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00:00After Chernobyl and after Fukushima, nukes just left a bad taste in people's mouths.
00:06If you're worried about safety, the metric that matters is deaths per terawatt hour generated.
00:12That's a statistic you guys have?
00:14Absolutely.
00:14I'd just say I'd be very concerned about that statistic, the death part.
00:18That's just weird to count deaths by how much electricity has been produced.
00:23Nuclear energy, you'll only die once in a while.
00:30This is StarTalk Special Edition.
00:34Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.
00:36And if it's Special Edition, you know what that means.
00:39We've got Gary O'Reilly.
00:41Hi, Neil.
00:42Hey, former soccer pro.
00:44Yes.
00:44Soccer announcer.
00:45And we're borrowing you from your soccer people.
00:47Yes.
00:48Okay.
00:50At Special Edition, we think all about the human condition and all that matters to make
00:57that work.
00:58And since you have been an injured soccer player in your life, you know about the human
01:03condition.
01:03I do.
01:04And the suffering therein.
01:05Although I'm not going to place it above or beyond anyone else's suffering.
01:09But we get a chance on Special Edition just to gaze into some interesting topics.
01:14Yes.
01:15Yes.
01:15And I love it.
01:16And I've got with us Paul Macario.
01:18Nice to see you guys.
01:19He's back.
01:20Yeah.
01:20Yes.
01:21Always fun.
01:21Paul.
01:22All right.
01:22You were former stockbroker or return?
01:25Return.
01:26You became a comedian after you were mergers and acquisitions.
01:29Well, I'm like, how can I give my mother an instant heart attack?
01:31I know.
01:32Oh.
01:33When I did say it, she said to me, I said, I'm going to leave Wall Street to be a comedian.
01:37She looked at me right in the eye and she said, that better be your first joke.
01:40Oh, good one.
01:42Oh.
01:42Clever mom.
01:43Yeah.
01:44I like that.
01:44And then, yes.
01:46And then made a right turn and got into comedy.
01:48So Emmy and Peabody Award for Best Actress.
01:51Yes.
01:52Made a right turn and got into comedy.
01:53So Emmy and Peabody Award winning.
01:56I mean, at Peabody, that's coveted.
01:59That's Highfalutin.
02:00Highfalutin.
02:01It's that little Sherman Peabody.
02:02I didn't know you were that Highfalutin here.
02:03From the cartoon character.
02:04And you also work The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
02:08Work on The Late Show with Stephen.
02:09We go back to The Daily Show together.
02:10Stephen, he's the first name.
02:11Stephen Colbert.
02:12Oh, yes.
02:12Sorry.
02:12Stephen Colbert and the rest of them.
02:14Unlike me.
02:16He's that guy on the TV.
02:17I know who you are, but I don't know your name.
02:20Yeah.
02:20So, Paul, you're so Highfalutin.
02:22Like, do you still even do stand-up like regular comedians?
02:25I'm so Highfalutin.
02:26You're not supposed to look me in the eye when you're talking.
02:28That's Highfalutin.
02:29I have to avert.
02:30I heard rumor you have a Broadway show.
02:32We were doing a...
02:33A stage show.
02:34Yeah, called Permission to Speak.
02:35And it involves...
02:37We're all disconnected and divisive.
02:38But if we get together and share stories,
02:40realize we have more in common than we think.
02:42So it's me involved in...
02:43Yeah, it's born out of my stand-up
02:45and liking to talk to audience members.
02:46And it's grown into this show.
02:48And the great Frank Oz is directing it,
02:50which still blows my mind.
02:51We'd love me some Frank Oz.
02:52Yeah, I know.
02:53He's been a guest on our show.
02:54I know.
02:55He's constantly backwards talking, though,
02:56with that Yoda thing.
02:57It's extremely annoying.
02:59No, it's been really cool.
03:00And we take it around the country.
03:01And folks can go to my website to check it out
03:03where we're going to be, paulmacuria.com.
03:04But it's been really cool
03:05and sort of a breakout from my stand-up.
03:07Okay, cool.
03:08Yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:08So, Gary, you and your producer put together this topic.
03:13We did.
03:13And I love me...
03:14It's nukes.
03:15I love me some nukes.
03:16Not the missile kind.
03:18Nukes predate missiles.
03:20Okay, good.
03:21As long as you're not...
03:21When I say nuke, I mean the nucleus of the atom.
03:25Yes.
03:25And the energy contained therein.
03:28It's the OG.
03:29What you do with it after, that's your problem.
03:31That is...
03:32Okay, so...
03:33Set up this show.
03:34What do you have?
03:34AI data centers.
03:36Well, we know what they are.
03:37What we don't quite know yet
03:38is how we are going to supply
03:40their rapidly increasing energy demands
03:42with reliable and clean energy.
03:45So where do we look?
03:46Fossil fuels are being phased out.
03:48Well, maybe.
03:49Sustainables do not suit everyone.
03:51And who needs a giant nuclear power plant
03:53in their backyard?
03:54So what are our options?
03:56Climate change means our energy must be clean,
03:59reliable, economically viable,
04:01and socially acceptable.
04:03The way I see it, this requires some clarity,
04:05some science, and an expert with both.
04:08So, Neil, would you like to introduce our guests?
04:10I would be delighted.
04:11Good.
04:11I love my physics peeps when they're out there.
04:13And we have one.
04:14We have one.
04:15Join me in welcoming Catherine Hough.
04:17Catherine, welcome to StarTalk.
04:19It's great to meet you.
04:20Great to be here.
04:21Thanks for having me.
04:22I got to do it in the voice.
04:23Welcome to StarTalk.
04:27Excellent.
04:28That's for the first time.
04:29You got to get one of those.
04:30You are associate professor in the department.
04:34No, this is a mouth.
04:35This is like a business card's worth it.
04:38In the Department of Nuclear Plasma
04:40and Radiological Engineering.
04:43That's right.
04:44Which means she glows at night at University of Illinois
04:48at Champaign-Urbana.
04:49Hang on.
04:49Flip the card.
04:50Now it goes to the back of the card.
04:51Oh, it keeps going.
04:52Yes.
04:54So your PhD is in nuclear engineering.
04:56But not only that, you've actually had a tour of duty
04:59serving the federal government.
05:01You were assistant secretary for nuclear energy
05:04in the Department of Energy, 2022 to 2024.
05:09So you did a little tour of duty there.
05:11So you've seen it all.
05:13So Catherine, could you just remind everybody
05:15the difference between fusion and fission?
05:19Yeah.
05:20So in fission, which is conventional nuclear power
05:23here in the United States and around the world,
05:25you separate, you break apart heavy atom
05:29like uranium-235 or plutonium-239.
05:32Whereas fusion gains energy from the binding reaction
05:36between two light particles fusing.
