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Matt and Sean talk about desalination and osmotic power production, plus your responses to our previous episodes.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, The Ocean's Invisible 15,000 TWh Goldmine https://youtu.be/kko09WIC6yc?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Matt and Sean talk about desalination and osmotic power production, plus your responses to our previous episodes.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, The Ocean's Invisible 15,000 TWh Goldmine https://youtu.be/kko09WIC6yc?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Follow us on X: @stilltbdfm @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
Undecided with Matt Ferrell: https://www.youtube.com/undecidedmf
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Creators and Guests
What is Still To Be Determined?
Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.
Sean Ferrell: Today on Still to be Determined. We're talking about having our salty cake and eating it too. Hi everybody. Welcome to Still to be Determined. This is the follow up podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And for not the last, but the latest time, I'm not Matt Ferrell. I know you wish I was, and there are times I wish I was too. But I'm unfortunately Sean Ferrell, Matt's older brother. And with me, as always, is the aforementioned Matt. It's that Matt. Hey, how you doing?
Matt Ferrell: Good, how are you?
Sean Ferrell: I'm doing okay. We're rumbling toward the end of the year and it really, it's kind of the year seems like it has both been the longest of my life and also the shortest of my life. It has been over full and not in a great way. There have been some good things, but there's been a lot of wow, can you believe this? And I'm looking forward to the end of the year and I hope all of our viewers and our listeners are safe and heading toward a relaxing end of year as well. I say all of that as preparation for I'm not sure what our recording schedule is going to be as we get into the end of year. So, like, Matt and I are plugged in for recordings on a weekly basis, but it's that time of year where suddenly one of us might say, oh, I have a thing. And then maybe we don't record. So I just wanted to get that out now before we get too deep into December, what we like to do here is follow up on Matt's most recent. In this case, it's going to be talking about energy production and desalination and where those two circles overlap in a Venn diagram that says everybody wins. Or do they? We'll get into that. Before we get into that, we always like to revisit our previous episode and see what you've had to say. And we're looking at episode 288 in which we talked about a number of things. Most importantly, we talked about, yes, Matt Ferrell being a wet blanket. Kara Goth jumped into the comments to say Wet Blanket with Matt Ferrell. This was a reference in something Matt said in response to a question. And he said of himself, well, I hate to be a wet blanket. And I'm like, well, wet Blanket with Matt Ferrell would actually be an interesting podcast. And here Kara Gough points out, Wet Blanket with Matt Ferrell could be a fun April Fool's debunking obvious grifts or non starter projects.
An example Sabine covered today, data centers in space for energy reasons or any other project that you come across that initially sounded cool but ended up dead for laws of physics reasons. Is there anything that comes to mind that you immediately are like, yeah, I have a topic I could talk about that would fit in that category. A clearly bad idea that somebody may have actually proposed. Does anything rise to the front of your brain?
Matt Ferrell: There's three and they're all space related. So it's funny that brought up data centers in space that has been bubbling up a lot over the past few weeks. And every time I see it pop up news article, my eyes roll so far back in my head I can hear them rolling. They're just making so much noise. The idea of data centers in space is being actually proposed by some of the richest people in the world for a reason of. Oh, you put data centers in space and then Solar panels have 100% access to the sun at all times and that solves the energy needs of the data centers. But they're, they're in, they're in space, right? You have, you have to get them there.
Sean Ferrell: You have to keep getting that. Cables. We just need a cable.
Matt Ferrell: There's just so many, there's so many logistical problems with that idea. It's so beyond silly. It's just like, could we technically do it? Yeah, we could technically do it. It would be the biggest boondoggle in human history, but we could do it, right? And then the same thing on that. I made a video about solar power from space. Kind of feel the same way about that one a little bit. But there's some new technologies that have made me start to change my thinking. But there's also a proposal right now, Sean, that is directly from the Simpsons, Mr. Burns, blocking the sun. Yes, it's actually being proposed.
Sean Ferrell: This has been something I saw floated, I kid you not, in like 2002, 2003, there was a discussion around we could solve global warming if we just block the sun.
Matt Ferrell: Big problem with that. We need the sun to live.
Sean Ferrell: I think, Matt, you're forgetting that since one tiny problem. I think you're forgetting that since the dawn of mankind, man has dreamed of blocking out the sun.
