While I have high esteem for Michio Kaku, on this topic I disagree with him. The Nuclear Power Plant performed admirably during the 9.0 earthquake in Japan. All systems automatically shut down as designed in the case of a catastrophic event. What caused it to fail was the fact that the backup power for the plant was on ground level and was wiped out by the tsunami. This was a human error in the designing process. Nuclear Power is one of the best technologies to pursue for future energy use.
Maybe they should have put the back up generators on a forty foot tower, rather than on the ground. Maybe we should have had strong doors and locks on cock pit doors. Maybe design engineers don't have any common sense.
@kkirT Wikipedia article reads, "Disadvantage: has lithium salts, which can be psychoactive drugs"... it would be the first nuclear reactor fully endorsed by hippies. lol
I normally like Michio Maku, but his arguments here are plain silly. First, if the brakes and radiator failing suddenly means the gas tank will explode, then you shouldn't be driving a Pinto in the first place. That aside, yes nuclear power plants are bad, m'kay, but so are CO2 emissions, and there's no way that renewables can ever meet the worlds energy needs. Sure Germany has shutdown their nuke plants, but guess what, now they have to import power from France. Lunacy.
I'm studying radiologic technology.. we talked about Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi in class one day. My professor said that the Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi sites will stay radiated for millions of years. Nuclear Energy is dangerous stuff.. it leaves a scar on the planet that prevents life from flourishing within 50-100 miles of the meltdown site for MILLIONS of years. We need to start looking for new ways to generate power... fusion power for example.
@piratebri Complete hogwash. Life is, in fact, flourishing around Chernobyl just fine, even around Pripyat itself, and the radioactivity is rapidly dropping off as isotopes decay away and are washed into the soil and run into bedrock. As for millions of years? what?.. Just go put STALKER and Fallout 3/New Vegas away. Then you can give me a hit of whatever you're smoking.
No, he is mean there will be above average level of radioactivity for long long time. It might not be dangerous level of radioactivity after a thousand years, but it is still radioactive
@leeo268 I believe he was quite clear with his explicit and gross misinformation when he said "it leaves a scar on the planet that prevents life from flourishing within 50-100 miles of the meltdown site for MILLIONS of years."
Anyone can agree that above natural background levels of radioactivity is unfortunate, but it's not like the global level isn't increasing due to fossil fuels. It's far from the end of the world like the hysterics are making it out to be. Life goes on.
@piratebri Sorry... What? Three Mile Island radiation amount per person was considerable less then the amount you 8 hour plane ride, and there is been no long term plant life effect. Chernobyl was the only true meltdown, and it was only 26 years ago and you can see photo with tree across the street from the reactors. And the Chernobyl release was over 12 times that of Fukushima.
@wo0obly Google "radiation from a plane ride", you get ~0.5mrem/hr or 2 to 5 mrem for a cross country flight, according to the EPA. This is from the fact of cosmic radiation that the 39,000ft of atmospherics would normally protect you from. Know your facts before calling someone else out, fool.
The atmosphere, which filters solar radiation, gets thinner the higher up in the air you go. You'll receive a higher dose of radiation on a plane trip than someone at ground level.
@TheGamblingApocalyps Yes I know you get radiation ALL THE TIME but I meant an amount of radiation that can actually damage you noticeably. A plane ride at 30,000ft gives you about the same dosage of radiation as ground level travel. You'd have to be way way higher to receive lethal doses.
Coal power plants are Bad! YES! I agree, however they don't meltdown and cause a nuclear disaster either. Look up Clean coal technologies. ofcourse its not the best option. Another option is oil, gas, or hydal.
There is a Fussion reactor coming online in 2020 in France. Fussion is clean!
@00Tenrai00 Coal dust is well known to cause frequent industrial accidents and contamination. And Fusion isn't remotely practical without stellar gravity. It's a hypothetical pipe dream so far.
@aidanjt Fusion on a small scale has already been demonstrated, as for stellar gravity look up tokamak. France's ITER is said to come on line in 2019-20. Pipe dream? I don't think so.
@00Tenrai00 Squeezing hydrogen atoms together in a lab isn't the same thing as netting energy out of the process. Scientists have experimentally created big-bang-like energies in particle accelerators, that doesn't mean we created a universe. And the French can plan whatever the hell they like, that doesn't mean it'll transpire. For the foreseeable future, modern fission reactors are the only feasible, clean, plentiful, and safe source of energy we have to replace coal.
@aidanjt ah... well we can't say much about it till France's ITER comes online. In the mean time, replace coal power plants with solar or wind. Fission is not the way to go! feasible (yes), clean (No - Nuclear Waster is simply stored in undergournd caverns; Technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and Iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years),Neptunium-237 (half-life two million years) and Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years). Go Green, ration electricity if you have to, consume less!
dr. kaku should stick to theoretical physics and leave important questions of energy to thinking people. neglecting the facts and resorting to Fear is un-becoming of an erudite cosmopolitan such as he.
"re-think nuclear energy" and swap with what form of energy production...crickets chirping...more crickets chirping...we are waiting...really easy to calculate the windmills and solar panels necessary to = Fukushima...anyone?
Anti-nuclear movements within industrialized countries is becoming ridiculous. Most of them do not even have oil. Yet, they need to generate electricity somehow. In the meantime, they seem to have a fetish for spectacular disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima, but ignoring more common (and therefore more damaging in the long run) disasters like oil spills and refinery fires.
@Cyberspine really? i wouldn't. i'd rather have the thousands die from the coal mines than the MILLIONS that are going to die of cancer from all the radiation that got into the food chain from these nuclear meltdowns
@chadwick0091 My point exactly, I can live without electricity sure. I can't live with cancer or have kids born with DNA damage. @cyberspine radiation cause cancer it doesn't make you spider man or some evolved mutant!
If we don't force our governments to end nuclear power projects well then eventually we'll all go extinct. The world how ever will eventually be restored. It has existed for eons. Nature always finds a way.
@00Tenrai00 You, sir, are a moron. There's simply no polite way of telling you how completely stupid that statement is. If anything will make humanity go extinct, it'll be scientifically illiterate oafs such as yourself.
@00Tenrai00 i suspect in the future, we're gonna see a huge spike in cancer-related deaths due to nuclear fallout. ppl think that it's short-term issue. half-life of plutonium is 24000 yrs
@chadwick0091 More stupid. The very worst meltdown ever was at Chernobyl, and only 31 people died as a result of that, and 5 of those died as the result of kinetic injuries (4 in a helicopter crash, 1 in the initial explosion).
And what did Chernobyl and Fukushima both have in common? Both were piece of crap reactors designed and built in the 60's, known to have faults, yet not replaced because scare mongering like this blocked investment in safe replacements.
@aidanjt think LONG-TERM. the radiation got into the food chain (the ocean), via the fukushima meltdown. the fuel rods were stored ON SIGHT at the nuclear power plant
@chadwick0091 Oh please, more isotopes get into the ocean from a single coal plant running *normally* for a year than the entire Fukushima event. How's that for long term? And again, this simply wouldn't have happened if nuclear hysteria just fucked off and died with the bullshit pseudo-scientic babbling.
@aidanjt direct me towards the studies that confirm "more isotopes get into the ocean from a single coal plant running normally for year than the entire fukushima event"
@chadwick0091 Direct me towards the study which confirms that the Fukushima isotopes which were washed back out into sea are more harmful than the normal operation of coal plants.
In the meantime, Go look up "Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger" by Alex Gabbard. It shows that a single 1GW/h coal fired plant emits more isotope pollution per year (5.2Mg U, 34Kg U-235, 12Mg Th, etc) than the entire isotope mass ejected at Fukushima.
@aidanjt ha, when did i make that claim? oh yeah, never...don't try to put words into my mouth. i said "the radiation got into the food chain (the ocean), via the fukushima meltdown" and the radiation got into the air too. i wasn't making any kind of comparison to radiation from coal
@chadwick0091 I know you weren't making any kind of comparison to radiation from coal, because you were ignoring that fact. That's why I pointed it out to you.
@aidanjt I see, I have a question for you. What do you do? Are you an expert on nuclear power plants? Are you a Nuclear physicist?
Did you know everything on this planet is radioactive? Its all about how much off that radiotion is permisible. Living in a 50 mile radius of a coal power plant gives you a 0.3μSv. Did you know that natural potassium you consume gives 360μSv. Yearly permited doasage is 1000μSv or 1mSv. Fukushima, one day dosage 3.6mSv (mammnogram), extremly hazardous!
No, not everything on the planet is radioactive, most of the planet is inert. Isotopes, plasmas, electronic equipment, stars, etc, are all radioactive. What we do have is a constant haze of particles zipping about which gives us background radiation. And permitted dosage is not hazardous dosage. Permitted dosage is an arbitrary line bureaucrats have decided is best for people to not exceed. The medically incurable dose is 8,000 times that.
