WEBVTT

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Have you heard the news?

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We're in a clean energy revolution.

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And where I live in Berkley, California,

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it seems like every day I see a new roof
with new solar panels going up,

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electric car in the driveway.

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Germany sometimes gets
half its power from solar,

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and India is now committed


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to building 10 times more solar
than we have in California

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by the year 2022.

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Even nuclear seems to be
making a comeback.

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Bill Gates is in China
working with engineers,

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there's 40 different companies
that are working together

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to try and race to build the first
reactor that runs on waves,

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that can't melt down

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and is cheaper than coal.

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And so you might start to ask:

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is this whole global warming problem


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going to be a lot easier to solve
than anybody imagined?

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That was the question we wanted to know,

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and so my colleagues and I decided
to take a deep dive into the data.

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We were a little skeptical of some parts
of the clean energy revolution's story,

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but what we found really surprised us.

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So the first thing is that clean
energy has been increasing.

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This is electricity from clean energy
sources over the last 20 years.

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But when you look at the percentage

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of global electricity
from clean energy sources,

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it's actually been in decline
from 36 percent to 31 percent.

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And if you care about climate change,

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you've got to go in the opposite direction

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to 100 percent of our electricity
from clean energy sources

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as quickly as possible.

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Now you might wonder,

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"Come on, how much could five percentage
points of global electricity be?"

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Well, it turns out to be quite a bit.

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it's the equivalent of 60 nuclear plants
the size of Diablo Canyon --

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California's last nuclear plant --

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or 900 solar farms,

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the size of Topaz,

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which is one of the biggest
solar farms in the world

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and certainly our biggest in California.

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The big part of this

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is just simply that fossil fuels
are increasing faster than clean energy.

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And that's understandable.

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There's just a lot of poor countries

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that are using wood and dung and charcoal
as their main source of energy,

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and they need modern fuels.

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But there's something else going on,

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which is that one of those clean
energy sources in particular

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has actually been on the decline
in absolute terms ...

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not just relatively.

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And that's nuclear.

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You can see it's generation
has declined seven percent

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over the last 10 years.

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Now solar and wind have been
making huge strides,

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and so you hear a lot of talk
about how it doesn't really matter

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because solar and wind is going
to make up the difference,

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but the data says something different.

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When you combine all the electricty
from solar and wind,

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you see it actually barely makes up
half of the decline from nuclear.

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Let's take a closer look
in the United States.

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Over the last couple of years --

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really 2013, 2014 --

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we prematurely retired
four nuclear power plants.

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They were almost entirely
replaced with fossil fuels,

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and so the consequence
was that we wiped out

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almost as much clean energy
electricity that we get from solar.

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And it's not unique to us.

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People think of California as a clean
energy and climate leader,

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but when we looked at the data

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what we found is that in fact

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California reduced emissions more slowly
than the national average

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between 2000 and 2015.

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What about Germany?

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They're doing a lot of clean energy.

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But when you look at the data,

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German emissions have actually
been going up since 2009,

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and there's really not anybody
who's going to tell you

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that they're going to meet
their climate comittments in 2020.

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The reason isn't hard to understand.

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Solar and wind provide power
about 10 to 20 percent of the time,

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which means that when
the sun's not shining,

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the wind's not blowing,

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you still need power for your hospitals,

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your homes,

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your cities,

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your factories.

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And while batteries have made some
really cool improvements lately,

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the truth is that they're just never going
to be as efficient as the electrical grid.

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Every time you put electricity
into a battery,

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you take it out,

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you use about 20 to 40
percent of the power.

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That's why when in California,

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we tried to deal with all
of the solar we brought on line --

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we now get about 10 percent
of electricity from solar --

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when the sun goes down
and people come home from work

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and turn on their air conditioners


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and their TV sets

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and every other appliance in the house,

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we need a lot of natural gas backup.

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So what we've been doing

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is stuffing a lot of natural gas
into the side of a mountain.

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And that worked pretty well for a while,

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but then late last year,

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it sprung a leak.

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This is Aliso Canyon,

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and so much methane gas was released,

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it was the equivalent of putting
half a million cars on the road.

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It basically blew through all of our
climate commitments for the year.

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Well, what about India?

