Nuclear Energy 101: The Yellow Cake Boys at K12Live! (Cambridge Science Festival 2014) - By MITK12Videos
Transcript
00:0-1 | this afternoon . Money will , I'm here with Sam | |
00:02 | and Sam go to Sam's and we go by . | |
00:05 | We can call ourselves the yellowcake point . And I | |
00:07 | hope to make it clear to you why we call | |
00:08 | ourselves healthy . Was a little later in the presentation | |
00:10 | of the present history . For now , we're gonna | |
00:13 | talk to them about nuclear interview 1 to 1 . | |
00:15 | And uh , all of us have sort of experience | |
00:18 | in the nuclear energy world and I want to try | |
00:22 | to make you buy . We're passionate about nuclear energy | |
00:24 | , part part of our future himself . Why ? | |
00:27 | Why ? Why should you guys be interested award ? | |
00:31 | Why ? Why should you care about nuclear ? I | |
00:34 | think the real reason you should care about is because | |
00:36 | you're using it right now . We're using it to | |
00:37 | power our lights . We use it every day . | |
00:40 | We don't think about it because every day we're using | |
00:44 | electronic devices are using iphones or something like that . | |
00:47 | The power of plug into the wall . So if | |
00:51 | you're like me , you're like , a lot of | |
00:52 | people might have a phone or something that you use | |
00:56 | your morning mr after morning and you're back looks sort | |
00:59 | of like this . And then by now your batteries | |
01:03 | start to look a little more like this , it's | |
01:04 | a little later today . By the time you leave | |
01:07 | here today you may have a bad it looks like | |
01:10 | , especially if you're texting on top . So by | |
01:14 | the time your battery , listen , when you're probably | |
01:15 | looking around for a power , plug your phone into | |
01:19 | . But you know if you're like me , you | |
01:21 | don't really think about you just plug your phone and | |
01:23 | I don't really think about where electricity comes . And | |
01:25 | I feel like a lot of people , including myself | |
01:27 | included for a long time didn't even give any thought | |
01:29 | to where electricity comes from . It's just sort of | |
01:32 | an invisible thing to take for granted . So this | |
01:35 | car to start off our presentation we're talking about where | |
01:37 | does our left ? So the vast majority of electricity | |
01:41 | in the U . S . And around the world | |
01:43 | comes from a place that looks like this , this | |
01:45 | is a power plant in this case the coal burning | |
01:49 | power plant . And there's a couple of key features | |
01:51 | I want to point out , you can see the | |
01:53 | first thing you'll see at any one of these apartments | |
01:55 | have hundreds of these United States . Uh is this | |
01:59 | a bustling achievements ? Is not the coolest local building | |
02:01 | but it has a bunch of gigantic furnace isn't used | |
02:05 | to burn coal or natural gas or something . Another | |
02:10 | key feature of the gigantic chimneys , we call them | |
02:12 | bloom stacks . These chimneys that are used to direct | |
02:15 | the smoke . That's a minute when we are fuel | |
02:19 | in our change in our government . And our question | |
02:23 | , there are a lot of people don't realize when | |
02:25 | you see one of these gigantic stacks , Like I | |
02:29 | understand how someone's gigantic Saxon tend to think that that's | |
02:32 | a nuclear power . That's not the case . That | |
02:33 | has nothing to do with nuclear energy at all . | |
02:36 | Uh , these are called cooling towers . And if | |
02:38 | you ever get a chance to go up inside one | |
02:40 | and look at look at what's happening , if you | |
02:42 | look , if you walking along and look up a | |
02:45 | gigantic circular waterfall , essentially what these are used for | |
02:49 | it to cool the water that's being boiled . So | |
02:54 | nuclear documents certainly do use these . I'll talk about | |
02:56 | that a little bit . But when you see this | |
02:58 | , this , this isn't a nuclear reactor itself is | |
03:00 | pulling power . So those are a couple of key | |