@aidanjt yea really, don't read off the innternet and sound smart. Plasma is radioactive? sure why not, last time I checked steel workshop using plasma torches didn't have glowing workers. most of the planet is inert? Hilarious.
woah, do you know what 8000mSv means?
I am not saying that coal energy should be persued, I am saying it is not as devastating as a nuclear disaster. Heck, I live in without electricity, no problem. However, I can't live with out clean water, air and food.
@00Tenrai00 Speaking of reading shit from the internet without knowning what it means. Anything which emits radio particles is radioactive, that includes non-ionising as well as ionising. Are you saying iron is radioactive? are you saying silicon is radioactive? No, nonsense, these are stable elements.
Yes. 8,000mSv = 8Sv = fatal dose. Which I already told you.
And I've shown that running a coal fired plant for a year is more devastating to the environment than a 'nuclear disaster'.
@aidanjt never mind, you just bent on proving your are right. Iron 54Fe is radio active and so is 32Si. Human body is radioactive too, so is the carbon in pencils, even the desk you keep you laptop on is radio active. Ever heard of carbon dating?
Coal is bad but it does not culminate into a nuclear disaster! Never mind. Build a reactor next to your island and have a meltdown. Just don't build it next to me! Nuclear will bring an end to human civilization! believe it or NOT!
@00Tenrai00 Fe-54 != Fe. Fe-54 is rare. The majority of Iron and Carbon on Earth is stable Fe and C.
Coal doesn't need a disaster as a dramatic culmination, because it cumulates radioactively and chemically toxic material continuously as per normal operation. You should seriously go get professional help about your hysterical moral panic, it's 100% irrational, and it's that which will end human civilization, not in dramatic nuclear meltdowns, but subtle cumulation of ignorance and stupidity.
@aidanjt 8000mSv = 8Sv at 2Sv it becomes "fatal" at 8Sv you'd die even with treament. By the way, cancer just doesn't pop up immdediately after you have been irradiated it takes time. weeks, months, years may be, depending on your genes and amount of damage. PLEASE DON'T TALK OUT OF YOUR ASS!
@00Tenrai00 I already told you that 8Sv is incurably fatal, why are you twice repeating information I already told you?
As for cancer risk, even the lowest one year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk is 100mSv, still much higher than the Fukushima dose you're whining about. And developing cancer doesn't automatically mean you're dead.
And finally, yet again I remind you, modern fission reactors are physically incapable of failing in the damaging manner '60's reactors suffered from.
@aidanjt you told me? track back on your comments you lying bimbo! I brought the idea that 1Sv is the yearly limit than you so blatantly eructed that's bureaucratic BS & said fatal dose is 8000 times at. you didn't tell me that! I already knew! Any thing > 1Sv can cuase fatalities. 8Sv=death.
Ya right, nincompoop, tell that to some one who has cancer. Cancer is a death warrant. Didn't you hear what Dr.Kaku said? Even a new reactor wouldn't have been able to withstand a 9.0 earthquake!
@aidanjt Oh really? check you facts. Cesium levels at Fukushima are 168 times more than Hiroshima. It will take 135+ years for the place to become usable again. Its the nuclear fallout, that is worrisome. After a nuclear disaster, that perticular site becomes a radioactive wasteland. There is excessive radiation in milk, eggs, meat. Things government keeps insisting are safe to consume.
Did you not hear the Dr. in the video? It would have mattered even if the reactor was new.
@deicidalmaniac Speculative nonsense. The only deaths which can be directly attributed to Chernobyl is the 31 who died during the event, and again, 5 died from kinetic injuries, not from radiation poisoning. How many died at Fukushima? Zero. How many would have even been put at risk if nuclear investment continued over the last 3 decades and Fukushima's plant was retired on schedule? Zero. Hysterical moral panic is ever puts lives in jeopardy. The hysterical are to blame for Fukushima.
@Arnalion Unknown is as good as zero. This is why nuclear hysteria, is exactly that, it operates entirely on media ignorance and speculation, and speculation is worthless.
@chadwick0091 Coal causes 3400 times more casualties than nuclear per energy unit produced. The deaths fossil fuels cause are not so high profile as nuclear, and ignorance causes fear in the public.
@Cyberspine yeah...recently. i'm talking in the long run. we're gonna see a huge spike in cancer-related deaths in the next 30, 40, 50+ years thanks to nuclear fallout
@chadwick0091 How come such a spike hasn't occurred after Chernobyl? These accidents cause cancer in the short run way more than in the long run, but it still makes it safer than all the lung cancers caused by polluted air from fossil fuel. Fossil fuels also contribute into the global warming, which by estimate causes millions of deaths per year in the form of extreme weather phenomena in developing countries.
@andajt Oh and define modern. Last I checked modern is a realitive term, and the 80's werent that long ago. "Physically cannot sustain fission"? That implies that "older" reactors were designed to fail catastrophically, which I'm pretty sure is not the case.
@aidanjt Okay I'm not even going to point out you are a member of the quote "fucking retarded public", oh wait I just did. But you completely danced around the point. I'm not argueing the finer points of nuclear power plant design, you said that older designs stop functioning when they fail, and I said don't new ones stop working when they fail?
I would rather have a Three Mile Island, Tshernobyl or Fukushima every twenty years than the thousands of dead in coal mines and congested cities caused by fossil fuel. Mind you that only Tshernobyl caused direct radiation fatalities. The solar and wind power haven't yet become cheap enough to be a viable alternative, unless we severely cut back our economy.
@Cyberspine Illegalize fossil fuel and cheapen solar and wind. Let's face it, fossil fuels damage the earth, skies and the water. It's like smoking, and the nation needs its natural treatment already.
@enlighteneveryone Illegalizing fossil fuels now would mean that your computer would shut down, the heating would shut down, the streetlights would shut down, the cars would stop, the price of food and power would skyrocket and the mafia would get a very profitable source of income.
And the only way we are able to make solar and wind power cheaper is by advancing their technology, which takes a lot of time, meaning that we will be burning those fossil fuels until then, unless we use nuclear.
@Cyberspine You speak truthfully. My bad if my comment sounded off hand. However, you speak too direct on my approach (my bad if I came out that way). What I am saying comes in a possible process in decisions available for us in the future. Direction towards solar and wind by first cutting down the process and drawn to the addiction needing coal and oil. And during the transition would rather be of need of more nuclear. As the cup fills to the brim, eventually, we can find the perfect solution.
@Cyberspine so you'd rather have uranium refiners dying from radiation, and oh how lovely nuclear waste is to clean up, just go tell that to the people of Hartford Washington, or the people of Fernald.
@jamschnitter No form of energy is completely safe, and by looking at statistics nuclear is extremely safe when counting amount of energy / human lives lost. Of course I don't want anybody to die, but the fewer the better.
@Cyberspine look, your argument is baseless! You are comparing energy/human live lost??? The aftermath of a nuclear disaster is that life cannot exist there for centuries. There is a rise in cancers and tumors cases in the affected areas. Look up rising cases of uterien mayoma is Japan.
@jamschnitter Exactly, this @cyberspine has got his head up in the clouds. Do you know there is no proper way to treat nuclear waste! They just dump cisterns filled with waste in undergournd mines. Hoping that after lets say a century or so may be some one will come up with a way to treat nuclear waste!
@jamschnitter@cyberspine and If there is an ungournd spill... *wistle* ... well it wasn't us promiss! blame the earthquake! The Germans are smart they have vouched to decommision all of their nuclear power plants and are lobbying for solar power. Solar Power is the Key, its just that Oil gaints don't want governments to act out on researching alternative energy. It just sad, that we are destroying our planet and pretty soons WE'LL BECOME EXTINCT, if we don't change our ways.
@00Tenrai00 If you think that the electricity you get from your sockets is bloodless you are terribly wrong. Just google 'coal deaths'. The human lives lost per terawatt-hour for nuclear is 0.04, oil 36 and 161 for coal. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of fossil emissions and mining accidents. Just think how many people get lung cancer from polluted air.
@00Tenrai00 If you think that the electricity you get from your sockets is bloodless you are terribly wrong. Just google 'coal deaths'. The human lives lost per terawatt-hour for nuclear is 0.04, oil 36 and 161 for coal. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of fossil emissions and mining accidents. Just think how many people get lung cancer from polluted air.
@00Tenrai00 If you think that the electricity you get from your sockets is bloodless you are terribly wrong. Just search 'coal deaths'. The human lives lost per terawatt-hour for nuclear is 0.04, oil 36 and 161 for coal. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of fossil emissions and mining accidents. Just think how many people get lung cancer from polluted air.
@00Tenrai00 If you think that the electricity you get from your sockets is bloodless you are terribly wrong. Just google 'coal deaths'. The human lives lost per terawatt-hour for nuclear is 0.04, oil 36 and 161 for coal. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of fossil emissions and mining accidents. Just think how many people get lung cancer from polluted air.
