OT But Some Good News for Once

[Flyby PC 23]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html

 

 

It's supposed to be a much safer form of nulear power. I don't care who develops it, just develop it well, and develop it quickly.

[Olham 164]

May be one step into a better direction. It's a shame that we still cannot use the energy of the sun far better.

 

Here is more detail about the Molten Salt Reactor:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

[Olham 164]

PS: Strangely the disadvantages of this reactor type are shown in just a few short lines in English, and uncomplete.

The German Wikipedia site says, that the amount of medium- and soft radioactive waste is even higher than from

the reactors we use today.

 

My personal opinion about the use of nuclear energy is simple: We are not capable of controling such reactors.

We do NOT even have ANY WORKING concepts yet, what to do with the long-term radioactive waste, so there is

only one intelligent decision: all nuclear powerplants must be switched off. Anything else is slow suicide.

The dangerous poison WILL sooner or later contaminate our drinking water.

[Flyby PC 23]

There have been Thorium reactors in the past, but they weren't given similar investment because they didn't produce weapons grade plutonium.

[Bullethead 12]

My personal opinion about the use of nuclear energy is simple: We are not capable of controling such reactors. We do NOT even have ANY WORKING concepts yet, what to do with the long-term radioactive waste, so there is only one intelligent decision: all nuclear powerplants must be switched off. Anything else is slow suicide. The dangerous poison WILL sooner or later contaminate our drinking water.

 

I have to disagree with your assessment here. The simple fact is, unless we start building nuke plants quite rapidly, we're going to run out of electricity in the not too distant future. All the current hoopla about wind turbines and such "green" things is just BS. Those things don't make enough juice to matter and are only built at all because of massive government subsidies given to fool the green voters into thinking the government is actually doing something worthwhile about the coming energy shortfall when it's really not.

 

And just to be clear, the fact that we have a radwaste problem is entirely the fault of the idiot greens. We spent vast amounts of money to built a long-term storage facility at Yucca Mountain, which at the minimum would have totally held everything for at least 10,000 years, and the greens shut that down saying that wasn't a long enough time. Huh? Anyway, because of this, radwaste has nowhere to go so it's just sitting there at each reactor, where yes, it can eventually get into drinking water. And who's fault is that?

[Olham 164]

None of the German storage sites can be called safe so far.

They had already stored a huge amount of so called soft and medium radioactive waste in a salt dome since the late sixties.

(The idiots called it storage - they dropped the barrels down into salt caves, where they bounced into other barrels.

This idioticy alone is proof enough - they cannot and WILL not handle it safe).

Now - only just less than 50 years later, they have to admit that water is getting in, slowly but permanently.

Together with the salt it gets aggressive enough to slowly decay the barrels.

They have to get all of those waste tons out of there again - with incredible costs - and don't know where

to try next. Right now they just have to admit, that they don't have a solution.

And that's the German right wing party; the Christian Democrats - not the greens.

 

If you could be absolute certain, that your mountain cave in the USA has no connection to any

drinking water lines - and that this will remain so for the next 10.000 years - then you could dump

the stuff there, I guess. But how could you be sure?

Part of this poisonous dirt is very long-time poison - very long time!

And I am absolutely certain for myself - man can not handle that. Full stop.

Edited June 5, 2012 by Olham

[Flyby PC 23]

They say this Thorium Nuclear energy can actually consume our existing nuclear waste.

 

Nothing's THAT good I'm inclined to agree. There's always a catch, but Thorium is getting good press, so I'm optimistic to see what follows.

 

It also doesn't melt down like a plutonium reactor, there's no chain reaction which gets out of control, so there's no possibility of another Chernobyl type incident.

 

 

I also agree with BH about green issues. It feels like an exercise in mind control, - be concerned, but not too concerned. Don't get me wrong, I want a healthier planet and environment, but there's too much propoganda and not enough action for me to really think it's serious - yet. It's playing as if 'somebody; knows the solution to it all, it's just we'll be more willing to accept the bad news and impact on our lifestyle once we're desperate enough.

 

Stage 1 was identifying the Global Warming problem. Took us a while, but I think we've got there in the end, although there remain those yet to be convinced.

 

We're still at Global Alert Stage 2- "Wringing of Hands", and worrying what can be done about it.

 

 

.

[RamblingSid 3]

I feel that massed ranks of hamsters needs to be seriously considered.

 

Here in Australia we have ample space for a Very Massive Hamster Array,

and our scientists have developed a fiendishly clever horizontal wheel.

 

The VMHAs will be sited near to mining operations and depleted Hamsters

can easily be recycled as badly needed protein for our horny-handed

magnates.

 

Of course, waste is always an issue and as you can imagine, thousands

of tons of Hamster poo can cause the most intractable of problems.

