beginning to
change the climate.
An outspoken minority reacted
with sarcasm and anger...
-Do you know what this is?
It's a snowball,
from outside here.
So it's very, very cold out,
very unseasonable.
So here, Mr. President,
catch this.
They thought the notion highly
exaggerated and overblown.
While on the other side,
many others reacted with alarm
demanding radical change.
Hope is taking action.
We can still turn this around.
It will take drastic
annual emission cuts
unlike anything
the world has ever seen.
In 2021, the IPCC stated
that if we didn't cut
carbon emissions
by nearly 100 percent
in less than 30 years,
by 2050, the world
would suffer serious damage
to ecosystems and economies.
Because we are still
depending on fossil fuels
for one of our most basic needs:
electricity.
Most of our power still comes
from burning gas and coal,
and the amount
is going up, not down.
The resulting volume
of carbon-free electricity
needed over the next 30 years
is almost unimaginable.
Realistic estimates range
from two to four times
the electricity
we currently use.
This is an even bigger problem
than we thought.
How can we create
even more electricity
and still cut down
on carbon dioxide emissions
to halt the climate crisis?
We've run out of time
to be afraid.
It's time to look again
at a proven source of energy.
It's time to look again
at nuclear.
Because this incredible power...
the very thing that we fear...
is what may save us.
An estimated
five billion years ago,
our sun and solar system
were formed in the aftermath
of an exploding star.
Scientists call this kind of
explosion a supernova.
Light, X-rays, and radio waves
pour out in every direction,
and immense shock waves,
with unimaginable energy,
fling matter
across great distances.
A bit of that matter collided
and became Earth.
Hidden below the surface
of this newly-formed planet
are many elements that were
created in that supernova,
including those
we extract from the Earth
like tin, copper,
gold and many others.
One of these elements
is the element of uranium.
Packed with energy from
its creation in a supernova,
it's a natural energy source
that has been there,
connecting us to our galaxy
for billions of years.
The presence of this star
power throughout the planet,
radiating energy,
has kept the Earth warm
since before life began.
And still does.
In 1896, 5,000 years
into our recorded history,
the Polish-born Marie Curie
and her French scientist
husband Pierre Curie,
along with French engineer
Henri Becquerel...
Pierre... discovered
the energy-releasing property
of certain elements,
like uranium.
It's there.
They knew then that
the whole conception of matter
would be changed.
That there indeed existed
a unique form of matter
that was not inert, that was
alive, with a superpower.
Marie Curie named it
radioactivity.
They could only imagine
what this volatile matter
could become or later achieve.
For this, one of the greatest
gifts nature has ever given us,
energy in a new form,
they received the Nobel Prize.
Then just a few years later,
in 1905,
independently working
in Zurich, Switzerland,
the theoretical physicist
Albert Einstein
discovered the astounding
truth that, in its simplest form,
matter is energy
waiting to happen.
And that the Earth
contains more energy
than we ever imagined.
Liberating energy from matter
was now the new challenge.
Scientists then discovered
that particles colliding
with uranium atoms
sometimes split the uranium
into smaller fragments
with a large and rapid
release of energy.
They named this process
"fission",
which could access
the stored energy quickly
instead of in a slow trickle,
as does radioactivity.
The physics of fission
were first explained
by the Austrian Lise Meitner
in 1938.
But unfortunately, that year,
through a coincidence
of history,
came on the eve
of the biggest war ever.
And the first thing people did
with this scientific
breakthrough, was make a bomb.
And use it.
America's Manhattan Project,
born out of World War II,
created the knowledge and fuel
to build such a bomb.
By packing uranium together
densely enough,
scientists learned to create
a chain reaction.
Enrico Fermi and his team
in 1942
created the first controlled
nuclear chain reaction
in a squash court under the
University of Chicago stadium.
The stadium did not blow up,
nor the university.
They had built a simple device
in which a pile
of graphite and uranium
was filled with cadmium
rodsthat slowed the chain reaction.
As the rods were removed
one by one,
the uranium fission
chain reaction began.
Remove more rods
and the energy increased,
put some rods back in place
and it decreased.
Thus, if a chain reaction could
be sustained and accelerated,
it would result in
a powerful explosion.
The good news was that
uranium'senergy could be controlled,
as Fermi had done in Chicago.
If controlled, the potential
of this new discovery
for the benefit of society
was beyond measure.
The first productive use
of that energy
was to run submarines and ships.
Admiral Hyman Rickover
was a poor Jewish immigrant
who, once admitted
to the Naval Academy,
never left the Navy.
He had the mind of an engineer
who, seeing the goal
clearer than anyone,
cut through time and space
to make it happen.
The idea of solving a problem,
building something,
creating something,
drove him all his life.
-This is the reactor
or the atomic pile.
There's uranium in here...
Rickover built
the first nuclear reactor
that fit into a submarine hull.
The USS Nautilus was
inspired in part by Jules Verne's
classic 19th century fable
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
exploring our original home
in the sea.
Nautilus was, in its own way,
a fantasy underwater vehicle
designed and built by Rickover
in just three years
between 1952 and '54.
It was a magnificent
achievement.
And over the next three decades,
Rickover supervised the
building of hundreds of reactors,
all quickly and successfully.
The Navy still has
100 of them operating now.
More than 60 years later,
the Navy has run this fleet
of small floating reactors
for a combined
6,000 reactor years
without a single major
nuclear-related incident.
An aircraft carrier
is a 100,000-ton, 6,000-person
city of steel,
moving at 35 miles an hour.
It's an awesome
piece of technology
that's being powered
by supernova energy.
In other words,
a mere two reactors so compact
that they could fit
into a large living room.
With just one of these reactors,
the submarine
can stay submerged for months
and thousands of miles.
It doesn't need
refueling for 25 years.
- A fuel pellet, the size of my...
- the tip of my pinkie
has as much energy
as a ton of coal.
The uranium to make that pellet
costs a buck or two.
A ton of coal costs somewhere
in the neighborhood of $100.
Huge difference.
And nuclear operates so cleanly,
you can do it underwater
with 150 people
sealed up in a ship
and having their power plant
running.
Now imagine trying to operate
even just a small gasoline
engine in a sealed building.
Wouldn't take very long
before you'd kill everybody.
After I went on board
submarines,
I recognized that all the things
that excited me
were still there.
And technically it was so easy.
The secret that nobody
wants to tell you
who serves in the Navy is...
the easiest job in the Navy
is being a reactor operator.
-You don't have to do anything.
You're sitting there
and everything works,
and you just sit there.
In a major address
at the United Nations
in front of 3,500 delegates
from most of the countries
of the world,
President Eisenhower shared
his vision for nuclear technology.
-This greatest
of destructive forces can be
developed into a great boon
for the benefit of all mankind.
Eisenhower proposed
that the only way
to overcome
international conflict
was to use nuclear power
to produce cheap
and massive amounts
of electricity.
-Experts would be mobilized
to apply atomic energy
to the needs of agriculture,
medicine and other peaceful
activities.
A special purpose
would be to provide
abundant electrical energy
in the power-starved areas
of the world.
Thus the contributing powers
would be dedicating
some of their strength
to serve the needs,
rather than the fears,
of mankind.
He went on to make probably
the most optimistic statement
of his eight years in office.
The United States
pledges before you...
to devote its entire heart
and mind to find the way
by which the miraculous
inventiveness of man
shall not be dedicated
to his death,
but consecrated to his life.