@00Tenrai00 The final sites for nuclear waste that can't be recycled (over 95% can be recycled in nuclear plants) are the most stable ground that the scientists can find. For example the site in Finland is drilled into rock that is about 4 billion years old. That's 40,000 times longer than it takes for the waste to become harmless. There has never been a major earthquake in this region. Wouldn't you rather have the dangerous waste deep in the ground than in the air you breathe as coal emissions?
@Cyberspine Recylced in nuclear plants? well that will be plotonium; Pu-239 Pu-240 Pu-241 Pu-242. It is a reciepe for disaster. Do you know that a speck smaller than a grain of sand, of Pu can cause cancer.
Nuclear is not the way to go forward. If you do want to build them than atleast burry them under a mountain or something. Then power transmission cost will increase. Solar, Wind and Fussion in the future will be the prime fource of energy. Each year solor in dropping 30% in cost
@00Tenrai00 Nobody is offering spoonfuls of plutonium for people to eat. That's like saying wind power is dangerous because if a fan hits you, your skull will crack open.
I trust the geologists' assessment on where is the safest place to store the nuclear waste.
It's you who has the head in the clouds. If the renewables were so cheap why wouldn't all power come from them already? You use big oil companies as a scapegoat for all of the world's evil.
@Cyberspine Easy for you to say when you are not living there. Cesium levels realeased at Fukushima are equal 168 hiroshima bombs! It take more thatn 135 years to stabalize.
I would rather stay in the dark than to be irradiated! Please don't talk out of your ASS!!!
@Cyberspine you're such an idiot. Chernobyl is now an involuntary park. And Fukushima will likely be the same. In addition, these accidents have contributed to the radioactive burden every single living thing on this planet must now endure throughout their entire lives. Rest assured, we can expect more involuntary parks and the radioactive burden to increase if we remain committed to nuclear power.
@Cyberspine well tell you what, why don't you move to the Zone of Alienation for a few years and I will move to smog infested LA and we can swap notes on who is healthier afterwards?
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident was purely the result of a blunder on the part of a group of Japanese persons who were in charge of estimating the size of a tsunami caused by the magnitude earthquake they experienced. It had nothing directly to do with the energy of the quake. I think Michio does a disservice to the high level of safety exhibited by nuclear plants in this country when he produced this clip. There appears to be an anti-nuclear bias in his presentation.
know that the thorium fuel cycle is not only safer, but cleaner, and that LFTR style reactors can't melt down by virtue of the fact that their fuel's natural operating state is a fluid. Instead he takes the opportunity to spread more ignorance and fear and demonizes the only non-fossil fuel source that can currently compete with fossil fuels.
I like how Kaku completely mischaracterizes the Fukushima accident by not mentioning the human error factors involved such as the crew disabling the isolation condenser cooling system and waiting until it was too late to vent the cores. Even better is his fearmongering anti-nuclear politics in which he paints all of nuclear energy as dangerous. As a physicist he should know that there are safer designs for reactors that are held up by the public's fear of the radiation boogeyman. He should also
They're currently building a new reactor in Georgia. I don't see any reason as to why we should rethink our commitment to nuclear. Every failure on record of a reactor is due to EXTREMELY incompetent operators and poor design. The flooding of the core in japan would have controlled the accident if they wouldn't have had the motors for the pumps in a basement.
Storage of the nuclear waste is a bigger issue. The state of WA was suing the fedds because they had a contract to store Hanford waste at Yucca Mountain, seeing that Yucca has been scrapped we now have NO PLACE TO STORE NUCLEAR WASTE IN THE USA. That is bad, where does it go now? A theory of mine was to shoot it into space, but after talking to somone who worked with many space and flight agencies it is too risky because of the failure rate. No one wants nuclear waste eploding in our atmosphere
@NathanCrumrine Why not just dump the waste into the Mariana Trench, with it being nearly 7 miles deep it would be thousands of years before we would even notice we had been dumping there.
@kelvinp0369 that is a really really really bad idea. I hope your being ironic. Theres a thing called ocean currents which eventually recycle all water in the ocean moving it around the world. Of course your not the first to think of this and there's plenty of organizations with a lot of power that just dont give a shit (our government), so I wouldnt be suprised if indeed this has been done. In kennewick WA there are plenty of old timers that can tell you very interesting stories about hanford
The way I see nuclear energy is that it is incredibly efficient (extreemely small amounts of fuel producing extreeme amounts of power) and the only way to provide power for the imminent power crises we will see in the near future. But as with any massive energy source, there are drawbacks. For example entire mountain ranges are dissapearing for coal (Appalachians) and oil spills seem more frequent than ever. For nuclear power it is radiation spills (a threat we have only seen 3 times) & storage
@aidanjt and older reactor desgins become inoperable when they fail. unless your standard for failure include a reactor that is broken, but is fixable. or am i wrong to assume that the failure of a reactor consists of a complete meltdown with nothing salvagable?
@RickardoMontavon Cold war reactor designs can have runaway reactions when they fail, and inevitably lead to a breach and get the media and thus the public in a panic. Modern reactor designs physically can't sustain fission when a fault occurs.
Incidents like Fukushima simply wouldn't have happened if the public weren't so retarded about nuclear energy as the reactor would have been replaced by a sound, modern design well over a decade ago through continuous investment.
When fossil fuels are no longer cost-efficient, nuclear power will make a major comeback regardless of the risks. It is a cheap way to produce power and that is what most people care about.
@Miranox2 Nuclear already is far far more materially efficient. The biggest cost impediment is extortionate insurance due to reality distorting fear of nuclear energy.
@aidanjt Indeed, it's used quite a bit in Europe. It would be our second best power source if it wasn't for alarmists. I swear the arguments they come up with... "IT HAS NUCLEAR IN THE NAME LIKE NUCLEAR BOMB SO IT BAD".
All of you crazy liberals and your wind power... I come from a state called California that has more windmills than you would fucking believe and guess what? They don't work anymore. What a waste of money.
The true answer is FUSION. Wind, solar, and tidal can't come anywhere near the energy production of fission. But fusion can and is infinitely safer too. It is years in the future, but there are some plants already.
What Michio is saying is true.Nuclear energy is an example of jumping on something that looks good,actually it's not economical or safe.The electricity isn't by nuclear,but the nuclear make steam that drives a huge generator like the old ones with brushes.All that danger and money to make steam?I must have missed something here , called logic,because obviously there isn't any.Steam can be made more safer and cleaner ways.Like rubbing two large stones with a 110motor.
any other power plant would have been destroyed by the japan's tsunami. electricity runs world civilization; without electricity nothing would function, and nuclear power plants are the only plants that are powerful enough to satisfy increasing electrical needs of civilization, and there is no alternative for them, yet.
But Japan is only one of very very very few places where Nuclear power is even theoretically dangerous. 3 Mile was bad. Chernobyl was bad. But nothing like those disasters will ever happen anywhere outside of earthquake and tsunami areas. Germany's decision to stop using Nuclear power was extremely stupid and extremely impulsive. The world needs nuclear power if it is to wean itself off of fossil fuels and not give up civilization itself.
@nomercyevolution That's not practical. Not by any stretch of the imagination. You cannot simply convince an entire civilization to voluntarily use less energy. While such efforts are noble, you cannot expect them to fix everything. And forcing people to use less energy is worse. Developing nations feel the need to use massively more energy than before. Nuclear power is the only green energy technology capable of powering the entire world. Solar, wind, and geothermal will never get there in time
@Kossimer No, they can't happen anywhere. Not at the level necessary to do anything near as much damage as happened in Fukushima. Nuclear power in all places not plagued by earthquakes, and not staffed by incompetent Soviets, is completely safe.
@hmortensen2907 Well it is too good to be true! They don't know much about LFTRs since no one has ever made one. The challenges that would come forward are unknow. No mater what we do nuclear waster will still be there. Nulcear is not the way to go! The risks are simple too high. We need to find a way to live in harmony with nature. Otherwise we'll perish.
@Void1943 A 95% fusion reactor was tested at the LLNL, called the PACER project. It was a shoestring project and it was incredibly cheap, a hole in the ground lined with steel plates, and it worked. The problem is that it used tiny peaceful nuclear explosions to work, which means you needed to make bombs, which are "the devil". It also produced a lot of neutron radiation which could be used to breed nuclear fuel for the fusion PNEs and for fission reactors, and people don't like that!
not building something because it COULD be destroyed is hippy-babble non-sense, period.
using that same, oh so great logic, we could come to the same conclusion about the entire human race and existence in general; why do anything? in 4 billion years the sun will go yellow giant and destroy the earth. we might as well kill each other off.
@tavogp solar never has a true energy offset because of the amount of energy needed to craft solar panels. wind isnt very efficient; huge upkeep costs. they also kill off species of birds/bats. durp tard'd hippie
@FuriousFatMan ok then tell me what are we going to do when the oil runs out or do u not plan to live that long and come on are u saying that it is impossible to make solar and wind energy better?
