Pratica di Shadowing: How Solar Is Beating Nuclear's Best Idea - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
Creazione lezione...
1
Three years ago, people were predicting the end of small modular reactors.
2
The Utah utility canceled plans for Portland, Oregon's NuScale to build the first of these novel nuclear reactors in the state.
3
The estimated cost started at $3 billion in 2015, it hit $4 .2 billion in 2018, $6 .1 billion in 2020,
4
and $9 .3 billion in 2023.
5
At which point, the customers walked.
6
SMRs were sold as a faster, cheaper route to nuclear, nuclear, but NuScale showed they could be just as slow and just as expensive to build.
7
I've covered these things three times.
8
Each time I said the same thing.
9
Promising, but unproven.
10
So did 2026 finally change that?
11
Just a few years after NuScale's collapse, it seems reports of SMR's death have been vastly overstated.
12
In fact, 2026 is perhaps the best year for SMR's ever.
13
Multiple projects are breaking ground after a decade without any new commercial nuclear projects.
14
And the Trump administration wants to help with a pro -nuclear agenda and 900 million dollars available to support the SMR industry.
15
94 million of that has already been awarded.
16
So now we're back to rosy headlines and you'd be forgiven for having a case of small modular whiplash.
17
So what's actually happening here?
18
Are small modular reactors about to play a major role in our energy system?
19
Or are they just a waste of time and enriched uranium?
20
I'm Matt Farrell.
21
Welcome to Undecided.
22
This video is brought to you by Incogni.
23
Big reactors put out 600 to 1500 megawatts.
24
Small modular reactors, or SMRs, are built for 70 to 350 MW.
25
SMRs are supposed to fix the problems associated with big, honking reactors.
26
Although America has more nuclear power than any country in the world and nuclear supplies about 20 % of the U .S electricity, the reactor fleet is old.
27
Most of it was built before 1990.
28
Over decades, nuclear reactors have gotten more and more expensive and taken longer and longer to build.
29
The most recent U .S nuclear reactors at the Vogel facility in Georgia took seven extra years to build
30
and produce energy at more than seven times the cost that nuclear cost in the 1970s.
31
New nuclear can't compete with renewable energy in terms of cost.
32
The levelized cost of electricity from nuclear is between $175 and $255 per megawatt hour.
33
That's much more expensive than utility -scale solar, which has an LCOE between $40 and $98, or onshore wind, which is between $37 and $99.
34
If nuclear wants to compete in an era of increased electricity demand, that's just not going to cut it.
35
SMRs are supposed to make nuclear competitive again.
36
They're supposed to make it cheaper and quicker to build and have more places they can fit.
37
As I've mentioned on the channel, whenever nuclear comes up, the prospect of a clean, firm source of power is incredibly appealing today.
38
New nuclear capacity reduces dependence on fossil fuels and compensates for the intermittency of renewables.
39
Also, I am aware that there are claims
40
that SMRs will be safer from malfunction than traditional reactors and that produce less hazardous waste.
41
We've gone into that in detail in other videos if you'd like to hear more about it, so I'm not going to rehash it here.
42
When we say SMRs are small, that refers first and foremost to how much power they make.
43
Modular means that most of the components can be built in a factory, shipped, and then assembled rather than built on site.
44
In a recent Reuters column, Gavin McGuire describes it like this.
45
The vision is straightforward.
46
Turn nuclear power from a construction business into a manufacturing business.
47
The idea is that over time it'll get cheaper and easier to build the pieces of these reactors.
48
That's what happened with solar panels.
49
We also know that finished working SMRs are possible.
50
There are sample projects in China and Russia, which we'll get into later.
51
Put this all together and you can start to understand the dream.
52
Smaller, safer and cheaper nuclear developed in the U .S and exported for profit.
53
You see the rosy picture painted across the U .S.
54
Department of Energy's website, which reads, If a sufficient number of SMR units were ordered, it would provide the necessary incentive to develop the appropriate factory capacity to further grow domestic
55
and international sales of SMR power plants.
56
That's a big if.
57
And it's a big problem.
58
If there were a large number of specific SMR in the development pipeline, we could assess if mass production actually decreased cost, at what point, for which specific technology.
59
The current levelized cost of electricity for SMRs, before any cost decrease from factory learning, is $214 per MWh.
60
That's higher than every source of renewable energy.
61
And without those orders, we can't fully assess its potential.