The entire assembly of delegates
from around the world,
including the Soviet Union,
responded with warm
and sustained applause.
Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace
program was born here.
This was a most promising
moment for mankind.
Fulfilling his pledge
to the world
and turning to his proven team,
Eisenhower asked
Admiral Rickover and the Navy
to build a nuclear reactor
that could generate
civilian electricity.
Adapting his submarine design,
Rickover went at it
in his usual way,
and in Shippingport,
Pennsylvania,
broke ground in 1954 and began
generating in 1958.
-But here is truly
the most wonderful
and exciting thing I've ever had
the chance to talk about...
it's the Westinghouse
Total Electric Home.
A home where electricity
does everything.
It heats, cools,
preserves and prepares food,
and entertains.
The Cold War
was a period of prosperity.
The plan was that by the 21st
century, the American economy
would be mostly nuclear-powered,
with little if any
air pollution,
no climate gasses,
and grids of plentiful
clean electricity
crisscrossing the country.
New York City was going to be
powered by nuclear reactors,
the first of which was being
built upriver at Indian Point.
Carbon emission
would drop substantially.
We would be in the process
ofelectrifying our entire country.
Futurists imagined modern
all-electric cities
with electric heat,
light and air conditioning
in our homes and buildings.
Electric trains
would replace diesel,
and new transportation systems
would evolve.
Westinghouse
and General Electric
followed in Rickover's tracks.
And from the late 1960s
to the '80s,
built almost 100 large reactors.
Other countries followed.
France, embracing the vision
of its president,
Charles de Gaulle, opened
its first nuclear power plant
in 1964 at Chinon.
And then from 1975 to '90,
in response to
the escalating price of oil
in the crisis of 1973, built
56 reactors in 15 years.
Sweden built a dozen reactors on
four sites in the '70s and '80s.
Six of those plants
continue to operate today,
producing 30 percent
of Sweden's electricity
and most of the rest coming
from hydro, wind and bio fuels.
Sweden during this time cut its
carbon emissions by 50 percent.
And contrary to what many
critics claimed would be
a disaster for its economy,
electricity generation
more than doubled
and its economy actually
expanded by 50 percent.
The same is true for Canada,
which built 19 reactors
of Canadian design,
mostly in the industrial
heartland of Ontario province,
which in those years
switched off coal
and reduced emissions
by 90 percent.
West Germany launched its
first commercial reactor in 1969,
and by 2010,
22 percent of the electricity
of a reunited Germany
came from nuclear.
Japan, which imported
its first commercial reactor
from England in 1966,
had five operating reactors
going by 1973,
and was expanding construction
with a major program.
By the end of the '70s,
Japan had become an expert
in standardized designs,
and exporting nuclear
to other countries in Asia.
But the world's
first nuclear power plant
to ever produce
clean electricity
was actually built
back in 1954 by the Soviets.
The atomic power station
has become one of the operating industrial plants
of the U.S.S.R.
The Obninsk Nuclear Power
Plant today stands as a museum,
and a monument to clean energy
and the power of the atom.
The process
of uranium nuclear fission,
releasing of atomic energy,
takes place in this reactor.
Many important world figures
visited the plant in operation,
including three high-level
American delegations
curious about its usages
for industrial production,
as well as any signals
for use in war.
They could find none.
But it was a signal
from the Soviet Union
in the middle of the Cold War,
a demonstration
of their peaceful intentions,
especially after
Eisenhower's speech
asking for shared
nuclear know-how
for the benefit of all mankind.
Atoms are working for peace.
This mid-century dream
of a fuel-efficient world,
run by clean atomic
energy, without fossil fuels...
it was all within our grasp.
So, what happened
to this promising moment?
Eisenhower's 1953 vision
of Atoms for Peace
was a mortal threat
to the rich and powerful
coal and oil industries.
And they were ready to
challenge nuclear energy
from the beginning.
The giant oil companies,
nicknamed the Seven Sisters,
straddling
all the world's markets
since early in the century,
spent a great deal of money
to present themselves as
necessary to our prosperity.
America's iconic oil family,
the Rockefellers,
through their foundation,
set about promoting the idea
that low-level radiation
harms human health.
-And so they set up a committee
to study the biological effects
of atomic radiation and...
kind of put their thumb
on the scale
for what the committee's
results would be.
And then they took
one of the directors
from the Rockefeller Foundation,
a guy named Warren Weaver,
was put in charge of
this genetics committee.
And not surprising to me,
the report from
the genetics committee
came out on June 12th, 1956,
and said radiation, all the way
down to a single gamma ray
was hazardous to your health.
The Rockefeller Foundation
included the publisher
of the New York Times,
Arthur Sulzberger.
So if they wanted to help sway
public opinion,
they didn't need to buy ads,
necessarily.
They just helped get a
particular point of view published.
The resulting fear
of low-level radiation,
which has never garnered
evidence to justify it,
began to erode the optimism
around this new industry.
The Sierra Club promoted
nuclear power before it opposed it.
The club was an old organizationfounded in 1892,
primarily devoted to hiking,
climbing and exploring nature.
Will Siri, a biophysicist
from Berkeley
and experienced mountaineer
and a veteran of
Oppenheimer's Manhattan
Project, had been influential
in conserving the California
redwoods and the Grand Canyon.
Like many early
conservationists,
he strongly favored
nuclear energy
and arranged
for the club's blessing
to the opening of California's
Diablo Canyon reactor
in San Luis Obispo in 1966.
Twice the club membership
voted to support the action.
Siri said at the time:
"Nuclear power
is one of the chief long-term
hopes for conservation."
Ansel Adams, the
club's legendary photographer
and board member,
said nuclear was,
"the only practical alternative that we have
to destroying the environment
with oil and coal."
-They spent a lot of time
in the early years
fighting against dams
that would fill up valleys
full of water.
The Sierra Club used to have
a campaign called
Atoms, Not Dams,
under David Brower.
And then David Brower
left the Sierra Club in a huff
and founded
Friends of the Earth.
And did you know, I'd known
Friends of the Earth
was a big anti-nuclear
organization.
But then I found out
where David Brower
got his first check...
$200,000 from Robert Anderson,
who was the CEO of ARCO.
He wrote the first check
to David Brower,
who was founding
an environmentalist organization
specifically to fight
nuclear energy.
So why would an oil guy fund
Friends of the Earth?
Makes sense to me.
And it's not conspiracy.
It's simply business.
Soon, Brower's faction
regained power in the Sierra Club
and switched its position.
Other groups sprang up as well, notably
Greenpeace, in 1971
in Vancouver, Canada.
Along with issues like
saving the whales,
it fused a peace position
on nuclear disarmament
with an environmental position
on opposing nuclear energy.
-We lumped nuclear energy in
with nuclear weapons
as if all things nuclear
were evil.
This was a mistake.
We got a lot of things right.
Stop the bomb.
Save the whales.
Stop toxic waste, et cetera.
But we made that one
serious error.
The new battleground was Ohio,
where new reactors were to
be built instead of coal plants.
The environmental groups hired
nlobbyists and filed lawsuits.
The young attorney, Ralph Nader,
nwho'd gained the public's trust
in the mid-'60's
with his criticism
of the safety of American cars, joined the cause
and now helped turn the public
against nuclear power.