@tavogp With decades of government subsidies, hard research, and failed companies, don't you think solar and wind have had their chance and that it's time to let them go? Besides, their specific energy, the amount of energy that can be harnessed given you use the same amount of material/cost, is about 4 million times lower than Nuclear's specific energy. That's a physical constraint that will not change unless you figure out how bend the laws of physics to overturn Hess' law and E=mc^2.
Exactly what infrastructure could you build that wouldn't be susceptible to a tidal wave?
I've seen the designs for fluoride salt reactors that have reliable safety mechanisms. If the power is disrupted, all of the liquid reactant is dumped into an underground bunker, harmlessly.
The reality is that the more energy you work with, the more dangerous things become. Can we take 5 minutes to stop pissing ourselves? Totally safe reactors can be made.
@ludwig7666g in order for nuclear to be as dangerous as coal, we'd have to have a chernobyl level accident every other week for a year. ww/w.skeptoid.c/om. now go learn something and shut your ignorant mouth.
nuclear power is really the only way to support renewable energy at this point in time leaders like Germany and Netherlands are 9 and 15 % wind and solar but France is 90% nuclear. at the same time you have to respect that a 40 year old reactor cracked under the stress of a tsunami and earthquake. But to be honest don't build them in earthquake/tsunami areas.
Alright what Dr.Kaku stated was true. However, keep in mine that with anything a person does it also comes with a risk. Yes Nuclear reactors come with risk but also rather massive rewards. We have chemical plants that deal with enough cyanide to kill every living person on Earth five times over and spills have occurred. There have also been massive oil spills that destroy the environment. The fact of the matter is we cannot prevent all risks and Nuclear power plants are no different.
When a nuclear power plant is utterly destroyed it's more then a big mess to clean up. There is no way to fully clean it up. That's a big problem. They may not have problems often but when they do... your f**ked.
@Llalena Actually it's like any other chemical cleanup job, with the twist that most of the highly dangerous radioactive stuff will stabilize extremely fast (high radioactivity = short half-life). The radiation risk of the longer lasting stuff is also exponentionally cut down as the fallout spreads and becomes less concentrated.
There are far worse chemical spills I can think of that beat radioactive fallout in terms of danger (organocyanides, trifluoric chloride, oil spills...)
@Llalena Radioactive material is actually very easy to clean up. You pick up the larger radioactive debris with robots and seal them in concrete. Fallout can be cleaned up with cheap salts that displace biologically incorporable radioactive ions.
Want something that's really hard to clean up, stays extremely lethal even when it spreads, and can cause noticeable and rapic development in cancer? Try oil spills.
@Llalena true but if you look at Chernoby (undoubtably the worst Nuclear Power plant accident in the history of the world due mostly to the fact that the soviets were far too incompetent to be owning a nuclear reactor) today it is perfectly safe to go to and radiation levels are pretty close to normal. So yes in the short term it does hurt and makes a place uninhabitable but it does far from the apocalyptic damage people think it does.
How about we keep nuclear power and DON'T put it in disaster prone areas. Japan could also become the world leading innovator in new energy production. Ocean currents and geothermal.
The answer is nuclear fusion. I say that because a fusion power plant cant ever have a runaway reaction. Why? Well because if you cut the power to a fusion plant you take away their ability to create the environment in which the fusion happens. The good news is that they expect to have fusion power plants ready for prime time in 2019
Just curious, I am no expert but I read that thorium reactors avoid all the safety concerns and fuel availability issues that beset the uranium reactors. Is this true? Does it then change the argument?
What's going on with cold fusion, free energy will drive economic growth not destroy it
so why is there so little funding going into it. You might loose a couple of Oil companies
but these guys all hedge their profits against competitors stock anyway.
Ireland's lived in the shadow of englands nuclear industry for a long time there's been too many accidents to list. If the wind blew the wrong way during a big enough accident Ireland would be uninhabitable.
I think the US should invest much more in geothermal, what I call the "forgotton alternative". It is incredibly powerful, it is efficient, and it is renewable.
unless you count Nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines
lrebsaxet 1 day ago
Also eating 900 bananas will give you a dose of radiation equal to a chest X-ray...
Tridecalogism 1 day ago
While I have high esteem for Michio Kaku, on this topic I disagree with him. The Nuclear Power Plant performed admirably during the 9.0 earthquake in Japan. All systems automatically shut down as designed in the case of a catastrophic event. What caused it to fail was the fact that the backup power for the plant was on ground level and was wiped out by the tsunami. This was a human error in the designing process. Nuclear Power is one of the best technologies to pursue for future energy use.
Intertronz 1 day ago
@Intertronz - I agree. Wind farms require HUGE amounts of space, Solar farms, I believe, are expensive (At the moment), and Coal is dirty.
Nuclear is by far the cleanest emission wise, but the waste is a problem. Unless they can use it for something else.
Tridecalogism 1 day ago
@Intertronz for me the main problem are the tons of radioactive waste. because there isn't a good final storage for it. sorry for my bad english.
JohLenMic 18 hours ago
Maybe they should have put the back up generators on a forty foot tower, rather than on the ground. Maybe we should have had strong doors and locks on cock pit doors. Maybe design engineers don't have any common sense.
rustytool100 2 days ago
@rustytool100 you obviously have no idea of the magnitude of 9.0 earth quake
51674 1 day ago
The answer? Nuclear Fusion.
soundslave 2 days ago
LFTR (google it)
kkirT 2 days ago
@kkirT Wikipedia article reads, "Disadvantage: has lithium salts, which can be psychoactive drugs"... it would be the first nuclear reactor fully endorsed by hippies. lol
jq747 2 days ago
*Kaku (I wish youtube would allow comment editing goddamit)
jq747 3 days ago
@jq747 you could remove the comment and start all over.
pjfislord 2 days ago
I normally like Michio Maku, but his arguments here are plain silly. First, if the brakes and radiator failing suddenly means the gas tank will explode, then you shouldn't be driving a Pinto in the first place. That aside, yes nuclear power plants are bad, m'kay, but so are CO2 emissions, and there's no way that renewables can ever meet the worlds energy needs. Sure Germany has shutdown their nuke plants, but guess what, now they have to import power from France. Lunacy.
jq747 3 days ago
I'm studying radiologic technology.. we talked about Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi in class one day. My professor said that the Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi sites will stay radiated for millions of years. Nuclear Energy is dangerous stuff.. it leaves a scar on the planet that prevents life from flourishing within 50-100 miles of the meltdown site for MILLIONS of years. We need to start looking for new ways to generate power... fusion power for example.
piratebri 3 days ago
@piratebri Complete hogwash. Life is, in fact, flourishing around Chernobyl just fine, even around Pripyat itself, and the radioactivity is rapidly dropping off as isotopes decay away and are washed into the soil and run into bedrock. As for millions of years? what?.. Just go put STALKER and Fallout 3/New Vegas away. Then you can give me a hit of whatever you're smoking.
aidanjt 3 days ago
@aidanjt
No, he is mean there will be above average level of radioactivity for long long time. It might not be dangerous level of radioactivity after a thousand years, but it is still radioactive
leeo268 3 days ago
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@leeo268 I believe he was quite clear with his explicit and gross misinformation when he said "it leaves a scar on the planet that prevents life from flourishing within 50-100 miles of the meltdown site for MILLIONS of years."
Anyone can agree that above natural background levels of radioactivity is unfortunate, but it's not like the global level isn't increasing due to fossil fuels. It's far from the end of the world like the hysterics are making it out to be. Life goes on.
aidanjt 3 days ago
@piratebri Sorry... What? Three Mile Island radiation amount per person was considerable less then the amount you 8 hour plane ride, and there is been no long term plant life effect. Chernobyl was the only true meltdown, and it was only 26 years ago and you can see photo with tree across the street from the reactors. And the Chernobyl release was over 12 times that of Fukushima.
Loathomar 2 days ago
@Loathomar you don't get radiation from a plane ride.
wo0obly 2 days ago
@wo0obly Google "radiation from a plane ride", you get ~0.5mrem/hr or 2 to 5 mrem for a cross country flight, according to the EPA. This is from the fact of cosmic radiation that the 39,000ft of atmospherics would normally protect you from. Know your facts before calling someone else out, fool.
Loathomar 2 days ago
@wo0obly You get radiation! h t t p://w w w.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html
tobiKaiser1 2 days ago
@wo0obly
Yes you do.
The atmosphere, which filters solar radiation, gets thinner the higher up in the air you go. You'll receive a higher dose of radiation on a plane trip than someone at ground level.
TheGamblingApocalyps 2 days ago
@TheGamblingApocalyps Yes I know you get radiation ALL THE TIME but I meant an amount of radiation that can actually damage you noticeably. A plane ride at 30,000ft gives you about the same dosage of radiation as ground level travel. You'd have to be way way higher to receive lethal doses.
wo0obly 2 days ago
Thorium reactors don't need cooling towers and can't melt down. Maybe we should push research in that direction.
lorizoli 3 days ago
This is a folly. We need to think about not placing potentually dangerous things on volcanic faultlines. That's all we need to think about.