03:02 | features of the power plant , uh , close tax | |
03:06 | cooling towers and combustion . And another thing that you | |
03:09 | can't see in this picture is the fuel trains . | |
03:12 | So all these power plants are burning or using some | |
03:14 | sort of fuel in this case is a coal burning | |
03:16 | power plant . You have about three of these 100 | |
03:20 | car trains and fuel that service a typical new cuts | |
03:23 | of coal burning power plant . Meanwhile , three of | |
03:26 | these drinks , about 300 part Train boats for 5 | |
03:29 | , 5 or the fuel coming in . Everybody that | |
03:33 | feel this particularly because that's a lot of fuel . | |
03:37 | So that's a typical problem . That's one of the | |
03:40 | most , most of our electors to come from . | |
03:41 | I'll get into nuclear and sit here in a moment | |
03:45 | . But before I do that , I want to | |
03:46 | talk about what is the basic recipe for electricity and | |
03:48 | just like the department of what's actually going on at | |
03:52 | the end of the day . I like to think | |
03:53 | of making electricity is sort of putting together a recipe | |
03:56 | and the earliest resume . There's only a couple key | |
03:58 | ingredients that we really need electricity . That's as much | |
04:02 | fundamental . First day . Here it is , you | |
04:04 | can see here is useless are the source from the | |
04:07 | beginning of time . Thinking of our time as a | |
04:09 | species , we've been burning things to produce energy and | |
04:13 | they were still burning a lot of stuff . For | |
04:15 | example , you need some sort of the sources , | |
04:18 | the next ingredient for producing like this . You need | |
04:20 | to channel that heat into water or into something that | |
04:24 | you can uh we can store that energy in case | |
04:28 | most higher plants channel the water introduced steam that steam | |
04:32 | you allowed to build up . In this case , | |
04:34 | you're seeing steam coming from a geyser in Yellowstone national | |
04:37 | park . It's just just showcase the power of steam | |
04:40 | to produce a lot of steam of these power plants | |
04:42 | . That steve is used to drive these gigantic terminus | |
04:47 | because you can take a steam rolled up and it | |
04:50 | allows these turbines to rotate and produce electricity . So | |
04:53 | that's the fourth main ingredient for the vast majority electricity | |
04:57 | tradition . The United States . He sourced only water | |
05:00 | , lots of steam and gigantic steam purpose . So | |
05:04 | if that's the recipe for electricity , how do you | |
05:06 | , and that's that's the recipe that's being cooked at | |
05:08 | this power plant , How did they get the electricity | |
05:10 | to you ? To me , how do they get | |
05:12 | into the M . I . T . Museums that | |
05:13 | you can watch this power way that we get to | |
05:16 | the uh our homes , our communities is through the | |
05:19 | electric power , massive system of high tension power papers | |
05:23 | crisscross the United States transport electricity power plants , a | |
05:27 | various source to our own service . So that electricity | |
05:32 | as a whole , that's the recipe for cooking electricity | |
05:35 | . What about nuclear ? How does nuclear power plants | |
05:37 | ? So at the end of day , when I | |
05:40 | first got my PhD at MIT , um , during | |
05:43 | orientation , one of the professors at M . I | |
05:46 | . T . Broke down . I feel like you | |
05:47 | did a really good job of breaking down what nuclear | |
05:49 | energy is exposed . Fundamental told us that at the | |
05:52 | end of the day , all nuclear energy is all | |
05:55 | nuclear energy is , it's just some hot rocks . | |
05:57 | We've just learned how as humans , we've learned how | |
06:00 | to make very special hot rocks and use that as | |
06:03 | our energy source instead of burning coal or natural gas | |
06:06 | or wood or something along those lines . So what | |
06:09 | do we make this hot rocks out ? So you | |
06:11 | may have seen this in school , You may have | |
06:13 | seen this on science videos of some sort of periodic | |
06:15 | table . Government . This is used to categorize all | |
