Nuclear Physicist REACTS to Sabine Hossenfelder Is Nuclear Power Green

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hmm is nuclear energy green Sabine hasenfelder  I wonder what she thinks hey there it's Elina   your friend the nuclear physicist and today we're  gonna be watching Sabine hosenfelder discussing   the topic of if nuclear energy is green and we're  gonna check how accurate the video is and if we   find something that needs more discussion we're  gonna discuss it in this video I'm Gonna Leave   a link to the original video of Sabine in the  description down below so you can guys check   it out she has plenty of videos related to physics  and without further Ado let's get into it a lot of   people have asked me to do a video about nuclear  power but that turned out to be really difficult   you won't be surprised to hear that opinions about  nuclear power are extremely polarized and every   Source seems to have an agenda to push I like how  she starts in the beginning of the video already   discussing very let's say true and realistic facts  about nuclear energy and nuclear power and how   very many organizations people institutions have  their own agenda to push when it comes to nuclear   energy and how they portrayed and how they talk  about it so I like that I like how she already   puts it out there and says how a big let's say  controversial problem this is to discuss will   nuclear power help us save the environment  and ourselves or is it too dangerous and too   expensive do thorium reactors or the small modular  ones change the Outlook is nuclear power green   that's what we'll talk about today let's see I  want to do this video a little differently so   you know where I'm coming from I'll first tell you  what I thought about nuclear power before I began   working on this video then we look at the numbers  and in the end I'll tell you if I changed my mind   when the ACT I wonder what was her knowledge  and nuclear power before she started working   on this video then what she read meanwhile and  then what opinion she ended up with so it's very   intriguing let's say accident and Chernobyl  happened I was nine years old I didn't know   anything about nuclear power or radioactivity  but I was really scared because I saw that the   adults were scared we were just yeah I wouldn't  be surprised especially since as I read Sabine   is from Germany and depending on where you were  from Germany there was a lot of territories in   Germany that were actually very much affected by  the Chernobyl because of the direction of the wind   blowing towards the let's say Central Europe so I  would assume that it would be a very big deal back   then in the country as in any other country pretty  much but specifically in Germany told you can't   see it but it'll kill you later when I understood  that this had been an unnecessary scare I was   somewhat pissed off at adults and yeah tell me  about it honorable and my teachers in particular   yes Radioactive pollution is dangerous but  in contrast to pretty much any other type of   pollution it's easy to measure that doesn't make  it go away but at least we know if it's there   and we also know how to control it what measures  you take in case it's increased so yeah that's   a very accurate fact that you cannot see it it  sounds kind of scary but you can very precisely   measure it today I worry much more about pollution  from the chemical industry which you won't find   unless you know exactly what you're looking for  and also have a complete chemistry lab in the   basement and I worry about climate change so I've  been in favor of nuclear power as a replacement   for fossil fuels since I was in high school  girls are being team nuclear power I like it   in 2008 I over optimistically predicted the  return of nuclear power then of course in 2011 the   Fukushima accident happened after which the German  government decided to phase out nuclear power but   continued digging up coal buying gas from Russia  and deporting nuclear power from France thank you   I totally relate with this move this  is exactly my move with the decision   of Germany to move forward with let's say such  actions after the Fukushima extent which was   yes of course a scary event an event that had to  be investigated and had to let's say people had   to work on and many changes happen in the nuclear  industry after the Fukushima accident and because   of that more safety is let's say implemented the  safety has been actually strengthened and become   even better since then but for Germany to be so  afraid of a tsunami causing an accident or nuclear   power plant is completely unrealistic since the  geographical let's say uh disposition of the   country and the climate itself would never have  any sort of correlation with the Japanese weather   and let's say catastrophic conditions that happen  because of tsunami and Germany so the reason why   they weren't so ahead to be against nuclear in  itself is very puzzling for me and I would really   like to let's say meet or discuss with the people  who took the decision to move forward even though   there was no decision in place on how would you  replace all the amount of energy that the nuclear   was producing so Renewables are clearly not enough  so as I've been mentions very well and very much   correctly they ended up buying gas and fossil  fuels from other countries which not only   worsen the economy of the country