Put a Nuclear Power plant in my back yard in Denmark I wouldn't give a damn. It's safe here because there are no earthquakes.
IshayuG 3 days ago
Coal power plants are Bad! YES! I agree, however they don't meltdown and cause a nuclear disaster either. Look up Clean coal technologies. ofcourse its not the best option. Another option is oil, gas, or hydal.
There is a Fussion reactor coming online in 2020 in France. Fussion is clean!
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
@00Tenrai00 Coal dust is well known to cause frequent industrial accidents and contamination. And Fusion isn't remotely practical without stellar gravity. It's a hypothetical pipe dream so far.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@aidanjt Fusion on a small scale has already been demonstrated, as for stellar gravity look up tokamak. France's ITER is said to come on line in 2019-20. Pipe dream? I don't think so.
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
@00Tenrai00 Squeezing hydrogen atoms together in a lab isn't the same thing as netting energy out of the process. Scientists have experimentally created big-bang-like energies in particle accelerators, that doesn't mean we created a universe. And the French can plan whatever the hell they like, that doesn't mean it'll transpire. For the foreseeable future, modern fission reactors are the only feasible, clean, plentiful, and safe source of energy we have to replace coal.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@aidanjt ah... well we can't say much about it till France's ITER comes online. In the mean time, replace coal power plants with solar or wind. Fission is not the way to go! feasible (yes), clean (No - Nuclear Waster is simply stored in undergournd caverns; Technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and Iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years),Neptunium-237 (half-life two million years) and Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years). Go Green, ration electricity if you have to, consume less!
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
dr. kaku should stick to theoretical physics and leave important questions of energy to thinking people. neglecting the facts and resorting to Fear is un-becoming of an erudite cosmopolitan such as he.
"re-think nuclear energy" and swap with what form of energy production...crickets chirping...more crickets chirping...we are waiting...really easy to calculate the windmills and solar panels necessary to = Fukushima...anyone?
clericbop 5 days ago
Anti-nuclear movements within industrialized countries is becoming ridiculous. Most of them do not even have oil. Yet, they need to generate electricity somehow. In the meantime, they seem to have a fetish for spectacular disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima, but ignoring more common (and therefore more damaging in the long run) disasters like oil spills and refinery fires.
Waterflux 5 days ago
@Cyberspine really? i wouldn't. i'd rather have the thousands die from the coal mines than the MILLIONS that are going to die of cancer from all the radiation that got into the food chain from these nuclear meltdowns
chadwick0091 5 days ago
@chadwick0091 My point exactly, I can live without electricity sure. I can't live with cancer or have kids born with DNA damage. @cyberspine radiation cause cancer it doesn't make you spider man or some evolved mutant!
If we don't force our governments to end nuclear power projects well then eventually we'll all go extinct. The world how ever will eventually be restored. It has existed for eons. Nature always finds a way.
00Tenrai00 5 days ago
@00Tenrai00 You, sir, are a moron. There's simply no polite way of telling you how completely stupid that statement is. If anything will make humanity go extinct, it'll be scientifically illiterate oafs such as yourself.
aidanjt 5 days ago
@00Tenrai00 i suspect in the future, we're gonna see a huge spike in cancer-related deaths due to nuclear fallout. ppl think that it's short-term issue. half-life of plutonium is 24000 yrs
chadwick0091 5 days ago
@chadwick0091 More stupid. The very worst meltdown ever was at Chernobyl, and only 31 people died as a result of that, and 5 of those died as the result of kinetic injuries (4 in a helicopter crash, 1 in the initial explosion).
And what did Chernobyl and Fukushima both have in common? Both were piece of crap reactors designed and built in the 60's, known to have faults, yet not replaced because scare mongering like this blocked investment in safe replacements.
aidanjt 5 days ago 2
@aidanjt think LONG-TERM. the radiation got into the food chain (the ocean), via the fukushima meltdown. the fuel rods were stored ON SIGHT at the nuclear power plant
chadwick0091 5 days ago
@chadwick0091 Oh please, more isotopes get into the ocean from a single coal plant running *normally* for a year than the entire Fukushima event. How's that for long term? And again, this simply wouldn't have happened if nuclear hysteria just fucked off and died with the bullshit pseudo-scientic babbling.
aidanjt 5 days ago
@aidanjt direct me towards the studies that confirm "more isotopes get into the ocean from a single coal plant running normally for year than the entire fukushima event"
chadwick0091 5 days ago
@chadwick0091 Direct me towards the study which confirms that the Fukushima isotopes which were washed back out into sea are more harmful than the normal operation of coal plants.
In the meantime, Go look up "Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger" by Alex Gabbard. It shows that a single 1GW/h coal fired plant emits more isotope pollution per year (5.2Mg U, 34Kg U-235, 12Mg Th, etc) than the entire isotope mass ejected at Fukushima.
The hysteria is simply not warranted by science.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@aidanjt ha, when did i make that claim? oh yeah, never...don't try to put words into my mouth. i said "the radiation got into the food chain (the ocean), via the fukushima meltdown" and the radiation got into the air too. i wasn't making any kind of comparison to radiation from coal
chadwick0091 4 days ago
@chadwick0091 I know you weren't making any kind of comparison to radiation from coal, because you were ignoring that fact. That's why I pointed it out to you.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@chadwick0091 this guy is bent on proving is point seriously :D
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
@00Tenrai00 lol, tell me about it...
chadwick0091 4 days ago
@aidanjt I see, I have a question for you. What do you do? Are you an expert on nuclear power plants? Are you a Nuclear physicist?
Did you know everything on this planet is radioactive? Its all about how much off that radiotion is permisible. Living in a 50 mile radius of a coal power plant gives you a 0.3μSv. Did you know that natural potassium you consume gives 360μSv. Yearly permited doasage is 1000μSv or 1mSv. Fukushima, one day dosage 3.6mSv (mammnogram), extremly hazardous!
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
@00Tenrai00 Appeal to authority argument? Really?
No, not everything on the planet is radioactive, most of the planet is inert. Isotopes, plasmas, electronic equipment, stars, etc, are all radioactive. What we do have is a constant haze of particles zipping about which gives us background radiation. And permitted dosage is not hazardous dosage. Permitted dosage is an arbitrary line bureaucrats have decided is best for people to not exceed. The medically incurable dose is 8,000 times that.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@aidanjt yea really, don't read off the innternet and sound smart. Plasma is radioactive? sure why not, last time I checked steel workshop using plasma torches didn't have glowing workers. most of the planet is inert? Hilarious.
woah, do you know what 8000mSv means?
I am not saying that coal energy should be persued, I am saying it is not as devastating as a nuclear disaster. Heck, I live in without electricity, no problem. However, I can't live with out clean water, air and food.
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
@00Tenrai00 Speaking of reading shit from the internet without knowning what it means. Anything which emits radio particles is radioactive, that includes non-ionising as well as ionising. Are you saying iron is radioactive? are you saying silicon is radioactive? No, nonsense, these are stable elements.
Yes. 8,000mSv = 8Sv = fatal dose. Which I already told you.
And I've shown that running a coal fired plant for a year is more devastating to the environment than a 'nuclear disaster'.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@aidanjt never mind, you just bent on proving your are right. Iron 54Fe is radio active and so is 32Si. Human body is radioactive too, so is the carbon in pencils, even the desk you keep you laptop on is radio active. Ever heard of carbon dating?
Coal is bad but it does not culminate into a nuclear disaster! Never mind. Build a reactor next to your island and have a meltdown. Just don't build it next to me! Nuclear will bring an end to human civilization! believe it or NOT!
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
@00Tenrai00 Fe-54 != Fe. Fe-54 is rare. The majority of Iron and Carbon on Earth is stable Fe and C.
Coal doesn't need a disaster as a dramatic culmination, because it cumulates radioactively and chemically toxic material continuously as per normal operation. You should seriously go get professional help about your hysterical moral panic, it's 100% irrational, and it's that which will end human civilization, not in dramatic nuclear meltdowns, but subtle cumulation of ignorance and stupidity.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@aidanjt 8000mSv = 8Sv at 2Sv it becomes "fatal" at 8Sv you'd die even with treament. By the way, cancer just doesn't pop up immdediately after you have been irradiated it takes time. weeks, months, years may be, depending on your genes and amount of damage. PLEASE DON'T TALK OUT OF YOUR ASS!
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
@00Tenrai00 I already told you that 8Sv is incurably fatal, why are you twice repeating information I already told you?
As for cancer risk, even the lowest one year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk is 100mSv, still much higher than the Fukushima dose you're whining about. And developing cancer doesn't automatically mean you're dead.
