00:00Three reasons why we should stop using nuclear energy.
00:03One, nuclear weapons proliferation.
00:06Nuclear technology made a violent entrance onto the world stage.
00:11Just one year after the world's first ever nuclear test explosion in 1944,
00:15two large cities were destroyed by just two single bombs.
00:18After that, reactor technology slowly evolved as a means of generating electricity,
00:23but it's always been intimately connected with nuclear weapons technology.
00:27It's nearly impossible to develop nuclear weapons without access to reactor technology.
00:32In fact, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty serves the purpose of spreading nuclear reactor technology
00:38without spreading nuclear weapons with limited success.
00:41In 40 years, five countries have developed their own weapons with the help of reactor technology.
00:47The fact of the matter is that it can be very hard to distinguish a covert nuclear weapons program
00:52from the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
00:55In the 1970s, the big nuclear powers were happily selling peaceful technology to smaller countries,
01:01which then developed weapons of their own.
01:04The road to deadly nuclear weapons is always paved with peaceful reactors.
01:09Two, nuclear waste and pollution.
01:12Spent nuclear fuel is not only radioactive, but also contains extremely poisonous chemical elements like plutonium.
01:20It loses its harmfulness only slowly over several tens of thousands of years.
01:24And there is also a process called reprocessing, which means the extraction of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.
01:31It can be used for two purposes, to build nuclear weapons or to use it as new fuel.
01:36But hardly any of it is used as fuel because we don't have the right kind of reactors for that.
01:41A milligram will kill you, a few kilograms make an atomic bomb,
01:45and even an inconspicuous country like Germany literally has tons of the stuff just lying around
01:51because reprocessing sounded like a good idea decades ago.
01:54And where will all the waste go?
01:56After dumping it into the ocean was forbidden, we've tried to bury it,
02:00but we can't find a place where it will definitely stay secure for tens of thousands of years.
02:05Over 30 countries operate nearly 400 reactors, managing several hundred thousands of tons of nuclear waste,
02:11and only one is currently serious about opening a permanent civilian waste storage, tiny Finland.
02:193. Accidents and disasters
02:21Over 60 years of nuclear power usage, there have been seven major accidents in reactors or facilities dealing with nuclear waste.
02:29Three of those were mostly contained, but four of them released significant amounts of radioactivity into the environment.
02:36In 1957, 1987 and 2011, large areas of land in Russia, Ukraine and Japan were rendered unfit for human habitation for decades to come.
02:47The number of deaths is highly disputed, but probably lies in the thousands.
02:52These disasters happened with nuclear reactors of very different types in very different countries and several decades apart.
02:59Looking at the numbers, we may as well ask ourselves,
03:02are 10% of the world's energy supply worth a devastating disaster every 30 years?
03:08Would 30% be worth another Fukushima or Chernobyl somewhere on Earth every 10 years?
03:13What area would have to be contaminated so we say, no more?
03:17Where is the line?
03:19So, should we use nuclear energy?
03:22The risks may outweigh the benefits, and maybe we should stop looking into this direction and drop this technology for good.
Comments