06:18 | of the fundamental building blocks that we see in nature | |
06:22 | . And on the box we've seen the heaviest atoms | |
06:25 | that are known to man . And in particular when | |
06:28 | we build our special hot rocks , the reaction we're | |
06:31 | looking at a couple of heavy elements is how the | |
06:34 | elements are posted . Lots of neutrons and protons . | |
06:37 | So many of those neutrons and protons that they become | |
06:40 | unstable . And a couple of key elements that were | |
06:43 | curious about that we're particularly interested in when we make | |
06:46 | our fuel for nuclear reactors . First one made for | |
06:50 | about it's called uranium . Another one that you may | |
06:53 | have heard of Antonio , a third one which has | |
06:58 | been used and may be used in the future . | |
07:00 | Not this one in the U . S . And | |
07:01 | china India . And the indian US Authority is also | |
07:04 | very promising . So these are three of the key | |
07:06 | ingredients that we're interested in is nuclear engineers and building | |
07:10 | on making our hot rocks to produce liners . So | |
07:15 | , uh so those are the elements , What do | |
07:19 | those elements look like when you dig them out of | |
07:21 | the ground ? Well around the world . There are | |
07:23 | a number of different minds when we mind your brain | |
07:26 | and we put it on the ground , it looks | |
07:28 | something like this . It's called . Yellow cake is | |
07:30 | probably put ourselves in yellow cake points . That's uranium | |
07:34 | when he pulled out of the ground before you start | |
07:35 | fabricating in the nuclear fuel uranium oxide . Looking at | |
07:39 | this yellowish color , it's called yellow cake . And | |
07:43 | as you , as you guys can enjoy after the | |
07:46 | program , we have some yellow actually yellow cake you | |
07:49 | can eat . And if your if your question is | |
07:52 | how much this yellow cake , you need to power | |
07:54 | your all of your electronic devices , everything you use | |
07:58 | for your entire lifetime . It's about three small pieces | |
08:01 | of cake is all the uranium , we need all | |
08:04 | of this . It's about that . You got a | |
08:08 | piece of cake . Eat your entire energy footprint for | |
08:10 | the entire lifetime . Like on your way out to | |
08:13 | take over here . This is what this is what | |
08:16 | we used the building blocks for . Pop rocks , | |
08:20 | rain yelping Okay now . So what is some of | |
08:25 | the basic physics ? What are we actually doing ? | |
08:27 | What's actually going on in these hot rocks ? So | |
08:30 | the fundamental idea that we want , the fundamental thing | |
08:32 | that we care about , what's called nuclear visions of | |
08:34 | the nuclear reaction that we're particularly interested in here . | |
08:37 | And what happens is you get this gigantic uranium or | |
08:40 | phoning foreign new . Please . It's got protons and | |
08:43 | neutrons that are building , develop uh tries through this | |
08:48 | and it's unstable . It's not quite unstable of to | |
08:50 | give us energy . We have to give it a | |
08:51 | little bit of a nudge nudge that we give it | |
08:54 | nuclear reactors is what's called approach a neutron . But | |
08:56 | we have to have an extra neutron comes in hits | |
08:59 | this nucleus And it gets absorbed as far as an | |
09:02 | unstable uh 36 couples called compound . It's unstable and | |
09:08 | it splits apart , performed two brand new atoms or | |
09:11 | nuclear tripped on barrier , a form of variety , | |
09:15 | different other byproducts . In any case , this nucleus | |
09:18 | splits apart into two new nuclei and it emits a | |
09:22 | couple extra neutrons in addition to releasing a lot of | |
09:25 | energy a lot . And what's really cool is that | |
09:29 | you can use those extra neutrons that are admitted to | |
09:32 | create a chain reaction . So , in a nuclear | |
09:34 | reactor , that's what we're doing essentially . We're trying | |
09:36 | to create this chain reaction to make it self sustaining | |
09:39 | . So they can continue on its own and producing | |
