professor before Fukushima what are the
possibilities both you know good and bad
well you know nuclear energy had so much
promise decades ago many futurists
predicted that by the year 2000 we would
have a thousand reactors and a thousand
breeder reactors in the United States
now we're lucky to have a hundred
ordinary reactors and we have zero
breeder reactors so there's been a
collapse of nuclear energy in the United
States however in Japan we have
something even worse right now we have
this raging meltdown that's in a
temporary stasis right now every single
nuclear power plant in Japan is shut
down every single one zero energy out
from nuclear energy right now well so
it's causing a national crisis you know
that's a third largest economy on the
planet and all of a sudden one of their
main sources of energy is shut off so
it's it's caused a tremendous amount of
disruption and the cleanup will take
about 40 years 40 years
Chernobyl by the way back in 1986 it's
still going on you realize the core is
still still melting its way through the
earth in outside Kiev and that's that's
been what 25 25 years in the making so
it'll take about 40 years to clean up
the Fukushima disaster all right half of
my wife and others own ask this I when
it happened when Fukushima happened I
was in the Philippines you know we were
worried to death
oh the radiation is gonna come this way
of course it went toward the US instead
because that's where the prevailing
winds I guess take it now here's my
question they're pouring all of this
water on the reactors to keep them from
further
I guess meltdown and this water is
running off they're trying to capture it
as best they can but they're not doing a
really good job a lot of it's leaking
into the Pacific Ocean
that's right TEPCO the utility has now
admitted that they bungled a clean up
operation 300 tons worth of radioactive
water we think have spilled into the
outside environment and probably into
the Pacific Ocean the Korean government
is now threatening not to purchase any
more fish from Japan because of this
crisis this is going to escalate as a
consequence of this and TEPCO
unfortunately is sort of like you know
the Three Stooges operating a nuclear
power plant Moe Larry and curly chasing
each other around the control room
hitting each other over the head we have
a bunch of incompetence running the
nuclear power plant I think that
eventually the government's gonna have
to take over and do what Gorbachev did
back in 1986 and that is call out the
military it was a military operation
that finally got the Chernobyl under
control and I think the Japanese
government may have to do something
similar admit that utility is totally
out class outgunned and they should
perhaps bring in the military Wow
self-defense forces or US military
self-defense forces you realize that a
quarter of a million people were
involved in the cleanup operation a
quarter of a million people it was the
largest engineering feat of its type
ever and a lot of them died a lot of
them died too right
the initial the firemen and the initial
emergency crews yeah they died a
horrible horrible death you know skin
falling off hair falling off
they had a lethal dose of radiation in
the initial initial day of the Chernobyl
accident yeah so is that what they're
facing in Japan I mean are there are
some jobs that are so damn dangerous
that if they start the real cleanup and
send in the military there's gonna be
people that will not live through the
experience yeah well at Chernobyl many
people were sent in just for a few
minutes just for a few minutes to do
these very important tasks robots for
example cannot do these tasks no matter
how many science fiction movies
we've seen with robots in them robots
can barely turn a screwdriver and so
robots have been a total failure at
Fukushima and as a consequence the
Pentagon the u.s. Pentagon has now set
up a crash program to develop robots
that can actually turn screws and turned
valves and robots have been a giant
failure worldwide anyway I mean when I
was a kid we all thought oh man robots
will be doing the dishes and cleaning
the rugs and everything else by the time
we're grown up ya know robots has the
intelligence of an insect like a
cockroach a retarded lobotomized
cockroach they're very slow the robots
we have at MIT put them inside Chernobyl
and all they do is get lost
can I try to stop you for one second and
ask why why have we made and not made
more strides in robotics a we made a
mistake 50 years ago we thought that the
brain is a computer but you see the
brain is not a digital computer there's
no windows there's no Pentium chip
there's no software there's no
programming there's no subroutines the
brain is not a digital computer it's a