62
It's like a middle schooler saying they're going to be an NBA all -star once they grow up to be 6 '10".
63
Sure, we can't totally rule it out, but skepticism?
64
It's appropriate.
65
It's even harder to make an assessment
66
because currently there are a huge number of different SMR designs taking off all over the world.
67
Well over 100.
68
With that many designs, it's possible that the market may become too diluted for any one design to be mass -produced cheaply.
69
One whole category of these designs can't legally get built in the US right now, and it has nothing to do with money.
70
It comes down to fuel and a piece of paper.
71
More on that in a second.
72
But speaking of paperwork, when my wife and I built our house, I filled out a mountain of it.
73
Permits, applications, utility forms, inspection requests, and every one of those had my name, my address, and my phone number on it.
74
I didn't think twice about it at the time, but years later I've got a pretty good idea where a lot of that information ended up.
75
Which brings me to today's sponsor, Incogni.
76
Data brokers buy that kind of record, package it up and sell it to whoever is willing to pay, including the people that you'd never want to have it.
77
Incogni helps you remove that personal data from over 420 broker sites and it handles the removal requests for you.
78
I signed up, gave them the legal right to work on my behalf and then just watched the dashboard fill in.
79
With an unlimited plan, you also get the new exposure scanner.
80
It hunts down where your info is showing up online, puts it in one place and lets you flag anything you want pulled with custom removals.
81
You get a risk assessment every 30 days and the app is on iOS and Android, so you can check progress from your phone.
82
They can't harm you if they can't find you.
83
Head to incogni .com slash undecided and the links in the description below
84
and use the code undecided to get 60 % off an annual plan.
85
Thanks to Incogni and to all of you for supporting the channel.
86
Ok, so back to those designs and the ones you can't get off the ground.
87
On the one hand, the growing number of designs for small modular reactors shows a very real interest in the technology.
88
But it's also a problem.
89
All these designs compete for the same investment dollars.
90
That makes it harder for any one of them to get built over and over.
91
And without that repetition, the cost savings never shows up.
92
The flurry of innovation in SMRs is creating a bottleneck to their adoption.
93
It's like a factory where 50 teams are making 50 kinds of car.
94
One team might be cooking up the Model T, but there's so much traffic to get out the door, it'll never have the chance to prove itself on the road.
95
Also, remember that one of the key components needed to reduce the cost is the ability to mass produce them.
96
If the same market for SMRs is divided between 100 teams versus 5 teams, mass production may not be possible, at least anytime soon.
97
When I covered these three years ago, I figured the field would have thinned out by now.
98
A couple of designs pulling ahead, everybody else quietly dropping off.
99
The opposite has happened.
100
There are more designs chasing the same pile of money than the last time I looked.
101
There's a whole category of these reactors that can't get built right now and has nothing to do with money.
102
There are some SMRs that we can probably count out from taking off, just from the kind of fuel they plan to use.
103
You wouldn't buy a car
104
if it ran out of gas from a special kind of gas station that hasn't been built yet.
105
But that's effectively the plan for some SMRs.
106
Many SMRs and advanced large nuclear reactors in the works plan to run on high -assay low -enriched uranium, or HALU.
107
This is more enriched than the low -enriched uranium fuel that's used by most current reactors.
108
HALU has a higher burn -up than low -enriched uranium, so you get more energy from the amount of uranium.
109
This is key to claims of increased efficiency and less waste for many SMR designs.
110
But there's a problem.
111
The only commercial HALU right now is produced by Russia, which is a non -starter given a law called Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act of 2024,
112
which does exactly what you think it does.
113
What this means is that a serious chunk of SMR designs can't take off until a domestic supply chain can be built.
114
The US is putting a lot of effort, and by effort I mean cash money, into meeting this potential demand.
115
A company called Centris in Bethesda, Maryland proved it could produce 900 kilograms of HALU.
116
They didn't want a separate $900 million contract, this one to commercialize its operations.
117
According to the company, the initial buildout will include 12 metric tons of annual HALU production capacity, as well as LOO.
118
The plan is for the facility to be built out by 2029.
119
It's a step in the right direction, but it won't be nearly enough to meet the demand, which could reach 50 tons a year by by 2035, according to the Department of Energy.
120
So there's a chunk of SMRs that have no chance of breaking out because of their fuel.
121
But set the fuel problem aside for a second.
122
What happens when you stop reading the pitch decks and go look at the reactors that are already running?
