Original subtitles

[narrator] Join us on Tomorrow's World Today

as we journey through the worlds of inspiration,

creation, innovation, and production.

To find the ideas and technologies

that are shaping our future.

In the final part of our four-part exploration,

we explore how nuclear energy

is helping with space exploration.

We close with a round table conversation

with some of nuclear energy's top minds

to discuss what nuclear energy looks like

in tomorrow's world.

Hi everyone.

Welcome to episode four

of our four-part exploration

on nuclear energy.

Now, in the previous three episodes,

we learned about the past, present,

and future of nuclear power

including how microreactors

are bringing energy to some of the most remote

and hardest to power locations on earth.

But today, we are heading out of this world.

That's right, we're gonna learn about nuclear energy

and space exploration,

specifically nuclear propulsion

and power.

Now, we're gonna start right here in DC.

We're gonna head over to X-energy

and learn about fuels

and next generation reactors.

Then, we're gonna head back out to Idaho

to learn how nuclear energy is powering

the Mars Perseverance Rover.

Right now, let's head over and meet Clay Sell,

he's the CEO of X-energy.

- Hey, Clay. - Hey, Greg.

- Welcome. - Oh, thanks for having me.

I'm so excited to be here today.

I'm super excited to learn what it is you guys do here.

Well, we're a nuclear reactor

and fuel design engineering company.

Great. Now, I know that you're also doing

some really innovative things with fuel

for space travel and such.

We'll learn about that in a little bit

but right now, tell me about this reactor.

Well, we are first focused on applications

for this earth, this planet,

and this is our standard utility model.

This is the reactor, it's about 25 meters tall.

It's filled with uranium fuel and it produces heat.

The heat then goes to the steam generator

where it's turned into steam,

and that steam spins a turbine generator

to produce electricity for about 80,000

- American homes. - That is awesome.

Now, space travel and nuclear power,

not usually something that people think of

at the same time, you know, reactors are big and heavy

and, you know, in space travel,

you need light and compact,

but I know that you're really doing

some really advanced stuff with fuel

and I'd like to find out more about that.

We're doing some amazing things with fuel.

Let me take you next door and show you.

Lead the way.

So Clay, I know that one of the areas

where you're making real innovations

is in nuclear fuel and TRISO-X

is what's happening right now.

So, explain to me how we're... What we're looking at?

Well, the most important thing about this fuel

is we've designed it and engineered it

so it cannot melt in any scenario

inside the reactor.

And that's one of the key safety attributes

that are central to the reactor design.

Let me tell you how we do it.

So, we start with the uranium chemistry,

in this case, it's uranium-enriched

to fifteen and a half percent.

This little kernel is about

half a millimeter in diameter.

And then, we have a process by we coat it four times

in various types of ceramic material.

So, you end up with a little containment vessel

about the size of a poppy seed and this containment vessel

during the life of the uranium,

when it burns up,

it will contain 99.999%

of all the waste produced burnt during burn up.

So it makes for a very robust fuel,

it makes for an incredibly safe fuel.

It makes for a fuel that cannot melt down.

And then, we take 19,000 of these kernels

and we put it into a fuel form,

we evenly space them out,

they're evenly dispersed, we can measure that

and we put a graphite rayon on it,

and then, this is the fuel form

that actually goes into the reactor.

So it can't melt and you're also

containing the nuclear waste.

That's true. And you know what's exciting?

This single pebble has enough energy in it

to power an electric vehicle

- almost 100,000 miles. - Wow.

Which would take you around the earth four times.

That's amazing. You're ready to go?

- Let's do it. - So, say we're not fueling up

the family station wagon with this thing.

We're using it in one of your reactors.

- Tell me how that works. - Well, we would take

220,000 of these.

We would load them into the reactor core barrel,

just like gumballs in a gumball machine.

We would pull the control rods out

and that would start the nuclear chain reaction

which produces heat.

That heat would be transferred

from the reactor core barrel

to the steam generator with helium,

that's our heat-transfer fluid.

This pebble would work its way down

through the core barrel for about six months

and then it would get to the bottom

where we have a burn up measurement system

to see if there's still fuel in it.

If there's still good fuel in it,

it goes back to the top

and will take another six-month trip

through the core barrel.

A typical fuel pebble like this

2in our design will take six trips

through the reactor core barrel.