and made  them more dependent on other countries and   other energy sources that they don't own but  it also forces the environment itself which   was the first reason why you don't want to use  fossil fuels and everybody goes to Renewables however in all fairness I haven't looked at  the numbers for more than 20 years so that's   what we'll do next and then we'll talk again  later fossil fuels presently make up almost   two-thirds of global electric power production  hydropower makes up about 16 globally and all   other Renewables together about 10 percent power  from nuclear fission makes up the rest also about   10 percent nuclear power is green in the sense  that it doesn't directly produce carbon dioxide I   say directly because even though the clouds coming  out of nuclear power plants are only water vapor   power plants don't grow on trees yeah so the thing  is that of course while the reactor is operating   there is no let's say CO2 production but if you  were to include the whole nuclear industry into   the picture and the mining itself and all  the other processes of fabricating the fuel   Etc then CO2 is present in those processes and  however there is an idea of if you have a power   plant basically fueling and providing electricity  and energy to a factory that builds nuclear power   then all of this is reduced and you have this  kind of nice chain let's say uh sources of CO2   free energy production but as it is of now yes of  course it should include the CO2 in the steps that   it exists and when we say that nuclear power is  CO2 free we mostly and primarily speak about the   operation of the reactor itself and nothing  much around it so when someone discuss about   this nuclear energy as a whole then CO2 has to  be included they have to be built from something   by someone and the materials that transport and  the construction itself have a carbon footprint   yes but then so does pretty much everything else  yes even breathing has a carbon footprint so one   really has to look at those numbers in comparison  a good comparison comes from the 2014 ipcc report   this table summarizes several dozens of studies  with a minimum maximum and a median value   all the following numbers are in grams of  carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour and they   are average values for the entire life cycle of  those Technologies so including the production   for coal the median that the ipcc quotes is  820 gas is a bit lower with 490 solar is a   factor 10 lower than gas with about 40. wind  is even better than solar with a median of   about 11 and the median for nuclear is 12 grams  per kilowatt hour so comparable to that of wind   but and lower on the scale of all the renewable  energy sources basically there is a huge gap to   the maximum value which According to some sources  is as high as 110 so both twice as high as solar   an estimate that's a little bit higher than  even the highest value the ipcc quotes comes   from the world information service on energy wise  which is based in the Netherlands they calculated   that nuclear power plants produce 117 grams of  carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour it's not entirely   irrelevant to mention that the mission of wise is  to fight nuclear according to their own website   that so basically this is one of the ways  to see how numbers can be let's say not   um represented in a wrong way because the number  itself is not wrong but the picture that for   example Sabine showed the table is a much more  clear understanding of the low the medium and the   highest value that the energy source can have and  then you can clearly compare nuclear with the rest   of the renewable energies and not only does it lie  in the category of renewable energies in terms of   CO2 footprint but it's also on the lower end but  then of course in some cases there might be higher   uh let's say footprint for CO2 emissions so is  for Renewables which no one really discusses or   brings about but in this case wise brought up the  number that is the highest ever measured instead   of saying that this is actually the maximum  the the nuclear can produce but is actually   have been recorded and has been measured that  lower values are also possible within this range   so it is a little bit one-sided doesn't make the  number wrong but they clearly have an agenda and   may not be the most reliable source but these  estimates differ not so much because someone is   stupid or lying at least not always but because  there is some uncertainty in these numbers that   affects the outcome that's things like the  quality of uranium resources how far they need   to be transported different methods of mining or  fuel production and their technological progress   and so on in the scientific literature the value  that is typically used is somewhat higher than the   ipcc medium about 60 to 70 grams of carbon dioxide  per kilowatt hour and the numbers for Renewables   should also be taken with a grain of salt because  they need to come with energy storage which will   also have a carbon footprint precisely and also  there is no solution for it at the moment right   because when we produce energy from solar or  wind or Hydro in order to store it you need   either some other kind of technology that doesn't  exist at the moment or you need very big batteries   and the technology for these batteries is not yet  developed so but we don't know when it's