123
Big Nuclear did try to standardize designs to make construction cheaper, the way SMRs are supposed to do it.
124
It just didn't work.
125
According to a 2020 study by Ish Gates and colleagues, the cost escalation comes down to lower labor productivity and soft costs.
126
I guess modularity isn't all it's cracked up to be.
127
So let's look at the actual SMRs.
128
Two of these things are in commercial operation right now.
129
Almost nobody talks about how they're actually performing though.
130
The numbers here are bad.
131
China's HTRPM ran 27 hours out of a possible 8 ,760 in 2020.
132
Russia's KLT -40s unit percent, performed at 26 .4 % and 30 .5 % of capacity.
133
And while they were being built, they had the same cost and time overruns of regular nuclear.
134
According to Goldman Sachs, Russia and China's SMRs experienced cost overruns between 300 and 400 % over initial estimates,
135
which aren't likely to go down until economies of scale develop.
136
And just like boring large nuclear, these SMRs took forever to build.
137
China's HTRPM took nearly a decade to complete.
138
Russia's KLT -40s was projected to take four years to build, but required 13.
139
Despite the troubled track record, the effort going to SMRs is very real.
140
Like I said at the beginning, this is an incredible year for SMRs.
141
Two US projects broke ground earlier this year.
142
Bellevue Washington's TerraPower received the go -ahead for a 345 MW facility in Kemmer, Wyoming, with storage that can push output to 500 MW at peak demand.
143
And the Alameda, California -based company Kairos broke ground on a demonstration project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
144
Energy -hungry hyperscalers are linked up with SMR companies to power the data centers increasingly central to the U .S economy.
145
Investment money is flowing into the space.
146
According to Michael Johnson, managing director for JPMorgan Chase, this recent round of SMR enthusiasm started in 2024 when Amazon made a deal with Rockville,
147
Maryland's X -Energy.
148
He told the Wall Street Journal it was real support from Amazon
149
that had people believe not just in the future of X -Energy, but in the future of small modular reactors.
150
Look, if you'd want anyone on your side to build your SMR, it would have to be one of the most profitable companies on the planet.
151
But how much should we weight that excitement from finance and big tech against everything else that we know? So here's my take.
152
SMRs are a hard sell.
153
For all the activity in this space, we're not seeing anything like what we've been promised every time we've covered them.
154
This is now the fourth time I've looked at these.
155
I keep waiting for my answer to change.
156
Even people working to develop SMR companies don't expect the tech to break out.
157
Ray Rothrock is an investor in several reactor companies.
158
He expects very few SMR startups will survive.
159
It's a single digit, he told the Wall Street Journal.
160
It's not a double digit.
161
The big problem is that a small nuclear reactor is more like a large nuclear reactor than a PV panel.
162
It faces the same regulatory hurdles and process challenges.
163
A reactor a tenth the size is just as complex to produce.
164
It needs the same design work, build the tension and paperwork, and at first it makes less power for more money.
165
Here's how the chief executive of TerraPower, Chris Levesque, put it to the Wall Street Journal.
166
Because this is a smaller reactor doesn't mean smaller design effort, because it's still fission.
167
A factory cranking out PV panels can produce millions of a specific design in a year.
168
That That leads to lower costs. And comparatively, right now there are just a trickle of SMR projects without
169
even a single design proving itself to iterate on into the future.
170
In an era of ubiquitous solar backed up by batteries, the case for massive SMR investment is thin.
171
But there's still a case for them.
172
An IEA report last year predicts that globally, SMRs are poised for rapid growth.
173
The IEA's baseline scenario has SMRs hitting 40 GW by 2050.
174
And to be fair to nuclear, 40 gigawatts of reactors running around the clock outproduces a year of US solar installs by a good margin.
175
The problem is the calendar.
176
The US installed that much solar last year.
177
SMRs get there in 2050.
178
But it's still something.
179
There are plenty of places they might be useful.
180
Military installations, small outposts, way off the grid, and of course the data centers that keep coming online.
181
I know how much we all love a good data center.
182
Increased energy demand and climate change make any new source of clean energy worth pursuing.
183
SMRs are being pursued, but their central mechanism to lower cost and speed adoption has yet to be proven.
184
It likely won't anytime soon, or maybe even ever.
185
But right now, solar and batteries are dunking on SMRs.
186
It's not a fair comparison really, for a technology that is still some years away at best from reaching the rim.
187
So are SMRs a waste of time?
