Endless Energy with Dr. Edward Teller

1981-09-09 film, with transcript

Catalog description: The story of nuclear power and breeder reactors as told by Dr. Edward Teller. He also speaks of fusion, fusion-fission hybrids, molten salt reactors, underground autonomous traveling wave reactors, regulations, TMI, and many other topics.

This is film 6254975 in our catalog.

Show transcript
01:00 In 1945, less than 1/10th of the people in this world
01:08 had a decent life.
01:15 The rest were poor and miserable.
01:23 Today there is still poverty over most of the face of earth
01:30 but at least a quarter of the people in a greatly increased population do not have to face the
01:47 hardest struggle for the daily existence. That is not enough more we have to come
01:59 but even so it's an accomplishment and to a great extent it was made possible
02:07 by the availability of energy. In particular this remarkable third of a
02:17 century that has passed essentially grew developed with the help of oil and
02:28 everybody knows that oil is becoming short. We must look for substitutes not
02:36 not one, but many substitutes. A substitute which is particularly important, which with
02:47 absolute certainty will grow into a major resource is nuclear energy. As we handle it
02:58 today it is the best source for producing electricity generating electricity in great
03:10 quantities the cheapest most reliable cleanest and safest now of course here is the rub safest
03:27 is that to be believed?
03:33 most people don't believe it but it is true
03:37 there is an argument
03:41 why one says nuclear energy cannot be safe
03:45 we want to make it foolproof
03:50 and it is a sad fact
03:55 that whenever you think you have something full proof,
04:00 you find that the fool is bigger than the proof.
04:06 Therefore, from the very beginning,
04:10 even 20 years before the building of the first big reactor,
04:16 we have introduced multiple safeguards.
04:21 the result is that in the most numerous big reactors in the free world
04:29 about which we have really complete information
04:32 not a single person's health has been damaged
04:38 it turns out that reactors are safe for people
04:46 even though people are not safe for reactors
04:50 the Three Mile Island accident which is the most remarkable example of such accidents damage
05:04 direct and indirect billions of dollars. Humans have lost none. Humans actually endangered
05:24 practically none and this is true throughout the world everywhere.
05:32 And this energy which can be now used for electricity and later for other things is
05:41 absolutely needed not only for the stability of the economy of the advanced world but very
05:51 particularly for the third world.
05:54 Because without energy, the developing countries won't develop.
06:00 They won't even eat.
06:03 They eat today because of the magnificent discoveries
06:08 of the green revolution.
06:11 But a green revolution works with new crops
06:15 that grow only with plenty of irrigation,
06:18 with plenty of energy-rich fertilizer the world needs energy and a big part of
06:29 it is nuclear energy and we must get rid of the unmotivated fears there is an
06:41 an answer to the question how we can get rid of these fears.
06:49 And that is reliable administration,
06:54 licensing procedures which will not
06:59 keep emphasizing the dangers, which will look once,
07:03 which will look hard, and which will permit safe reactors
07:10 to be constructed rapidly. And by rapidly I mean 6 years, maybe 5 years. It's most important
07:23 because the cost in nuclear energy is capital cost. If you have to pay your money and get
07:33 energy much later at an uncertain time the capital costs grow beyond all bounds
07:41 that is why we need not political appointees but truly competent people to regulate
07:51 with the development of nuclear energy we could have plenty provided
07:57 we do not run out of raw material
08:03 as we are beginning to run out of raw material
08:07 in connection with oil.
08:10 So this is now the remaining big problem.
08:15 What do we do to ensure a steady flow of nuclear fuel
08:24 from now, and I'm ambitious enough to say,
08:29 from now till forever.
08:33 There are many ways to do it.
08:37 And these many ways have to be carefully studied,
08:42 carefully compared.
08:43 It's high time that we get together
08:47 a number of experts
08:52 who will consider which is the best way to ensure the flow of nuclear materials in the long run,
09:04 or which are the several ways.
09:07 I can tell you a few eminently important examples.
09:12 Better mining methods.
09:15 With better mining methods, we can exploit poorer ores.