going to   be developed and if it's going to be developed  and how vocabulary footprint of that will look   like so as I said before it is important to take  either the whole picture into account for all the   energy sources at once or while they are let's  say working in production and producing energy   and electricity and you compare them in this  moment but it's a little bit let's say unfair and   wrong to basically compare an energy source in its  Hall from resource transportation to production   to fabrication to decommissioning to everything  with energy source for it just being let's say   in production currently producing electricity I  think the message we can take away here is that   either way you look at it the carbon footprint  of nuclear power is dramatically lower than that   of fossil fuels and roughly comparable to some  Renewables exact numbers are hard to come by so   that's one thing nuclear has going in its favor it  has a small carbon footprint another Advantage is   that compared to wind and solar it doesn't require  much space nuclear power is therefore also Green   in the sense that it doesn't get in the way of  forests or agriculture and yet another Advantage   is that it generates power on demand and not just  when the wind blows or The Sun Shines let us then   so we have discussed the space and the area  basically that the nuclear power plant needs to be   built and the same amount of for energy if it was  to be produced by Renewables how much area would   they occupy in a previous video and there the  numbers were much higher for the let's say area   that the Renewables would need to produce the same  amount of electricity that the nuclear power plant   would so I agree with a little space occupied  and that is a very good advantage of nuclear of   course nuclear can produce energy on demand is  not dependent on weather or any such let's say   things that will limit it however it is important  to mention that the best way that renewable is   operating and the best way that you don't lose  money the money that you sow let's say you put so   much money into building a nuclear power plant in  the best way for you to utilize it and not use it   is if your reactor is running at 100 capacity all  the time so for that to do that sometimes this is   not necessary if you have an overload of energy in  your system or the electricity you need to lower   it down then in that case the efficiency of your  reactor will go down and you will not produce as   much as you could produce meaning that you lose  money when you do that and this is where a good   let's say point of small modular reactors comes  by then you can have modules which you can much   more easily regulate and they're more flexible in  terms of how much energy you need at the moment   instead of one big reactor of certain gigawatts  that would constantly produce such a large amount   of energy either you need it or not and of course  we can discuss about other things to do with the   energy that reactors are producing such as  distract heating or hydrogen production uh   or something like that that would not just lead to  electricity production but would also be utilized   for something else in case such higher electricity  demand is not necessary talk about what is maybe   the biggest disadvantage of nuclear power let  me guess otherwise it's not renewable oh the   vast majority of nuclear power plants which are  currently in operation work with uranium to 35. at   the moment we use about 60 000 tons per year the  word resources are estimated to be about 8 million   tons this means if we were to increase nuclear  power production by a factor of 10 then within   15 to 20 years uranium mining would become too  expensive to make economic sense this was pretty   much the conclusion of a paper that was published  a few months ago by a group of researchers from   Austria they estimate that optimistically  nuclear power from uranium-235 would save about   two percent of global carbon dioxide emissions by  2040. that's not nothing but it isn't going to fix   climate change there just isn't enough Uranium on  this planet I mean I'm not sure if Sabine is going   to elaborate on that but I cannot not comment  on this moment because uh of course based on   the recent video we made about Cantu reactors  and we do know that there's a energy there's   reactor types that basically utilize energy from  the fission that comes off the uranium-238 and   that is the uranium that is the most abundant on  earth and the numbers that are being gave I would   assume are for uranium-235 which is the one that  we use for light water reactors mostly in Europe   however if we were to run out of uranium-235 then  in that case I don't see why when we wouldn't push   forward for technologies that already pretty much  established and mature in order to use the very   big abundance of uranium-238 that exists on the  planet let alone the fact of developing Generation   4 reactors that would actually be able to utilize  the spend nuclear fuel that we have plenty all   around the world so even though I would agree  I wouldn't really put a stamp of Renewables in   the term of nuclear energy at the same time I do  have to say that if we treat it smartly and use   the technology to our advantage while we proceed  then in that case the resources and the let's say   the resources of uranium would last for much much  longer than what the article suggests