[soup]

This stuff is supposedly safer than uranium and more abundant. The future of energy?

[Tytalus]

The problem is PR: "NUCLEAR ENERGY IN CARS?!"

[Dr. Howard]

Yeah lets get all wrapped up in something called "Thorium" and then next thing we know America will be at war with Asgard for control of it.

"Have at thee America!"

[Menace]

Relevant discussion from reddit re this stuff: http://lo.reddit.com/r/technology/commen...way_clean/

Summary: not a panacea.

[Sombro]

Energy From Thorium

http://energyfromthorium.com

Quote:

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors:

- Use cheap and abundant Thorium as the fuel source
- Cannot meltdown
- Produce no long-lived radioactive waste
- Produces ~3% of the “spent fuel” of traditional light water reactors. Most of which can be economically extracted and sold (e.g. Molybdenum-99)
- Can use our current inventory nuclear waste as a fuel source eliminating this waste.

[Vicious]

It's certainly the future. Unfortunately environmental nuts are doing everything they can to get this associated with nuclear power. Why? Beats me.

France is years ahead of most nations in this tech.

[Aliblahba]

Iron Manium is far more powerful.

[PoosyWrecker]

(07-31-2013 03:52 PM)Vicious Wrote:  

It's certainly the future. Unfortunately environmental nuts are doing everything they can to get this associated with nuclear power. Why? Beats me.

France is years ahead of most nations in this tech.

I've long suspected that these environmental groups are controlled by oil companies in order to extend reliance on oil.

Nuclear - never! too scary!
Coal to liquid & biomass gasification - never! global warming!

Do these environmental groups have any engineers or scientists on their board of directors?

[Hades]

(07-31-2013 08:49 PM)PoosyWrecker Wrote:  

(07-31-2013 03:52 PM)Vicious Wrote:  

It's certainly the future. Unfortunately environmental nuts are doing everything they can to get this associated with nuclear power. Why? Beats me.

France is years ahead of most nations in this tech.

I've long suspected that these environmental groups are controlled by oil companies in order to extend reliance on oil.

Nuclear - never! too scary!
Coal to liquid & biomass gasification - never! global warming!

Do these environmental groups have any engineers or scientists on their board of directors?

There's people out there who think that Chernobyl can happen at any nuclear facility, and these people are generally into political science.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

I always heartily recommend the site "Without hot air" for these matters:

Quote:

We made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. I think that’s as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons.

- former Director of Greenpeace International

http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml
http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml

The guy maintaining the website has incredibly detailed and accurate comparisons of energy production and consumption. One possible vision of the future (along with renewable energy sources) involves some form of thorium reactors on a large scale.

[Architekt]

It astounds me that anyone can be against the use of nuclear energy at all. If I recall correctly, Th decays into U, which can be reused and has all sorts of benefits. Nuclear power plants cause a lot less deaths than coal/gas power by some immense number, and storing spent fuel isn't actually that much of a hassle. Nuclear power is also a far cleaner way to produce energy, the spent fuel is reusable, and even the massive disasters of recent times (Fukushima - the worst since Chernobyl - which was the result of unfortunate circumstances and ignorant observation regarding tsunami activity) have very little actual impact - there were no actual deaths as a result of radiation from Fukushima, meanwhile a quick google turned up an article claiming over 22000 deaths a year, just from the pollution that coal plants emit.

What I'm pretty interested in is fusion power (the way the sun produces energy). The only bi-product is helium, and we have entire oceans full of fuel for such a reactor.

[Vicious]

I really doubt the oil companies would sponsor these groups. The truth is even stranger, these people are banking on an utopian dream. Never mind that the same greens are usually inner city dwellers that wouldn't survive a week without their Macbooks.

[InternetMarketer]

(08-01-2013 02:46 AM)Architekt Wrote:  

(Fukushima - the worst since Chernobyl - which was the result of unfortunate circumstances and ignorant observation regarding tsunami activity) have very little actual impact - there were no actual deaths as a result of radiation from Fukushima

Oh really? "Very little actual impact"? What the hell are you talking about? Just because it's not affecting us right now, that doesn't mean it won't in the future.

http://rt.com/news/japan-fukushima-radia...evels-689/

"According to a Saturday statement by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the tested water contains 2.35 billion becquerels of cesium per liter, and the radioactive water is now seeping into the sea."

[Vicious]

InternetMarketer:

Settle down. The Fujinuma dam killed 8 people when it broke as a result of being hit by the same tsunami as Fukushima. Likely you've never heard about this.

Earlier this year the fertilizer plant explosion in West killed 14 people. It was on the news for a couple of days but no one proposed banning fertilizer as a result.

The Great smog of '52 caused 4000 premature deaths. Coal power was the main culprit there. Heard of any moratorium on using coal lately?

People fear nuclear power due to ignorance. Personally I stick to what's real. Get back to us when you can tie radiation to the same number of deaths as the figures cited above.

[Bad Hussar]

(07-31-2013 08:49 PM)PoosyWrecker Wrote:  

(07-31-2013 03:52 PM)Vicious Wrote:  

It's certainly the future. Unfortunately environmental nuts are doing everything they can to get this associated with nuclear power. Why? Beats me.

France is years ahead of most nations in this tech.

I've long suspected that these environmental groups are controlled by oil companies in order to extend reliance on oil.

Nuclear - never! too scary!
Coal to liquid & biomass gasification - never! global warming!

Do these environmental groups have any engineers or scientists on their board of directors?

Absolutely. And I say this as someone who has a great appreciation for nature and "the environment". Even I can see that current environmental activism is directed for the economic benefit of energy companies, governments and banks.

Energy companies earn more because new streams of energy are cut of raising the price of current production, and also the value of deposits existing companies already control.

Governments benefit because they can essentially create a new class of tax (carbon tax) while pretending they are doing it to save the world.

Big Investment Banks benefit because they advise Oil companies, but more importantly they want a carbon trading scheme which will shave $Billions off world economic output and direct this money right into their hands.

It's all so obvious it's boring. Hardly worth writing down. "Environmental activists", at least the ones who are serious, are naive and essentially acting as unpaid shills for people they claim to, and usually do, hate. It's too funny.

***

As for the original post. Seems interesting, but I'll believe it when I see it. There have been a few new nuclear related technologies over the years that have been hyped up, but then just fizzled. Fusion and Pebble Bed Reactors are two I can think of off the top of my head. Good luck to the researchers though. Goodness knows the rest of the world needs to break the chains with the middle eastern oil cartel at some point within, I don't know, the next thousand years. How satisfying would it be for the majority of the world to finally be able to give the eternally warring tribes of the Middle-East the middle...finger.