188
What do you make of the money that's still going into them? jump in the comments and let me know.
189
You can also check out extended cuts of my videos over on Patreon.
190
In this one I go into more detail on the different kinds of SMR designs that are out there.
191
If human -written and researched videos matter to you, Patreon support helps a ton.
192
And a big welcome to new Supporter Plus member Blue Falcon.
193
The link's in the description if you'd like to join, but just watching, subscribing, and turning on notifications is awesome.
194
And check out my follow -up podcasts still to be determined will keep this conversation going.
195
Keep your mind open, stay curious, and I'll see you in the next one.
📺 Stesso Canale
C18
How Quantum Batteries Break Every Rule of Charging
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
The Hidden Problem With Home Batteries
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B23
Is Solar About to Get WAY Better? (I Did the Math)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
How the Worst Oil Crisis in History is Backfiring
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B28
Why Australia’s Solar Is So Cheap (And Ours Isn’t)
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B28
The Truth About Ocean Plastic
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
✨ Video consigliato
C17
37 frasi
3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Terrible! 2/3
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C14
28 frasi
Comparing Low Voltage Vs. Medium Voltage Equipment on Solar Sites
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
89 frasi
The Plan for a Unified Nordic Stock Exchange Explained
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
163 frasi
SpaceX Delays Flight 13 Further, Flight 14 Testing Starts! | Starship Update
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2227 frasi
Breaking Iran War Update - Massive Explosions Reported As Iran Prepares For US Nuclear Attack
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B23
63 frasi
A $6.3 billion open-weight model just got embarrassed by the French...
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
49 frasi
AI & Future Jobs: Skills You NEED Now!
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C111
323 frasi
Global renewables: Pioneering the energy transition | DW Documentary
IELTS PrepBusiness EnglishUniversity Students
C13
195 frasi
What is This $3BN Machine Under New York?
British AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
177 frasi
Why Electric Motorcycles Are Failing and Nobody Will Admit It
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
245 frasi
Power Plant | How it Works Power Plant Steam Cycle
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questo video contiene 195 frasi e 2687 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 14:02. Chi parla va veloce, circa 191 parole al minuto: aspettati suoni legati e ridotti. Solo il 81% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese, quindi il lessico è impegnativo.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
15 parole del video che vale la pena imparare, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| reactor sostantivo | /ɹiˈæktɚ/ | reattore nucleare |
| uranium sostantivo | /ˌjuː.ˈɹeɪ.ni.əm/ | uranio |
| compete verbo | /kəmˈpiːt/ | competere, gareggiare |
| utility sostantivo | /juːˈtɪlɪti/ | utilità |
| renewable aggettivo | /ɹɪˈnu.ə.bl̩/ | rinnovabile |
| thin aggettivo | /ˈθɪn/ | sottile, fine |
| assessment sostantivo | /əˈsɛsmənt/ | accertamento |
| removal sostantivo | /ɹɪˈmuː.vəl/ | estirpazione, asportazione |
| component sostantivo | /kəmˈpoʊ.nənt/ | componente |
| ton sostantivo | /tʌn/ | tonnellata |
| pursue verbo | /pɚˈsu/ | perseguire |
| anytime avverbio | in qualsiasi momento, in qualunque momento | |
| adoption sostantivo | /əˈdɑp.ʃən/ | adozione |
| decrease verbo | /dɪˈkɹiːs/ | diminuire, calare |
| predict verbo | /pɹɪˈdɪkt/ | profetizzare |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| take off verbo | togliere | |
| break out verbo | evadere | |
| check out verbo | investigare | |
| get off verbo | scendere | |
| come up verbo | venire fuori, emergere | |
| drop off verbo | addormentarsi, appisolarsi | |
| end up verbo | andare a finire, finire | |
| fill out verbo | /fɪl ˈaʊt/ | compilare |
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | I've covered · have been · has already been awarded |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | were sold · been awarded · is brought |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | solar, which has · Russia, which is |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 43 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come can't, you'd, I've. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “th”: thin /ˈθɪn/, enthusiasm /ɪnˈθuziæzəm/, tenth /tɛnθ/
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: adoption /əˈdɑp.ʃən/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, innovation /ˌɪn.əˈveɪ.ʃən/, sufficient /səˈfɪʃənt/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: uranium /ˌjuː.ˈɹeɪ.ni.əm/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, utility /juːˈtɪlɪti/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come reactor, uranium, compete.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.