Matt Ferrell: But that's another one. And actually there's another one beyond that, which I did a video on this one a while back. Mining in space, basically going to asteroids and getting the materials we need. Again, completely doable. It actually is. We have the technology and the know how to do it. But guess what makes it cost prohibitive getting those minerals back to the Earth. So it's like there's, there's these, there's always one of those big sticking points that's just like not going to make sense. So most of them are space related unfortunately for me.
Sean Ferrell: But yeah, yeah, the sci fi fan in me is just like well, cool.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: I like the idea of a massive satellite that's a data center in space that's also collecting solar energy to send back to Earth. There's also a part of me that's the James Bond fan that says that sounds like a 1981 Bond villain plan of. He has somehow convinced the world governments that this is a great idea and in reality he's going to rain down nuclear bombs on the planet. Like yeah, it's kind of Moonraker style of villainy at work there. And then as far as mining in space, there are, there is a. One of my favorite pulp sci fi books is called Space Miners and it is basically an old western in which it's just a bunch of people prospecting in space. So I'm all on board for that.
Matt Ferrell: But that's the thing. It's like all these ideas that are being proposed, I'm not going to be the guy that goes, that's never going to happen. Because it might, like at some point it might. I don't think it's gonna happen in my lifetime. It's like it's one of those, that's sci fi future. Maybe 200 years from now we have space mining and we have space elevators and all that other kind of stuff. Sure. It's like anytime in the next few decades. No, no, no, no.
Sean Ferrell: I love it, I love it. So there's also this from Junkers who raises a question about NuScale. NuScale was one of the companies that we talked about last week in our chat around SMRs and their modular reactor plans and trying to push things out. And Junker raises a couple of questions, Starting with isn't NuScale bankrupt? Not quite yet, but they aren't doing very well. Why? Because. Because SMRs aren't cheap as all the hype would have people believe. That said, I can see how it can be, how it can match data center consumption, but data center consumption predictions are basically nonsense. The last thing the nuclear industry would want to do is build based on assumptions of a data center build out that is fast going bankrupt. Really. I mean this is. I appreciated this comment very much, Junker, because this is a kind of meta question that pulls the camera back from who's doing it? How are they doing it? What are they doing to do all these circles actually overlap in the way that people are talking about it? So I wanted to share that comment with you as a jumping off point to yeah, is this in fact are the people making the modular reactors great going to last? And what is the thinking around data center energy needs when we're not even sure how much or when or where the data centers will need anything? Who's doing all this? Who's doing all this thinking? I'm betting it's not government.
Matt Ferrell: So no.
Sean Ferrell: Who is doing this thinking?
Matt Ferrell: This is all being driven by billionaires. It's like the billionaires and the rich people and the corporations that are building these data centers and they say we need 15 data centers and we need this data center over here that might need a gigawatt of power. And then when you press them on it they're like, ah, no, it's not a gigawatt, it's only 20 megawatts. It's like it is this weird fluid thing that's happening right now. And I agree that much of the data center stuff is blown out of proportion right now and it's really a gigantic unknown. Hank Green and his channel has had several videos recently where he's dug into this himself and I just recommend going watching those because he does a wonderful job explaining like he's not convinced we need all the data centers that are being built out to support the AI that's still not a proven product. He's still not completely convinced. I am convinced AI is, is here to stay. It's going to be the future. There's no doubt in my mind. But I am in agreement with Hank on we don't know how much data center and energy use we actually need to support what we're going to use for AI because we haven't hit that point. And it's the type of thing where like they keep making advancements and the Chinese are kind of showing the world how this is happening, where it's like they're, they're taking, requiring less power, less high end hardware to create AI LLMs that are as performant as these OpenAI foundation models that cost way more to make and so much more energy to produce. So it's like we're finding ways to make these systems more energy efficient. So it's like there may come a point in the next five years or 10 years where they're running on our phones pretty efficiently and on our computers locally and, and we're using less cloud services and suddenly it's like we just built out 500 data centers and we only need a hundred.
It's like, well, whoops. It's like we may be heading to that future.
Sean Ferrell: Is it almost the inverse of the 1950s thinking that led the head of IBM to say why would anybody want a computer in their home? It almost feels like it's, it's, it's almost like in the 50s it was like, why would we go there? Why would we try to do that? That's not worth our time. And here it's like we have to run as fast as possible to the finish line. Where is the finish line? We don't know, but we'll cross it when we get to it. It's this kind of build it and they will come thinking as opposed to dismissive of possibilities.
