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most people know that World War two ended with a bang. or make that two

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giant incredibly devastating atomic bangs. but we'll talk about atomic weapon [map of Japan]

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a little later time. right now we want to focus on atomic power as a new world

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changing source of energy. well after World War two ended we turn

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to using nuclear reactions for non world destroying purposes. some geniuses even

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proposed using nuclear bombs as giant bulldozers. not even joking. in 1951 we

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started using nuclear reactions to produce small amounts of heat which made

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steam which then made electricity. it only powered four light bulbs but hey it

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was a start. and by 1956 both the Russians and the Americans had

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established very small but practical nuclear power plants. and before we go

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any further we're gonna hit the pause button. did we explain how splitting

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atoms ultimately results in electricity? well the short version is that we mine

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uranium, purify it, and then blast it apart in a chain reaction. in exchange we [ore taken from the ground]

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get tons and tons and tons of energy. sounds pretty miraculous right? well most

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people in the 1950s and 60s totally thought so. all our energy worries are

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over everything's gonna be awesome forever. well in 1954 the head of the

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Atomic Energy Commission predicted that nuclear energy would make electricity so

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cheap and plentiful that it would no longer be metered. be free energy for the

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world! but we still have power bills. today but a nuclear energy today only [man gives lecture]

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provides about 13 percent of the world's electricity. doesn't make energy pop out

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of the ground in a magical rainbow field of happiness and free power or whatever

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they were imagining you know way back in the day. here are a few of the challenges

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holding us back first of all uranium ore isn't just

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hanging out in candy piles next to power plants. it has to be mined and we've

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already talked about how much fun mining is.

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Uranium ore has the added bonus of radioactive. uranium also has to be

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enriched before it's useful. uranium ore comes out of the ground as u-238 [ore tours art gallery]

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and in order to be the juicy energy dense uranium we all know and love it

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has to be enriched to become u-235. well to get u-235 the ore has to be spun at

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crazy speeds in a centrifuge. like the graviton at the county fair

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about even more puke inducing. nuclear reactors aren't exactly super safe

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themselves either. not like they're exploding left and right but there have

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been some major disasters. so people have a right to be paranoid about the idea of

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nuclear power plants going up next to their hometown. and of course nuclear

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waste is also a big problem. well after we blast our enriched uranium

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with neutrons creating a nuclear reaction, [barrels of waste burn up ground]

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we're left with some very very dangerous radioactive goo. the bad news is that

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the stuff will continue to be poisonous for thousands of years. the good news is

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that when the aliens finally destroy all life on Earth

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we'll have left some nasty surprises for them. [aliens die from radioactive waste]

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