-If we stop nuclear power,
or shall we say,
when we stop nuclear power,
we will usher in
throughout the United States
and the world
the sun, the sun...
which Exxon doesn't like
because it's free,
it's abundant,
it can bypass Exxon.
Stopping atomic energy
is saving this country.
He wildly exaggerated the
dangers from radioactivity,
saying "A nuclear accident
could wipe out Cleveland
and the survivors
would envy the dead."
Six of the eight Ohio reactors
planned were closed,
including one canceled in 1975,
when it was 97 percent complete.
It was then turned into
a coal plant.
To this day, two-thirds
of Ohio electricity
is powered by dirty coal,
which alone kills
about half a million people
worldwide per year
and sickens millions more
with horrible effects
such as cancer, emphysema,
and heart disease.
-If you want to accuse us
of having raised the costs
of building new nuclear plants
by demanding more regulation,
I plead guilty.
In 1979, there were 72
commercial reactors in the U.S.
...happened early this morning
at a nuclear power plant
in Pennsylvania.
But then came Three Mile Island.
The reactor overheated
and partially melted down,
but the containment structure
prevented radiation
from affecting the surroundings.
-There was no apparent serious
contamination of workers.
But the accident
in 1979 was a gift
to the anti-nuclear movement,
that would lead to a halt
in the building of any more
nuclear reactors.
Later that year, a star-studded cast of musicians
put on five nights
of No Nukes concerts
at Madison Square Garden...
...followed by a rally
on Battery Park landfill
attended by 200,000 people.
Along with Ralph Nader and
other stars, Jane Fonda spoke.
-The money that is being raised
is going to support all of
the local anti-nuclear groups
around the country, and I
want to express my gratitude
and I know
you feel the same way.
She followed up
with a 32-day, 50-city tour
to spread the gospel and raise
a good deal of money.
For the environmental groups,
stopping nuclear power
was now glamorous, virtuous,
and lucrative, all at once.
And they had a friend
in President Jimmy Carter,
who promoted energy conservation
and installed solar panels
on the White House, while
downgrading nuclear energy
below coal
on his list of priorities.
-It does now seem likely
that sometime
in the last couple of days,
there's been perhaps
the worst accident
in the short history of the
world's nuclear power industry.
But the fact that
they've had to reveal it
and admit that there are
casualties
suggests they're deeply
worried about the scale of it.
When Chernobyl
in the Ukraine part
of the Soviet Union struck,
it deeply shook the public's
faith in nuclear.
It was just what
the environmentalists
had feared and predicted.
But what happened exactly?
There's no question the
reactor was poorly designed
and lacked a containment
structure to keep radiation
from leaking out
into the environment.
The operators carried out
a risky experiment
that led to a meltdown...
which was very badly handled
by the bureaucracy
of what was then an empire
in decay, the Soviet Union,
which tried to keep it secret.
This allowed low-level radiation
to spread across northern Europe
before the government finally
admitted the problem.
They sent in first responderswith
inadequate protective gear
to get the fire under control.
And these men were exposed to
massive doses of radiation.
Vladimir Asmolov
was the scientist
in charge of the investigation.
As he spoke, I saw
he was haunted by the event.
Yeah, it was
a big responsibility.
But you're not responsible
for the explosion.
You were in charge
of the cleanup.
-I don't agree with you
about this.
He thoughtnthe highly-successful
HBO series was a fiction,
that the real scientists were
professional,
and that there was no conflict
with the government,
or the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
According to the United Nations
and World Health Organization,
about 50 people died from
radiation at the reactor.
And possibly 4,000 from cancers
over the long term
in areas downwind.
That's a small fraction of
the hundreds of thousands
of deaths every year
from generating electricity
with coal.
Chernobyl, the world's worst
nuclear power accident
in history,
was far less deadly than
many industrial tragedies.
The 1984 Union Carbide accident in Bhopal, India,
where chemical gas leaked,
killed 15 to 20,000 people
and injured half a million more.
The 1975 collapse of a hydroelectric dam in China
killed roughly 200,000 people.
Outdoor air pollution
kills an estimated
four million people a year.
Industrial accidents and
disease, roughly two million.
Nuclear's death toll,
all from Chernobyl,
is at most in the low thousands,
which is a very tiny fraction
of fossil fuel deaths.
By the early '90s,
activist anti-nuclear groups
were on fire,
calling for no compromise
on the bottom line
that nuclear power
must be eliminated
and that any amount
of radiation,
even if below the normal
background levels,
had to be treated as
a risk to human health.
Every new nuclear-related
project from mining to transport
to construction, operation,
and decommissioning
was now facing a series
of legal, political,
and economic obstacles
that would stall
any further progress.
The supposed death knell
for the industry
finally happened 25 years
after Chernobyl,
in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011.
It was the second largest
accident in nuclear history.
It happened when
the biggest earthquake
Japan ever suffered...
created a tsunami,
100 feet tall.
The earthquake and the tsunami
killed about 18,000 people,
but it had nothing to do
with nuclear power.
All the nuclear plants
in the tsunami's path,
with one exception,
avoided serious damage.
But the plant at Fukushima,
like Chernobyl's,
was poorly designed.
Not the reactor,
but the site design.
It had too low a seawall,
less than 20 feet,
and all backup generators
were located on low ground
where they flooded.
The plant lost electricity.
The core melted down.
Hydrogen gas built up, and
exploded inside the building,
and radiation was released
into the air.
But the authorities,
unlike at Chernobyl,
did not send in
unprotected people
to fight
the highly-radioactive fire,
and the public never received
more than low-level
harmless radiation.
Fukushima might be
the only disaster in history,
widely called a nuclear
disaster by almost everyone,
with a death toll of zero
from nuclear.
More than 600 died from the
badly-managed forced evacuation,
such as when patients
were abruptly yanked out
of hospitals.
But the actual disaster
was the tsunami,
with its 18,000 victims.
Nonetheless,
Japan reacted in panic,
closing down
all its nuclear plants,
whether affected by
the earthquake or not.
And the country remains
frozen with doubt.
In 2021, ten years
after the accident,
only ten of Japan's 33
operable reactors were in use.
Imported fossil fuels
replaced the rest.
The negativity of world opinion resulting from
both Chernobyl and Fukushima
now reached a critical mass.
Germany took
the most severe course,
and under significant political
pressure from the Green Party,
began phasing outnall 17 of its nuclear reactors,
while continuing
to rely on coal plants.
Even in Sweden, winds
were blowing against nuclear.
A new government that included
the Green Party
dramatically raised
anti-nuclear taxes
which led to the premature
retirement of four reactors.
South Korea had
a well-trained generation
of engineers and scientists
and a standardized design,
and had been generatingelectricity
at a very low price
when it decided to pull back.
The heavily-publicized
2016 feature "Pandora,"
which pictured an accident
farnworse than the actual Fukushima,
grabbed and swayedpublic opinion against nuclear.
And the government stopped
construction on new plants.
The trend of politicians around
most developed countries
of shutting down
well-working nuclear reactors
met little political opposition.
And it became far easier
to approve
a new methane gas power plant
or a new coal plant.
And without forward movement,
the U.S. nuclear industry
was slowly declining as well,
with existing plants
being shut down early...
including Indian Point
which supplied 25 percent
of New York City's electricity
for many years.
And, the planned closing
of Diablo Canyon... California's
last remaining
nuclear power plant.
Although in 2022, this was
reversed after a fierce battle.