09:43 | a lot of energy for us . So with that | |
09:46 | I am going to , mm hmm . Mr Coburn | |
09:49 | . And allow SAM to give you a little bit | |
09:51 | of a his experience in the nuclear world . Thanks | |
09:54 | book . Uh so I want to switch gears here | |
09:56 | a little bit . You can get a little secret | |
09:58 | . You want to talk about something actually related to | |
10:01 | nuclear power . We'll talk about Elvis . Uh I | |
10:04 | want to talk about the state of Alaska and I | |
10:07 | want to talk about bobby Fischer . So , one | |
10:09 | of these things have to be a nuclear power . | |
10:11 | Uh 1958 hours . During the last 15 , the | |
10:15 | state about the fisher became the Nuggets grandmaster at the | |
10:19 | age of 14 . But most importantly , in 1958 | |
10:22 | the USs Dallas uh completed the first submerged circumnavigation of | |
10:26 | the North Pole . This is only possible because it | |
10:29 | didn't think about it traveled problem Pearl Harbor y all | |
10:33 | the way up to the North Pole , but around | |
10:35 | the North Pole and then came back to Greenland without | |
10:38 | one . What's up once the entire time . And | |
10:40 | it did so only because it didn't require diesel power | |
10:44 | or any other source of propulsion . It did so | |
10:46 | on nuclear power . And the reason I tell you | |
10:49 | this is not only because that's really cool and it | |
10:51 | did so in nuclear power . That was in 1958 | |
10:54 | . Uh just go uh election , say most of | |
10:58 | us were alive at that point . Uh So this | |
11:01 | technology has been proven to be reliable and safe for | |
11:05 | a little . Uh Mhm . This year is the | |
11:08 | crew of the USS Nevada in 2003 . Uh this | |
11:11 | is a US Navy nuclear powered submarine and I'm showing | |
11:15 | you this picture for two reasons . Uh first this | |
11:18 | is a crew of about 150 people . Uh the | |
11:21 | vast majority of these people , I've never got a | |
11:24 | college education human being straight from high school yet . | |
11:27 | The Navy has taught them not just safely upgrade reactor | |
11:30 | for extended periods of time and they do so safely | |
11:33 | . Uh Also , second resentful because that's me right | |
11:37 | there . Uh so I have 10,000 hours of experience | |
11:40 | operating a credible nuclear reactor . Uh I'm an economics | |
11:43 | major . Um no significant technical background , But within | |
11:48 | about a year and a half maybe taught me the | |
11:50 | basics of nuclear engineering , talking about compulsion and it | |
11:54 | made me safe and capable of operating a reactor . | |
11:57 | I did that for 10,000 hours in the most danger | |
11:59 | that ever happened to that entire time spilling hot coffee | |
12:02 | . And so uh , you can truly be done | |
12:05 | safely and effectively . Right , Okay . So uh | |
12:11 | other people have concerns about the radiation side . And | |
12:14 | I'm here to personally attest to you that it is | |
12:16 | safe radiation perspective . When I left the nuclear navy | |
12:19 | in 2008 , This is what lifetime does . 127 | |
12:22 | mill around . So that doesn't mean optimus United . | |
12:25 | So I want to put that in perspective for you | |
12:29 | . So here's one of my colleagues in the name | |
12:32 | . He's a pilot . Uh you can make some | |
12:35 | guesses about what his dose would be over 10,000 hours | |
12:39 | . I'll just go and tell you About $7,000 from | |
12:42 | naturally occurring sources of radiation because pilots operating in a | |
12:45 | bunch of higher altitude , they're exposed to much more | |
12:48 | confident radiation . Uh we are normally here the day | |
12:52 | I tell you this not to tell you that this | |
12:54 | pilot season unsafe dose of radiation he receives a completely | |
12:57 | safe dose of radiation . We never think twice about | |
13:00 | it . But if you quickly place uh , context | |
13:03 | , I got a lot less radiation uh , in | |
13:05 | this pilot that we don't consider his Japanese has this | |
13:09 | from that . Okay . And the reason we don't | |
13:13 | consider his Japanese has this for radiation point because there | |