Matt Ferrell: I'd say it's we'll build it and we'll figure it out later. That to me is what it seems like right now. We'll build it, we'll figure it out later. You know the whole joke of like Silicon Valley is step one, great idea, step three, profit. Well, what about step two? It's like basically right, we're basically watching that right now. This step two, this rapid build out of data centers. However, the data centers we do have and we do build out, we actually do need. I do think SMRs are a viable potential for that market. And there's a lot of companies that are trying to do this and, and half of them are going to go out of business, no doubt. And to answer the question, NuScale, like he brings up, NuScale's not out of business, they're not bankrupt. But they're, they're on the ropes, they're struggling. But like I've talked about a few of these companies. There's NuScale, there's TerraPower, GE, Hitachi, Westinghouse, X Energy, Rolls Royce. Think about cars. But there are massive, really well, Rolls Royce, they make like jet engines and like, yeah, huge stuff so that they do way more than cars. Rolls Royce is working on this and the idea that it's turning out they're more expensive than, than hyped. I would kind of push back on that just a little bit. The hype is about what they could potentially cost as their mass manufacturer. Because the whole idea, it's like my house, my house was built in a factory, not on site. When you do factory built stuff, it means you can have repetition how you're building these things like Lego blocks, which means you get better scale which drives on costs and they're not bespoke. Nuclear right now is bespoke. So nuclear, these small modular reactors will like per megawatt end up being cheaper than bespoke.
There's no doubt the question is how cheap can they go? And we're not going to get to those cheaper prices until these companies are actually producing their things at a prop. At a scale they can get those costs. So the first ones they're making are going to be absurdly expensive. Like they're going to be crazy expensive to start. Hopefully if they can find a footing like 20 years from now, maybe they're making them at the prices that were hyped, but it's going to take us a while to get there. So that's, that's my only thing that kind of pushed back on Junker's point. But I think Junker kind of nailed it like overall his comment.
Sean Ferrell: I wanted to share more of Junker's comment because they. It was a rather long comment and I broke it into pieces because it felt like it was discrete ideas that all were part of a whole but were worth visiting individually. So I wanted to continue on to his next point which is talking about why can't you just say yeah, let's build this brand new power plant and be done with it? Junkers continues. At the same time, the larger grid is very daily cyclic and nuclear can't operate economically on a daily cyclic grid. What fixes that is drum roll grid scale Battery storage. Yes, that again. Batteries solve the same problem for nuclear that they solve for solar, just in reverse. Solar doesn't generate power when you need it and nuclear generates power when you don't need it. He continues. Another problem is that it is awfully difficult to predict just how much actual baseload we will need in the final iterate of the renewables plus batteries grid. All predictions made to date have been horribly off from what is actually happening. If we build nuclear out now, so we will likely overbuild it and that could bankrupt the entire industry. Finally they end with so if people want to get an idea of the when for nuclear, whether it be SMRs or conventionally sized nuclear reactors, just project battery storage at about 50 times current levels worldwide. Call it four time relative to California's current deployment and maybe 10 times Texas's. At that point the grid will be smoothed out enough by battery storage that nuclear's base load makes economic sense. This is I think an excellent breakdown of an argument that you have talked about on this channel before, which is it's not a one size fits all solution. It's going to take overlapping solutions that are going to provide different means.
It's going to be battery storage, it's going to be some solar, it's going to be some wind, it may be nuclear reactors of some fashion. And they're all chasing a moving target, which adds to the wrinkle of, well, what do we need to build now? So the people who are saying, build SMRs, that's the solution. That's a solution, but it's not the only solution. And the same for the people who are calling for solar and the people who are saying, well, let's just dig, baby, dig. And the people who are like, it's not. There's no single fire hose that will put out every fire. So having said all of that and talking about junker's junkers, very thoughtful comment. And it is signed at the bottom, Matt, which made me wonder if this is an alias of yours for a brief moment, but then I figured you probably wouldn't go and do that.
Sean Ferrell: No. So all of that being said, you've already said several times you're not a prognosticator, you aren't putting your money down on any one thing to be the thing, and you aren't in the let me tell you when this is going to happen business. So let's just kind of like really big picture. Do you think that some of this gets settled in our lifetimes or is this just the state of the world now? Constantly chasing the moving target, never quite answering tomorrow's needs, today adjusting, swinging one direction, then swinging back the other. Is this just a conversation that will always exist or do you think there will be a point where somebody will say, yeah, our grid storage is now decentralized, it's across this entire country or across the globe. It's feeding people's needs and we're having a much easier time than we used to in providing clean, renewable, sustainable energy.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, this is something, Sean. I do think you and I will see most of it in our lifetimes. We live a normal lifespan, but I totally see this as we're not going to see the end state of this transition. We're in the biggest energy transition ever right now. But if you just kind of go back in history and look at how long did it take for cars to become a thing, how long did it take for the steam engine to become a thing. That timeline's getting compressed. But it should change from this old technology to the new technologies is going to take decades before it hits that 50% of all energy is accounted for by these new things worldwide. It's going to take decades and then it's going to take decades beyond that before it's like everything's this now. It's like you're probably talking 50 plus years for all of that stuff to happen. We're going to be long gone by that point.