learning machine it's called a neural
network it learns and it changes itself
actually learns right now your laptop
today is this as stupid as it was
yesterday
this laptops never changed they never
learned anything and that's the
difference between a digital computer
robot and a human brain the brain does
one thing learn okay it doesn't compute
it doesn't add doesn't subtract like
what ordinary robots - robots are my
windows 7 does not learn right and you
know roll master adding machines very
sophisticated so it gives you the
appearance that it's thinking but it's
actually not thinking at all just adding
light while we are learning machines and
that's why at Fukushima hub we have
robots fact can't even turn a
screwdriver it's not bad so they're no
good so are people gonna lose their
lives trying to get Fukushima under
control eventually in Israel comes to
hope it doesn't happen that way but you
know if they do what
ruch instead they'll order you know
hundreds of thousands of people to go in
just for a few minutes a piece and turn
the screws and open the valves and begin
the cleanup operation you realize they
keep dumping cold water on the reactor
and it flows out because the loop is not
closed it's an open loop and until they
close the loop they're good at the more
water and create more radioactive water
SiC on time all right what about the
fish what about the sea life what about
the ocean you're an environmentalist as
well as everything else so how bad is it
well that's what we're fearful of you
know cesium strontium and iodine occur
in water soluble form and they will
eventually wind up in into the food
chain I in fact even in Tokyo some
housewives bringing geiger counters when
they go shopping there are hot spots hot
spots outside the evacuation zone of
Fukushima well you know because it rains
and the radiation was distributed
unevenly there are hot spots and as you
get closer to Fukushima but they're dead
zones you know areas that just like it's
your novel will be off-limits for
centuries to come and it does mean that
we have to inspect the fish because
francium iodine cesium will accumulate
in muscle tissue and different kinds of
organs of the fish so it is something
that has to be monitored so far so good
so far there has been no major dumping a
radioactive waste but hey it could
happen it's seeping slowly but so far we
have not yet seen a catastrophic breach
of the water okay professor if you were
a one-man committee in charge of
deciding what the world needs to do with
nuclear power and nuclear power plants
and and where we go as a world from here
for energy what would your advice to the
world be with respect to nuclear power
well I think every country has to decide
for itself but the Germans have decided
and they've thrown in the towel nuclear
power is going to be phased out in
Germany also Switzerland they both have
phased out nuclear energy Italy is
teetering
Japan every poll shows that the people
do not want nuclear but of course
something has to replace it right and
right now there's no single white night
we would like to go with solar and
renewable technology and clean
technology but solar is more expensive
and we're gonna have to reduce the cost
of solar now if further down the line I
think maybe within five to ten years in
that framework solar power gets cheaper
and cheaper and slowly becomes more
competitive with oil and coal but on a
10-year time frame Fusion becomes
possible
the French are bidding the store on the
ITER fusion reactor that will hopefully
go online in ten years or so enhancers
well we don't know because we've never
had an operating fusion reactor before
but usual reactors do not meltdown
meltdowns are caused by nuclear waste
the heat emitted from nuclear waste
causes meltdowns Wow let me try those
out yes yes a fusion reactor goes wrong
what do we have
well nothing because it shuts itself off
good a fusion reactor has to attain what
it's called Lawson's criterion criteria
had at the right density the right
temperature to get fusion off the ground
the Sun does it hydrogen bombs do it and
a fusion plant also has to attain
lossless criterion but if you have a
leak
then the loss of the criterion is no
longer satisfied and it shuts off so the
fusion plant basically shuts off it
doesn't melt like a conventional nuclear
fission plant because it has no nuclear
waste dare I ask so nothing can go wrong
well there's always not on the scale of
fission you know a fission reactors that
use uranium are not found in nature
mother nature does not use uranium at
all uranium is only found on the planet
Earth for fission reactors mother nature
uses fusion which is clean recyclable
that's what mother nature uses fusion
well
