Quote:

Solar has never been able to compete in price, maybe someday it will come down but the liberals who scream for solar change their tune when they see the bill. Then they want govt to pay for it, lol.

---

koods said:

koraks said:

Well koods, kindly explain what is fake about it. I'm all ears.

---

Where are the thorium reactors?

Thorium reactors are pseudoscience bullshit

---

koraks said:

koods said:

koraks said:

Well koods, kindly explain what is fake about it. I'm all ears.

---

Where are the thorium reactors?

Thorium reactors are pseudoscience bullshit

---

Pseudoscience?

Thorium is a candidate for replacement of U/Pu fuel cycles in slow and fast reactors: https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:15048609
Specific application in Canadian CANDU reactors; also perfectly feasible: https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:11542052
Future prospects for Th reactors, based on the existing knowledge that it is a feasible fuel for all reactor types: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029549397002963
Report on experiments in India with Th fuel mixed in with MOX fuel to assess the usability of Th fuel: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022311508004856
Strong arguments for Th as a limiting factor in nuclear proliferation: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08929889708426440
Discussion (a.o.) of construction materials issues associated with Th fuels: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022311581905341
Discussion of molten-salt Th reactors, ending with a feasible case study for implementation in France: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elsa_Merle-Lucotte/publication/280855626_Launching_the_thorium_fuel_cycle_with_the_Molten_Salt_Fast_Reactor/links/579f55c508ae5d5e1e17eccc.pdf
Study supporting the feasibility of a molten salt breeder reactor using Th: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019689040700427X

And I could go on and on, for several pages. All peer-reviewed, academic articles reporting on the use of thorium in a wide range of reactors, some of them focusing specifically on the particularly promising molten salt reactors that are inherently safe due to their negative temperature coefficient.

Oh, there's also this: http://samofar.eu/
EU-funded project involving several universities, research laboratories and industrial partners aimed at further developing the concepts of molten-salt thorium reactors. Coincidentally, they're not exactly acting on a hunch here - the molten salt reactor concept is one of the generation IV reference designs. The use of thorium as a fuel is amply supported by studies from all over the world as you can see above.

Tell me, was it very rewarding to brush it off as pseudoscience while literally 1 minute of searching for literature would have shown you to be dead wrong? Because I imagine there must be a good reason why you would want to come across as a total dumbass.

---

koods said:

Great. Such an awesome technology nobody uses. It's all hype.

---

If it was a true hype, everybody would be using it
There's quite a bit of development on this technology going on. I linked to one actual example, but there are dozens all around the world, ranging from individual nutcases to competent consortia of substantial size with government backing.

If you understand how technological evolution works, you can also see how a technology may lie dormant for an extended period of time before it's resurrected. There are many examples in the history of technology. A changing environment can create conditions that make a niche, unfeasible or arcane technology relatively attractive at some point. Wind energy is a good example; it has been largely dormant except for niche applications for decades and now it's all hype (there's a true hype right there if you recognize it). In the case of complex technologies, individual entrepreneurs or even larger businesses simply don't have the clout to bring development to fruition, particularly if strict regulation and strong opinions in the general population are persistent. This is the case with all things nuclear, which explains why there's relatively little development occurring in nuclear energy technology across the board, leaving particularly little resources for technologies that are yet further removed from market readiness than more established technologies. Radical innovation requires critical mass if the innovation is complex and systemic. This is true for energy technology as a whole, particularly if it's highly centralized.

It seems to me that your personal preferences are clouding your judgement. If you're really interested in energy technology and want to bring your knowledge a little further, there's a wealth of information on many technologies for you to discover. When it comes to nuclear energy, your knowledge still seems to be at a very basic level. That's okay, but don't expect to be taken seriously as long as that's the case.

Stonehenge said:

Cookie, nat gas is a fossil fuel, as is oil same as coal.

---

ballsalsa said:

Absolutely. I would say that most natural gas consumed today is from fossil sources.  There is lots of room for us to capture and use biogas though.  There's no reason not to digest much of the waste we produce through various means and get the gas back.  that goes for human sewage, animal manures, green waste like lawn clippings and other ag waster that is not suitable as feed,  or anything else that can be decomposed in an anaerobic digester.

---

That would be renewable natural gas and that's not what they're fracking for. That's the odd thing about calling it natural gas, natural gas means alot of different things. We should definitely be investing more to harvesting the natural methane that gets produced from waste... waste that often just sits around polluting the environment.


My dad works for one of the largest power companies in the U.S. and they've invested alot into researching alternative energies the last decade or so, particularly under the Obama administration. For a while they were investigating using algae as an energy source. Don't entirely remember how but algae is very easy to grow and has such a short life cycle that it could be used to make cheap renewable energy. Only I don't think they really know how to effectively harness that yet. And besides natural gas has just been far more profitable. Most of their alternative energy funds have gone into that and nuclear power.


It's rather concerning to me that the cleanest least problematic most profitable energy we have up and running right now harnesses the most destructive force we've ever seen on earth...

CookieCrumbs said:

ballsalsa said:

Absolutely. I would say that most natural gas consumed today is from fossil sources.  There is lots of room for us to capture and use biogas though.  There's no reason not to digest much of the waste we produce through various means and get the gas back.  that goes for human sewage, animal manures, green waste like lawn clippings and other ag waster that is not suitable as feed,  or anything else that can be decomposed in an anaerobic digester.

---

That would be renewable natural gas and that's not what they're fracking for. That's the odd thing about calling it natural gas, natural gas means alot of different things.

---