Sean Ferrell: Speak for yourself. I'm planning on living forever.
Matt Ferrell: Unless the billionaires figure out how to live forever, we're not going to make it. Um, so future. So we're still not going to make it. Yeah, but yeah, I, I, I think it's an interesting point. I, I again, Matt's or junker's comment I think is spot on because I do agree with, like with what you were saying. There's no silver bullet, but there is for me a universal that stretches across all these different forms of energy generation. And it's like energy storage is the key here. It doesn't matter like what you're talking about. It's energy storage, wind, renewables, nuclear, it even, it would even benefit fossil fuels. It's like it doesn't matter what the energy source is. Batteries and energy storage systems that don't have to be chemical batteries are hugely beneficial and they're getting cheaper. So it's like, it seems like that is the thing, the nut that we're trying to crack and get those rolled out wide and we'd find a lot of new opportunities that.
Sean Ferrell: Way. Finally, from last week, the best worst comment is from Lyle who says if you whisper SMR, which of course stands for Small Modular Reactor, does that make it aSMR? Hat tip. Thank you, Lyle. On now to our discussion about Matt's most recent. This is how desalination could power cities. So right off the bat there were a lot of people talking about, well, where are you going to do this? You got to be near water, which means it doesn't work for everybody because you got to be near water. So that's like that was kicked out in the comments by multiple people right away. So I want to ask you just kind of big picture, where is this being talked about as a thing that people are legitimately behind as opposed to, you know, we're not talking about Chicago, we're not talking about Kansas City, but where are we talking what parts of the country or world are saying, yeah, this is something that we think is a potential for us?
Matt Ferrell: Well, most of the world lives next to water. I mean if you just look where all the population maps, we're all lining the water system around the world. And the most people live against the ocean. And what you need is, guess what? The ocean. And you need fresh water. And that's the whole point of this, which is water. Fresh water's become more scarce, so we need desalination plants. And you get fresh water out of desalination. So as you're desalinating this water, you have fresh water and then that salty water that you just made, as well as the ocean that's right next door. And suddenly you combine all this stuff together. If you can have a system that can produce more energy than it uses to run the desalination plant, Bob's your uncle. You got a power plant there that you can actually tap into. And this is the part of what I found this so fascinating is that the market for this is way bigger than you'd expect. And I actually had a call with one of the companies I spoke about in the video, and I talked to them at length and asked some very pointed questions about this exact thing of, like, when you look at some of the research papers about how much potential there is, it's kind of a small number. But the number that they were promoting and they were in their. Their press releases were way bigger. And I was like, how are you getting to that number when, like, nobody seems to agree with you on this? They walked me through the rationale, and it was what I just said. It's like, it's not accounting for most of the numbers you see around. It's a desalination plant. You just have to be next to the ocean. You just. Or could even be putting this. Like, if you're doing lithium mining, it's not really mining, but you're pumping lithium up. You’re harvesting. Right where they put up, you're harvesting. Yeah, those brine pools and you're putting salts out. It's like, guess what, if it's nearby some source of water? It's like you've got the saltiest salty stuff right there that you could then try to use for this. It's like there's all these different use cases, and then they have a whole concept around even being able to use waste heat systems from industry to run their system and be able to produce even more energy. It's. It's bonkers what they're planning on doing, but it's one of those.
Sean Ferrell: It does feel like a pyramid scheme. It does sound like there's an instinctive moment where you just like, look, all you need to do is put in $5, and pretty soon you're making 50. And that's all it takes. And it's just like, I don't. How can you. How would we put in? Look, you just put in this much energy, but look at all the energy you're getting back. Maybe now you've got a stew. And it's just like, how are getting there?
