Thorium reactors would be the perfect solution, which is why they will not be permitted.
‘The only source of energy that can meet global demand while avoiding greenhouse gas emissions is nuclear power’
This is misleading in so many ways. The largest greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is WATER VAPOR. It is impossible to produce large scale electricity without producing water vapor except in a damn. They keep tearing down the damns. All large scale power plants that are not damns are steam powered. Some use coal, some oil and some gas, but they all produce STEAM to run the dynamos.
This is the flaw. Carbon Dioxide is essential for life. No CO2, no plants. No plants, no oxygen. No oxygen, no humans.
More CO2, more plants, more life.
CO2 is not a poison, it is the essence of life.
I wouldn't want to live downwind form one of those power plants.
The future of nuclear energy is LENR.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/coldfusion/index?tab=articles
Keywords: ColdFusion; LENR; lanr; CMNS ; ecat
What energy crisis? Global warming is a hoax and we have an ample supply of carbon based fuels.
I’m all for it, along with Cold Fusion and the XL Pipeline..
Yet another IDIOT ENGLISHMAN!There is more”GreenHouse Gas”in the atmosphere than EVER before and it’s getting Colder,you BOOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Harry Reid made a real difference in the world: he basically killed Thorium reactor research in the 70s for political reasons.
Well done, Reid, may you rot in H###.
But our perception of nuclear power is coloured by issues of safety, radiotoxic waste, and the threat of nuclear proliferation.
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Actually, “our” perception of nuclear power is significantly coloured by the incompetence, hubris, failure, and lies of the nuclear power industry.
1. It uses thorium-232, which is far more common than uranium (it's found anywhere there are rare-Earth deposits).
2. The fuel is essentially thorium-232 dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salts, a form of nuclear fuel very cheap to make.
3. The same reactor can use reprocessed spent uranium-235 fuel rods or even plutonium-239 from dismantled nuclear weapons dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salt as fuel, which means we eliminate a huge nuclear waste problem by turning it into reactor fuel.
4. The reactor does not need an expensive, potentially dangerous pressurized reactor vessel.
5. A SCRAM emergency shutdown is essentially dumping the liquid fuel from the reactor into a holding tank, which is much safer than trying to reinsert control rods into the reactor in an effort to stop the chain reaction.
6. By using closed-loop Brayton turbines to generate power from the heat generated by the reactor, we eliminate the need for large, expensive cooling towers or locating the reactor near a large body of water.
7. Because of #6, LFTR's can be scaled up and down in size depending on the customer who needs the power. It could be big enough to generate 1,500 MW to power a whole city or as small enough to generate 85 MW to power a single factory or computer server facility.
8. The amount of nuclear waste generated is very small compared to uranium reactors, and the waste has a half-life of under 300 years, which means cheap waste disposal by dumping it into disused salt mines or salt domes (if the nuclear medicine industry doesn't grab it first!).
So what are we waiting for?
Is anyone in the UK listening to this guy?
If even half of the money we have wasted since Jommy Carter was President had been spent on developing nuclear power rather than green energy boondoggles we would have been energy self suffcient years ago.