I now believe that
nuclear is vital to our future
on this planet, and
I've helped start a group
called Mothers for Nuclear
to help explain why.
These reactors have
operated safely and reliably
for decades, producing
about 9 percent
of California's electricity
in recent years.
There are still a number
of nuclear reactors
working in
the United States today.
These legacy reactors,
more than 30 or 40 years later,
still supply 20 percent
of U.S. electricity.
Working 24-7 without oil
spills, gas leaks or coal pollution.
They have become so uneventful
it's easy to forget
they even exist.
Many people to this day
still think that these plants
are capable of blowing up
like a nuclear bomb.
But that's physically
impossible because their uranium
is not sufficiently enriched
in any way close to
the necessary amount.
The idea that low levels
of radiation are dangerous,
right down to near zero,
is a contamination phobia,
which, when you think it
through, is kind of ridiculous.
We've evolved, after all, on
a planet filled with uranium
and bombarded by both
sunlight and cosmic rays.
Our bodies are built
by nature and evolution
to handle small amounts
of radiation.
Medical procedures
such as dentistry account for
about one-third of the radiation
to which humans are exposed.
The other two-thirds being
natural background radiation.
This low-level background
radiation doubles
if you live at altitude
in Denver, Colorado.
Or triples if you work on
a long-distance airline crew.
Or if you smoke a pack
of cigarettes each day.
The FDA sets a radiation
dosenlimit for diagnostic procedures.
Radioactive iodine treatment
of thyroid cancer
delivers 100,000 milli-Sievertsto the thyroid
and 200 milli-Sieverts
as a whole-body dose.
Granite contains some uranium,
and you get extra radiation
if you live near a mountain
or work in a building
like the U.S. Capitol.
And it's far higher
in Ramsar, Iran,
with its radium hot springs.
Or the black sand beaches
of Brazil,
where people bury themselves
in the sand
to get what they consider
a healthy dose.
High levels of radiation
are dangerous, for sure.
People died and got very sick
from exposure
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and at Chernobyl.
But there is no basis
for the public perception
that the offspring
from these survivors
had an increased rate
of genetic defects.
Massive and careful
long-term studies
do not support
these conceptions.
Fears of passing down
horrible mutations
like the three-eyed fish
of The Simpsons
are without foundation.
-So what kind of audience
do you get,
and what kind of feedback?
-On TikTok, it's mostly
18-to 25-year-old females,
which is unheard of
for science communicators.
A single one of my videos
can get something like
500,000 views, and
that's 500,000 people
that didn't know anything
about nuclear power,
but now do and might have
changed their minds.
-What are some of the things
that young girls say?
-Some things,
like I used to think
that millions of people died
when Chernobyl happened.
So there are a lot of people
changing their minds
around that.
And nuclear waste as well.
The nuclear industry is the
only energy generating industry
that's actually responsible
for its waste
because it is radioactive.
And so as soon as it comes
out of the plant,
it's handled by the industry.
-We have a highly
rigorous process
to manage the waste coming
from a nuclear plant.
And we can tell you exactly
where every bit of waste is
from every nuclear plant
that is operated.
It's contained, it's located
on sites that are protected.
We can't say the same for
many other energy resources,
where waste goes up in the air,
or we have piles of tailings
from those materials.
And I hesitate to call it waste
a lot of times
because it's really
just used fuel.
-Not a single person
anywhere in the world
has ever been harmed
by used nuclear fuel.
What many don't know
is that if we brought together
all of America's spent fuel
from 60 years of powering
20 percent of our electricity,
it would be the size
of a Walmart.
60 years, 20 percent
of our electricity
would be the size of a Walmart.
There's nothing
uniquely dangerous
about radioactive materials.
They're just one of
many industrial materials
that can be toxic
and must be handled carefully.
The U.S. solution for now
is dry cask cylinders,
eighteen feet high,
made of concrete and steel,
that keep radiation contained,
and are not damaged
by things like earthquakes.
Concrete absorbs radiation.
The government hopes to use
the spent fuel someday to
power new reactor types.
Or it can, like their military
has been doing for years,
safely bury the waste
underground,
because radioactive
materialsnactually lose potency over time.
Finland is already building
a permanent storage site
for spent fuel
in bedrock deep underground.
Sealed in copper canisters
and back filled with clay.
Sweden plans to use
the same design.
Two billion years ago
in Gabon, in Africa,
there were natural
nuclear reactors.
Meaning in these
uranium mines in Africa,
water would pool
around the uranium
and that would create
a chain reaction.
And so these reactors operated
for hundreds of thousands
of years,
and they left behind
what we call nuclear waste,
fission products.
And just by analyzing
where these fission products are
in the area,
scientists actually know
that nuclear waste
doesn't move very far,
even in a scale of hundreds
of thousands of years
or, in this case,
two billion years.
Hey, guys, so a lot of you have been asking
about my makeup routine.
The most important thing is,
make sure you wash your face
really well
because we want those pores
as clean as we want
our electricity.
And the best way to get that
is to use this cleanser called
Stop Shutting Down Nuclear
Plants For Christ's Sake.
It's carbon free,
emission free pollution,
free electricity.
The answer
to solving climate change
is very straightforward.
We have the solutions.
We just have to implement them.
You know, the first question
is, but isn't it too dangerous?
What about the waste?
Nuclear waste is nothing
compared to climate change.
In 2006, the film An
Inconvenient Truth,
produced by former
Vice President Al Gore,
dramatized vividly the dangers
of carbon emissions
and overheating the planet.
-Look how far above
the natural cycle this is.
And we've done that.
-And the Oscar goes toAn Inconvenient Truth.
It opened
with a worldwide impact
and won a Nobel Prize
and an Oscar.
In the years that followed,
the issue of climate change
became even more polarized,
with conservatives
holding on to their position,
that this was not
an extraordinary event
created by mankind.
-Climate change is not science,
it's religion.
In 2017, President Trump,
despising tree huggers
and liberals,
pulled the United Statesnout
of the Paris Climate Accord
and called climate change
a hoax.
At the other extreme,
environmentalists and activists
were folding the issue
of climate change
into a wider agenda of ending
capitalism and globalization,
bringing to the forefront
inequality.
-We are in the beginning
of a mass extinction
and all you can talk about
is the money
and fairy tales of
eternal economic growth.
How dare you!
But most people
were in the middle,
confused by the claims,
but scared by the changes
they were seeing so vividly
in the weather,
oceans, and animal kingdom.
People wanted not partisan
or ideological solutions,
but practical ones.
One solution that gained
momentum during this time
was clean energy
in the form of renewables.
Global investment in renewables
reached close to
$3 trillion dollars
and costs dropped by
80 percent for solar
and 50 percent for wind.
A giant step.
Together, wind and solar
grew from about two percent
to ten percent of world
electricity generation.
Hydroelectric power, the
biggest of the renewables,
expanded across
southeast Asia and elsewhere.
But despite the massive
effort and the optimism,
the Intergovermental Panel
on Climate Change...
the IPCC... stated in 2018,
and again more strongly
in 2021, that if we didn't
cut carbon emissions
by nearly 100 percent
in less than 30 years,
by 2050, the world
would suffer serious damage
to ecosystems and economies.
There would be mega changes like
the melting of polar ice sheets,
sea level rise, coastal cities
might become uninhabitable.
There would be an increase
in the frequency and size
of extreme weather
events, forest fires, droughts,
terrible heat waves, and
unusually strong hurricanes.