05:39And these would be isotopes of helium
05:41or hydrogen typically.
05:43And so you're talking about completely different
05:44ends of the periodic table,
05:48the forces that hold a nucleus together,
05:50the binding energy of that nucleus.
05:52You can achieve a net increase,
05:55a net sort of output in energy
05:57by coming down the isotopic curve
06:00by splitting a big atom
06:01or by coming up it by fusing two light atoms.
06:05And that's because of the shape
06:06of the binding energy curve for the nucleus.
06:09And we know in astrophysics,
06:11the peak of that curve,
06:12or depending if you plot the other way,
06:13the base of that curve is iron.
06:16And stars give up the ghost when they hit iron.
06:21Because you can't fizz it or fuse it
06:24and get energy out of it.
06:25It sucks energy.
06:26And stars in the business of making energy,
06:28it hits iron, that's all she wrote.
06:31It collapses and then explodes
06:33in a rebound as a supernova.
06:35So we know all about this in astrophysics.
06:38There's quite the relationship
06:39between what nuclear physicists do
06:41and what we do thinking about stars in the universe.
06:44So let me just open this up.
06:47Because after Chernobyl and after Three Mile Island
06:51and after Fukushima,
06:55nukes just left a bad taste in people's mouths.
06:58It was always that way.
07:00And these then just became evidence for it.
07:04And so there's a lot of re-branding
07:08that's gonna have to happen going forward
07:11if nuclear energy is gonna rejoin the conversation.
07:17So what are your challenges squaring that circle
07:22from the sources of energy people typically talk about,
07:26especially in the green movement,
07:28and nuclear energy as a kind of wannabe
07:31as part of that conversation?
07:33Yeah, absolutely.
07:33I think a lot of it's around numerics, right?
07:36Talking to people about the metrics that matter.
07:39If you're worried about safety,
07:40the metric that matters is deaths per terawatt hour generated.
07:44You have that?
07:45That's a statistic you guys have?
07:47Can I just say I'd be very concerned
07:50about that statistic, the death part?
07:53Yes.
07:54That's just weird to count deaths
07:56by how much electricity has been produced.
07:59Nuclear energy, you'll only die once in a while.
08:04No, but does that exist for coal?
08:07Yeah, it's only interesting as a metric
08:08if you're using it to compare energy sources.
08:11And so a number of different data sets
08:13have informed a number of deaths per terawatt hour
08:16from solar, wind, coal, et cetera.
08:19And nuclear is way, way, way down at the bottom,
08:22slightly below solar and wind, actually.
08:24Even if you include Fukushima and Chernobyl,
08:27interestingly, no deaths at Three Mile Island.
08:30And you have geothermal, I think,
08:34is one of the only ones that is lower than nuclear
08:36in terms of deaths per terawatt hour.
08:38And it's construction projects.
08:40There's serious issues maintaining wind turbines,
08:44like putting things on roofs and installing.
08:46That sort of thing doesn't happen
08:47on a nuclear construction site
08:49because of the incredible amount of regulation.
08:51And so you really are left with accidents.
08:53And so there's plenty of lifecycle analyses of deaths,
08:56but also carbon per terawatt hour.
08:59And the reality is nuclear, in terms of generation,
09:04is higher, and so the denominator is huge.
09:07Wait, higher as a return?
09:10There's more power generated.
09:12Per whatever, per anything.
09:15So the terawatt hours are higher.
09:16Yes.
09:18By a long shot.
09:19Yes.
09:20Oh, so that's how it wins.
09:22I get it.
09:23Of course.
09:24She pulled some fast denominator numerator math there.
09:27Did you stay with that?
09:28Pulled the right turn on you.
09:32No, no, because if you have gerbils on a treadmill
09:36producing your energy, and it kills 1,000 gerbils,
09:39they didn't make much energy to begin with, right?
09:41So the death rate relative to the energy return,
09:44that ratio is bad for you.
09:46Again, correct me if I'm wrong, Catherine.
09:49Nukes are so potent in the capacity to produce energy
09:53that whoever died doing whatever,
09:57there's so much energy produced at the other end,
10:00it compensates for that.
10:01It's a relative number.
10:03It's a relative, correct.
10:04But doesn't it beg for more regulation
10:06and sort of renewables?
10:07Like, you're right about solar.
10:09Like, you know, some guy that was working at Jiffy Lube
10:11is now selling you solar panels and putting it up half drunk.
10:14Like, isn't it?
10:16That sounds like a bad experience on your behalf.
10:17No, no, yeah, that was way too-
10:19We call him my uncle.
10:20That was way too precise an example.
10:24My Uncle Archie.
10:25Anything, but doesn't it sort of beg for that on some level,
10:29sort of if there's that level of sort of death rate
10:31relative to renewables?
10:33So interestingly, renewables like wind and solar
10:36and geothermal and nuclear,
10:37they're all in the same category,
10:39which is just magnitudes and magnitudes lower than fossils.
10:43And, you know, nuclear ends up winning
10:45because historically nuclear has been the largest source
10:47of carbon-free emissions-free power, right?
10:50And it's those emissions from the fossils
10:52and, you know, that really takes them
10:54to a completely different order of magnitude
10:56in terms of deaths per terawatt hour.
10:58And so I would say that renewables are safe,
11:01nuclear is safe, geothermal is safe.
11:03It's really the fossils you need to be worried about
11:05when you're talking about safety
11:07because they impact human health
11:09in a really demonstrable, clear way.
11:11How many people ever have died mining coal?
11:15It's a great question, right?
11:17The WHO has estimated all kinds of things
11:19for full total cost and death of the fossil industry
11:23and separates it into particulate-related
11:26premature deaths and whatnot.
11:27I don't know the exact number from people dying mining coal,
11:29but it's not zero.
11:31Okay.
11:32It's pretty high.
11:32By the way, when a business says not zero,
11:35it doesn't mean it's one or two.
11:38It's pretty high, right?
11:40Like you would lose people in collapses.
11:42Okay, we've got clean, high energy production
11:46in totality with fusion and fission,
11:48but we still have some radioactive material.
11:51That is going to make people unhappy.
11:54More than zero-
11:55Not in my backyard.
11:56Don't put it there.
11:57You and the NIMBYs, there they are.
11:59I mean, that's why they're all spelt in capitals
12:01because they want you to know that's what it's about.
12:03So it doesn't sound so clean.
12:05But can't you point to the fact that nuclear power
12:08has been around for years
12:09and people have accepted the fact
12:11that there's radioactive waste sort of hanging out anyway?
12:13Like it's not a completely new concept.
12:15They're not accepting that it's there.
12:16They're accepting the disposal plans
12:19that Katherine just told us about.