And at the end of those six trips,

you have essentially an empty vessel

but anything that is and still in there

is gonna be contained right within that pebble.

Well, almost all of the usable special nuclear material

has been burned up, so that's a huge benefit.

This ceramic and graphite fuel form

retains all of the long-lived waste

that has been produced during the burn up.

So, this great, beautiful fuel form

actually becomes a spectacular waste form

because this thing will last forever

and it will keep all of the waste in here

for tens of thousands of years.

Excellent. So, how would you control a reactor like this?

Greg, do you like to play video games?

- A lot. - Then you need to see

our reactor room simulator mock up.

- Let me show you. - Lead the way.

[mellow music playing]

Greg, let me introduce you to Yvotte Brits.

Greg, welcome.

Oh, great to meet you, Yvotte.

Thanks Clay.

Well Yvotte, I mean, it goes without saying

that this looks like the arcade room of my dreams,

but I know that it's a lot more than that.

This is an actual graphic representation

of the reactor that Clay and I were just discussing.

[Yvotte] Yes, Greg. This is very exciting.

This is the toolset that we are using

to train our operators.

We have a single control room to operate

four reactors, four turbines

for a total of three operators

in the control room.

The control room is also modular,

we can add more reactor units

as the client wants more.

On the screen here, you will see

we have a nuclear island and a conventional island.

The nuclear island stays consistent

no matter what the client wants

- on the conventional island. - So the client can determine

if they want steam or electricity

or co-generation, they'd get to pick that.

- Yes Greg, that is correct. - That's cool.

Let me show you the toolset that we are using

for the maintenance and for the security personnel.

In the absence of a real plant,

we are relying on 3D virtual reality models

to train up our maintenance and security personnel.

So, please put on the virtual reality goggles.

Oh, I have been looking forward to this.

Greg, so what you see in front of you is the reactor

coupled to the steam generator

and of the fuel handling system

doing the online refilling.

That's amazing. You can see... Even see the pebbles

going through the system and these are the fuel pebbles

that Clay and I discussed earlier.

[Yvotte] Yes, that is correct.

That is absolutely awesome, Yvotte.

- Hey, Clay. - Hey, Greg.

- So, what do you think? - Well, I think

this is all pretty amazing but what I really want to know now

is how you're gonna take all of this terrestrial technology

and send it up into space?

Well, the great thing about it is the same fuel

and the same engineers that have been

so successful here on earth

are perfectly suited for space applications.

- Let me explain it to you. - Sounds great.

- Yvotte, thank you very much. - Thanks. Great to meet you.

Hey Greg, do you have any idea how long it takes

to take a rocket to Mars?

Well, from everything I've read,

between six and nine months.

That's right. And what's exciting

with the technology we've developed here,

a version of that can be used to build

a thermal nuclear propulsion system

that will shorten that trip

- to half the time. - That's amazing.

It's really important for astronauts,

they're exposed to tremendous cosmic radiation

during that contemplated long trip to Mars,

and if we can shorten that trip, cut it in half,

that has a huge benefit for the astronauts.

Right. That's one of those things that folks

don't really consider 'coz they think,

well, there's space stations up there

for years and years and years,

but there's space, and then, there's outer space.

And you know the space stations

actually still contain within the earth's magnetosphere

so it's protected from all of that cosmic radiation.

But once you get beyond that, all bets are off.

Yeah. Let me tell about something

that we're working on that's one step further out

and that is a permanent installation

on the lunar surface.

It's something that's really being talked about a lot.

We're talking about humans on the surface of the moon

for long periods of time and they need a power source.

But with the lunar night, which lasts 14 earth days,

they need something better than solar arrays

and batteries to survive the lunar night.

And that's where a nuclear fission surface power system

that applies a lot of the same principles

that we've developed here on earth

is being developed for the moon.

So, that's gonna get us to the moon,

get us to Mars, and then even beyond.

That's true. And again,

it relates to a lot of the technology

we developed here.

From our fuel form

which is, you know, ceramic encapsulated

can achieve very high temperatures,

has very long life, that's important.

The instrumentation and control system

that we've developed for our reactors here

will be necessary on the moon.

A lot of the materials that were produced

to achieve very high temperatures

will be necessary to that nuclear

thermal propulsion system

and many other of the technologies

that we're developing are directly applicable

- to nuclear space application. - Even this control room?