Ominously, the predictions
from the 1980s
are proving to be accurate,
because we're still depending
on fossil fuels
and we're in the same place
we were
at the turn of the century.
How can that be?
We have put such effort
and money into renewables,
yet we burn more fossil fuels
than ever.
To understand how this happened,
Germany is a good case in point.
No nation has done more
to promote green power
in the last 20 years
and received a great deal
of favorable publicity.
Germany made
the fateful decision
to phase out nuclear power
by 2022.
-We won't support even
a one second extension
for an energy form
that we can't fully control.
Replacing it
with roughly the same amount
of electricity using
renewable power instead.
How did that work out?
Germany's largest solar plant,
with 465,000 panels,
was built on 500 acres.
The nuclear plant,
which was recently closed,
was built on about 100 acres.
It operated around the clock,
all seasons, all weather,
on average producingnat
near 90 percent of its peak.
The average for the solar plant
has been about
11 percent of its peak,
because most of the time,
it's either night,
winter, or cloudy.
So the reality is
that a nuclear plant
produces almost 100 times
the electricity per year
as a solar plant, and can
do soon one fifth the land.
Germany also built
about 30,000 wind turbines,
some of the newer ones
almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower.
Wind has worked for Germany,
producing twice as much
electricity as solar.
But it still averages less than
a quarter of its peak capacity.
To equal the same amount
of nuclear power
would require
4,000 giant turbines
spread over many square
kilometers.
And would still depend
on the weather.
One way to make wind
and solar more efficient
when weather is a factor,
is to store some of their power in batteries.
Their prices
are dropping quickly
and there's an intense race
going on.
China, at this point
is far in the lead,
producing more than 70 percent
of all battery cells.
Still, despite the promise of
bigger and better batteries,
Bill Gates, who's invested a
billion dollars in renewables,
has said there's
no battery technology
that's even close
to allowing us to take
all of our energy
from renewables.
-It'll be a lot of renewables
and either a storage miracle
or quite a bit of nuclear.
The problem is scale.
What works for a phone or a car
doesn't work for
a city or a continent.
Germany doesn't have the
naturalhydroelectric potential
like Norway or New Zealand.
And most of the great
hydro sites in the world
are already dammed, leaving
little upside in development.
And geothermal energy,
such as it exists in Iceland,
is unproven outside of
limited volcanic locations.
Which leaves biomass, the
burning of organic material.
Germany cuts down
and burns forests
in Europe and North America
with a similar result
as fossil fuel pollution.
And yet it's called renewable
energy, because in theory,
new trees grow back when
you cut the old ones down.
But it takes decades for
the new trees to grow back.
The mathematics
simply do not add up.
All of these renewables
combined are not enough to provide
Germany's demand for energy.
So it still has to burn coal.
A more economical solution
is natural gas,
also known as methane gas,
which is widely available,
especially since
the fracking revolution.
Is this a solution?
-Methane gas is less
polluting than coal.
That's true. Half the CO2.
But that's still putting CO2 in
every time you light
methane fire,
you're putting CO2
into the atmosphere.
And then the dirty secret
of it is,
it leaks out all along the line.
Although
it's invisible to the eye,
methane can be seen
by infrared cameras,
which reveal that it severely
pollutes the atmosphere
when it leaks
and escapes unburned.
If you take
a methane gas detector
and go around, you'll find that
there's gas pipelines
everywhere.
Under our streets.
Your gas stove.
You turn it on, goes click,
click click and then it lights...
that unburned methane.
And when that stuff
gets into the atmosphere,
it's 80 times worse
for global warming than CO2.
And it doesn't last as long as
CO2, but in the immediate,
the next few decades,
it's a major problem.
Methane levels are going
way up in the atmosphere,
and it's definitely contributinga
lot to climate change.
It's no wonder that publicly,
oil and gas companies
fully support renewables
and lobby for subsidies.
They tell us natural gas is the
nperfect partner for renewables.
But it's a false solution.
In the last 30 years,
renewables have been going in
on top of fossil fuels,
not replacing them.
And that's why
the overall proportion
of clean renewable energy
hasn't changed.
Sadly, more than 80 percent
ofnenergy use is still fossil fuel.
Altogether, Germany
has spent over $200 billion
on renewables since 2013.
But within Europe, Germany
has the highest electricity prices,
and their carbon emissions
are among the highest.
This energy indecision is not
just a European phenomenon,
but is something that is
affecting many countries
on a global scale.
India, with well over
a billion people,
represents another
crucial participant
in our world community.
Demand for
air conditioning alone
in India and other hot countries
is projected to triple
by 2050 worldwide.
India has made tremendous gains in solar power
and is planning to build
at large scale very cheaply.
It has a new
technology-trained workforce.
Its solar power has become
cheaper than coal.
And wind has become
cost competitive.
Both energies are still
weather dependent.
India has ventured into nuclear
power with 23 reactors on-line,
seven under construction
and more planned.
And Indian consumers,
sick of the deadly pollution
in their cities,
may well push the government
to accelerate these kinds of
clean energy initiatives.
But India is a democracy,
and if you don't give people
what they want,
which is cheap electricity,
you'll be voted out of office.
So the Indian government says
that for the next
foreseeable future,
75 percent of their electricity will be from coal.
In Russia, there is also
some indecision
about their energy future.
There's a lot of
cheap methane gas,
which can supply electricity
and can be exported
successfully to other countries,
though at the cost of
accelerating climate change.
But Russia has a significant
nuclear program,
as their government agency
Rosatom
employs some
quarter-million engineers,
researchers and employees.
-Global warming,
which is caused by CO2 emission,
is something which is
very painfully felt
here in Russia
because a big chunk
of Russia's territory
is located closer to the North.
This is why we actually feel all
these variations in temperature.
So I'll give you
an example, Mr. Stone.
Currently in the world,
there is 490 gigawatts
of installed nuclear capacity.
If we replace this with gas
or oil power generation,
that would cause
emission of more than
two billion tons of CO2
into the atmosphere.
-I get it.
-So the nuclear industry is
in fact, an extra lung
that our world has.
-Well said, an extra lung.
When it joined
the World Trade Organization
on favorable terms in 2001,
China became
the world's workshop.
Incomes rose for hundreds
of millions of people.
And with agricultural
and computer progress,
the expectations of people
in general brightened.
But the worm in the apple
was that as the West moved
much of its manufacturing
to China,
more and more coal was burned.
Half of the world's coal
is now burned in China.
The poster child of this shift
was the San Francisco-Oakland
Bay Bridge, built by China,
its pieces then shipped over
and put together
in the Bay Area in 2013.
California brags
that it doesn't burn coal.
It's a nice and clean state.
But China burns the coal
for California.
China has a major decision
to make,
which will impact
all our futures.
Does it modernize
or does it continue down
the path of coal?
China's emissions,
combined with the United States,
make up almost half
of the world's total.
The key to decarbonization
lies in these two countries,
who ideally should be partners
in this global issue.
What's scary is not
the same as what's dangerous.
Coal is dangerous.
It kills millions of people
every year.
More people die from coal
in a couple of weeks
than have ever died
from nuclear,
which is all from the one
accident in Chernobyl.
People are scared of flying
because it's dramatic.
If a plane crashes, you know,
you're going to die.
-"I'd say severe turbulence,
definitely severe turbulence."
-And they can't get that image
out of their mind.