12:21And Paul's right that it hasn't been a huge impact
12:24on human's day-to-day lives
12:26because it's an incredibly small volume
12:29of spent fuel from fission reactors.
12:32We have 60 years of spent nuclear fuel.
12:36It has been producing close to 20%
12:39of our electric power in the United States.
12:42And it's produced enough material to,
12:44if you sort of ignore the packaging
12:46and focus on the uranium,
12:47fill a football field, not very tall,
12:50you know, a few meters high.
12:52And what people seem to ignore
12:53is if you put it in the right bag on Sunday nights
12:55when you put your garbage out,
12:57it's radioactive material, they'll pick it up.
12:58Oh yeah, yeah, that's right.
12:59It's gonna be, put it in the blue bag.
13:01And put it on Staten Island.
13:03Remind me not to live in your neighborhood ever.
13:05Exactly.
13:06There's the glowing Paul house.
13:08Yeah, so the thing is,
13:09this stuff gets buried so far deep into-
13:12Wait, wait, but you're mixing-
13:14In the middle of nowhere.
13:15You're mixing two things
13:16and I think they're separable variables.
13:18You're saying nukes are dirty because fission is dirty.
13:22Okay, but fusion isn't so dirty.
13:24I understand that much.
13:25That's true.
13:26It just doesn't happen yet.
13:27So Catherine, are you in your world
13:29of thinking about this,
13:30combining them together as a solution going forward?
13:33Or are you totally leaning fusion,
13:35excited by the recent sort of ignition test
13:38that went on at the Livermore Labs?
13:41I'm a fission girl.
13:43I'm a sort of classic nuclear energy fission person.
13:46I have great optimism for fusion,
13:48but it will take quite a long time.
13:50And interestingly, you probably know this,
13:52that NIF test is an inertial confinement fusion experiment.
13:56A lot of the commercial proposals
13:58that are attempting to commercialize fusion in the near term
14:01are more like the ITER device in France
14:04that is a magnetic confinement fusion.
14:06It's a slightly different approach
14:09and seeing real breakthroughs in the ITER device
14:12may be quite a few years from now.
14:13So, you know, we await some breakthroughs
14:16in things like the first wall protection,
14:18things like that.
14:18But for me, I'm here about
14:21kind of conventional nuclear energy
14:22and advanced fission energy
14:24that's sort of on the horizon right now.
14:26So we are correct to fold that into the conversation.
14:29And I'm still waiting for Mr. Fusion,
14:31the home fusion from Back to the Future.
14:34Yeah.
14:35So the thing is,
14:36it seems like we don't quite have a handle on fusion
14:39to make it operate the way
14:41we really want to.
14:42Not yet.
14:43But is this an extension of this plasma fusion,
14:46which has a breakeven issue, right?
14:50More heat goes in to get the heat out
14:52and that's an extension of traditional fusion process, right?
14:56So there are no operating fusion reactors.
14:59There like could be someday.
15:02Maybe if you guys tried harder, there would be.
15:05Yeah, I'm not a fusion scientist.
15:07I like work in a nuclear plasma radio.
15:10There we go.
15:11You went that way.
15:12By the way, when you were at the Department of Energy,
15:14when you left your office at night,
15:15would you turn the thermostat down?
15:16I'm just curious.
15:17Absolutely.
15:18Okay, good.
15:18Absolutely.
15:19Every light switch has a little
15:20don't forget to turn me off light sticker.
15:24Okay, so what are going to be
15:26the major consumers of our energy going forward?
15:29AI data centers for sure.
15:31Then we look at maybe quantum computing.
15:34We've got bit mining,
15:35throw in the development of electric vehicles,
15:39we may have already calculated
15:41because I've joined the DOE, obviously,
15:42we have may have calculated already,
15:45but have we calculated enough
15:47the terms of how exponentially
15:49this consumption is going to go?
15:51Yeah, it's totally data centers and things like that,
15:53but it's also increased electrification like for EVs,
15:56but all kinds of other things as well.
15:58And an increased sort of revival
16:01of industrial manufacturing that requires
16:03not just electricity, but heat.
16:04We see carbon-free steel companies
16:06wanting to start up in the United States
16:08and they don't have enough heat.
16:09Where do you get heat?
16:09Usually you burn fossil fuels.
16:11Very few clean energy sources are available
16:13to provide that direct heat.
16:15Nuclear is there for it.
16:16So yeah, we have a huge amount of demand.
16:19Are we even factoring it in?
16:20The projections for how much new gigawatt worth,
16:25many tens of gigawatts worth of capacity
16:27are going to be needed to support data centers
16:29in the coming decades
16:30to support these kinds of endeavors.
16:32They grow and grow every time you look at the news.
16:34And so we are in a position
16:36where the existing clean energy infrastructure
16:39has to expand to support those data centers,
16:42especially data centers that need 24-7,
16:45reliable, always on power.
16:47If you own a multi-billion dollar data center,
16:49you don't want it to be running at 2% capacity
16:52because the wind stopped blowing.
16:53You need 100% power 24-7, regardless of weather.
16:56And the issue there is in sort of these data centers,
17:00which are going to are
17:01and will continue to be everywhere.
17:03And the scaling of traditional power plants,
17:06nuclear power plants,
17:07you have to get to SMRs, right?
17:09Which are not fully developed yet.
17:11Paul, could you tell the rest of us what SMR means?
17:14Small Modular Reactors.
17:15Did he get it right, Catherine?
17:16Yeah. He did.
17:17Okay, Catherine, you know how exhausting it is
17:19that I have to carry this guy all the time?
17:22But in that sense, the proximity is an issue, right?
17:26Because if your data centers are too far away
17:29from the source, the nuclear source of energy,
17:32you're going to have loss of data, loss of energy.
17:35And so it becomes sort of being able to build a lot
17:37of these SMRs, which are smaller
17:40and can be closer to the data centers.
17:42Yeah, you're absolutely right.
17:44Transmission, especially building
17:46new high voltage power lines to move gigawatts of power
17:49from a generator to a consumer is expensive.
17:52It cuts through land that usually needs permits.
17:56Sometimes it can be very slow.
17:57So co-locating data centers
18:00with smaller modular reactor builds has an advantage.
18:03The more modularity in these builds is certainly also
18:07supposed to contribute to the speed and reliability
18:10with which we can deploy them.
18:12The idea being that it takes a really long time
18:14to build a gigawatt scale nuclear power plant.
18:17But if you build a 30% sized 300 megawatt reactor,
18:24then maybe you can build a few more of them,
18:26get some lessons learned.
18:27They maybe move a little faster.
18:29You might be paying slightly more per kilowatt hour,
18:32but you should be able to deploy them quicker
18:35and learn faster, thereby coming down the cost curve
18:39of those construction learnings.
18:40That's a whole future there that has not yet been realized.