And finally, yet again I remind you, modern fission reactors are physically incapable of failing in the damaging manner '60's reactors suffered from.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@aidanjt you told me? track back on your comments you lying bimbo! I brought the idea that 1Sv is the yearly limit than you so blatantly eructed that's bureaucratic BS & said fatal dose is 8000 times at. you didn't tell me that! I already knew! Any thing > 1Sv can cuase fatalities. 8Sv=death.
Ya right, nincompoop, tell that to some one who has cancer. Cancer is a death warrant. Didn't you hear what Dr.Kaku said? Even a new reactor wouldn't have been able to withstand a 9.0 earthquake!
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
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00Tenrai00 4 days ago
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@aidanjt Oh really? check you facts. Cesium levels at Fukushima are 168 times more than Hiroshima. It will take 135+ years for the place to become usable again. Its the nuclear fallout, that is worrisome. After a nuclear disaster, that perticular site becomes a radioactive wasteland. There is excessive radiation in milk, eggs, meat. Things government keeps insisting are safe to consume.
Did you not hear the Dr. in the video? It would have mattered even if the reactor was new.
00Tenrai00 4 days ago
@aidanjt people are dying today from the nuclear fallout of chernobyl, 31 poeple proably died nere the time of the accident..
deicidalmaniac 4 days ago
@deicidalmaniac Speculative nonsense. The only deaths which can be directly attributed to Chernobyl is the 31 who died during the event, and again, 5 died from kinetic injuries, not from radiation poisoning. How many died at Fukushima? Zero. How many would have even been put at risk if nuclear investment continued over the last 3 decades and Fukushima's plant was retired on schedule? Zero. Hysterical moral panic is ever puts lives in jeopardy. The hysterical are to blame for Fukushima.
aidanjt 4 days ago
@aidanjt
How many people that have already died because of the accident is _unknown_.
WHO _thinks_ that thousands will die in the upcoming years because of their exposure to the radiation. The cause of death is however hard to prove.
An increase in some types of cancer has already been noted. If it's related to the accident or not no one can say for sure.
A nuclear plant catastrophe is also (from a pure economical perspective) a total disaster.
Arnalion 3 days ago
@Arnalion Unknown is as good as zero. This is why nuclear hysteria, is exactly that, it operates entirely on media ignorance and speculation, and speculation is worthless.
aidanjt 3 days ago
@chadwick0091 Coal causes 3400 times more casualties than nuclear per energy unit produced. The deaths fossil fuels cause are not so high profile as nuclear, and ignorance causes fear in the public.
Cyberspine 5 days ago
@Cyberspine yeah...recently. i'm talking in the long run. we're gonna see a huge spike in cancer-related deaths in the next 30, 40, 50+ years thanks to nuclear fallout
chadwick0091 5 days ago
@chadwick0091 How come such a spike hasn't occurred after Chernobyl? These accidents cause cancer in the short run way more than in the long run, but it still makes it safer than all the lung cancers caused by polluted air from fossil fuel. Fossil fuels also contribute into the global warming, which by estimate causes millions of deaths per year in the form of extreme weather phenomena in developing countries.
Cyberspine 4 days ago
its all about the money
qazz11q 1 week ago
we need to hook up fat people to bikes to power our civilization!!!!!!!!!!
MrGidderz 1 week ago
Nuclear-Incredible mass amounts of energy
0% emissions.
RoyalDevelopment 1 week ago
Don't build nuke plants near fault lines. Problem solved.
technatezin 1 week ago
Oops I forgot how to spell. But I was made post Cold War, so by your hypothetical standards, I can't physically sustain fission when I fail.
RickardoMontavon 1 week ago
@andajt Oh and define modern. Last I checked modern is a realitive term, and the 80's werent that long ago. "Physically cannot sustain fission"? That implies that "older" reactors were designed to fail catastrophically, which I'm pretty sure is not the case.
RickardoMontavon 1 week ago
@aidanjt Okay I'm not even going to point out you are a member of the quote "fucking retarded public", oh wait I just did. But you completely danced around the point. I'm not argueing the finer points of nuclear power plant design, you said that older designs stop functioning when they fail, and I said don't new ones stop working when they fail?
RickardoMontavon 1 week ago
I would rather have a Three Mile Island, Tshernobyl or Fukushima every twenty years than the thousands of dead in coal mines and congested cities caused by fossil fuel. Mind you that only Tshernobyl caused direct radiation fatalities. The solar and wind power haven't yet become cheap enough to be a viable alternative, unless we severely cut back our economy.
Cyberspine 1 week ago 16
@Cyberspine Illegalize fossil fuel and cheapen solar and wind. Let's face it, fossil fuels damage the earth, skies and the water. It's like smoking, and the nation needs its natural treatment already.
enlighteneveryone 1 week ago
@enlighteneveryone Illegalizing fossil fuels now would mean that your computer would shut down, the heating would shut down, the streetlights would shut down, the cars would stop, the price of food and power would skyrocket and the mafia would get a very profitable source of income.
And the only way we are able to make solar and wind power cheaper is by advancing their technology, which takes a lot of time, meaning that we will be burning those fossil fuels until then, unless we use nuclear.
Cyberspine 6 days ago
@Cyberspine You speak truthfully. My bad if my comment sounded off hand. However, you speak too direct on my approach (my bad if I came out that way). What I am saying comes in a possible process in decisions available for us in the future. Direction towards solar and wind by first cutting down the process and drawn to the addiction needing coal and oil. And during the transition would rather be of need of more nuclear. As the cup fills to the brim, eventually, we can find the perfect solution.
enlighteneveryone 6 days ago
@Cyberspine so you'd rather have uranium refiners dying from radiation, and oh how lovely nuclear waste is to clean up, just go tell that to the people of Hartford Washington, or the people of Fernald.
jamschnitter 1 week ago
@jamschnitter No form of energy is completely safe, and by looking at statistics nuclear is extremely safe when counting amount of energy / human lives lost. Of course I don't want anybody to die, but the fewer the better.
Cyberspine 6 days ago
@Cyberspine look, your argument is baseless! You are comparing energy/human live lost??? The aftermath of a nuclear disaster is that life cannot exist there for centuries. There is a rise in cancers and tumors cases in the affected areas. Look up rising cases of uterien mayoma is Japan.
00Tenrai00 6 days ago
@jamschnitter Exactly, this @cyberspine has got his head up in the clouds. Do you know there is no proper way to treat nuclear waste! They just dump cisterns filled with waste in undergournd mines. Hoping that after lets say a century or so may be some one will come up with a way to treat nuclear waste!
00Tenrai00 6 days ago
@jamschnitter @cyberspine and If there is an ungournd spill... *wistle* ... well it wasn't us promiss! blame the earthquake! The Germans are smart they have vouched to decommision all of their nuclear power plants and are lobbying for solar power. Solar Power is the Key, its just that Oil gaints don't want governments to act out on researching alternative energy. It just sad, that we are destroying our planet and pretty soons WE'LL BECOME EXTINCT, if we don't change our ways.
00Tenrai00 6 days ago
@00Tenrai00 If you think that the electricity you get from your sockets is bloodless you are terribly wrong. Just google 'coal deaths'. The human lives lost per terawatt-hour for nuclear is 0.04, oil 36 and 161 for coal. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of fossil emissions and mining accidents. Just think how many people get lung cancer from polluted air.
cont'd
Cyberspine 6 days ago
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@00Tenrai00 If you think that the electricity you get from your sockets is bloodless you are terribly wrong. Just google 'coal deaths'. The human lives lost per terawatt-hour for nuclear is 0.04, oil 36 and 161 for coal. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of fossil emissions and mining accidents. Just think how many people get lung cancer from polluted air.
cont'd
Cyberspine 6 days ago
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@00Tenrai00 If you think that the electricity you get from your sockets is bloodless you are terribly wrong. Just search 'coal deaths'. The human lives lost per terawatt-hour for nuclear is 0.04, oil 36 and 161 for coal. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of fossil emissions and mining accidents. Just think how many people get lung cancer from polluted air.
cont'd
Cyberspine 6 days ago
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@00Tenrai00 If you think that the electricity you get from your sockets is bloodless you are terribly wrong. Just google 'coal deaths'. The human lives lost per terawatt-hour for nuclear is 0.04, oil 36 and 161 for coal. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of fossil emissions and mining accidents. Just think how many people get lung cancer from polluted air.
cont'd
Cyberspine 6 days ago
@00Tenrai00 The final sites for nuclear waste that can't be recycled (over 95% can be recycled in nuclear plants) are the most stable ground that the scientists can find. For example the site in Finland is drilled into rock that is about 4 billion years old. That's 40,000 times longer than it takes for the waste to become harmless. There has never been a major earthquake in this region. Wouldn't you rather have the dangerous waste deep in the ground than in the air you breathe as coal emissions?