13:16 | are naturally occurring sources of radiation . So I had | |
13:20 | a banana this morning . I probably had about uh | |
13:23 | , on average of banana every day in my entire | |
13:25 | life . During that , during my lifespan , I | |
13:28 | received as much radiation from the potassium inside of banana | |
13:32 | . Uh , as I did while I was operating | |
13:34 | reactors horse submarine . Uh , we'll see radiation from | |
13:38 | , uh , don't worry from uh , from their | |
13:42 | solar cosmic radiation that uh , sitting on the beach | |
13:45 | . You talked about when you fly in an airplane | |
13:47 | to get additional radiation from the sun and cosmic sources | |
13:51 | , uh , there's even radiation in our smoke detectors | |
13:53 | and raisins in there and it's used to detect smoke | |
13:57 | and these are things that save our lives daily basis | |
14:00 | . So radiation is all around us . It's time | |
14:02 | to be afraid of at natural doses . It's something | |
14:05 | that's naturally occurring . It's just as naturally for best | |
14:08 | craft . Yeah . Okay . So going back to | |
14:12 | the native context , the actual first commercial reactor , | |
14:16 | The United States was in the 1950s . And it's | |
14:19 | actually based on that first Navy reactor design . It | |
14:22 | makes less sense . It's reliable design can be used | |
14:25 | effectively in a large scale . And so this is | |
14:28 | very similar to what To what we used today to | |
14:31 | what was on that first nuclear-powered submarine . The USS | |
14:34 | mounts back in 1958 . So , uh , that's | |
14:37 | really good things over to Sam's share . All right | |
14:42 | , thank you Sam . And now could I go | |
14:45 | into showing a few gives every effort that we have | |
14:48 | today in the producing energy and also uh space travel | |
14:54 | . So , this is a picture of what a | |
14:56 | nuclear power plant looks like . Everything here will be | |
14:59 | insane for a natural gas fired power point for solar | |
15:03 | power plant . The only difference is in this power | |
15:06 | that we have the uranium fuel and nuclear reactor because | |
15:10 | used to produce the everything else , the generator , | |
15:13 | the the cooling tower has a point . This is | |
15:20 | a picture of an actual nuclear amount of plant in | |
15:23 | the central coast of California . I'm about 15 miles | |
15:27 | from where I went . Uh My neighbors work at | |
15:31 | and you can see the two circular domes . Those | |
15:34 | are two reactors are introducing a gigawatt of electricity each | |
15:40 | and then they just heat up water from the pacific | |
15:43 | ocean instead of having completely counters , this provides enough | |
15:47 | energy . Was something like a million people we're here | |
15:53 | . Yeah . And then this is another picture of | |
15:56 | regard plant this one has the cooling towers that you | |
15:59 | saw forward , keep your other reactors and they're going | |
16:04 | out just did not examine . I think this is | |
16:07 | hard to do . Okay . And then what do | |
16:11 | we do with the waste that comes out of the | |
16:14 | reactor in the US we actually keeping him on side | |
16:17 | at all advance . And we just have a lot | |
16:20 | of these nuclear fuel assemblies or bundles like this example | |
16:24 | we have over here stand the reactor for about five | |
16:27 | years . We've taken out for these big swimming basically | |
16:31 | where they can cool down for a number of years | |
16:35 | . Usually think they do that after 30 years now | |
16:40 | . Chris is uh currently we have all these pools | |
16:44 | after reactor sort of people . After a while . | |
16:49 | We just take it out and put in these large | |
16:51 | cement casts in the parking lot . And use this | |
16:55 | for ground . The interim storage in the U . | |
16:57 | S . Strategy is to develop a geological repositories of | |
17:02 | this is more than sufficient needs to store . Uh | |
17:08 | It's been a long shot in the long term waste | |
17:12 | disposal . Some of you have heard nothing happens is | |
17:14 | a picture of it located in Nevada and this is | |