second big   problem with nuclear power is that it's expensive  a medium-sized nuclear power plant currently costs   about 5 to 10 billion US Dollars though large  ones can cost up to 20 billion have a look at this   figure from the word nuclear energy status report  2021 it shows What's called the levelized cost of   energy in U.S dollar per megawatt hour that's  basically how much it costs to produce power   over the entire lifetime of some technology so not  just the running cost but including the production   as you can see nuclear is the most expensive  it's even more expensive than coal and at the   moment roughly five times more expensive than  solar or wind if the current Trend continues   the Gap is going to get even wider on top  of this comes that insurance for nuclear   power plants is mandatory I'm Curative they're  plot before was taking into account that the   lifespan of a nuclear power plant is pretty much  doubled than that of renewable energies or if it   was counting up until let's say the 20 30 or 15  years limit that for example solar panels have   the premium is high and those expenses from the  plant owners go on top of the electricity price   so at the moment nuclear power just doesn't  make a lot of economic sense of course this   may change with new technologies but before  we get to those we have to talk about the   biggest problem that nuclear power has people  are afraid of it that's why we're here your   friendly Nuclear Physics is here to give you all  the information for you to make your own informed   decisions if you do like nuclear power or not  if you want to have it in your backyard or not   Islands in nuclear power plants are a nightmare  because radioactive contamination can make regions   uninhabitable for decades and tragic accidents  like Chernobyl and Fukushima have arguably been   bad publicity however the data say that nuclear  power has historically been much safer than   fossil fuels it's just that the death toll from  fossil fuels is less visible in 2013 researchers   from the NASA Goddard Institute for space studies  and Columbia University calculated the fatalities   caused by coal gas and nuclear and summarize their  findings in units of deaths per terawatt hour   they found that coal kills more than 100  times more people than nuclear power the   vast majority by air pollution they also  calculate that since the world began using   nuclear power instead of coal and gas nuclear  power has prevented more than 1.8 million deaths   so these are very interesting numbers and I do  really appreciate that there is people out there   who actually show them and discuss about them even  though they are not necessarily nuclear physicists   or nuclear engineers and you can tell that the  opinion of Sabine is quite objective on the matter   so I really appreciate that and I have seen these  tables before but you would rarely find them just   publicly and easily accessible and is that really  pretty much the first thing you're going to find   when you start googling about nuclear energy  nuclear power so it requires some digging but   this is actually the case that if you correlate  of course fossil fuel and coal plants to the air   pollution and Odessa this causes then this value  is much higher than that's caused by nuclear that   doesn't mean that we should basically consider  that oh well then nuclear accents are just a   minor thing it doesn't matter we shouldn't anyway  no this is not the case of course we should always   strive to make the energy production safer and  more reliable and better than the previous ones   and eliminate the accidents or minimize them  to the least possible however it's good kind   of estimate to understand a little bit the values  and the priorities that we have and where do we   put all of our effort instead of let's say maybe  overlooking something that we need to be putting   more more effort and attention to another study in  2016 found a death rate for nuclear that was even   lower about a factor 5 less the authors of this  paper also compared the risk of nuclear to hydro   and wind and found that these Renewables actually  have a slightly higher death rate though in   terms of economic damage nuclear is far worse I'm  guessing now you all want to know just how exactly   people die from Renewables this exactly was going  to be my next question well since you asked for   wind it's stuff like a bus collided with a truck  transporting a turbine Tower or an aircraft   crashed into a wind turbine or workers falling off  the platform of an offshore wind farm for solar   its accidents in manufacturing sites electric  shocks from improper wiring or forts from roofs   the number for hydropower is dominated by a  single accident when a dam broke in China in   1975. the water flooded several Villages and  killed more than 170 000 people the Chernobyl  