09:20 And of those, there are plenty.
09:24 Wherever you mine phosphate, an important fertilizer,
09:31 you can get uranium from the remnants.
09:35 The same holds for many other minerals.
09:39 It has been even attempted to get uranium out of seawater.
09:46 The Japanese have tried it.
09:47 and maybe they will really succeed
09:51 because actually in the capital investment
09:56 for a nuclear reactor the mined uranium
10:02 plays a relatively minor role one tenth or less of the cost
10:08 we could pay more for it
10:11 but with clever mining methods the question can be solved
10:15 There is one way in which we could do even better.
10:23 In the world there is five times as much thorium as there is uranium.
10:31 And all of the thorium can be used.
10:34 Not only a little less than 1% as we are now using in the case of uranium.
10:45 There are lots of reactors that could use thorium now.
10:53 What is done is that the thorium is irradiated, it then transforms itself
11:02 into a very valuable fuel uranium-233. You run the reactors on this fuel and make more uranium.
11:12 The trouble is that in the reactors which are now available can do the Canadian heavy water reactor
11:21 or the high temperature gas cooled reactor or maybe a slight modification of the light water reactor,
11:31 the epithermal reactor.
11:33 In all those cases, you do not reproduce usually the material that you have burnt up.
11:42 You will always have to add in a little uranium,
11:48 a little mined uranium, a few percent.
11:53 But for that much, we will always be able to pay.
11:58 Or there is an even better method in the long run.
12:03 In Oak Ridge, a beautiful method has been developed
12:08 where thorium is dissolved in molten salt
12:14 and which can breed, which can give you, starting from the fuel,
12:23 uranium-233, that you obtain from thorium,
12:27 starting from that fuel, you get more than you started from.
12:30 That is what is meant by breeding.
12:33 But little work has been done on it, and it is far away.
12:38 there is still another really remarkable new possibility
12:45 which you must see in order to believe,
12:50 or at least see a part of it.
12:55 And now, here it is.
13:01 What is it?
13:04 You can't see it at once.
13:06 it's something complicated many years ago
13:13 for my four year old son I wrote an atomic alphabet
13:19 and for F
13:23 I have written this F stands for fission
13:28 that is what things do when they get wobbly and big
13:32 and must split in two And just to compound the atomic confusion, what fission has done can be undone by fusion.
13:46 Only it's not true.
13:49 It's the big nuclei that suffer fission.
13:53 It is the small nuclei like hydrogen that can fuse and release energy.
14:01 Congress passed a law in 20 years after 20 billion dollars it will work maybe they forgot
14:14 to legislate 20 splendid ideas we already had 20 we need 20 more it's an immensely difficult job
14:25 A very hot gas, very dilute, but extremely hot, confined by a magnetic field, is moving in within all these pipes and looked at with all these complicated apparatus to see whether we are beginning to succeed.
14:48 And we are on the verge of success, but still a lot of work has to be done.
14:55 And there is one idea that I would like to contribute.
15:01 Not only mine, many of us think of it.
15:05 Fusion is good.
15:07 Fission is good.
15:09 The two together, a hybrid, might be much better.
15:15 Much easier.
15:17 Might be doable in 10 years and for less than $10 billion.
15:22 and solve all the problems of raw materials for fission and fusion forever so that it's
15:31 practically a renewable energy source now i told you of what we dream let's go now and
16:12 will be built a safe containment building about as big as present reactors
16:23 one big difference instead of using just the seven tenths of one percent
16:34 uranium 235 and a little more of the other material
16:39 We are trying to use practically all the uranium
16:44 Because that uranium will capture neutrons
16:50 Transform itself into plutonium Which again is an excellent fuel
16:56 And thereby we multiply the fuel supply
17:01 A hundred fold A decision has been made
17:06 to go ahead and so at last
17:09 on one of these projects actual and very practical work
17:15 will be done as is already being done
17:19 on the Phoenix reactors in France.