18:43We've probably had the last major nuclear power plant
18:46built 30 something years ago.
18:48In the United States?
18:49Yes, in the United States or around developed nations.
18:52Now you're saying, what are the new technologies?
18:54Small modular reactors.
18:56SMRs.
18:58SMRs to some.
18:59Advanced reactors.
19:01So you've got these micro reactors.
19:03You've had all these different sort of acronyms going on.
19:06Where are we right now with the technologies
19:08and what are our options for fission
19:11and for fusion going forward?
19:14You've got to have them close.
19:15The NIMBYs are going to dance up and down
19:17and scream a merry hell.
19:18We know that.
19:19So how are we going to sort this out
19:21and with what technology?
19:23Yeah, I think we have technologies at all sizes
19:25in the advanced reactor space.
19:26The most recent two builds in the United States
19:29were the Vogel unit three and four.
19:31Those are AP1000s from Westinghouse.
19:34They're big, like conventional nuclear reactors,
19:36but they incorporate some passive safety.
19:38And so they're kind of a generation three plus design
19:42at the sort of big gigawatt scale.
19:44They were built pretty over schedule and over budget.
19:47And so there's a lot of trend towards shrinking
19:49that kind of design.
19:50A light water reactor that's just smaller.
19:52You've got designs from Holtec and GE Hitachi.
19:56Westinghouse has a shrunken version of the AP1000
19:58called the AP300.
20:00Yeah, you've got NuScale is one of those small modular
20:03light water reactor designs.
20:05But then in addition to that,
20:06you can also build small modular advanced reactor designs.
20:09And there are a number of companies
20:11pursuing commercialization of that
20:12with two deployments already happening
20:14with the support of the Department of Energy.
20:16These would involve more advanced coolants and fuels
20:19like sodium, which is a liquid metal.
20:22Is that the Moen salt?
20:23Yeah, MSRs, yeah.
20:25What does sodium do for you?
20:26So sodium has a couple of cool features.
20:29As a coolant, it's highly conductive.
20:32And so it's extremely performant to move the heat
20:35from the fuel to where you need it in the turbine
20:37through an exchange process eventually.
20:39But that conduction is really useful,
20:41but it's also very helpful for the neutronics control
20:45of that criticality that I talked about earlier.
20:48So it absorbs neutrons.
20:49Yeah, so it keeps the neutrons fast by not moderating them.
20:53If you combine that with a metal fuel,
20:55sodium-cooled fast reactors have an opportunity
20:58to be quite passively safe using reactor physics
21:02and negative feedbacks from the expansion of the fuel
21:06and the expansion of the coolant
21:07and the sort of neutronic behavior of the coolant
21:09to drive power down if power goes high,
21:13keeping things balanced.
21:14Regulated.
21:15Isn't there a practicality issue though?
21:16Because corrosion is a problem with that process, right?
21:20So critically, sodium in this case is a liquid metal.
21:23When it's combined with something else,
21:25it becomes a salt.
21:25There are salt reactors.
21:26We can talk about that.
21:27But yeah, sodium itself is also somewhat corrosive.
21:31You can't see through it because it's liquid metal
21:33and it is pyrophoric.
21:35So when it gets wet, it tends to burst into flames.
21:38Good.
21:40That's good to know.
21:41Just so it gets wet.
21:44Just spend a quick second reminding us.
21:47I don't want to simplify it too much,
21:49but correct me if I've done so.
21:52In the end, all you're trying to create is a source of heat
21:57to raise the temperature of water
21:59that will spin a turbine
22:04that has magnetic fields and coils in it
22:08to generate electricity.
22:09That's the same way we've been making electricity
22:11since Faraday.
22:12That's half of it's old school.
22:13Is that correct?
22:13Half is old school.
22:14Is that correct?
22:15Yes.
22:16It is almost exactly like a coal plant.
22:18You're just boiling the water in a different way.
22:20In a different way.
22:21Different source of heat.
22:22I mean, is the goal to get even higher temperatures?
22:24I mean, are we aiming for building a star on Earth here?
22:27What are we doing?
22:28So star on Earth would be pretty hard with fission.
22:31We await our fusion colleagues for that matter.
22:33But the fission reactors that are being deployed
22:36with some of these advanced coolants
22:37will get much, much hotter safely
22:41than conventional reactors.
22:42We're talking 800 degrees Celsius,
22:45really high temperatures,
22:46which is quite a bit more than the 300 degrees C
22:49we would usually see
22:50from conventional light water reactors.
22:52So the higher temperature of the water,
22:54I mean, it's under pressure, I guess, right?
22:55Yeah, absolutely.
22:56And if you're going to use that heat directly,
22:59then it's very useful for industrial applications
23:02like reducing steel,
23:04reducing iron for the steelmaking process.
23:05Rather than making electricity out of it through a turbine.
23:08Right.
23:09And rather than burning natural gas or coal
23:11to make direct heat.
23:13The first application of the X-Energy
23:15high temperature gas reactor
23:16will be at a Dow Chemical plant
23:18where they'll use both the direct heat
23:20and the electricity that they convert.
23:23Some of that heat straight from the reactor
23:25won't be converted at all into electricity.
23:26Well, with temperatures that high,
23:28can't you generate electricity that is more robust
23:31for lack of a better term
23:32and that can travel farther distances without loss?
23:35Not exactly the way we convert heat into electricity,
23:39but it is certainly the case.
23:42It is the case that high temperature heat
23:44is higher quality because it is easier to convert.
23:47You have a little bit less loss.
23:49Very good. Very important point.
23:51Okay. What I hear now, Neil,
23:53is this is the next iteration of the smartphone.
23:56Right?
23:56So you've got these big clunky cell phones
23:59that we used to have back in the 80s.
24:01The shoulder mounted one that they used in...
24:03The one that Magnum PI would have.
24:06Or Gecko in...
24:08Right. Right.
24:08So now...
24:09Shoulder mounted cell phone.
24:11I remember 1987, I saw the movie in real time.
24:15And I'm looking and I said,
24:16gee, I wish I was rich so I had a phone like that.
24:19I could have a phone in a suitcase that weighs 50 pounds.
24:22So now they're getting smaller and smaller,
24:24but we're getting higher temperatures out of them?
24:26It sounds a lot like the smartphone scenario.
24:29And how much they cost and who's paying for it?
24:31Wait, wait, just, I think you confused two things there.
24:34What's also happening is chips are getting more efficient.
24:38Right.
24:38So your laptop used to burn the top of your thighs.
24:42It doesn't do that anymore.
24:43Where were you putting it?
24:44Exactly, exactly.
24:46And why was it on your thighs?
24:48So Catherine, if we have quantum computing,
24:52which does much more computing in less time,
24:55ultimately that's less consumption of energy, isn't it? Or not?