Cyberspine 6 days ago
@Cyberspine Recylced in nuclear plants? well that will be plotonium; Pu-239 Pu-240 Pu-241 Pu-242. It is a reciepe for disaster. Do you know that a speck smaller than a grain of sand, of Pu can cause cancer.
Nuclear is not the way to go forward. If you do want to build them than atleast burry them under a mountain or something. Then power transmission cost will increase. Solar, Wind and Fussion in the future will be the prime fource of energy. Each year solor in dropping 30% in cost
00Tenrai00 5 days ago
@00Tenrai00 Nobody is offering spoonfuls of plutonium for people to eat. That's like saying wind power is dangerous because if a fan hits you, your skull will crack open.
I trust the geologists' assessment on where is the safest place to store the nuclear waste.
It's you who has the head in the clouds. If the renewables were so cheap why wouldn't all power come from them already? You use big oil companies as a scapegoat for all of the world's evil.
Cyberspine 5 days ago
@Cyberspine Easy for you to say when you are not living there. Cesium levels realeased at Fukushima are equal 168 hiroshima bombs! It take more thatn 135 years to stabalize.
I would rather stay in the dark than to be irradiated! Please don't talk out of your ASS!!!
00Tenrai00 6 days ago
@Cyberspine you're such an idiot. Chernobyl is now an involuntary park. And Fukushima will likely be the same. In addition, these accidents have contributed to the radioactive burden every single living thing on this planet must now endure throughout their entire lives. Rest assured, we can expect more involuntary parks and the radioactive burden to increase if we remain committed to nuclear power.
ddognine 4 days ago
@ddognine The cancers that are caused by the increased radioactivity from these disasters are still far from the lung cancers caused by coal.
Cyberspine 4 days ago
@Cyberspine well tell you what, why don't you move to the Zone of Alienation for a few years and I will move to smog infested LA and we can swap notes on who is healthier afterwards?
ddognine 3 days ago
@ddognine Nobody should be forced to live in either of those hellholes.
Cyberspine 3 days ago
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident was purely the result of a blunder on the part of a group of Japanese persons who were in charge of estimating the size of a tsunami caused by the magnitude earthquake they experienced. It had nothing directly to do with the energy of the quake. I think Michio does a disservice to the high level of safety exhibited by nuclear plants in this country when he produced this clip. There appears to be an anti-nuclear bias in his presentation.
dsgregg 1 week ago
@dsgregg because risk is dangerous?
jamschnitter 1 week ago
@jamschnitter What? Risk is risk. We all take risks. Its a part of daily life.
dsgregg 1 week ago
know that the thorium fuel cycle is not only safer, but cleaner, and that LFTR style reactors can't melt down by virtue of the fact that their fuel's natural operating state is a fluid. Instead he takes the opportunity to spread more ignorance and fear and demonizes the only non-fossil fuel source that can currently compete with fossil fuels.
magicstix0r 1 week ago
I like how Kaku completely mischaracterizes the Fukushima accident by not mentioning the human error factors involved such as the crew disabling the isolation condenser cooling system and waiting until it was too late to vent the cores. Even better is his fearmongering anti-nuclear politics in which he paints all of nuclear energy as dangerous. As a physicist he should know that there are safer designs for reactors that are held up by the public's fear of the radiation boogeyman. He should also
magicstix0r 1 week ago
They're currently building a new reactor in Georgia. I don't see any reason as to why we should rethink our commitment to nuclear. Every failure on record of a reactor is due to EXTREMELY incompetent operators and poor design. The flooding of the core in japan would have controlled the accident if they wouldn't have had the motors for the pumps in a basement.
kelvinp0369 1 week ago
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kelvinp0369 1 week ago
Storage of the nuclear waste is a bigger issue. The state of WA was suing the fedds because they had a contract to store Hanford waste at Yucca Mountain, seeing that Yucca has been scrapped we now have NO PLACE TO STORE NUCLEAR WASTE IN THE USA. That is bad, where does it go now? A theory of mine was to shoot it into space, but after talking to somone who worked with many space and flight agencies it is too risky because of the failure rate. No one wants nuclear waste eploding in our atmosphere
NathanCrumrine 1 week ago
@NathanCrumrine Why not just dump the waste into the Mariana Trench, with it being nearly 7 miles deep it would be thousands of years before we would even notice we had been dumping there.
kelvinp0369 1 week ago
@kelvinp0369 that is a really really really bad idea. I hope your being ironic. Theres a thing called ocean currents which eventually recycle all water in the ocean moving it around the world. Of course your not the first to think of this and there's plenty of organizations with a lot of power that just dont give a shit (our government), so I wouldnt be suprised if indeed this has been done. In kennewick WA there are plenty of old timers that can tell you very interesting stories about hanford
NathanCrumrine 1 week ago
The way I see nuclear energy is that it is incredibly efficient (extreemely small amounts of fuel producing extreeme amounts of power) and the only way to provide power for the imminent power crises we will see in the near future. But as with any massive energy source, there are drawbacks. For example entire mountain ranges are dissapearing for coal (Appalachians) and oil spills seem more frequent than ever. For nuclear power it is radiation spills (a threat we have only seen 3 times) & storage
NathanCrumrine 1 week ago
@aidanjt and older reactor desgins become inoperable when they fail. unless your standard for failure include a reactor that is broken, but is fixable. or am i wrong to assume that the failure of a reactor consists of a complete meltdown with nothing salvagable?
RickardoMontavon 1 week ago
@RickardoMontavon Cold war reactor designs can have runaway reactions when they fail, and inevitably lead to a breach and get the media and thus the public in a panic. Modern reactor designs physically can't sustain fission when a fault occurs.
Incidents like Fukushima simply wouldn't have happened if the public weren't so retarded about nuclear energy as the reactor would have been replaced by a sound, modern design well over a decade ago through continuous investment.
aidanjt 1 week ago
Modern reactor designs are physically inoperable when they fail or are damaged.
aidanjt 1 week ago
When fossil fuels are no longer cost-efficient, nuclear power will make a major comeback regardless of the risks. It is a cheap way to produce power and that is what most people care about.
Miranox2 1 week ago
@Miranox2 Nuclear already is far far more materially efficient. The biggest cost impediment is extortionate insurance due to reality distorting fear of nuclear energy.
aidanjt 1 week ago
@aidanjt Indeed, it's used quite a bit in Europe. It would be our second best power source if it wasn't for alarmists. I swear the arguments they come up with... "IT HAS NUCLEAR IN THE NAME LIKE NUCLEAR BOMB SO IT BAD".
Miranox2 1 week ago
HE GUESSED THE TSUNAMI! OMG IS THE GOD?
someone2Utoo 1 week ago
@someone2Utoo guessed the tsunami? what? this video came out in May...the tsunami in Japan happened in March...
chadwick0091 5 days ago
the liquid fluoride thorium reactor seems like its much safer though
TheJLDoyle 1 week ago
All of you crazy liberals and your wind power... I come from a state called California that has more windmills than you would fucking believe and guess what? They don't work anymore. What a waste of money.
Haydenatorofwow 1 week ago
The true answer is FUSION. Wind, solar, and tidal can't come anywhere near the energy production of fission. But fusion can and is infinitely safer too. It is years in the future, but there are some plants already.
djguydan 1 week ago
Solution to lack of energy sources: Dyson sphere. You're welcome.
Seniorchief98 1 week ago
Raiden recommends harvesting energy from lightnings.
Jubgaga 1 week ago
What Michio is saying is true.Nuclear energy is an example of jumping on something that looks good,actually it's not economical or safe.The electricity isn't by nuclear,but the nuclear make steam that drives a huge generator like the old ones with brushes.All that danger and money to make steam?I must have missed something here , called logic,because obviously there isn't any.Steam can be made more safer and cleaner ways.Like rubbing two large stones with a 110motor.
GIANFRANCO FRONZI.FEB.10.12
9493760 1 week ago
@9493760
And where exactly will the energy come from to run this motor smarty pants???
TowardOliver 1 week ago
@TowardOliver A HONDA GENERATOR MAYBE .FRONZI GIANFRANCO FRONZI . FEBRUARY / 11 / 2012
9493760 1 week ago
2 new reactors have been aproved by the Obama administration XD
MegaLink117 1 week ago
any other power plant would have been destroyed by the japan's tsunami. electricity runs world civilization; without electricity nothing would function, and nuclear power plants are the only plants that are powerful enough to satisfy increasing electrical needs of civilization, and there is no alternative for them, yet.
CosmicCaprice 2 weeks ago
i just thought of something funny
FlCl3000 2 weeks ago
But Japan is only one of very very very few places where Nuclear power is even theoretically dangerous. 3 Mile was bad. Chernobyl was bad. But nothing like those disasters will ever happen anywhere outside of earthquake and tsunami areas. Germany's decision to stop using Nuclear power was extremely stupid and extremely impulsive. The world needs nuclear power if it is to wean itself off of fossil fuels and not give up civilization itself.