accident in comparison killed less than 40 people  directly the World Health Organization estimates   long-term deaths from cancer as a consequence  of the Chernobyl accident to be four thousand   to nine thousand there is a group of researchers  which claims it's at least a factor 10 higher but   this claim has remained highly controversial the  number of direct fatalities from the Fukushima   accident is zero one worker died seven years later  from lung cancer almost certainly a consequence   of radiation exposure about 500 died from the  evacuation mostly elderly and ill people whose   care was interrupted and this number is unlikely  to change much in the long run according to   the who the radiation exposure of the Fukushima  accident was low except for the direct vicinity   of the power plant which was evacuated they do not  expect the cancer risk for the general population   to significantly rise the tsunami which caused  the accident to begin with killed considerably   more people at least fifteen thousand I don't want  to trivialize accidents in the nuclear industry of   course they are tragic yes but there is no doubt  that they pale in comparison to fossil fuels which   cause pollution but according to some estimates  kills as much as a million people per year   also fun fact coal contains traces of radioactive  minerals that are released when you burn it   indeed radioactivity levels are typically higher  near coal plants than near nuclear power plants   again this is actually a very interesting point  and uh it is true it is a fact that when burning   coal you actually produce radioactivity from the  all the different particles and elements that   exist in the let's say burning process that they  actually end up to release more radiation than you   would actually do with from a nuclear power plant  because everything is so controlled in the nuclear   power plant and everything is filtered everything  is let's say monitored and cleaned and you would   expect their radiation levels to be higher but  they're actually not they're much lower and in   the cold power plant that you wouldn't even think  about radiation there the levels are much higher   even from a nuclear power plant and then again  no one discusses about this there is no let's say   um discussion attention drawn into it and  mostly because people don't know about it   because people who do know about it probably make  sure that other people don't find out see there   are some differences in the details but pretty  much everyone who has ever seriously looked at   the numbers agrees that nuclear power is one  of the safest power sources we know of okay so   we have seen that the biggest two disadvantages of  nuclear power are that it's not renewable and that   it's expensive but this is for the conventional  nuclear power plants that use uranium 235 which   is only 0.7 percent of all uranium we find yes  another option is to use fast breeder reactors   which work with the other 99.9 of uranium on Earth  that's the isotope uranium-238 a fast breeder   transmutes uranium-238 to plutonium-239 which  can then be used as rectofuel like uranium-235   and this process continues running with the  neutrons that are produced in the reaction itself   so the reactor breeds its own Fuel and so this is  pretty much like the thorium reactor concept that   we discussed in the thorium video that I did  it is the same thing but here is a so-called   uranium plutonium cycle whereas in a thorium  is called thorium uranium cycle because here   you begin from thorium sorry here you begin from  uranium going to protonium there you begin from   thorium going to uranium 233 and that's your  fuel that you're actually visioning the name   fast breeders are not new they have been used here  and there since the 1940s but they turned out to   be expensive unreliable and troublesome the major  problems are that they are cooled with sodium   which is very reactive and they also can't be  shut down as quickly as the conventional nuclear   power plants to make a long story short they  didn't catch on and I don't think they ever will   but technology in the nuclear industry has much  advanced in the past decades the most important   Innovations are molten sword reactors thorium  reactors and small modular reactors molten salt   reactors and all of them together and mold  and sold thorium small modular reactor work   by mixing the fuel into some type of molten salt  the big benefit of doing this is that it's much   safer that's partly because molten soil directors  operate at lower pressure but mostly because the   reaction has a negative temperature coefficient  that's a complicated way of saying that the   energy production slows down when the reactor  overheats so you don't get a runaway effect   molten saw directors have their own problems  though the biggest one is that the molten   salt fuel is highly corrosive and quickly  degrades the material meant to contain it   how much of a problem this is in practice is  currently unclear molten Soldier actors can   be run with a number of different  fields one of them is a thorium   thorium is about four times more abundant in the  crust of Earth than uranium and it's easier to   mine however fewer resources are known so there's  somewhat High abundance isn't going to make a big   difference in the short run the real Advantage  is that these reactors can use essentially the   entire thorium not just a small fraction of it  as is the case with the normal uranium reactors   this means thorium reactors produce more energy  from the same amount of fuel and as a consequence   thorium could last for thousands of years so  similarly basically to what let's say candle   reactors are doing with ethereum 238 right so  there you could actually utilize all of your   fuel and not just a small percentage of the fuel  that we enriched what will be the uranium-235 for   the light water reactors similarly for the  thorium constant there you could utilize all   of the fuel every gram of the fuel you put inside  the reactor so of course that will increase their   time that you can use the fuel and the energy  that it can produce to thousands of years   film is also a waste product of the rare earth  mining industry so trying to put it to use is a   good idea however the problem is still that the  technology is expensive there is currently only   one molten sword thorium reactor in operation and  that's in China it started operating in September   2021. it's just a test facility that will generate  only two megawatt but if they are happy with  