Matt Ferrell: Well, my. My little pea brain, my. My little pea brain made sense of this, equating to something I do understand, which is heat pumps. I'm. I'm heat pump obsessed. And heat pumps feel like they're breaking the laws of physics. It's like, you can't make energy. You can't get more energy out than you're putting in. But it's like, it's basically two different kinds of thing that they're just taking advantage of each other to kind of get more out than you're putting in. So you're putting in one kind of energy and getting a completely different kind of energy out. Over here, this is something similar. It's kind of similar to that where it's like, yeah, you're taking energy to run the system, but the kind of stuff you're getting out could theoretically be higher if you can really optimize this system to get enough charge out of it. And that's been the challenge historically, is they don't get enough charge out of it. You can't get to that surplus. But there’s this place in Japan that I highlighted in the video. They're doing it. It's not like this is theoretical. They're actually doing it. So this is not a theoretical idea.
Sean Ferrell: Does this also fall into the category of, well, you've got a byproduct over here, you have to do something with it, so why not try? Like, if you're doing desalination, you're going to have brine, and you can't just dump it into a river or even the ocean, which is one of those things that just like, really, why can't I take this salty water and put it in the salty water? Well, biofishes, they'll kill the fish. Let's not do that. So, yeah, it's. It does sound like snake oil.
Matt Ferrell: But it made my brain hurt.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it. It's a little. But yeah, it's like, okay, it's about. You're getting a byproduct of one thing, and then here's the thing you can do with that, which makes energy, so why not take advantage of that opportunity, even if it's negligible? And then, big picture, it's not negligible, it's big.
Matt Ferrell: So it's kind of like taking advantage of waste heat from any kind of system. Like I have waste heat coming off of my geothermal system that's heating my hot water. Or a data center takes their waste heat and they put it into a district heating system for a nearby community that's actually happening. So it's like it's just thinking about these things as a holistic thing and it's not just focused on the specific technology, it's finding ways to kind of tap in and get dual use, triple use out of something.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. The community of commenters who show up and actually have hands on experience with this technology always amazes me. Such as this from Bartz who says it'd be exciting to see this finally take off. A professor of mine back at uni was worked on this tech something like 15 years ago. A small research plant on the enclosure dam in the Netherlands. Ideal conditions you'd think with the lake on one side and the sea on the other. But back then at least they couldn't get it to work well enough to see a path to commercialization. Improving the numbers by adding on to a desalination plant seems like a smart move. So yeah, here is a thing where can't make it work. Well, you got this other thing that helps make it work.
Sean Ferrell: Yep. It's stops feeling like snake oil when you start seeing the pieces. It's a little bit like in order to understand that you do need to look drill down into the particulars because the big picture sounds like it's made up but when you look at the particulars. Yeah, there was also this from Synod who says even if it never touches the grid, if it can generate enough energy to power the desalination plants themselves, that's a game changer. The energy consumption has been the big bottleneck holding back desal projects. If you eliminate that, it makes makes desalination plants way, way more viable. And that is a great reminder too. It's not about here's this project which will solve our energy problems in all places for all time. It can be, yeah, it's a little bit like a windmill and yeah, it's just going to pull water where it needs to be, which is these urban centers that are right next to the ocean.
Matt Ferrell: It's also like we've had conversations about this before but like over the next 30 years the projections of how much energy the world is going to need is just skyrocketing because we're going, we're electrifying Everything. And it means we're going to have to increase our total generation capacity. And it sounds like, oh my God, we're going to have to expand the grid in these profound ways. But it's kind of to tie it back to the small module reactor. It's like, okay, you're building a brand new data center. Oh my God. What's it going to do to the local community? Well, nothing, because they're actually building their own little nuclear power plant right next door. They're completely self contained. Oh, here's a new desalination plant. It's going to be using gobs of energy, but guess what, they have this integrated technology which means they only have to sip a little extra power from the grid. You know, it's like it's not, it's going to be as demanding. So it's like you can look at the overall energy use is going up, but these technologies that are going to make micro grids more capable of like being self sustaining. I just find that fascinating. I think that's really, really cool.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it feels like your comment right there kind of is a response to the next comment that I'd highlighted from Fold. Who says outside of the desalination plant, I can't see this being a particularly viable energy source. There just aren't enough fresh water volumes available near saltwater. And the odds of significant ecological harm if you try to run a large portion of the river through it seems too great. But for locations that do have the right geography to make it work, it seems pretty sensible. I think this is basically what you just addressed, which is given the right conditions, you've got, you've got a certain tool that could be used in that circumstance. But we're not out here arguing that Peoria, Illinois is going to be trying to do this just because they happen to have a fresh water source nearby.