ElGringoCastellano 2 weeks ago
@ElGringoCastellano or we could reduce our energy consumption?
nomercyevolution 1 week ago
@nomercyevolution That's not practical. Not by any stretch of the imagination. You cannot simply convince an entire civilization to voluntarily use less energy. While such efforts are noble, you cannot expect them to fix everything. And forcing people to use less energy is worse. Developing nations feel the need to use massively more energy than before. Nuclear power is the only green energy technology capable of powering the entire world. Solar, wind, and geothermal will never get there in time
ElGringoCastellano 1 week ago
@ElGringoCastellano Nuclear power is dangerous wherever earthquakes can happen i.e. anywhere. Solar, wind, and tidal is where its at.
Kossimer 1 week ago
@Kossimer No, they can't happen anywhere. Not at the level necessary to do anything near as much damage as happened in Fukushima. Nuclear power in all places not plagued by earthquakes, and not staffed by incompetent Soviets, is completely safe.
ElGringoCastellano 1 week ago
What about Thorium as an alternative nuclear fuel as explained in a Ted Talk by kirk sorensen called "thorium an alternative nuclear fuel"
It sounds to good to be true!
hmortensen2907 2 weeks ago 18
@hmortensen2907 Well it is too good to be true! They don't know much about LFTRs since no one has ever made one. The challenges that would come forward are unknow. No mater what we do nuclear waster will still be there. Nulcear is not the way to go! The risks are simple too high. We need to find a way to live in harmony with nature. Otherwise we'll perish.
00Tenrai00 6 days ago
the sunamy already wiped out the nuclear plants in japan
hyderali3211 2 weeks ago
MAKE*****
Void1943 2 weeks ago
WILL Someone my a FUSION Reactor Already FFS!
Void1943 2 weeks ago
@Void1943 A 95% fusion reactor was tested at the LLNL, called the PACER project. It was a shoestring project and it was incredibly cheap, a hole in the ground lined with steel plates, and it worked. The problem is that it used tiny peaceful nuclear explosions to work, which means you needed to make bombs, which are "the devil". It also produced a lot of neutron radiation which could be used to breed nuclear fuel for the fusion PNEs and for fission reactors, and people don't like that!
OfficeThug 2 weeks ago
not building something because it COULD be destroyed is hippy-babble non-sense, period.
using that same, oh so great logic, we could come to the same conclusion about the entire human race and existence in general; why do anything? in 4 billion years the sun will go yellow giant and destroy the earth. we might as well kill each other off.
*sigh*
FuriousFatMan 2 weeks ago
we have solar and wind free and close to unlimited lest focus on them and make them more efficient so we can have a clean planet
tavogp 2 weeks ago
@tavogp solar never has a true energy offset because of the amount of energy needed to craft solar panels. wind isnt very efficient; huge upkeep costs. they also kill off species of birds/bats. durp tard'd hippie
FuriousFatMan 2 weeks ago
@FuriousFatMan ok then tell me what are we going to do when the oil runs out or do u not plan to live that long and come on are u saying that it is impossible to make solar and wind energy better?
tavogp 2 weeks ago
@tavogp ya still need oil to run those machines too lol
BTPPaintBallTeam 2 weeks ago
@tavogp With decades of government subsidies, hard research, and failed companies, don't you think solar and wind have had their chance and that it's time to let them go? Besides, their specific energy, the amount of energy that can be harnessed given you use the same amount of material/cost, is about 4 million times lower than Nuclear's specific energy. That's a physical constraint that will not change unless you figure out how bend the laws of physics to overturn Hess' law and E=mc^2.
OfficeThug 2 weeks ago
Exactly what infrastructure could you build that wouldn't be susceptible to a tidal wave?
I've seen the designs for fluoride salt reactors that have reliable safety mechanisms. If the power is disrupted, all of the liquid reactant is dumped into an underground bunker, harmlessly.
The reality is that the more energy you work with, the more dangerous things become. Can we take 5 minutes to stop pissing ourselves? Totally safe reactors can be made.
oEQjet 2 weeks ago
@oEQjet Well, if you can get fusion power working a disaster would just stop the supply of fuel and it would stop...
MeakerSE 2 weeks ago
about fucking time!! eletric. wind. nuclear sucks!! to damn dangerous
ludwig7666g 2 weeks ago
@ludwig7666g in order for nuclear to be as dangerous as coal, we'd have to have a chernobyl level accident every other week for a year. ww/w.skeptoid.c/om. now go learn something and shut your ignorant mouth.
FuriousFatMan 2 weeks ago
nuclear power is really the only way to support renewable energy at this point in time leaders like Germany and Netherlands are 9 and 15 % wind and solar but France is 90% nuclear. at the same time you have to respect that a 40 year old reactor cracked under the stress of a tsunami and earthquake. But to be honest don't build them in earthquake/tsunami areas.
VonSwaggernaut 2 weeks ago
Alright what Dr.Kaku stated was true. However, keep in mine that with anything a person does it also comes with a risk. Yes Nuclear reactors come with risk but also rather massive rewards. We have chemical plants that deal with enough cyanide to kill every living person on Earth five times over and spills have occurred. There have also been massive oil spills that destroy the environment. The fact of the matter is we cannot prevent all risks and Nuclear power plants are no different.
alphacentary 3 weeks ago
Whos team is this guy on?
There WILL be ALOT more nuclear power.
LukeSchoen 3 weeks ago
When a nuclear power plant is utterly destroyed it's more then a big mess to clean up. There is no way to fully clean it up. That's a big problem. They may not have problems often but when they do... your f**ked.
Llalena 3 weeks ago 29
@Llalena Actually it's like any other chemical cleanup job, with the twist that most of the highly dangerous radioactive stuff will stabilize extremely fast (high radioactivity = short half-life). The radiation risk of the longer lasting stuff is also exponentionally cut down as the fallout spreads and becomes less concentrated.
There are far worse chemical spills I can think of that beat radioactive fallout in terms of danger (organocyanides, trifluoric chloride, oil spills...)
OfficeThug 2 weeks ago
@Llalena Radioactive material is actually very easy to clean up. You pick up the larger radioactive debris with robots and seal them in concrete. Fallout can be cleaned up with cheap salts that displace biologically incorporable radioactive ions.
Want something that's really hard to clean up, stays extremely lethal even when it spreads, and can cause noticeable and rapic development in cancer? Try oil spills.
OfficeThug 2 weeks ago
@Llalena true but if you look at Chernoby (undoubtably the worst Nuclear Power plant accident in the history of the world due mostly to the fact that the soviets were far too incompetent to be owning a nuclear reactor) today it is perfectly safe to go to and radiation levels are pretty close to normal. So yes in the short term it does hurt and makes a place uninhabitable but it does far from the apocalyptic damage people think it does.
hailmary7283 1 week ago
How about we keep nuclear power and DON'T put it in disaster prone areas. Japan could also become the world leading innovator in new energy production. Ocean currents and geothermal.
TheRealTaco87 3 weeks ago
The answer is nuclear fusion. I say that because a fusion power plant cant ever have a runaway reaction. Why? Well because if you cut the power to a fusion plant you take away their ability to create the environment in which the fusion happens. The good news is that they expect to have fusion power plants ready for prime time in 2019
Baronstone 3 weeks ago
Just curious, I am no expert but I read that thorium reactors avoid all the safety concerns and fuel availability issues that beset the uranium reactors. Is this true? Does it then change the argument?
MrTreacle55 3 weeks ago
And we're not even talking about nuclear waste. Lets wait for Nuclear Fussion before we built any more nuclear related power plants.
WaiWu 3 weeks ago
Cold fusion?
Thejbirdy 4 weeks ago
I wonder what he thinks about liquid salt reactors. I hate that people say "nuclear" but really mean a specific kind of reactor.
PhalkonZ 4 weeks ago
maybe they should just not put nuke plants where earth quacks happen
darkdragonsoul99 4 weeks ago
Yes, zoom in on his face... faaaaace
ubermons 1 month ago
how about we build the plants NOT on the Pacific Ring of Fire...
xdopiex 1 month ago
I have to disagree michio kaku on this one. Instead of rethinking nuclear power we should rethink the design of the reactors.
86coffeemaker 1 month ago
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ftlqed 1 month ago
@ftlqed What?
FelixMaxwell 1 month ago
What's going on with cold fusion, free energy will drive economic growth not destroy it
so why is there so little funding going into it. You might loose a couple of Oil companies
but these guys all hedge their profits against competitors stock anyway.
Ireland's lived in the shadow of englands nuclear industry for a long time there's been too many accidents to list. If the wind blew the wrong way during a big enough accident Ireland would be uninhabitable.
MrIrishBilly 1 month ago
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aczerb 1 month ago
I think the US should invest much more in geothermal, what I call the "forgotton alternative". It is incredibly powerful, it is efficient, and it is renewable.
TagRation 1 month ago