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Sometimes you have to go places
to really get the right data,

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so we travelled to India
a few months ago.

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We met with all the top officials --

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solar, nuclear, the rest --

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and what they told us
is they said,

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"we're actually having
more serious problems

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than both Germany and California.

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We don't have backup,

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we don't have all the natural gas

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and that's just the start of it.

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Say we want to get to
100 gigawatts by 2022,

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but last year we did just five

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and the year before that we did five."

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So let's just take
a closer look at nuclear.

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The United Nations and our governmental
panel on climate change

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has looked at the carbon content
of all these different fuels,

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and nuclear comes out really low.

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it's actually lower even than solar.

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And nuclear obviously
provides a lot of power --

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24 hours a day,

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seven days a week.

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During a year a single plant can
provide power 92 percent of the time.

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And what's interesting is that when
you look at countries

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that have deployed different
kinds of clean energies,

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there's only a few that have done so

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at a pace consistent with dealing
with the climate crisis.

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So nuclear seems like
a pretty good option,

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but there's this big problem with it,

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which all of you I'm sure are aware of,

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which is that people really don't like it.

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There was a study --

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a survey done of people
around the world --

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not just in the United States or Europe --

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about a year and a half ago,

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and what they found

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is that nuclear is one of the least
popular forms of energy.

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Even oil is more popular than nuclear.

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And while nuclear kind of edges out coal,

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the thing is,

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people don't really fear coal in the same
way that they fear nuclear,

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which really operates on our unconscious.

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So what is it that we fear?

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There's really three things.

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There's the safety
of the plants themselves --

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the fears that they're going to melt
down and cause damage.

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There's the waste from them.

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And then there's
the association with weapons.

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And I think understandably,

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engineers look at those concerns

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and they want to look
for technological fixes.

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That's why Bill Gates is in China
developing advanced reactors --

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40 different entrepreneurs
are working on this problem,

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and I myself have been
very excited about it.

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We did a report:

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how to make nuclear cheap.

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In particular the Thorium reactor
shows a lot of promise.

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And so when the climate scientist
James Hansen asked

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if I wanted to go to China with him

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and look at the Chinese
advanced nuclear program,

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I jumped at the chance.

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We were there with MIT

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and UC Berkley engineers.

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And I had in my mind

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that the Chinese would be able

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to do with nuclear what they did
with so many other things.

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Just start to crank out small
nuclear reactors on assembly lines,

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[ship] them up like iPhones
of MacBooks

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and send them around the world --

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I would get one at home in Berkley.

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But what I found was somewhat different.

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The presentations were all
very exciting and very promising,

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and they have mutiple reactors
that they're working on.

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The time came for the Thorium reactor
and a bunch of us were excited.

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They went through the whole presentation,

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they got to the timeline,

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and they said,

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"We're going to have a Thorium
molten salt reactor

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ready for sale to the world by 2040."

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And I was like, "What?"

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(Laughter)

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I looked at my colleagues and I was like,

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"Excuse me,

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can you guys speed that up a little bit?"

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Because we're in a little bit
of a climate crisis right now --

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and your cities are really
polluted by the way.

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And they kind of responded back,

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they were like,

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"I'm not sure what you've
heard about or thorium program,

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but we don't have a third of our budget

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and your department of energy
hasn't been particularly forthcoming

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with all that data you guys
have on testing reactors."

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And I said, "Well I've got an idea.

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You know how you've got 10 years
where you're demonstrating that reactor?

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Let's just skip that part

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and let's just go right
to commercializing it.

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That will save money and time."

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And the engineer just looked at and said,

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"Let me ask you a question.

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Would you buy a car that had
never been demonstrated before?"

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So what about the other reactors?

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There's a reactor that's
coming on line now,

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there's starting to sell it.

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It's a high temperature gas reactor.

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It can't melt down.

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But it's really big and bulky.

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That's part of the safety

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and nobody thinks it's going to get
cheaper than the reactors that we have.

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The ones that use waste as fuel
are really cool ideas,

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but the truth is

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we don't actually know how to do that yet.

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There's some risk that you actually
will make more waste,

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and most people think

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that if you're including that waste
part of the process,

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it's just going to make the whole
machine a lot more expensive --

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it's just adding another complicated step.

