[ Aleksandr ] Anything can be the plague of the 21st century
[ Aleksey ] This fragile world could be set ablaze and become conflict-ridden in a matter of days
[ Oleg ] Right now, humanity isn't up to this challenge
[ Aleksey ] 10 billion people on the Earth are a threat if we don't rethink our approach to nature!
[ Aleksey ] But 10 billion is a positive challenge because I'm sure we can learn to live
on this huge planet with all 10 billion inhabitants
[ Oleg ] The biggest challenge mankind faces now is a lack of resources
[ Oleg ] All sorts of resources: energy, water, food, minerals
[ Vladimir ] Energy wars of varying magnitudes have been going on for decades
all around the world
[ Tatyana ] If you take a closer look at all these problems,
you'll see that energy is required to solve them
[ Tatyana ] Out of all the water supplies in the world, only 2.5% is potable
[ Tatyana ] This is not enough
[ Tatyana ] To produce potable water, it needs to be purified,
it needs to be desalinated, and that requires energy
[ Aleksey ] We're not sincere if we expect to reach a finite number of global goals by a certain deadline
[ Aleksey ] Obviously, the planet won't change drastically by 2030
[ Vladimir ] In a remote Chinese or Indian village, people light an oven or start a fire to prepare food,
and by doing so, they affect the climate all across the world,
from Antarctica to… Moscow
[ Aleksey ] Burning gas, as they say, is like lighting an oven with banknotes
[ Tatyana ] Today we're using the energy that nature has accumulated for millions of years
[ Tatyana ] And we're going to expend it in 200 years
[ Vladimir ] Over the next 23 years, there will, first, be a massive displacement of coal,
and, then, oil from the global energy mix
[ Vladimir ] A gas bridge will lead to the future
[ Vladimir ] Second place will swiftly be taken by new renewable energy sources
[ Vladimir ] You can't put a nuclear power plant in your yard,
but solar panels can be installed, and are being installed, on every house
[ Kirill ] In a Moscow winter, this many panels wouldn't power half a floor of this building
[ Kirill ] If the building was in Rio de Janeiro, this many solar panels might be enough
to power the whole building, even in winter
[ Kirill ] In northern Norway, we could cover the whole building with solar panels
just to power a microwave. Even that I'm not sure about
[ Kirill ] In winter, with little sun in many countries, such a building could use windmills
[ Kirill ] But the main problem is it's hard to catch strong wind
[ Kirill ] Like now! There's almost none. A windmill wouldn't work in wind like this
[ Kirill ] In theory, either a single 100-200 kw windmill or a dozen small 10-15 kw ones
would suffice to power this building
[ Kirill ] But it's still unclear where to put them around here
[ Kirill ] That's true for most cities
[ Oleg ] The environmental-friendliness of hydropower is dubious - it needs a lot of flooded earth
[ Kirill ] Can we provide the whole world with carbon- free energy in the foreseeable future? No
[ Kirill ] No single energy source is a panacea, they need to be complementary
[ Aleksey ] Atomic fission energy is created by nature itself
[ Kirill ] The lowest per capita emission rate among major European countries is in France
[ Kirill ] Thing is, 70% of the energy produced in France is nuclear energy
[ Aleksey ] Germany suspended nuclear energy development
[ Aleksey ] And, without creating adequate renewables,
Germany, in fact, substitutes nuclear power for coal
[ Tatyana ] The 3 and 3+ generation reactors now being built are safe
[ Tatyana ] This is the result of the methodological work that started after the Chernobyl accident
[ Aleksey ] Back to natural safety levels
[ Aleksey ] This means creating reactors that wouldn't require a human reaction
in case of an emergency, but nature itself would make fissile materials revert
to their natural state without releasing tons of energy
[ Aleksey ] It's become part of our country's history
[ Tatyana ] In 10-20 years, mobile reactors, especially in distant or low-density regions,
won't be something extraordinary, more likely a reality
[ Tatyana ] This method will let us use nuclear fuel repeatedly: load fuel into a reactor,
produce synthetic fuel, process it, and reload it into the reactor
[ Aleksandr ] Behind me is a vacuum chamber section
[ Aleksandr ] Inside will be plasma with a temperature of more than 150 mn degrees C
[ Aleksandr ] In a tokamak, plasma is doughnut-shaped
[ Aleksandr ] If you sliced it open, you'd see these red dots - it's the plasma
[ Aleksandr ] The vacuum chamber and magnetic system are around it
[ Aleksandr ] Like the dough holds the jam in this doughnut,
magnetic fields hold the plasma in the tokamak
[ Sergey ] We can measure the plasma characteristics and find out
what's happening inside this 'sun' on Earth
[ Sergey ] This sun may be even hotter than the natural one
[ Aleksey ] I'm not sure if we can make a fusion energy source for commercial use by 2050,
but in this century, I'm sure we will
[ Aleksey ] We can make the planet revert to a state of almost absolute purity
[ Aleksey ] But we've absolutely passed the point of no return
in terms of doing it with small interventions, quick actions
[ Aleksey ] In order for the challenges not to become threats or, moreover, come to be,
a lot of work needs to be done
[ Aleksey ] Countries have to learn to work together