the test the Chinese have plans for a bigger  Reactor with 373 megawatt for the next decade   though that is still fairly small for power  plant yeah it'll be very interesting to see   what comes out of this and the biggest hope of  the nuclear industry is currently small modular   reactors the idea is that instead of building big  and expensive power plants you build reactors that   are small enough to be transported Mass producing  them in a factory could bring down the cost   dramatically a conventional plant generates  typically a few gigawatts in electric energy   the small modular reactors are comparable in size  to a small house and have an energy output of some   tenths of megawatt for comparison that's about  10 times as much as a wind turbine on a good day   that they are modular means they are  designed to work together so one can   build up power plants gradually to the desired  capacity several projects for small modular   reactors are at an advanced stage in the USA  Russia China Canada the UK and South Korea   most of the current Pro I would add more countries  into this about the designs and projects that are   currently in let's say walking stage for small  model reactors however yeah I do also completely   agree with Sabine in this part that SMR seems to  be the future as of now in the nuclear industry   the fact that they are going to be Factory  produced and transported to the areas that   they meet them would reduce the cost very much  would reduce the time or that they will need to   be built hence reduce the cost again and it will  also give the possibility to countries that don't   have the technology to build their own nuclear  power plants to just purchase one and it will be   directly transported to the area that is in need  and it's going to be installed and used there yes   the fact that they are modular as we discussed  in the video that we made as well is that it   gives much more flexibility as we said before to  basically say Which models you want to operate   or models that you don't want to be working at  the moment or maybe working for heating or hard   reproduction or something else so it gives much  more flexibility in the power plant altogether   let's use uranium as fuel partly and the molten  salt design but the big question is will the   economics work out in the end this is not all  clear because making the reactor smaller may   make them cheaper to manufacture but they'll  also produce less energy during their lifetime   certainly at this early stage small modular  reactors aren't any cheaper than the big   ones a cautious example comes from the American  company new skin they sit in Utah and have been in   business since 2007. they were planning to build  12 small reactors with 60 megawatts by 2027 except   for being small they are basically conventional  reactors that work with enriched uranium each   of those reactors is a big cylinder about three  meters in diameter and 20 feet tall the original   cost estimate estimate was about 4.2 billion  3 meters in diameter and 20 feet tall that is   a European metric system and the American height  which is very confusing for me to understand the   difference but yeah I kind of understand the  the size of it however last year they announced   they had to revise their estimate to 6.2 billion  dollars and said they'd need three years longer   in terms of cost per energy that's even more  expensive than conventional nuclear power plants   the project is subsidized by the department of  energy with 1.4 billion but still several funders   backed out after the announcement that the cost  had significantly increased okay so that concludes   my rundown of the numbers let's see what we've  learned what speaks in favor of nuclear energy is   that it's climate friendly has a small land use  and creates power on demand what speaks against   it is that it's expensive and ultimately not  renewable the disadvantages could be alleviated   with new technologies but it's unclear whether  that will work and even if it works it almost   certainly won't have a significant impact on  climate change in the next 20 years it also speaks   against nuclear power that people are afraid of it  even if these fears are not rational that doesn't   mean they don't exist if someone isn't comfortable  near a nuclear power plant that affects their   quality of life and that can't just be dismissed  of course that cannot be dismissed if people and   the public is afraid of nuclear and they don't  want it to be built in their country or even near   them and that is why public acceptance is such  a big issue that is discussed in the nuclear and   sadly it's only discussed but not much has been  taken let's say as an action to actually approach   people and talk about nuclear and give educated  simple information that the public understands   comprehends and can discuss on ask questions