Matt Ferrell: And this is my, my response is definitely not. This is not, we don't have to worry about solar or wind anymore. It's like we got this. It's like far from it. This is going to be boutique for specific locations, but it could be very profound in those locations where it's getting used. Even the company I spoke to where they had that large number of potential energy they could generate. It's like even they're saying we're not going to be the primary energy source of the world. It's just like we're specific use case like the right tool for the right job. We've got the tool that could really unlock a lot of new stuff.
Sean Ferrell: There was also some pushback in the comments and I wondered about the. Whether this comment was very specific to a moment in your video or whether it addressed a topic that was kind of outside the point of the video. Dan weighs in saying, this is a bad idea. We did this in Romania in order to pull salt from deep underground. We used to pump clean water into the ground and extract the salty water. Fast forward a few decades, villages are abandoned because of ground collapse. So here, this is not in any way dismissive of the reality of the things that humans can do in the name of progress can sometimes really screw stuff up. Just see the fracking debate here in the United States. Is this comment more narrowly about a specific moment in your video as opposed to the big picture plan that is outlined in the video, or is this?
Matt Ferrell: It's clearly to a specific moment in the video and it's. But what happened in Romania, what Dan wrote, it's like, it's horrible, but that's not the plan for these plans. Like in general. So at a high level, that's not what's happening here. But at the same time, it's good to know this so that this is not repeated because that's horrific that they did that.
Sean Ferrell: Finally, this from Trikepilot, who says, I thought I followed alternative energy developments closely, but I have not heard anything about this besides the trial in Norway being shut down. Good work. So there were other comments like this, which were like, this sounds made up, this sounds unreal. How come we haven't talked about this before? There are other comments that we've seen in other videos where people say things like, wake me up when it gets here, that kind of thing. That's not the sentiment here. This sentiment seems to be. This is a subject that's really flown under the radar. So I wanted to hear from you about how did this come across your desk at first? What was it that caught you or your team's eye to say, let's look into this? And the other thing is, do you have any teasers about things that might be coming up in 2026 that might fall in the same category of you won't believe it when you hear it?
Matt Ferrell: Well, for this one specifically, I had learned about osmotic power a while back, but I learned about it as like, oh, that's an interesting way you can generate electricity, but not as a, oh, it's actually a useful thing that we could use anywhere. It was more of that, a technical oddity that I had learned about it and it was maybe two months ago I think about two months ago, an article came out about this Japanese plant that is being like in operation, that's actually using this to make energy that's going to be going to homes. And I was, when I read that, I was like, wait, wait. I basically did like a whiplash, like double triple take of like, wait, you got, Wait, this is actually a thing. I didn't think this was a thing. I had never, I had no concept that they were trying to do this as an actual power plant. And so when I read that they actually were able to make it do it, that's when immediately for me, I was just like, oh no, I got to dig in. I got to dig into this. And so my team, my team and I started looking into it and when we stumbled upon this other company that's trying to commercialize it as well as finding out more details about the Japanese plant, and we were finding out the more we dug into it of like, oh my gosh, there's actually a thing happening here that nobody seems to be talking about that's really quite cool, especially when you consider desalination, because a lot of people are concerned about desalination. And so for me, it just became a no brainer that I wanted to make this video. And it was like, you got desalination on one side and you got this quirky power generation on the other. Sign me up. So that's when we started like digging into it to actually make a video. And as far as next year there, I don't know if there's anything like on this level of a what the. What kind of a thing. But there are some very unique.
I'll just say that I don't want to give any spoilers away. There's some unique things. Some of them are in progress. Like, I'm not sure if the video is actually going to come together or not yet. So it's like, I don't want to say anything too early.
Sean Ferrell: Right. Prudent. I am sure nobody likes to reveal what's behind the curtain too early. So thank you for that. So thank you viewers and listeners for your comments. You can tell that they do drive the content of the show and we look forward to hearing what you have to say about this conversation. Jump into the comments, don't forget while you're doing that, like subscribe, share with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. And if you'd like to support us more directly, you can do it right here on YouTube or you can go to Trek in time. No, you can’t.
Matt Ferrell: Wrong show. We're leaving that in. We have another podcast, in case you didn't know.
Sean Ferrell: Yes, there's another podcast that we do, Trek in Time, if anybody's interested in talking about Star Trek in chronological Stardate order. Anyway, if you want to support us directly, you can do it right here on YouTube by clicking the Join button. Or you can go to stilltbd.fm, click the Become a Supporter button there. Both those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of me forgetting which podcast we are currently recording. Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.