24:59Yeah, one would hope, right?
25:00And then you can use that energy for other things
25:03that will advance human prosperity, right?
25:06We can also use it to displace the kinds of fossil energy
25:10that we still rely on and contributes to the climate crisis.
25:13So these small modular reactors, as I said...
25:16It's MRs.
25:17Thank you for reminding me.
25:20How much do they actually cost
25:23and who is writing that particular check?
25:26It remains to be seen precisely how much each design will cost.
25:30But we're looking at a scenario,
25:32I would refer you to the liftoff report that DOE put out,
25:36but it estimates that new nuclear power,
25:39it's going to be in the order between $120 per megawatt hour
25:44for the first of a kind,
25:46all the way down to nth of a kind,
25:48maybe in the $60 per megawatt hour range.
25:51That's a big range,
25:51but it's very similar to the kinds of ranges we're seeing
25:54when we look at renewables plus grid-scale storage,
25:59which is the only comparable,
26:01reliable 24-7 clean energy that involves renewables, right?
26:05Alternatives would be natural gas with carbon capture,
26:08cheaper, certainly,
26:09maybe between $100 at the high end
26:12and $60 per megawatt hour at the low end.
26:15Geothermal has a very, very big range,
26:17but very similar to nuclear,
26:18you know, $130 at the high end, $57 at the low end.
26:23Hydropower is always cheap.
26:25I was recently in Iceland,
26:26they're nearly 100% geothermal.
26:28I mean, they're sitting on top of multiple volcanic...
26:31Isn't the issue here partly like
26:33there's two streams of technology battling each other?
26:35In other words, demand for energy, right?
26:38In the year 2060,
26:39there's going to be 12,230 streaming services alone, right?
26:44Okay, you're going to have houseplants
26:46that self-water, self-fertilize and can talk to you, right?
26:49And my hope is, can we, in all seriousness,
26:51can you keep up with that,
26:53with, you know, these lazy fusion people
26:56that clearly aren't pushing the envelope
26:58and just, you know, are phoning it in?
27:00No, in all seriousness,
27:01so can we develop energies fast enough
27:05to keep up with these incredible demands that are...
27:09But we have become more efficient.
27:11Like, I would say the total wattage
27:14of all light bulbs in my house is probably 100 watts.
27:18I got 50 light bulbs and they're all LEDs, all right?
27:21So, Catherine, I don't even have...
27:25Shut off lights before you leave the room
27:26because I don't need it.
27:28But the advances, I mean,
27:31there are guilt-inducing mirrors
27:32that are going to come out soon
27:34where you just stand in front of it and say,
27:35really, that's what you want to eat?
27:36Like, so...
27:38Oh, I seem to hit a nerve with you on that one.
27:40So can...
27:42Or are you talking about your own life?
27:43Exactly, exactly.
27:44So can, in all seriousness,
27:46can the technology that's needed,
27:49is it there to keep up with the demands
27:51and the new demands that we haven't even foreseen yet?
27:54It's a great question.
27:56DOE has estimated that if we want to hit net zero by 2050...
28:00Net zero what?
28:02Net zero carbon.
28:03Carbon, thank you, okay.
28:04Yeah.
28:04We will have to build at least 550 to 770 new gigawatts
28:09of firm, clean power.
28:11Some of that'll be hydro or geothermal
28:14and things like that, battery storage.
28:16But at least about 200 gigawatts of that
28:19will need to be nuclear.
28:20And we're not the only ones that made that calculation.
28:23Across the world, dozens of countries
28:25have committed to tripling nuclear energy
28:28in their countries.
28:29But just since we have flat earthers among us,
28:31don't say across the world, say around the world, okay?
28:35Just give me that sentence again.
28:37Had to get that in, didn't you?
28:37Had to get that in.
28:39Absolutely, yeah.
28:40Around the world, dozens of countries
28:42have committed to tripling nuclear power.
28:44All right, so we have a football field
28:46a few metres high worth of spent nuclear fuel, right?
28:50Correct, yes.
28:51How are these new advanced modular,
28:55small modular reactors, our good friends the SMRs,
28:59are any of them going to be able to recycle that spent fuel?
29:03Some of them could.
29:04I mentioned sodium-cooled fast reactors earlier
29:06which have metal fuel.
29:07And while TerraPower isn't currently
29:08planning to recycle in the United States,
29:11it is an amenable technology for the kinds of recycling
29:15that other nations do.
29:16France, for example, recycles a great deal
29:18of their spent nuclear fuel, resulting
29:20in lower volumes, lower masses, and much shorter lifetimes
29:25of long-term radioactivity.
29:28By putting the longest-lived and most useful isotopes
29:31back in the reactor.
29:33We could do that.
29:34But in the United States, we don't currently
29:35have the infrastructure to do that.
29:36So it would take a real government effort
29:38to move forward on recycling.
29:40But when I was at DOE, this was definitely something
29:44that we were continuing to do research on.
29:46And there was a great deal of interest
29:48from the commercial side in seeing recycling
29:51be back on the table in terms of options.
29:54Molten salt reactors also were mentioned earlier.
29:56I should note, in the SMR, MSR universe,
30:00molten salt reactors are also very amenable to recycling.
30:04I like the ASMR universe.
30:06And?
30:07Yeah, yes.
30:11How's your nuclear power doing?
30:13Yes.
30:14Tell me about it.
30:15Yes.
30:16So are we still mining uranium?
30:18There's still plenty of uranium left
30:20in Earth's crust for this?
30:21Yeah.
30:22We are still mining uranium.
30:24Some of the best uranium in the world
30:26comes from mines in Canada.
30:28But it exists in a lot of places,
30:29including the United States, Australia, Kazakhstan.
30:32How about Greenland?
30:33Oh, gosh, too soon.
30:34So yeah, I think the reality is, unless you
30:37do a great deal of recycling, you're
30:39going to continue to mine uranium.
30:41So yeah, recycling would reduce our need
30:44for new, fresh uranium.
30:45But isn't that part of the issue is the geopolitical concerns
30:48of this, right?
30:49The more we come up with this great technology and SMRs
30:52that feed these data centers, there's
30:55a lot of uranium out there.
30:56But they're not in every country.
30:57And some of these countries are borderline,
30:59sort of friendly.
31:01Terrorists take over.
31:02Like, so how do you factor that in?
31:05And should some other simultaneous technology
31:08be developed away from nuclear energy
31:11so that we're not so dependent on uranium
31:14and the potential exposure?
31:15Do you have a hotline to the State Department?
31:17Yeah.
31:17Well, it basically comes down to not going back
31:19to relying on one single source of fuel.
31:21Exactly.
31:22I think that's what it comes down to.
31:23Right.
31:23That's right.
31:24If there's a trouble in one sector,
31:26you just shift the economics.