17:26 We also have put in various parts of the country
17:31 a lot of work into studying
17:35 this kind of a reactor. We work with different kind of neutrons, these fast neutrons, which
17:45 make breathing possible. And we have checked that this reactor has a very good property,
17:52 that wherever it becomes a little hotter, there the reactivity will decrease. An important
18:01 safety feature also the fuel is put into it in a form that has to be that will
18:09 live twice as long as it lives in present type reactors an important
18:17 factor in making energy less expensive and they maybe we can make it live four
18:24 times as long it won't be uranium it will be uranium oxide it will be cooled
18:32 by an excellent cooler coolant sodium which will produce no pressure or
18:41 practically none and thereby again make the reactor considerably safer all this
18:52 This will take quite a few years.
18:56 I wish it could be done in six years.
19:00 It might take ten, but now we know it will go ahead and it will be done.
19:10 Still, a number of questions, a number of worries remain, and we shall have to talk
19:17 about them.
19:18 Now, this, in these cylinders, you have the fuel that goes into a fast breeder.
19:29 It is uranium, purified, used once in the reactors as we have them today.
19:40 but almost 100 times as much is still in there if you use it in the first breeder
19:49 it is in the form of uranium fluoride crystals and it is half full you can hear the hollow sound
20:02 and the full sound here it's filled up to here approximately
20:08 And what you see before you here, in these many containers, is equivalent in energy to the whole coal reserves of the United States.
20:29 This is the material.
20:33 I hold it in my hands.
20:38 which will go into the breeder reactor.
20:42 Approximately one part plutonium oxide
20:47 with three parts of uranium oxide.
20:51 It is a material about which the most horrible kind
20:56 of scare propaganda has been spread around.
21:00 It has been said that this material
21:04 could kill the population of the whole earth.
21:08 This little material here.
21:11 The fact is that if it would be distributed in the worst way
21:15 through an explosion, anybody outside the immediate range of the explosion
21:24 would be probably unharmed.
21:28 The exaggeration is not a million fold.
21:32 It is more than a billionfold.
21:36 We must know the truth, the actual danger of plutonium which exists,
21:42 but which is not great, and one should know the precise truth about it.
21:51 I am now sitting at the control panel of one of the Oak Ridge reactors.
21:59 In a few years from now, there will be a similar control panel for the fast breeder.
22:10 I think I can say that there is no other reactor whose safety has been so thoroughly, so reliably analyzed as that of the fast breeder.
22:30 Still, it is predictable that opponents of the fast breeder will raise objections.
22:40 There is not as much experience with it
22:45 as with the reactors which we are running now.
22:48 Of course not.
22:51 The fast breeder contains sodium
22:55 in contact with water.
22:59 It gives a violent reaction.
23:02 There won't be any water there.
23:04 still there is in the reactor a lot of active material if something should go wrong
23:20 even a portion of this active material could become critical again
23:27 if it got surrounded by water
23:33 or by some other hydrogen substance there will be criticism
23:38 and this has been
23:42 dealt with and will be dealt with still
23:47 to quiet all worries
23:51 there might be a radical remedy
23:54 future reactors,
23:58 not the one we are building now, but future reactors
24:03 might be designed for use underground
24:08 deep enough, a couple of hundred feet,
24:15 so that we know that no matter what happens,
24:19 no radioactivity can come to the surface.
24:22 We have lots of experience about that by having performed many explosions, nuclear explosions in Nevada.
24:31 So we know very, very much about containment.
24:36 I am not recommending that this be done.
24:39 I am recommending that this be studied.
24:42 And if the study shows that in this way, if the reactors are already properly designed,
24:54 an underground reactor can be as inexpensive as a surface reactor,
25:02 then this might have a big and favorable psychological effect.
25:09 And after all, one never can have too much safety.
25:15 I therefore recommend we go ahead with the reactor.
25:20 We consider carefully how best to do it.
25:25 We consider all alternatives of other ways
25:30 of getting material, getting raw material
25:34 for future nuclear energy so that it should last effectively forever.
25:40 And then make the best choice.
25:43 A very important part of that program is to build and build well
25:49 the fast breeder reactor in Clinch River.