Some say nuclear energy is ready to make a comback; some say it’s still too dangerous. How do you know which to believe? infactvideo.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5
(April 11, 2011) Burton Richter, director emeritus of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Matthew Wald, reporter with the Washington Bureau of The New York Times (joining the seminar from New York via videoconference), discuss the unfolding of events in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, what vulnerabilities in the system contributed to the meltdown and the design and regulatory lessons that can be applied to the future of nuclear energy development. Stanford University www.stanford.edu SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory http The New York Times www.nytimes.com Stanford Energy Seminar energyseminar.stanford.edu Stanford University Channel on YouTube http
30 Responses
Breeder reactors that recycle waste are the future, as are thorium reactors. Thousands of years of clean energy.
People are just used to air pollution, and don’t understand radiation and associate nuclear energy with nuclear weapons, so they’re irrationally afraid.
@PiratGeneralen that was after an earthquake/ tsunami, nobody can foresee or prevent those. the only serious accident was chernobyl. Japan will likely have already cleared most, if not all, of it up by the time you or i are older. Chernobyl with take centuries to clear out with how serious the radiation spilled out. Besides, as brian says, “people only see the problems of the past rather than the promise of the future” what you said is being ignorant, not smart.
@rs2013 Wind and Solar are great, but they are intermittent. The power grid doesn’t have the capacity to store energy. You don’t get too much use out of solar in the north, and on day when its not windy… then what?
In the south solar is better, but there are still cloudy days.
@jimcarreyhimself That was a first generation plant. The modern plants have taken lessons learned from the past 30 years of operation and made upgrades. It was not a “very sophisticated” plant by today’s standards.
What about the BP oil spill, that has caused more death and damage than the Fukushima accident.
What about the Massey Energy coal mine explosion, that killed more people than Fukushima. Strip mining and coal fly ash regularly cause more problems than the nuclear industry.
Needs an update on japan.
@jimcarreyhimself Modern nuclear power plants have passive cooling, that is, even if the power goes out it can be cooled. This was not the case in Japan.
I wish I was not bankrupt to be able to support you financially. You should make more videos on environmental hysteria. The local food and organic food videos were GREAT. Look into the “rainforests produce our oxygen” myth but of course also debunk global warming denialism.
Nuclear energy is the most safest and effective energy out there. The tree fuckers should just die and let the rest of us live in clean energy peace.
@jimcarreyhimself How to protect skyscrapers from hijacked airliners? Do you want us to stop building highrises, too?
Heck, how do you protect cities from asteroids or tsunamis? Let’s all phase out cities, because there’s a one to a billion chance they might be hit by something bad some day!
“Look to the future”, exactly one year later after posting this video the nuclear crisis in Japan happens. This was a very sophisticated plant. How to protect these factories from a meteor impact or earthquake?
Solar energy is the answer dude.
some say its a killstreak
@tazzy4president Other countries are deciding to quit nuclear all together. Let’s hope America does the same.
I know there is lots of money at stake. But there are way too many lives at stake too. Fukushima will be poisoning the land, sea and air for years to come, all by itself. Let’s pray that doesn’t happen again somewhere else before we can shut all the nuclear plants down.
Ummmmm japan?
@tazzy4president It’s not like the 4th generation plants are going to be ready by tomorrow.
3rd generation plants are functional even before 4th generation idea was proposed.
In Germany they are planning to shut down all of their 3rd generation Nuclear plants by 2020 if I’m not wrong.
So you can say 4th generation plants will take time. The world cannot wait though.
ok this might show my complete lack of knowledge in this area, but why don’t they skip making the 3rd generation plants and wait until they’ve designed the 4th generation plants, if they’re so much safer?
@ChorltonBrook since when do we let legislatures determine the safety level of any substance? not to mention it could very well be that germany jus feels that current technology for handling nuclear energy is insufficient, you’ve simply assumed they’re banning it, confirms your bias.
@ChorltonBrook im not brian.
if, you’re meaning to imply that brian is a paid “shill” of “big x” or is proponent of an nwo type conspiracy, kindly demonstrate evidence of said claim, or fuck off.
So why’s Germany just banned them? There’s no safe level of radiation. Shave.
@volleybrian 1st. What were those waste tanks in Japan about? they were described as piles 2nd There’s still no way to make reactors profitable without subsidies and waste.3rd Your information is literally decades out of date.
@kapwns brian who pays your wages?
@MidgardEagle Didnt say that at all thanks, but clearly being exposed to the problem in a modern world answers many of the things he asks.
@knoose Disagree. We already knew that thousand-year earthquakes and resulting tsunamis kill lots of people. Saying that Fukushima proves we shouldn’t build nuclear reactors is like saying 9/11 proves we shouldn’t build skyscrapers.
Nuclear power has had two major accidents in 50 years. Compare that to the countless accidents in most other forms of power production except maybe wind and solar — coal, gas, oil, and hydroelectric. There have been dam accidents where 150 000 people have died.
@MidgardEagle Yeah clearly it transforms the ideas being said within the old video….
@rs2013 How many millions of these solar panels to do you need to generate the stable and reliable 24/7 electricity output of a single nuclear reactor? How much pollution is generated from building, shipping and maintaining them? How much power does such a system generate once in place? What if you live in a rainy area?
And since when could nuclear power poison and kill millions?
@knoose Do you have a point of some kind? That was a kinda short comment.
The audio in this presentation drops out like a faulty spent-fuel cooling system. We are so doomed by techno-energy-ego-addiction and inherent entropy and unforeseen catastrophic circumstances.
despite its lenth not a lot of important information – may be good in order to learn what happened in fukushima, but the video can’t give you a good review about the future of nuclear energy. not more in it about that topic than could fit in a youtube comment
I believe we are distorting and deforming the fabric of spacetime itself when we radiate our environment, If nuclear power causes just one child cancer can it be justified?
too long…
Preciently, in 2004 Leuren Moret traveled to Japan and delivered a lecture in which she warned that Japan was playing “reactor roulette” in building on liquification prone soils at the conjunction of four moving tectonic plates. Her testimony stands as lone gospel of an enlightened soul to truths too great for many to bear. Her evidence trail is most compelling. Very poor quality audio, please rebroadcast.