The future of nuclear power

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning, it’s a new year. Well, today we have doctor Robert Zubrin, and he’s a well renowned nuclear and aerospace engineer and an author, explains how nuclear power works and how it’s part of our future. And well, I hope you had a happy new year, and we’re here today, and Robert, give us your give us your vision for

0:25 the future on nuclear power.

0:29 Speaker 2 Okay, Well, nuclear power is a tremendous potential source of energy. I talk about it a lot in my new book called The Case for Nukes, which people can get on Amazon. But basically, you get about a million times as much energy per pound with a nuclear fuel as you can get with fossil fuels, and there is no carbon emissions

0:52 or anything like that. And actually, I think that is why the environmentalists opposed nuclear power, because it would solve a problem they need to have.

1:02 Speaker 1 Well, I argue, I have a lot of friends that are are well, how do you say it best, environmentalists or their believers of the liberal cause, and they’re my friends. I don’t hold it against them. I try to talk common sense into them that the only thing that’s going to replace oil someday within the next twenty years thirty years.

1:28 That is going to be nuclear power. It’s not going to be wind mills, it’s not going to be you know whatever else, solar cells.

1:38 Speaker 2 Well, sure, I mean, look, fossil fuels replaced wood because they’re more energy differs. And if we had remained reliant on wood during the Industrial Revolution, we would have destroyed all the forests in the world completely. But unfortunately we went to coal and in oil. But now a type of fuel that has even less impact on nature than

2:05 fossil fuels is nuclear power. And just to give you an idea, if you take the few parts per million that there are of uranium and thorium and ordinary granite, ordinary rocks that you see everywhere, for instance in the mountains and New Hampshire, Okay, a kilogram of such rock has more energy in it than one hundred kilograms of

2:26 oil if used in a nuclear reactor.

2:31 Speaker 1 And now I believe that, and that’s what’s gonna happen. And the other thing is, I know, you know, I no longer talk everybody talk the word fossil fuels. Oil is not from dinosaurs. Oil is made by the planet Earth.

2:47 It’s in other words, to allow the plaques to roll smoothly amongst themselves. Whoever, whoever our creator was, that’s what he did with your planet Earth.

3:00 Speaker 2 Well, I don’t know if that’s true, but I can tell you one thing that does an awful lot more nuclear fuel around than there is oil, virtually unlimited at the rates we’re currently using it.

3:11 Speaker 1 But the rates we’re currently using we only have a couple hundred years of oil left.

3:14 Speaker 2 That’s all that could well be true, But we would have millions of years of nuclear power.

3:20 Speaker 1 Yes, may we survive. What else would you like to tell I mean, it’s the new year, it’s Sunday, mortal. What else you want to tell our audience?

3:28 Speaker 2 Well, here’s the thing. Okay. Nuclear power was developed first for the out of bond to win World War Two, but then the nuclear submarines in the nineteen fifties, and then the submarine reactors were converted to make power plants.

3:45 And the first nuclear submarine reactor in the first power plant took it took three years to develop them. Now it takes sixteen. And that’s because a hostile bureaucracy has been created in the Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner. Aviation Administration was run by the like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we have no airlines. The thing that has blocked nuclear power from

4:10 completely solving the problem of energy limitations and pollution is this federal bureaucracy. And if there’s one thing, the.

4:18 Speaker 1 Federal bureaucracy is going to be over. On January twentieth, at two pm, I was at the New York Stock to change with President Trump when he turned to Lee Selden, who’s the introgedy EPA, and says, anybody wants And he said to leez Elden, if anybody wants nuclear technology to go forward, make sure you give him the permits right away.

4:45 I was there. Came out of his mouth.

4:48 Speaker 2 Well, I’m sure that’s what he wants to do, but he has to really do it because we have an insane regulatory system. You have a regulatory agency that is filled with people that want to destroy nuclear power, and you have a system that has been set up which is open to hostile interveners at every step. And it

5:10 went from three years to build a nuclear power plant to sixteen, which knows it’s increased five times the amount of time when it should have gone down with more experience, and the cost has gone up by a mat of factor.

5:24 Of twenty five because frankly, you know, bosses people, time’s time, and the more time, the more parasites, lawyers and so forth get into the game. And lawyers cost more than plumbers and construction workers by far, And so this is something that they should really set themselves the task to do.

5:44 It was not done during the first Trump administration. If he means business, he’s got it with this time.

5:49 Speaker 1 I think he’s a lot smarter today than he was in the first Trump administration because I believe there’s a lot of people around him that did not want him to succeed.

6:00 Speaker 2 Well, that could be, but in any case, this is the one place where there is a regulatory agency that really has to be completely dethroned, dismantled, and replaced with something that wants nuclear power to succeed, not something that wants to destroy the agency. And here’s the thing. People are talking about new kinds of nuclear power plants like

6:21 small modular reactors and so forth, and they’re good ideas, but none of them will succeed.

6:26 Speaker 1 So so our people realize this, PA, so our audience realized what we’re talking about small modular reactors is we’re taking the nuclear reactors from nuclear submarines and converting them for land use. So they’ve been in use in nuclear submarines for sixty years, so you convert them to land use.

6:47 They’re very safe, very little radiation, because otherwise our sailors and the nuclear submarines would have died already. And you know, and that’s going to be the technology of the future, and that’s what SMI stands for.

7:03 Speaker 2 Well, that’s correct. And we had such reactors before we had color television. And we’ve had about five hundred of them operating at sea for the past sixty years and there’s never been an accident. But once again, the thing that has stopped nuclear power is not limitations of the technology.

7:20 It’s a hostile bureaucracy.

7:22 Speaker 1 Let me let me ask you a history question, because I don’t know the answer. Sixty years ago is a long time that we had already nuclear submarines and nuclear reactors. Who helped the United States and British build them.

7:37 Speaker 2 Well, America, did America invented nuclear power? Okay? This is not something we got from the Germans. We’re the ones who invented nuclear power, okay, and we invented it first, of course for the Manhattan project for the Adam bomb program, and then Rickover Captain Ben Admiral Ricover introduced a nuclear smrena.

7:58 Actually it’s seventy years years ago. Nineteen fifty four was the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, and the first time they took it out in the war games against the rest of the whole American fleet. It sunk the whole fleet.

8:11 Speaker 1 But it’s awfully it moved from nineteen forty seven the nuclear bomb in nineteen forty six. Whenever it was to technology to run a submarine. That’s off for flast, isn’t it.

8:28 Speaker 2 Well, it’s even faster than that. Because the submarine program was begun in nineteen fifty one, they went from program start to the first function in nuclear submarine in three years. They invented not only the reactor but the submarine to go along with it, built it and put it to c and as I say, in the very first it

8:48 sailed across the Atlantic Ocean underwater. It engaged in war games against the rest of the fleet and defeated the whole fleet.

8:53 Speaker 1 Because I saw a movie.

8:55 Speaker 2 Was that come up?

8:56 Speaker 1 I saw the movie? Wasn’t that deceive you? No?

9:00 Speaker 2 The Normalist was the first subcons.

9:01 Speaker 1 Okay, now I’m talking about the show about nuclear submarines in the nineteen fifties to see view of what was it called?

9:09 Speaker 2 Well, the Sea Wolf was the second nuclear submarine.

9:12 Speaker 1 Well, we’re out of time, doctor Robert Zubrin. Thank you for the update for all our listeners, and let’s catch up again real soon.

9:21 Speaker 2 Okay, and once again, the book is the case for nukes. It can give you all the details.

9:25 Speaker 1 Thank you so much. Thank you.