31:29But if you have single point failure,
31:32everything is running on oil.
31:33If you're trapped into fossil fuel, there's a problem.
31:35The biggest bottleneck for that uranium fuel cycle
31:37is that the mining of uranium, there's lots of sources of it.
31:41But then the processing, conversion, and then
31:44enrichment of that fuel, where you increase
31:47the number of isotopes of uranium,
31:48235 per kilogram of total uranium.
31:51That enrichment process and the fuel fabrication process
31:54all happen at a much smaller number of facilities
31:58internationally.
31:58And so, yeah, quite to your point,
32:01international collaboration has been necessary to ensure
32:04that if Russia, who dominated historically
32:08conversion and enrichment capabilities in the last 20
32:10years or so, if they decided not to sell to the United States,
32:15we needed to have more capabilities in the US
32:17and among our allies, France, the UK, et cetera.
32:19So that has been underway.
32:21In fact, right behind me is the law
32:22where we banned Russian uranium from Russia imports
32:28in the near term so that we could protect some
32:30of our ability to invest in new enrichment capability.
32:34Catherine, if you have what's called spent uranium,
32:38and that is basically waste product from fission,
32:41uranium fission, what does it mean to recycle it?
32:44You have to boost the isotope back
32:46or stick it in a particle accelerator again?
32:50Because you have the uranium.
32:52How would you accomplish this?
32:53So there's two different ways.
32:54But basically, the spent fuel that you start with
32:56is a mixture of uranium atoms and split fission products.
33:01So the two parts that the uranium atom splits into,
33:04this might be iodine and technetium,
33:06practically half of the isotopes in the periodic table
33:09or in the chart of the nuclides.
33:11The mixture needs to be separated
33:13so that those fission products are removed from the total.
33:16The already split atoms.
33:19So I think the public is generally not familiar
33:22with the chart of the nucleotides.
33:24We all know the periodic table of elements
33:26because that's that mysterious chart of boxes
33:28that sat in the front of your chemistry class.
33:31And the table of nucleotides,
33:32those were always in the more advanced chemistry classes.
33:35The one I didn't go to.
33:36Or the physics classes.
33:37And so that lists not just the elements,
33:40but all the isotopes possible for each of the elements.
33:44That's a more complicated diagram, correct?
33:46It is.
33:47It's quite a bit more complicated.
33:49And it's extremely useful for nuclear engineers
33:51because we end up producing a lot of those isotopes
33:54inside reactors during the fission process.
33:56Okay.
33:56So you can track their whereabouts.
33:59Can you make little cocktails to find
34:01which ones work better with each other
34:03to be able to take that forward?
34:05That's an interesting idea.
34:06You know, some of them fall into chemistry groups
34:10that can be useful for industrial applications
34:13and things like that.
34:13So one of the interesting possibilities for recycling
34:16which I'll get to how you do it in a second,
34:18but one of the interesting possibilities for recycling
34:20is that some of those products
34:21that aren't useful in the reactor
34:23and are otherwise waste,
34:24some of those products are hard to generate otherwise
34:26but can be useful for, you know,
34:28medical reasons, imaging, other kinds of radioactive.
34:32You listed technetium as one of the byproducts
34:34and I've seen that used in medical imaging.
34:37So that's what you mean
34:38by possibly recycling some of this material.
34:41Absolutely.
34:42Technetium-99 metastable is routinely used
34:44for things like thyroid imaging
34:46and whatnot.
34:47Right, right.
34:48Cool.
34:49So it's picking through your dumpsters.
34:50Exactly.
34:52That's right.
34:53A very specialized, high precision,
34:56radioactive dumpster.
34:57Yeah, but how do you,
34:58you can't boost the uranium back
34:59into the isotope it needs to be
35:01and then just run it?
35:02No, but generally speaking,
35:04what you end up doing
35:05is you take out those fission products
35:06and you still have a great deal
35:07of enriched material left
35:09and during the fission process,
35:10you have been breeding a little bit of plutonium.
35:13Some of the uranium-238 atoms
35:15have absorbed a neutron
35:16and then another neutron
35:17and they move their way up
35:19the chart of the nuclides
35:20into plutonium-239,
35:21which is also fissile.
35:23So you can put both the uranium
35:24and plutonium back into the reactor usefully,
35:27along with some of the other transuranic elements
35:29and that's recycling.
35:31You can do it with aqueous chemistry
35:32or electrochemistry.
35:34And that's no different from recycling plastics
35:36or if they got to carry their weight
35:38with their waste products.
35:39That's right.
35:40That's right.
35:40So be a time when I could take my nuclear waste
35:43to the dump on a Sunday.
35:44On your own.
35:45Make a dump run.
35:46But then you sort it out in there.
35:47You sort it out or I have a man do that for me.
35:49You have the right little bins
35:50for the right sort of waste.
35:51I have a guy who sorts my radiation.
35:53Why hasn't...
35:54You got a guy?
35:55Yeah, I pay him 50 bucks and he's like, whatever.
35:57Not Louis again, is it?
35:58Not Louis.
35:58He's easy to find.
35:59He's glowing.
36:00Can you explain to me
36:01why this is going to sound like a neophyte question,
36:03but why we haven't gotten better
36:06at reducing the amount of radioactive waste
36:09that gets generated in these processes
36:12and is there an attempt
36:13or again, are all you scientists just lazy?
36:17So first of all, the volume is pretty small to start with.
36:20But yeah, there's been a lot of work in fuel utilization
36:24so that the amount of fuel that you put in
36:26is used to the maximum extent practical.
36:29A lot of that has resulted in designs
36:31that will leverage a higher initial enrichment of uranium.
36:34You'll see this in a lot of small modular reactor designs
36:36because it allows the reactor to be smaller
36:39and in a lot of cases,
36:40it'll allow for a higher fuel efficiency
36:42or fuel utilization.
36:44What kind of radioactive waste
36:45do you get out of fast reactors?
36:47It's a metal uranium plutonium fission product object, right?
36:53And it's never sort of,
36:54when it's sort of comes out of a reactor,
36:56it's going to be in the same form it is.
36:57You know, you get a lot of Simpsons kind of images
37:00where it looks like a glowing green goo.
37:02Spent nuclear fuel is actually a uranium oxide
37:05coming out of conventional reactors.
37:07So it's a type of ceramic, it's quite heavy
37:09and it's in little pellets, but it's a solid
37:12and quite dull.
37:13In the case of a sodium cooled fast reactor,
37:15it would be a solid metal cylinder.
37:17In the case of a molten salt reactor
37:19where the uranium is dissolved
37:21into a liquid salt in the reactor,
37:23these don't really exist commercially yet,
37:25but they've been proposed.
37:26That would be a liquid,
37:27but that would be the only kind of reactor
37:29that has sort of a liquid waste.