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And the truth is

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that there's real questions about
how much of that we're going to do.

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We went to India and asked
about the nuclear program,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the government said before Paris,

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the climate talks,

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that they were going to do something
like 30 new nuclear plants.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But when we got there

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and we interviewed people

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and we even looked
at the internal documents,

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they're now saying they're
going to do about five.

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And in most of the world,

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especially the rich world,

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they're not talking
about building new reactors.

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We're actually talking
about taking reactors down

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
before their lifetimes are over.

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Germany's actually pressuring
its neighbors to do that.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I mentioned the United States --

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we could lose half of our reactors
over the next 15 years,

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which would wipe out 40 percent
of the emissions reductions

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we're supposed to get under
the clean power plan.

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And of course in Japan,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
they took all their
nuclear plants offline,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
replaced them with coal,
natural gas, oil-burning,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and they're only expected to bring online
about a third to two-thirds.

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So when we went through the numbers,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and just added that up:

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how much nuclear do we see China
and India bringing online

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over the next 15 years,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
how much do we see at risk
of being taken offline.

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This was the most startling finding.

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What we found is that the world
is actually as risk

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of losing four times more clean energy
than we lost of the last 10 years.

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In other words,

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we're not in a clean energy revolution,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We're in a clean energy crisis.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So it's understandable that engineers
would look for a technical fix

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to the fears that people have of nuclear.

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But when you consider that these
are big challenges to do,

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that they're going to take
a long time to solve,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
there's this other issue,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
which is that

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are those technical fixes really
going to solve people's fears?

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Let's take safety.

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You know, despite what people think,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it's hard to figure out how
to make nuclear power much safer.

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I mean every medical
journal that looks at it --

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this is the most recent study
from the British journal Lancet,

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one the the most respected
journals in the world --

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nuclear is the safest way
to make reliable power.

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Everybody's scared of the accidents.

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So you go look at the accident data --

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Fukushima,

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Chernobyl --

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World Health Organization
finds the same thing:

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the vast majority of harm
is caused by people panicking --

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and they're panicking
because they're afraid.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
In other words,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the harm that's caused isn't
actually caused by the machines

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
or the radiation.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It's caused by our fears.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And what about the waste?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Everyone worries about the waste.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Well the interesting thing about the waste
is how little of it there is.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This is just from one plant.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
If you take all the nuclear waste
we've ever made in the United States,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
put it on a football field,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
stacked it up,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it would only reach 20 feet high.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And people say it's poisoning people
or doing something --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it's not, it's just sitting there,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it's just being monitored.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
There's not very much of it.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
By contrast,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the waste that we don't control
from energy production --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
we call it pollution

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and it kills seven million people a year

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and it's threatening very serious
levels of global warming.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And the truth is that even if we get
good at using that waste as fuel,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
there's always going to be
some fuel left over,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and that means there's always going to be
those people that think it's a big problem

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
for reasons that maybe don't have to do
with the actual waste as we think.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Well, what about the weapons?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Maybe the most surprising thing
is that we can't find any examples

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
of countries that have nuclear power

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and then, "Oh," decide to get a weapon.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
In fact it works the opposite.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
What we find is that

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the only way we know how to get rid
of large numbers of nuclear weapons

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is by using the plutonium in the warheads
as fuel in our nuclear power plants.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And so if you are wanting to get
the world rid of nuclear weapons,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
then we're going to need
a lot more nuclear power.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Applause)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
As I was leaving China,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the engineer that brought Bill Gates there
kind of pulled me aside

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and he said,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"You know, Michael,
I appreciate you interest

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in all the different nuclear
supply technologies,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but there's this more basic issue,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
which is that there's just not
enough global demand.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I mean we can crank out
these machines on assembly lines,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
we do know how to make things cheap,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but there's just not enough
people that want them."

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And so let's do solar and wind
and efficiency and conservation.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Let's accelerate the advanced
nuclear programs.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I think we should triple the amount
of money we're spending on it.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But I just think the most important thing,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
if we're going to overcome
the climate crisis,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is to keep in mind that the cause
of the clean energy crisis

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
isn't from within our machines,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it's from within ourselves.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Thank you very much.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Applause)