show us what the science of nuclear energy

will look like in the future?

Hi.

I'm Sarah, and I'm a senior reactor operator here

at the MIT research reactor.

I'm also a nuclear engineer, and I'm here

today to tell you about the future of nuclear energy.

Here at the MIT research reactor,

we do research on finding new technologies that

could be used in nuclear energy in the future.

So we're here in the control room of the MIT research

reactor where we monitor the temperature and the reactor

power level and other parameters to make sure that everything's

running smoothly.

So the basic physics that's going

on inside the reactor core, no matter what type of reactor

you have, is that there are atoms that make up the fuel,

and these atoms we bombard with neutrons

and then they are unstable and split apart.

So when an atom splits apart, it releases a lot of energy,

and this energy is in the form of heat,

and then the heat is used to make electricity

that you use in your home.

So the goal of nuclear engineering research

is to take this heat energy that's

released from splitting atoms and use it to make electricity

rather than using natural gas or coal, which are not as clean.

We don't actually do experiments on the reactor.

We use the reactor to test new materials.

These new materials that we test here

could be used to build stronger and safer reactors

in the future.

We may have reactors that are on land,

we may have reactors that are floating in the ocean,

we could even have reactors that are like batteries and sitting

on every street corner.

Even though we have all these different technologies

to build safer, stronger nuclear reactors,

the reason why we're not building them right now

is because they're very expensive.

But in the future, as the price of natural gas goes up,

we may be relying more on nuclear energy for electricity.