- Even this control room. - All right.

Well, I know that there's nuclear power right now

on the surface of Mars

powering the Perseverance Rover

and I'm heading out to Idaho Falls

to find out all about that.

Well, thanks so much for being here.

- Have a great trip to Idaho. - Thank you, Clay.

This has been amazing.

Now, if you've ever blown up a balloon

and then the air out and watched it

whizz around the room, that's a similar concept

to nuclear thermal propulsion.

Now, nuclear thermal propulsion rockets

use a nuclear reaction to heat up liquid hydrogen.

Once that hydrogen is heated up, it expands,

then it's forced through a nozzle

and that produces thrust.

I'm at the Idaho National Laboratory

Space & Security Power Systems Facility.

I'm gonna talk to Steve Johnson

and we're gonna learn how nuclear propulsion

is going to help get humans to Mars faster.

- Hey, Steve. - Hey, Greg.

- Welcome to Idaho. - Thanks for having me.

I'll tell you, your work with NASA

and the Mars Perseverance Rover,

it really couldn't be more exciting,

so please tell me more about it.

All right. Let's take a look at this selfie

taken by the Perseverance Rover.

You can see our power system here,

you can the ingenuity helicopter here,

and you can see

with this 3D model behind us here,

you can see the thermoelectrics

which turn the heat from the heat sources inside

into electrical power.

It's 2 feet in diameter,

it's 2 feet tall, it weighs about 100 pounds...

Well, 110 to 120 watts electric.

Similar to the Curiosity Rover that landed in 2012,

they last for several years in terms of the power system

and it's a great way to get around Mars.

We have the acceptance testing facilities here

and fueling facilities.

I'd really like to show this to you.

Do you have time for that?

- Absolutely. - All right. Let's go.

[mellow music playing]

[mellow music playing]

So Steve, this is where you would

actually put the fuel source for the rover together?

Yes, Greg. This is where we take

the general-purpose heat source modules,

we stack up a total of eight of these

inside the glove box

and each of those has four of these heat sources in it.

And we will stack them up in the specialized fixture

and pick them up with this tool,

put them down inside the power system,

that's a multi-mission radioisotope

thermoelectric generator

or MMRTG for short.

This operation takes about three weeks.

Most of it is prep time and everything

but there's a couple or three days

of exciting stuff in the middle.

Once it comes out of here, it's a fully functioning RTG.

It needs to go through acceptance testing

which is vibrational testing, center of mass testing,

magnetic field testing, and the vacuum testing.

The first thing we do out of here

is the vibrational testing.

Would you like to take a look at that?

Absolutely. Let's go see it.

Follow me.

So Steve,

I know that all elements of testing in this

have to be vitally important but I can't imagine

that there's a better opportunity for something

to go wrong than during a launch.

You're absolutely right, Greg.

So, that's why we place a lot of emphasis

on vibrational testing.

We do it on all three axes.

This is the horizontal flip table.

We will mount the MMRTG on here.

Our vibrator head here will then agitate

in the X direction.

We'll rotate the MMRTG ninety degrees,

we'll call that Y agitation.

And then we can decouple it

from that horizontal flip table,

rotate the head up,

mount the MMRTG in the top

and we'll get our Z direction.

We typically look at zero to 5,000 hertz,

sine, random sine shock

and that gives us the information we need.

Okay. Now, you're gathering that information

by monitoring this how?

Yes, yes. We have 31 separate transducers

and accelerometers that are wired to the body

of the MMRTG that allows us

to carefully monitor it,

make certain nothing is damaged

and then we get all the information we need.

Great. Well, can we see this thing in action?

- Can we fire it up? - Yes, yes. We can.

Why don't we put our safety gear in?

- Our... - [Greg] All right.

earplugs...

and let me give the guys a call.

Hey, are we ready to shake this thing?

[whirring]

So, Steve. Pretty impressive.

Now, I know this is meant

to simulate the stresses of a launch,

and when we talk about stress in a launch,

we talk about g-forces.

So, where were we on that scale?

X-axis, 10 g's.

Flight test would be 13 g's.

And again, we'll through that for X, Y, and Z axis.

So you test all the different ways

that it could possibly be vibrated

to make sure that you're ready

- for launch time. - Yes.