37:31So is spent fuel then sort of turned into a ceramic
37:34and then buried deep underground?
37:37Because that's kind of the way it originates in earth
37:40to begin with before we extract it.
37:42Do we then kind of send it back in a similar state?
37:44Yeah, so it's a rock ore when it comes out
37:48and then when you put it back in,
37:50it's a solid of uranium oxide typically
37:53and it's contained in a canister that's steel
37:57and then concrete and layers upon layers of shielding.
38:00But Catherine, they're not equally as safe.
38:05Yeah, so it's fairly straightforward
38:07to maintain a fission reaction at a stable steady state
38:13at this point with our development of technology,
38:15but there are feedbacks that could drive that reaction
38:20into super criticality
38:23and you have to spend a lot of time
38:24balancing the reaction in the reactor.
38:26Whereas a fusion reaction, its tendency is to end.
38:30This is why it's so hard to make a fusion reactor.
38:32It's a very hard reaction to maintain
38:35because it's hard to maintain
38:36and because there's not this sort of opportunity
38:39for easy super criticality,
38:41then you don't end up in this situation
38:43where you might become overpowered,
38:44create a lot of extra heat you weren't ready for,
38:46melt things down, et cetera.
38:47And so fundamentally, since the stable state
38:50of a fusion reaction is to not be happening,
38:53it's a little bit easier to keep them safe.
38:55And you don't have radioactive byproducts.
38:59So in fusion, there are activated byproducts,
39:01but not the kind of high level fission products
39:04that are very radioactive for a very long time
39:07that we'll have to manage
39:08as a spent nuclear fuel in fission.
39:09Gotcha.
39:10And you have to dispose of it in some careful way.
39:12That's right.
39:13And multiple nations are making real progress on that.
39:15Finland is just about to start operating
39:18their final repository.
39:20Canada has just selected a site
39:22for their final repository.
39:23Sweden has gotten permission to begin
39:26constructing their final repository.
39:28And one other quick point.
39:30I think the fear factor here
39:32is if there is an accident,
39:35it will kill many, many more people
39:37than if there's a coal mining accident.
39:40You can tout the deaths per terawatt hours
39:45and nukes look very good until they don't look good.
39:49And if there's some disaster,
39:52if a terrorist takes over the plant
39:54or it becomes the target of a weapon
39:57and there's some kind of radioactive leakage,
40:01if it's in the fission,
40:03if in the fusion, maybe, as you said,
40:05it's not self-driven,
40:06so maybe you'll just snuff it out.
40:08But what do you tell someone
40:10who's concerned about how widespread
40:14the damage would be in an accident
40:16relative to any other sources of death
40:19from any other source of energy?
40:21If I have time to bring that person
40:23to a nuclear power plant,
40:24I would and show them the containment structure.
40:27But if I don't, then I would show them a video
40:30of Sandia experimenting with the structures
40:34that protect us from nuclear power plant accidents.
40:37And those-
40:38So Sandia, is it FFRDC?
40:40Yeah, Sandia National Laboratory-
40:43In New Mexico? Are they in New Mexico, I think?
40:45Yeah, that's correct, in Albuquerque.
40:47Did some experiments to show
40:48that you could ram a jet engine
40:49right into the side of a containment building,
40:52a sort of standard steel and concrete structure,
40:56the dome over the reactor,
40:57and it survives just fine.
40:59Who thought of that
41:00as an actual experiment to conduct?
41:02That was from Mission Impossible.
41:04Yeah, exactly.
41:05They were filming.
41:05Why not?
41:06They said, throw it in there.
41:07Tom wanted a new challenge.
41:09If we're talking about not in my neighborhood, right?
41:13How you get people to come on board,
41:15which is great.
41:15Education, give people knowledge about safety.
41:18If you want to get people on board
41:20and to have a nuclear power plant,
41:21small or large, in their neighborhood,
41:23just put a Chick-fil-A in it.
41:25If you've got a Chick-fil-A
41:26attached to a nuclear power plant,
41:28people are on board.
41:29You do a little drive-thru, you enjoy the...
41:31That's how that works.
41:32Is this the new PR campaign
41:33for the Department of Nuclear Energy?
41:36Exactly, nuclear waste and Chick-fil-A bring you...
41:39Power plants like that do produce a lot of jobs
41:42and tax revenues that communities love.
41:44Maybe they use them to build a Chick-fil-A.
41:47Okay, so data centers are connected,
41:50surprisingly enough, to the people behind AI,
41:53which are the tech bros.
41:56As such, it's important for their model going forward
42:00that they have clean, reliable energy.
42:04So surely the tech bros are going to be driving
42:06this whole thing along
42:08so as nuclear energy does become
42:10the go-to source of energy for this in the future.
42:13We're seeing it already.
42:14We've seen requests for proposals
42:18and power purchase agreements signed
42:20to ensure that new reactors are coming online.
42:24Amazon has invested in Xenergy.
42:26Microsoft has invested in restarting
42:28the Three Mile Island unit.
42:31We have very clear demonstration
42:33that the money is already going
42:35towards those new deployments and restarts.
42:38And I think it's helpful to have those deep pockets
42:41working towards reducing the risk for end-of-the-kind builds.
42:45But yeah, it's hopefully going to result in more power
42:48even than those tech companies are going to need
42:50because that's what we need for our country.
42:52Do we see in our ever quest for capitalism
42:55and to market anything that we can
42:58that these SMRs become so small
43:01that literally they'll be marketed
43:03as you could have your own nuclear reactor
43:05in your house, right?
43:06Like I could see a day-
43:07Your own power generator.
43:08Yeah, well like-
43:08That's a whole fusion, Mr. Fusion.
43:10Well, I mean, but that's like gives a whole new-
43:11Back to the future.
43:12Meaning to nuking leftovers, right?
43:13Is that the limit of this?
43:14You can literally nuke leftovers.
43:16And here's an example.
43:18In 1968, the movie 2001 came out.
43:21Imagining the world in 2001,
43:24which is 33 years after that.
43:27And what they could not figure
43:32was that the future of computing
43:35would be distributed rather than centralized.
43:38So to them, the modern computer
43:40was this one giant computer, how?
43:43Controlling the whole ship.
43:45The super brain.
43:46The super one brain.
43:47And they weren't thinking that it could be miniaturized.
43:50You don't need a whole room.
43:51It can fit on your hip.
43:52And I can watch movies.
43:54We can all watch different movies.
43:55And this is exactly, and Gary referenced it,
43:58in comparison to smartphone development.
43:59It could get, these reactors could get so small.
44:02So that's a question back to our expert here.
44:05Is that a future possibility?
44:08And let me add that I'm impressed
44:12at the level that private enterprise is participating
44:15in trying to solve our energy future.