But actually driving is
far more dangerous than flying.
And in the same way,
a nuclear accident,
because of all this hype around
nuclear power scares people.
But actually,
it's orders of magnitude safer
than fossil fuel,
especially coal.
It's as though
you're on a bridge
and a train is coming
onto the bridge.
-"Train!!!"
And the train coming
at you is climate change.
-Oh, shit.
And what we're doing is
trying to run off the bridge
away from the train,
but we don't have time
to get off the bridge.
That's our renewables.
That's our personal
carbon footprint.-
All the little things
that we're supposed to do.
But it's not working.
And the thing that we have
that we know works
is to jump off the bridge
into the water below,
and that's nuclear power.
The jump is scary,
but it's the train
that's going to kill you.
Many in the West's
post-industrial lifestyle
feel they're taking steps
in the right direction.
And they are.
People preach the green gospel, they recycle,
they install solar panels,
and look for sustainability
in their consumer brands.
'Turn out the lights.
Drive more efficient cars.
Reduce your carbon footprint.'
We do things that are
politically doable, affordable,
convenient and make us feel good
about being virtuous,
better citizens.
And we all hope,
somewhat blindly,
that these things will add up,
but they don't.
So what do we need to do?
How do we solve this problem
in a better way
than just trying to
add up things
that don't get to a solution?
The answer is to think
objectively,
top down from the future back
to now, and be very honest.
Where do we actually
need to be in 2050
to solve carbon emissions?
And working backwards
from there,
what steps can we take
to get to that solution?
One place to start is to include
everyone in our thinking...
not only the billion people
living in the richer parts
of the world,
but the seven billion who don't,
and are now producing
two-thirdsof carbon emissions...
700 million of whom don't have
any access to electricity.
Did the West think
the populations of China,
Africa, India, South America
and the Middle East
wouldn't want what we have?
Electricity in their homes,
cars, computers,
air conditioners,
modernized agriculture?
Or at a more basic level,
if your destiny is to grind
sugar cane by hand in India,
that destiny can be
hugely transformed
by an electric grinder.
That's why poorer countries are
building electricity generation
as fast as they can.
And they're using the cheapest,
fastest, simplest technology
they can find.
Coal.
Can the West now seriously tell billions of people
they can't enjoy a
life-changing event like electricity
because we've already
burned up most of the carbon
the planet can afford?
Did we think these populations
would use less energy
than we did?
And the truth be fully known,
it's not just
electricity we need.
That's only a third
of the total,
because two-thirds
of the energy-related
carbon dioxide emissionsncome
from non-electric sources.
That is, most transportation,
including cars, trucks,
trains, ships, and planes.
Secondly, industries such
as steel, cement, and fertilizer.
And thirdly, the heating
of homes, offices,
and all buildings which are
not yet electrified.
And just to get these sectors
off the coal, oil and gas
they depend on,
they need to be electrified,
which will enormously multiply
demand for clean electricity.
The resulting volume
of carbon-free electricity
needed over the next 30 years
is almost unimaginable.
It depends on several factors,
but realistic estimates range
from two to four times the
electricity we currently use.
The world is not standing
still as this is going on.
All these economies
are growing fast,
month by month, year by year.
We're going to need a gigantic
amount of clean electricity
by 2050...
two, three, maybe four times
all the electricity we use now.
And it has to be cheap enough
to out compete coal and gas.
And also scalable, able to
be built in large quantities
and at quicker speed.
Realism dictates that
renewablesaren't going to be able
to bridge this energy gap.
And we don't have much time
till 2050
to switch over
an extremely large system.
So it becomes apparent,
for the sake of humanity,
that we must seriously
reconsider nuclear energy.
At present,
more than 400 reactors
are producing over 10 percent
of the world's electricity.
Dozens of countries
are building more right now,
about 50 reactors
in 16 countries,
notably in China,
India and Russia.
And another 100 are on order.
Most of these in Eurasia,
with its rapidly rising
electricity demand.
Turkey, Bangladesh
and the United Arab Emirates
are newcomers to the game.
President Xi Jinping
surprisingly,
suddenly announced in 2020
to the United Nations
that China intended to
drop its carbon emissions
to zero by 2060.
This is a huge commitment.
But can China deliver?
They have 37 nuclear reactors
and are building 19 more,
which is faster
than anyone else.
They hook a new reactor to the
grid every two to three months.
Having adapted American,
Russian, Canadian
and French designs
over the years,
the Chinese now have
their own design,
the Hualong One, which took
about five years to build
and is now in operation.
These are inexpensive,
heavy workhorse reactors
that can be built by the tens,
maybe by the hundreds.
China also is building
the Linglong One,
a low-cost small
modular reactor,
called an SMR - a technology
first deployed by the Russians.
It's about one third the size
of the Hualong One,
and can be built in a factory
and either sited on land
or barged to locations around
the world and plugged in.
Whether China
standardizes and replicates
its big reactors or small ones,
it will be investing deeply
in the future of this century.
These reactors are to last
50 to 80 years or more.
There's no question the cost
of building nuclear plants,
though dropping, is still huge.
The positive side is they're
inexpensive to operate.
And once the pattern of building
is established successfully,
reactors could conceivably
be built like airliners
or giant turbines on a
factory-scale at a central location.
The first fully functional SMR
has already been successfully
deployed in Russia
in a remote but important
Arctic port town, Pevek.
Built in the St. Petersburg
shipyards,
the plant was barged
to the Arctic.
Greenpeace called it
a nuclear Titanic,
but it dodged the icebergs,
arrived in a new home,
plugged into both the grid
and the district heating system
for the town's buildings,
and in 2020,
was powering the town
without a problem.
Similar to the United States,
Russia is operating 35 reactors,
accounting for almost
20 percent of its electricity.
But unlike the United States,
Russia is building a new reactor
each year to replace retirements
and raise the nuclear share
of electricity
to what they plan,
if they stick to it,
50 percent by mid-century
and 75 percent by century's end.
Russia, with 60 percent
of the market,
is the world's leader in
exporting larger reactors,
specializing in turnkey plants
that it designs,
builds and operates.
Dozens of projects are underway in India, China,
Bangladesh, Turkey,
and elsewhere.
The most ambitious
development in Russia
is its fast breeder reactors,
which we visited
close to the foot
of the Ural Mountains.
Beloyarsk is a unique facility.
It's the only industrial scale
fast reactor in the world.
In a conventional reactor,
uranium fuel regularly degrades,
whereas in a fast neutron
reactor,
it becomes higher
and higher grade.
Then you have the capability
to recycle the same fuel
multiple times.
-So we operate using the waste
from other reactor types.
We don't extract resources
from the earth.
-And why do you call it
a fast breeder?
-Because we breed, we produce
more fuel than we burn.
This is the most advanced
nuclear reactor in the world.
With breeder
reactors, no one yet knows
if this technology will be
cheap enough to standardize
and be the complete
breakthrough technology.
Or perhaps it'll be the model
for the next stage and so on.
Like any science, nuclear keeps
adapting and renewing itself.
In 2021, Europe split into
pro- and anti-nuclear camps.
The United Kingdom
has begun to build again,
with multiple reactors planned.
The Netherlands, Poland,
and much of Eastern Europe
all intend to build new plants
in the coming decades.
But, with its 56 nuclear
reactors, and more promised,
France continues to be the
true world leader in clean energy.