17:19 | where they see the the field is for long term | |
17:23 | in this world . Crazy . Another option is deep | |
17:28 | or over disposal where you basically drill a big hole | |
17:32 | in the ground and a very geologically a stable area | |
17:36 | . And we have a lot of experience with this | |
17:39 | from petroleum , petroleum industry oil in the same concept | |
17:46 | . The whole in another option stuff that You look | |
17:54 | at mit and the industry is actually taking the waste | |
17:57 | from the nuclear reactor . We only actually burn about | |
18:00 | 5% of the energy in the fuel . And 20 | |
18:04 | actually reacting to take it and burn essentially more energy | |
18:11 | extra ways the car's there . So how much waste | |
18:16 | is there has uh , Sam mentioned earlier first nuclear | |
18:20 | governments came online the late 50s , early 60s , | |
18:24 | we used to produce 20% of our electricity . Have | |
18:28 | a sense that if you take all that waste from | |
18:30 | 20% of our electricity cap , Five or six decades | |
18:34 | and put it on uh , this football , if | |
18:37 | they're good stadium , it will be a walkabout this | |
18:42 | day . Not , not really all that much . | |
18:44 | It's just 100 yards Home by well over 50 yards | |
18:49 | wide and the height of this block , but only | |
18:53 | need about seven yards . So it's really not much | |
18:56 | wasted enough that we can contain it sure storage . | |
19:00 | If you set to replace all those nuclear power plants | |
19:05 | with coal or natural gas , how much waste increased | |
19:11 | ? Hence a theme about hundreds of millions to a | |
19:14 | billion of these states build all the way to go | |
19:18 | to the other . Uh , it's quite a support | |
19:24 | everyone . It's all over . Yeah . Yes . | |
19:29 | Now we look at a few other reactor text with | |
19:32 | following the reactors in space and this is the Voyager | |
19:35 | one aircraft , first spacecraft , that first man made | |
19:39 | object . That's a lot of the solar system . | |
19:42 | And this had a nuclear reactor located that used to | |
19:45 | produce about 400 watts of electricity for the past 35 | |
19:50 | years and will continue to use it for the next | |
19:52 | decade . And it just happened about 100 kg material | |
19:57 | that's used to . I have witnessed the satellite and | |
20:01 | send signals back to another examples of mars curiosity rover | |
20:07 | , prevent you represent Tamara's the curiosity is what about | |
20:12 | the first one to have nuclear power ? It has | |
20:15 | a nuclear reactor located to that's used to it's all | |
20:19 | our for its scientific instruments and for communication and allows | |
20:23 | it to operate all the time . You know , | |
20:26 | when you have Washington make sure . And then there's | |
20:34 | been some other concepts that have proposed and tested uh | |
20:39 | , give crunching here on earth . It's basically a | |
20:42 | large nuclear reactor that we used to hydrogen and to | |
20:46 | send okay satellites and space . Various cited reactor is | |
20:53 | pretty small but this is the same amount of energy | |
20:57 | . That's one of the largest power for a few | |
21:01 | seconds . Yes , it was for a long term | |
21:04 | Along My Family . Nuclear Power for Space Explorations of | |
21:09 | Saving one Voice . We only have having a reactor | |
21:12 | like this . Just power for decades and power and | |
21:18 | the space around . And the reason I think this | |
21:22 | is really interesting right now , we're considering going to | |
21:25 | MARS , and if we want to go too far | |
21:29 | , you can do it on the International space craft | |
21:34 | eventually want to get back for months . If we | |
21:37 | want to go there in a short amount of time | |
21:39 | , we really need a nuclear reaction . Now that | |
21:42 | there's really no other resources that can provide that much | |
21:45 | energy or that long period of time . That's another | |
21:49 | reason why my classes , people are getting into close | |
21:56 | . There's potential to |
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