44:17Because I don't think it was always like that.
44:18There was like, each city had its power plant
44:20or each county, and that was it.
44:22And it was a utility, and it did the thing,
44:25and the government, and that was it.
44:27But in an entrepreneurial atmosphere,
44:30it seems to me, yeah, I wanna invent that
44:32so you buy the product from me.
44:33I wanna go to a picnic and show off and go,
44:35anybody want a smoothie?
44:37Here we go, I'm gonna power it
44:38with my nuclear, miniaturized.
44:40That seems like overkill, but okay.
44:42Yeah, but it's a, you can just shake.
44:45No, it's a damn good smoothie.
44:47Not the way I make it.
44:48With energy powder, strawberries, bananas.
44:51That probably will be overkill
44:53for especially the regulatory
44:55and nuclear nonproliferation community.
44:57You wanna make sure that certain nuclear material
44:59is kept extremely well controlled
45:01and observed, counted, tracked.
45:05Because there's a universe in which
45:07if you could put it in a suitcase, a briefcase,
45:11then there's a potential to make a dirty bomb
45:14out of some of the spent fuel.
45:16There's too many bad actors around for it to be unlicensed.
45:20I'm just saying, we are throwing that way into the future.
45:23So far in the future.
45:25Yeah, with Mr. Fusion, our little nuclear home friend.
45:28Mr. Fusion, yes.
45:28I mean, how far are we actually away?
45:31These things are obviously being tested,
45:33but how far are we away from commercially
45:35being able to bring them to a situation
45:38where they go online?
45:40Yeah, the first couple are in the very early stages
45:42of construction and we're expecting them to be completed.
45:46Some of them hope for a five-year construction timeline,
45:48but it'll probably be more like 10 years.
45:50And then if we don't have orders on the books
45:53for more and more of them in the next year or two,
45:56then you have to wait another 10 years for the next one.
45:58And so what we're seeing from data centers
46:00and other kinds of companies,
46:01utilities like Dominion thinking
46:03about small modular reactors,
46:05then you see those orders,
46:07that's an opportunity to have those first deployments
46:09five, 10 years from now that are connected to the grid,
46:13followed by the next many.
46:16I just want one in my basement.
46:17I want to be able to go to a party and say,
46:19just got a nuclear reactor in my basement.
46:22You think anyone's going to stay at this party?
46:25Exactly.
46:26You just want to be the first one on the block
46:28with a nuclear power reactor.
46:29The guy's just looking at you like, what?
46:30And then walks out.
46:32So we've got to land this plane.
46:33So Catherine, what are you working on right now?
46:37So I run a research group that writes software
46:41for modeling and simulating advanced reactors
46:44and their fuel cycles.
46:45A lot of what we've been talking about today,
46:46I write multi-physics software with my graduate students.
46:49Wait, what does multi-physics mean?
46:50What does that mean?
46:51Yeah, it's when you combine different physics,
46:53especially when you're combining physics
46:55at different scales.
46:56In my case, it's neutronics
46:58on the very small sort of angstroms
47:00and 10 to the negative 14 seconds kind of time scales
47:04with thermohydraulics,
47:05which is more like seconds and meters.
47:08If those two things affect each other,
47:09which they do when you're talking about reactor feedbacks
47:12and reactor accidents.
47:14The actual reaction is this tiny little nuclear thing
47:18that has to plug into this macroscopic facility
47:22out of which you draw energy.
47:24So I hadn't thought about it that way.
47:25Multi-physics, is that the word?
47:27That's right, multi-scale multi-physics
47:30if you want to sound highfalutin.
47:32And that's not only in size,
47:33but in time scale as well for phenomena.
47:36That's right, that's right.
47:37So I studied advanced reactors
47:39like molten salt reactors
47:40and high temperature gas reactors,
47:41sodium cooled fast reactors and recycling strategies.
47:45This is something really important.
47:46Okay, but do you earn your keep at the university?
47:49Do you also teach?
47:50I do, I absolutely do.
47:52It's my favorite thing to do in the whole wide world.
47:54I'm sure you understand.
47:56How about that?
47:56Very cool.
47:57Just make sure she's an honest broker here.
48:00Sounds a lot like she is.
48:01You seem like you'd be great at it.
48:02You're very relatable.
48:03You make it understandable for somebody
48:06that doesn't know the world.
48:08I could borrow a few jokes though.
48:09I don't think they're laughing enough.
48:1150 bucks a joke, you're in.
48:14And I want to go in your bunker
48:16when the whole place melts down from nuclear.
48:18I know you got the best bunker, I know you do.
48:20Only if I get to go to the party
48:22with the reactor in the basement.
48:24There you go, it all comes full circle.
48:27Well, let me offer a cosmic perspective here.
48:30All right.
48:31If I may.
48:32You may.
48:33Yeah.
48:34Those of us old enough remember
48:37back in the 50s and 60s
48:39where people were imagining futures
48:43and you didn't have to wait longer than a month,
48:47maybe not even a week
48:48before one of the major magazines,
48:51Life Magazine, Look Magazine,
48:53had a cover story that the city of tomorrow,
48:56the home of tomorrow,
48:58transportation of tomorrow,
49:00food of tomorrow.
49:01And you'd see these artists' illustrations
49:04of what tomorrow would look like.
49:07And that tomorrow was not infinitely far away,
49:10it was like in your lifetime.
49:13What every single one of those projections got wrong
49:17was the assumption
49:19that we'd have unlimited access to energy.
49:23Because every one of those illustrations,
49:25they had flying cars, motorized sidewalks,
49:29everything was in motion from a power source,
49:33an energy source.
49:36And what it got wrong was,
49:37no, we didn't walk into a future of unlimited energy,
49:41we walked into a future of cheap computing.
49:46So we became an information technology future,
49:51not an energy technology future.
49:54And what I wonder now,
49:56hearing these developments on the horizon
49:58and our needs that will require it,
50:01perhaps, though it's long overdue,
50:05we're on the doorstep of a future
50:08where we derive our energy from any one of a dozen ways
50:11and we have as much of it as we need
50:13to do anything we want.
50:15And that is a cosmic perspective.
50:17Join me in thanking Catherine Hough
50:20for your brilliant expositions
50:22on the state of the industry.
50:24And dude.
50:26Always fun.
50:27Good to have you, man.
50:28Absolutely.
50:29And tell Frank Oz I said hi
50:30because we became good friends when he was on the show.
50:32Yeah, he's not a fan.
50:36Okay.
50:38Why are you laughing?
50:39Because it's funny.
50:42All right, Gary, we'll catch up with you next time.
50:44For StarTalk Special Edition,
50:46Neil deGrasse Tyson,
50:47as always, bidding you to keep looking up.
50:56Transcribed by https://otter.ai