And when they look at it,
they see that the end price
for corporations
and for households
is significantly less in France
than it is in all
the neighboring countries.
We believe that in 2050,
mankind has the ability
to be a net zero planet,
or very close to net zero,
in order for
global warming to stop.
We need global warming to stop,
we believe electricity
is the key success factor
in managing
global warming issues
and we believe there are
a lot of solutions
and nuclear is a key part
of these solutions.
Voila, welcome to
the swimming pool.
The water is hot, clear.
France still to
this day runs a clean grid,
with one-third
of the carbon emissions
per person of the United States.
Truly a major accomplishment.
This brings us around
to the United States,
still dependent on fossil fuels:
40 percent gas, 20 percent coal.
Despite tripling output
in the last decade,
wind power only supplies
eight percent
of the nation's electricity.
And solar power, despite its
highly-publicized fast growth,
generates only
two to three percent.
But, public support
for nuclear energy has grown,
in fact, to 60 percent in 2021.
-I was reading a book
about the Wright Brothers.
You know, they started
as bicycle mechanics,
but they wanted to fly.
And they kept doing it
and doing it and doing it;
it took forever.
They flew 20 feet,
30 feet, a minute.
It was a long haul,
eight, nine years,
but they did it and they were
the best fliers.
Well, it just shows you
that tenacity
in scientific matters
is crucial.
-And certainly, the nuclear
industry in the United States
has done that as it keeps
being counted out...
-Counted out
for dead in the United States,
never in the world.
- That's right.
- Too good to let it die off.
-Yeah, it's too good
to let it die off.
-Yeah.
The spirit of innovation
has always defined
America's character.
And now 50 or more new companies
have entered the energy field
with creative new designs
for nuclear reactors,
with a focus on SMRs.
These new reactors are small,
taking up a fraction
of the footprint
needed for traditional
nuclear power reactors.
They're modular, making it
possible for these designs
to be scaled up
and factory assembled.
And they're reactors,
utilizing the same reliable
nuclear fission technology
to generate heat
to produce electricity.
-There's two
fairly significant projects
that are going to be built
by the end of 2028.
First of all, the partnership
between Bill Gates' TerraPower
and General Electric/Hitachi
is called
the Natrium facility.
And it's going to heat
a set of molten salt tanks.
The other one of these advanced
reactor demonstration projects,
by a company called X Energy,
initially funded by an entrepreneur
from the space program.
So we're actually
building stuff.
And bigger American companies,
like General Electric, are
also building new reactors,
in partnership with
Hitachi of Japan.
They've designed
a most promising,
low-cost workhorse
boiling water reactor.
Built in a factorynand
dropped into a hole on site,
the SMR is scheduled
for completion by 2028.
And then it can be built
as a fleet.
There are high hopes
and demand from the utilities
for this potentially
breakthrough reactor.
-China and Russia seem to be
the leading explorers
in this field.
-Absolutely.
-If General Electric's got
this kind of thing
with the Japanese company
called Hitachi,
why are we not going
all out on this?
-Part of the problem
is that General Electric
is a very large company with
a very small nuclear division.
General Electric has a huge
business in wind turbines,
gas turbines and natural gas
drilling equipment.
Their priority is a little low
in the nuclear range.
So perhaps there's
an advantage to these new,
smaller energy companies.
They comprise a whole
new generation of young people
who are focused
primarily on nuclear.
And the Department of Energy
is working with several
of these startups
to build prototypes at
America's first nuclear test lab:
the Idaho National Laboratory.
Located on the outskirts
of Atomic City, Idaho,
and established in 1949,
this facility, known as "the Site"
has provided the space for
several organizations
to build over
50 reactors to date,
including Admiral Rickover's
groundbreaking engine
for the USS Nautilus.
Today, the lab is the epicenter
for the next generation
of reactors.
And you work
for the government, right?
-So I'm the Director of
the National Reactor
Innovation Center,
and, it's also called NRIC
for short.
NRIC is charged with
accelerating the demonstration
of advanced reactor technologies
in partnership with
private industry.
-So what are we
going to do about the climate?
What's the best solution
in your mind?
-I think
that it's straightforward
to get to the first
30 percent renewables
and then probably 50
and even greater.
- Right.
- But when we get to
higher levels of
deep decarbonization,
we really find that we need
firm low carbon resources
to have the most affordable
decarbonization.
-And that would be?
- Largely nuclear.
- All right.
-Where the United States
excels most is in innovation.
And the Department of Energy
has made an enormous investment
in advanced reactor
demonstration projects,
and my organization is working
closely with the companies
who are pursuing those designs.
Our vision is
that we help demonstrate
at least two advanced reactors
by the end of 2025.
We need nuclear energy
to address climate change.
And nuclear energy is one of
the safest forms of energy
that we have.
-On Capitol Hill,
do they care about that?
-There is growing
bipartisan support
for advanced nuclear,
more so than there has been
for the traditional
technologies.
But there's a large audience
that we haven't reached yet.
And my view is that we need
advanced technologies
because if we're going to have
nuclear meaningfully addressing
climate change,
it needs to scale globally
in a really big way.
I mean, in the United States,
our electricity demand
is fairly stagnant,
but that is not true globally.
Globally, it's skyrocketing,
and we have to provide clean,
affordable energy to the world.
- That's a good point...
- India, China, Indonesia.
-Africa and the Middle East,
yeah.
All growing very rapidly.
The other thing
that we can look at is,
what is the alternative?
And if the alternative
is climate change,
that is a much more
serious risk.
We need to do nuclear
differently.
And this is where we're going
to build our first reactor.
-You're going to
build a reactor here?
-We're going to
build a reactor here.
-Do you know where?
-Yeah, basically out in there.
Pretty neat, right?
Because this is the first
advanced reactor
that's going to be
a commercial plant
that gets built
in the United States.
And it's a micro reactor,
which is different.
You know, it's a lot smaller
than what we have today.
It starts, at one and a half
megawatts electric.
-So that's going
to light up how many homes?
-Like a thousand homes.
-A thousand homes.
-Yeah, really well suited for,
you know, small towns,
small communities.
-You're going
to build a micro reactor
and it's going to give you
1.5 megawatts?
That's nothing compared to
some of the SMRs.
-Exactly.
-You know, if we start
with something so small,
then we can really meet
the regulations
but do it
efficiently and quickly.
A big problem with nuclear is,
maybe it takes a decade,
and billions of dollars.
We want to show that it can take
a couple of years and less money
while still meeting
the same regulations.
-Is it your money,
or how does that work?
- We're a private funded company.
- It is our money.
-Can I ask you
roughly how much you've spent?
-Yeah, less than
10 million dollars to date.
-So you raised
$10 million, less than ten.
It's likeShark Tank.
-Yeah, kind of.
We've talked a lot about
how we're starting small.
So that's where
the Aurora comes in
at one and a half megawatts.
And that provides a platform
on which we can scale.
'Cause what's next for us
is something that's on the order
of about 15 megawatts.
And from that we can go
all the way up to 100 or more.
-And you would run the plant.
-We'll run it.
By making it sort of
a simpler process
where we're selling
the power and the heat
and not the reactors,
that makes it easier to buy.
-And so the utility company,
you cut out of it.
How does that work?
-We see the utilities
mostly evolving
to wanting to run
distribution and transmission.
We act as an independent
power producer
and we just sell the power
to the local utilities
or into the market.