get  answers about their issues and their problems and   this is something that in my opinion is one of the  most important disadvantages of nuclear energy and   nuclear power altogether there are two points I  didn't discuss which you may have expected me to   mention wait one is nuclear proliferation and the  risk post by nuclear power plants during war times   this is certainly an important factor but it's  more political than scientific and that would be   an entirely different discussion the other point  I didn't mention is nuclear waste that's because   I think it's a red herring which some activist  groups are using in the attempt to scare people   okay Sabine gets my friendly nuclear physicist  after this sentence I have heard everything I   needed to make my conclusion I 100 recommend her  videos I really much I cannot agree enough with   this sentence of I understand the let's say  concern of people that they might have about   nuclear waste if they have no knowledge about how  the nuclear waste is handled but all these Big   Fuzz and showing it and talking about it as if it  is the biggest problem that nuclear industry has   to offer it is an over exaggerated let's say  way of looking at the situation in my opinion   for what I'm concerned burying the stuff in a  safe place solves the problem just fine it's right   that there aren't any final disposal sites at the  moment but Finland is expected to open more next   year and several other countries will follow and  no provided adequate safety standards I wouldn't   have a problem with the nuclear waste deposit  in my vicinity so what did I learn from this   I learned that nuclear power has become  economically even more unappealing than it   already was 20 years ago and it's not clear this  will ever change personally I would say that this   development can be left to the market I'm not  in favor of Regulation that makes it even more   difficult for us to reduce carbon emissions  to me this just seems insane in all fairness   it looks like nuclear won't help much but then  again every little bit helps and also it will   not help much in the next 20 years because its  regulations were to change and let's say power   plants started to be built tomorrow it will still  take quite some years for them to be built to get   into operation and for them to produce electricity  replace it with their current fossil fuel sources   and to reduce some of the carbon emissions that  that's why Sabine is basically saying that it   will not make much of a difference in the next 20  years even though it will make difference in the   next 40 50 and 60 years of the operation of the  lifetime of the reactor itself so yes it might   not be the short-term goal that the European Union  and the world for that matter is targeting at but   it is a long picture that we are all targeting  at for the sake of the planet and the climate   having said that I think part of the reason  the topic is so controversial is that what   you think is the best strategy depends on local  conditions there is no globally right decision   if your country has abundant solar and wind power  it might not make much sense to invest in nuclear   though you might want to keep in mind that climate  change can affect wind and precipitation patterns   in the long run if your country is at a high risk  of earthquakes then maybe nuclear power just poses   too high a risk if on the other hand Renewables  are unreliable in your region of the world and   you don't have a lot of space and basically never  see earthquakes nuclear power might make a lot   of sense in the end I am afraid exactly so as  we discussed in many videos and generally the   opinions is that usually people tend to have a  either or topic and discussion about nuclear or   Renewables however this is much far and away from  the actual discussion and conversation that we   should be having since the only solution and way  I see and many other scientists see this going   forward is if we collaborate combine them together  and utilize every energy source where it makes   sense in every country that has the resources  and has the capacity and capability and basically   choose the best source for the best location and  not just go with one source for the whole world   or with the other one for the whole world because  this is not the way to go forward okay so this was   a very educational video as a matter of fact this  is the first time I'm watching one of sabine's   videos and uh I'm very much impressed I really  like this video I already said several times   that I recommend the video and the channel itself  you can go ahead and check it out I will leave a   link to it in the description down below uh there  was a lot of things that we already had discussed   in different videos throughout the topics that I  have discussed in my channel some new things that   we discussed together with Sabine teams and let  me know if you like this reaction and if you have   been watching Sabine before and if you would like  me to react to some other videos of hers so leave   a suggestion in the comments down below don't  forget to like this video subscribe to the channel   if you don't forget to like this video subscribe  to the channel if you haven't subscribed already   thanks for watching it's been Elina your friendly  nuclear physicist and until next time see you soon

2023-02-28

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