 

But our officials are in discussion with the UK govt: Westminster is the

prefered location for the re-processing plant.

 

 

[Bullethead 12]

Stage 1 was identifying the Global Warming problem. Took us a while, but I think we've got there in the end, although there remain those yet to be convinced.

 

We're still at Global Alert Stage 2- "Wringing of Hands", and worrying what can be done about it.

 

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this. So-called "climatology" is so far removed from actual science that it's "not even wrong". It's just pure garbage.

 

To be a scientific, a theory must not only make testable predictions for the future, it must also explain all previous observations. Climatology fails this initial condition. It cannot explain how there have been periods in the Earth's history where there was zero polar ice at all, or how there has been ice all the way to the equator. So, at present, climatology is at the same level as saying UFO aliens taught people how to do anything other than make fire, especially wnen it comes to saying everything happening today is the result of human actions. Pure crap!

 

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not denying the world's getting hotter. However, I wish to point out that it's not yet hotter today than it was back in the 1200s. IOW, we're still just seeing the planet recovering from the Little Ice Age. And note that prior to the whole climate issue becoming a political meal ticket, the 1200s were called the "Medieval Optimum". Since then, they've been called the "Medieval Warm Period".

 

But if anything, since the 1200s, the net human impact has been to decrease greenhouse gases. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of people in the world lived on family farms, which they'd created by clearing forest. And they relied on having a wood fire going perpetually for cooking, light, and heat. Nowadays, we get way more agricutulture out of much less land and relatively few have fires in their houses except on special occasions, so most folks live in cities. Thus, there's today much more forest than 200 years ago and there's much less wood smoke and animal-produced methane. Yet still the world's getting hotter. Sure, everybody's got a car these days, but those cars only run a couple hours a day at most. Not like everybody having a 24/7 fire going, plus at least 1 cow and several horses constantly producing methane from the products of mass deforestation.

 

And contrary to popular belief, the Earth isn't in the "Goldilocks Zone" where liquid water occurs naturally. We're inside it and we only have liquid water due to the presence of greenhouse gases. So greenhouse gases, up to a point anyway, are a good thing. We reduce them at our peril.

 

Anyway, the only measurably siginficant impact on Earth's climate comes from this totally unshielded fusion reactor that's about 1,000,000 times the size of this whole planet, and is only 8 light-seconds away. Because of the relative sizes, an unnoticeable flucuation in the Sun, multiplied by 1,000,000, could easily be a change of several percent here on Earth. To think human activity is even on the same scale as this is ridiculous.

 

I should also point out that there are no private sector jobs for climatologists. They only exist because of government subsidies, which are provided to for them to support the political agenda of the politicians. So guess what the climatologists are going to say? I should also point out that the not-even-wrong pseudoscience of "climatology" is only a couple decades old. Meanwhile, meteorology goes baqck to Neolithic times, has ample private-sector employment, and absolutely disagrees with the conclusions of the "climatologists". Who would you rather believe?

 

[RamblingSid 3]

Oh, it's science all right.

 

I think that the politics of AGW are another question, not

much interested in that- people are entitled to hold

whatever beliefs they like.

 

Some very encouraging news is that we may have more

time. Lovelock for example, has in light of the data

stepped back from his very dark and catastrophic view

of the timings - sorry don't have a link.

 

At the moment most folks are more concerned with the

shambolic state of the economy rather than AGW and

understandably so.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Bullethead,

 

Ordinarily, your observations are spot on and display a level of knowledge that is most impressive, but I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on a number of points in your last post.

 

First, the light energy of the sun is not 8 light seconds away. My understanding is that the energy of the sun takes approximately 8 minutes to reach Earth. Second, I have to disagree with your assessment that we are producing less methane and CO2 gasses now than in the past. I'm sure you are right that in Europe and North America we have more forests and burn less wood than in the past, but this is not true for much of the rest of the world. For instance, it has been estimated that we are currently losing forests and jungle vegetation in South America at the rate of one acre a second! That works out to 86,400 acres a day. Of course, the primary method of clearing these forests and jungle is by fire. And, just what are they replacing these forests with--cattle! So, your conclusion that we are producing less methane and less CO2 gasses is, IMO, not supported by the evidence. And I am not even including in this discussion the influence of industrialization in places like China and India, or the influence of all the flatulence produced by the 8 billion gasbags who currently live on this planet.

Edited June 6, 2012 by Herr Prop-Wasche

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Most importantly, I have to disagree with the following statement:

To be a scientific, a theory must not only make testable predictions for the future, it must also explain all previous observations. Climatology fails this initial condition. It cannot explain how there have been periods in the Earth's history where there was zero polar ice at all, or how there has been ice all the way to the equator. So, at present, climatology is at the same level as saying UFO aliens taught people how to do anything other than make fire, especially wnen it comes to saying everything happening today is the result of human actions. Pure crap!