And then they can distribute it
to the customers.
-We're excited about how
that could allow communities
to basically opt in
instead of feeling like
a huge plant is being stuck
in their backyard.
-Do you sometimes feel
frustrated that you know all this,
and it just goes so slowly
and you're getting older?
- Yeah.
- Absolutely.
-Timescales are just so long
in nuclear, and too slow.
We're doing everything we can
to change that.
I think another way
of looking at it,
if nuclear was just discovered
like in the last 15 years,
people would have become
a lot more familiar with it
and comfortable
with the technology
because once you understand it,
people have a better sense of
not being afraid
and they'd see the benefits.
We would probably have
a thousand nuclear power plants
built around the world.
-That's a good point.
-One of the last public speeches
JFK even gave was saying,
We need to use fission
to help with conservation
and for clean power.
For various reasons, it was
overshadowed by the weapons.
And I think
we're looking at it anew
because of the imperative
of climate change.
-Younger people
seem more open to it.
-I think so.
-They're smarter.
-I think
for the younger generations,
climate change is more
of an imperative
than worrying about nuclear war.
-Well, Jake and Caroline,
I wish you all the freakin'
luck in the world!
- And the wind at your back!
- Thank you so much.
If micro reactors work
the way Jake and Caroline say,
the industry would gather
momentum quickly in the 2030s.
And it's not hard to imagine
micro reactors in the future
having the high-end cachet
of a nuclear battery
buried away in the basement
of a smart home,
putting out the power
to run lights, heat,
water purification,
as well as perhaps a small
hydroponic indoor farm,
all with zero emission.
And not much maintenance
required for 20 years,
after which the reactor is
replaced with a fresh battery.
-When you have nuclear fission,
the primary output
- is heat, thermal energy.
- Right.
-We typically convert
that to electricity.
We could use that heat
for water purification.
We might look at desalination,
producing clean, potable water
from sea water
or brackish ground water,
metals refining,
fertilizer production,
cement production...
those require a lot of heat.
-And that heat
comes off our reactors,
for example, almost for free
because it's heat
that we can't convert
into electricity.
So instead of just
dumping it into the air,
we could use that
in district heating
or industrial heating
or different things.
Like, for example, heating a
campus or heating a hospital,
or heating a big
commercial district.
You could have reactors
heating the district,
heating that we have
in New York City,
and it would be
completely clean.
-This is where we're using
high temperature
steam electrolysis.
That means simply
breaking down water molecules.
Hydrogen is a highly versatile
energy carrier
that can also be used
to produce synthetic fuels.
We take that hydrogen,
from a clean process,
and we combine that
with carbon dioxide
that maybe has been captured
from a fossil plant,
an ethanol plant,
or even directly from the air,
and we can combine
that carbon dioxide
with the hydrogen to produce
liquid transportation fuels
that are clean burning.
-To fly a plane?
-Yes.
-So now we have a pathway
of using clean, non-emitting
nuclear energy
to produce hydrogen,
that goes all the way to
liquid fuels for your car,
for heavy transport vehicles,
for even aviation.
Shannon went on
to explain how hydrogen
is the beginning pathway
to many other solutions.
Scientists at the Idaho Lab a
real so working on fusion energy,
an even more powerful way of
harnessing energy from matter.
Fusion, which is created
when two lightweight atoms
are forced together,
can produce
immense amounts of energy.
It's the same process
that powers our sun.
Its fuel source, hydrogen
and lithium, are plentiful.
And after decades of research,
the goal is closer
but still elusive.
Several startups think they can
reach commercial-scale fusion
faster and smaller,
within a decade,
and they've raised
billions of dollars
in investment in 2021.
If humanity ever makes fusion
practical and economical,
it could power the world
of the future,
maybe even in the second half
of this century.
-We've done some really
fantastic development
here at the site.
-Are you moving fast enough?
-Oh, I think that energy
in general,
we need to move faster.
Why do we do this?
We do this for our families,
we do this for our kids
and those generations.
It's so important that we look
to our energy resources
and use them wisely.
We're leaving a legacy
and I hope it's a positive one.
As I left the lab, it became
clearer than ever to me
that to hit the needed levels
of clean energy,
we need to think big.
Among other things,
we will shortly need to
stamp nuclear reactors
off assembly lines
on the scale of
world jetliner production.
This would mean
creating a significant new
worldwide industry, redeploying
hundreds of thousands of people
of all skills.
It would mean in the
first years, 2020 to 2030,
building factories
around the world,
then scaling up in the
middle years, 2030 to 2040,
as electrification
takes over across the world
and multiplies
the demand for electricity.
And then going all out
with everything we have
in the remaining years
of 2040 to 2050.
To do that, we need to
rekindlethe spirit of Hyman Rickover,
with the urgency he had
to quickly build new things.
And how much faster could it
go if we also imagine a world
where countries cooperate
to do this.
One partnership here on Earth,
a United Nations
of clean energy.
No question
the world is changing,
and far faster
than I ever imagined.
The future is coming.
And I thought,
as little as I know,
I know there's no real limit
to where clean energy
can take us.
-But the other part of
conservation is the newer part.
And that is to use
science and technology
to achieve significant
breakthroughs
that we are doing today,
and in that way,
to conserve the resources
which, 10 or 20 or 30 years ago,
may have been wholly unknown.
So we use nuclear power
for peaceful purposes and power.
A formidable energy
gave birth to our planet,
and that energy... through
centuries of war, peace,
cataclysms, the price
of potatoes and stocks,
all the history, blunders,
tragi-comedies,
and the occasional triumphs...
that energy,
E equals M-C-squared,
was always there for us,
all along.
And it's still there,
like an inner voice,
our most faithful companion.
Why are we not using that power?
If this build out were to occur,
can we imagine a world
in which human beings
are not terrified
by climate change,
but are smart and confident
enough to solve it?
Together, collectively,
we're combating viruses,
exploring inner worlds,
oceans, and fellow travelers.
We're traveling through space.
And for that matter,
just building bullet trains,
housing, deep underground
tunnels, and giant aeropolises.
We can do most anything
with our mind.
Human ingenuity, the
workings of the mind,
can get us out of our
climate predicament.
Unless we dull it with fear,
the mind is the most powerful
tool we know.
It is more imaginative than
any computer will ever be.
There is no force, no energy,
that can contain
or stop human consciousness.
We may have come
to a point in time
when Earth is asking us, "Do
you know what you're doing?"
And there's no going back
or forward from this moment.
Time stops now.
Or,
maybe I'm being melodramatic.
But I think as a race,
we're more informed
and conscious
than we've ever been,
and many of us are thinking
the same thing.
We're thinking
not just about ourselves,
but of the entire world
as we know it,
and how we can fix it.
And that's a hell of a lot
of consciousness
from many, many people.
And for that reason,
let's make something of it.
If we human beings
can get this right,
if we can create clean
electricity
fast enough to decarbonize
the world... and we can...
the effects would be incredible.
People would know, they would
sense the changes right away.
And it would energize
the world anew.
Imagine that.
Imagine that there is a
tomorrow, and it can be better.
If we overcome our fears
and embrace the primordial
star power in the nucleus
of the atom.
And in doing so, give
us all, all living beings,
what is our birthright:
a future
that we can look forward to.
We are all time travelers,
journeying together
into the future.
But let us work together
to make that future
a place we want to visit.
Be brave, be determined,
overcome the odds.
It can be done.