Tell me about a little bit about

the rest of the testing that we'll go through

before it heads down to Florida

and to end up in space.

So next we would do a center of mass,

we'll do a magnetic field measurement

- and a vacuum chamber test. - Sounds great.

Now, if I were to ask you to sum up just briefly

what you think nuclear power's role will be

in space exploration, what would you say?

Simply put, we would support a manned mission to Mars.

Get guys there, get them back again,

and that would be the ultimate for nuclear power.

All right. Well Steve, thank you very much.

This has been awesome.

George is having a bunch of the folks

that we've been talking to back in Inventionland

for a round table,

love to invite you to be there.

Fantastic. Look forward to it, Greg.

All right. Well, see you back in Inventionland.

[mellow music playing]

[mellow music playing]

- Hi everyone. - Hey George.

Well, welcome to Inventionland.

- Thank you. - We've been looking forward

to hosting this round table discussion.

And this field of nuclear technology

is just so exciting to all of us.

I think you're in good hands with Greg

as you guys get through this meeting.

I'm gonna see all of you a little later, okay?

[man] All right. Thanks, George.

[George] Bye now.

So, as we get this started, I'm just gonna dive right in.

Dr. Rita Baranwal,

how do you see nuclear energy

helping us with decarbonization?

So nuclear energy has always been a clean energy resource,

so that's really important to know right up front.

So as communities start to consider

what they need to do to decarbonize

and meet their goals and objectives,

nuclear, if it already exists in that community,

is the cheapest way to decarbonize

the electricity sector.

Also we have to consider deploying new nuclear

and then finally it's really important

to consider that the electricity market

is just one sector that needs to be decarbonized.

If you look at the transportation sector,

which is a very, very large sector

that really needs decarbonization,

nuclear reactors and nuclear power

can also make a big, big impact.

Great. Now Dr. Kathy McCarthy,

working into that answer to that question,

how do you see our... The world's energy needs

- changing in the future? - From a volume perspective,

you know, we think about countries

like the Unites States

and we're developed

and we've got access

to electricity

but now let's talk about

we want everybody to have access

to broadband.

We need to have storage

to be able to store that data.

That storage takes a lot of cooling, that takes energy.

So, it's really both reducing carbon

- as well as increasing volume. - Okay.

So those are some very earthbound things

that we need to think about. So Dr. Stephen Johnson,

how is nuclear propulsion gonna work into our future

out in space?

One of our greatest challenges

is getting to Mars.

And nuclear thermal propulsion

can help us do that by cutting down

the amount of time it takes to get there.

For example, if we were going to the moon,

the Apollo shots, Apollo 12, 14, et cetera,

in the '69, '70 timeframe,

they took three days to get to the moon

with their human payload and equipment

to survive there.

When we were firing the Pluto New Horizons' shot

in 2006, January 19th,

it took nine hours to get to the moon from earth.

We need to be able to use nuclear thermal propulsion

to get there in a safe amount of time,

do our mission, and get people back.

Okay. Great. Now Dr. Corey McDaniel,

thank you for being here.

Are there policy changes that can help us move forward

with all of this as we... As we get into the future?

Well Greg, I'm somebody of the opinion

that the free market breeds innovation

and it's innovation

that is the culture in the United States,

that our freedom allows us

to have the freedom to pursue market-based solutions

that support investments in technology

like fusion and space nuclear

and the advanced reactors we see today.

Really over the last decade,

the marketplace has dictated

that investors like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett

have invested in advanced nuclear

because of the attributes of that power,

clean, as Dr. Baranwal mentioned,

it's also reliable and it can be integrated

with other clean energy sources

and work with other renewable energy sources

to reduce greenhouse gases

which is obviously something that a lot of people

are concerned with today.

So, I think that the policies

that we have around innovation,

the policies we have that support

our 17 national laboratories,

that really allows the US to be competitive

and to out-innovate other countries.

So I wanna thank you all very much for being here

and thank all of you for joining us

on our exploration of nuclear energy.

For Tomorrow's World Today, I'm Greg Constantino.

So, the big question is, if you could go to Mars,

- would you? - No.

- Yes. - Absolutely.

- No? - I'm the only honest one here.

No. [laughs]

- No? - We're going without you.

Okay.

[dramatic music playing]