Posted on 08/16/2023 9:28:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
That’s my opinion, but because I do have a background in Chemistry and the handling of nuclear materials, I readily understand there are many technical challenges, but...I simply don’t see ANY of them as insurmountable.
Not like going to the moon.
I don’t know enough about fusion power, except to know my whole life they are saying it is “right around the corner”, but...not sure I will see this in the life I have left to me.
Thorium reactors, though...I could see one being built in under a year.
Actually, I feel like those are safe, but...having studied them on my own as both an exercise in the Human UI to control them, and the possible failure points, any kind of pressurized reactor is inherently capable of a catastrophic steam explosion, even with all the safety features built in.
The one they they have never built in is a thing that slaps the human hand as it reaches for a control to do something they shouldn’t do.
Because most of the times, even if we didn’t cause the underlying problem, what we do to try to “fix” it can be catastrophic.
I hope I didn’t give the impression that I was one of those weenies, but I completely stand by my observation that Thorium reactors can be made to be FAR safer with fewer built in safeguards that might fail or be mal-adjusted by a human.
If you have never read it, a fantastic book is: “Atomic Accidents” by James Mahaffey.
Besides being hugely informative, it is extraordinarily entertaining to read. (I have purchased this book as a gift for like minded people who even have a peripheral involvement in radiation...)
Like I said in my post above, I have a degree in Chemistry and Nuclear Medicine, but was also involved in Aviation, and what struck me from reading that book and recalling publications I was able to read in the US Navy regarding aviation mishap investigations, there is a lot of similarity between aviation accidents and nuclear accidents, and those similarities almost always involve flawed human intervention!
I have actually never seen that Jane Fonda movie “The China Syndrome” for the same reason I never watched “The Day After”...should I take time to watch it? (or will it make me grit my teeth?)
1) I agree that thorium reactors have the potential to be superior to pressurized or boiling water uranium reactors. I object to the notion, though, that PWR/BWR are inherently very dangerous, a notion that is very widespread. I do not impute that notion to you.
2) Don’t waste your time with those movies. They were made purely to propagandize falsehoods. They also weren’t made very well ... “The Day After” was really bad ...
I should change my statement to: Thorium reactors have the potential to have a far simpler design with fewer failure points, passive and safe system shutdowns, and fewer opportunites to turn into a larger and more expensive failure!
Nuclear power has caused far fewer injuries per megawatt hours generated than coal or gas generation. So I do view it as pretty safe.
It is the cost and effort to keep that tiger inside his cage that I would like to improve on!
I’m pretty much there with you.
While the technology is potentially attractive, there's a fairly high startup cost associated with being an early adopter. Just to pick on one item, for example, fabricated thorium fuel elements are probably extremely expensive today, because there's no market for them. (Not much of a market for thorium, period, since they stopped putting it into lantern mantles.)
Now, if you had an already-functioning thorium energy industry, might those thorium fuel elements end up being cheaper than uranium? Yes! But that's a potential savings, not a real one, as of today.
If you want a really mind-blowing tech fantasy, think ... nuclear-powered spacecraft, fueled by thorium, mined from the moon. That's right, based on surveys from orbit, there's believed to be a thorium deposit on the far side of the moon that is something like 3x richer than any thorium ore found on earth.
I agree that the private sector would build it, except...for all the overhead placed on it by government.
Which is likely why you don’t see permit applications being filed. (I have no insight at all into that process, so I would take your word for it)
Gold is for the mistress — silver for the maid —
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.
“Good!” said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
“But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all.”
-Kipling
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