To be scientific, a theory does not have to explain all previous observations. That is an impossible standard. Even Einstien's theory of relativity didn't explain everything that was known about the Universe at that time. To be fair, a theory can be evaluated by the number or accuracy of its explanations of observed phenomenon, but that does not make the theory unscientific.

[Hellshade 110]

Forget global warming for a moment and lets say that nobody on earth even says that it exists. It's a non-issue.

 

Thorium reactors are a great idea strictly from a conservative point of view if you think about it.

 

If thorium reactors have all of the benefits listed in the story, then lets forget about global warming entirely for just a moment and focus on something pretty straight forward. National defense and economics.

 

If I was going to try and take out a nuclear powered nation, current nuclear reactors make for extremely inviting targets. If I can blow up just one, I've killed potentially hundreds of thousands of people. Yes, the reactors are incredibly safe - because the builders know that if anything should ever go wrong with them, an awful lot of people are totally screwed. That makes them very inviting targets for people who hate us. Now imagine a nation that only uses thorium reactors. Nothing you do to them will cause a melt down so they aren't a prime target.

 

Furthermore, since there is so much of the raw material around, we would go a long way towards energy independence from the middle east. Energy independence from foreign oil is a national security benefit too. It insulates us from dramatic price shifts in oil if we aren't consuming nearly as much of it. If you've ever said "drill baby drill" then why be opposed to any other resource that we can get right here that helps fuel our economy? It makes no sense to oppose it.

 

The problem is that the moment anyone hears the term "global warming", knee jerk reactions kick in for a lot of people that say "It's all a hoax and so anything to do with it is completely worthless and not worth the money or effort to develop." Forget about global warming and look at the nation security benefits of thorium. If we didn't have to depend on nearly as much foreign oil, that would be a very good thing. If they weren't a high value target to terrorists or enemy nations, that would be a benefit. If they were completely safe, we could probably build a lot more of them than we do our current generation of reactors because you won't have the "green crowd" screaming that they kill the environment. With less opposition we could easily build a lot more of them for even greater energy independence. Not to mention if we build a bunch of thorium reactors, we're going to need people to run and maintain them once they are built. last time I checked, those are permanent jobs to help boost the economy.

 

In short the conservative benefits are:

1. Produce energy from plants that are NOT a prime target for terrorist / enemy nations

2. Build more of them since the green crowd has no reason to oppose them on environmentalist grounds

3. That results in more domestic production of energy for us - reducing our dependency on middle east oil.

4. Create permanent jobs right here in our own country that helps grow the economy

5. and we can even use them to clean up the toxic waste that is left over from the older style nuclear plants.

 

The downside is that it makes the environmentalists happy? If both sides can see a benefit to doing something, maybe we should stop opposing things on principal just because "the other side" says they like the idea.

 

Just a thought.

 

Hellshade

Edited June 6, 2012 by Hellshade

[Flyby PC 23]

It also heads off the growing race to plunder diminishing resources.

 

The fly in the ointment? For me, it lets us off the hook before we've really got the point.

 

There's something about respecting the environment and the critters that live there that resonates with me. The whole problem is we're plundering the earth and not living within our means, and finding more 'means' isn't really the point. We need to start looking after the big blue marble, or time will render scientific progress obsolete before we even get the chance to use it.

 

 

Thorium sounds pretty good, but not as good a Nuclear fusion, and they're getting very close to this commercial breakthrough too. http://www.ccfe.ac.u...troduction.aspx Commercial fusion power is a bigger story than Thorium.

 

There are answers coming, and things can get better, so why are we still plundering rain forests and oceans? If there are energy solutions for our future, please, let us all be responsible in distributing the wealth and opportunity that comes with it fairly and humanely, so nobody is forced to clear away virgin rain forest or drive fish stocks past the point of collapse. There's no need for it, so there's no excuse for it either.

Edited June 6, 2012 by Flyby PC

[eraser_tr 29]

I utterly despise the disparagement of environmentalism. Go to Beijing and take a deep breath, then whine about treehuggers. Because they have absolutely no regard for the environment there and it is neither healthy nor pleasant. There are places in China you can't see the sun from all the smog and water is unrecognizbly polluted. I don't give a s**t about trees and prancing forest animals. I care about health and the safety of our food and water supply.

 

Until you find a way to travel faster than the speed of light so we can find other habitable worlds, we're stuck here. You keep your own how clean because you live there, just scale that up.

 

That said, I had heard of these Thorium reactors earlier and they sound promising. Solar and wind are great, they don't run out, but their generating capacity is limited.

 

If both sides can see a benefit to doing something, maybe we should stop opposing things on principal just because "the other side" says they like the idea.

 

Amen!