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Posted on 05/03/2026 9:20:35 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Here is the unvarnished truth that has been kept secret by the choices of important people. At present population levels, there may be more than enough energy in the world for the next 100,000 years (maybe for millions of years) that is relatively easy to obtain, clean, and safe, and that would be productive of peace among men, because there would be fewer fights over resources.
The fuel of the future is thorium, and it is being withheld from the world because too few people know about it to demand it—and there’s no reason for this ignorance. Why the secrecy?
While positive for ordinary folks, thorium could ruin everything for important people who make their living from dealing with the consequences of conflict based on energy resources. What, then, would the bureaucrats, the military, and academics do to put bread on their tables?
With the implementation of a thorium-based economy, people and energy-hungry AI utilities would coexist without competing for limited electrical power. In a sense, we could have our cake and eat it too. And, as a bonus, we could stop consuming some of the rare resources of our only planet.
For all the foregoing reasons and hopes, I would like to suggest to decision-makers in Washington that they seek out and support the work of Kirk Sorensen, a nuclear engineer who has been doggedly pushing liquid-fluoride-thorium reactors for more than fifteen years. The technology that he touts has been understood since the mid-1940s and was demonstrated in a working model in the mid-1950s and again in the 1960s before the government shut down the thorium project.
There are still unresolved scientific issues blocking our access, but most require engineering tweaks rather than entirely new science.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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Agreed. We have too many people that think “green power” is free. It’s not, but too many people think sunlight & wind are all we need. They are fine in certain scenarios where you don’t need 24/7 60cyle AC power in large doses. That doesn’t get it in an industrial nation. Too many people do not understand this. They think that if you can flip a switch at any time & the lights come on, then that’s enough. Take a course in industrial electronics/power distribution & you’ll know why.
Source: 'Large, Stanford. Thorium as a Nuclear Fuel Source.'
All of that may be well and true, but someobe is going to have to build the reactors for it.
I know a certain rocket surgeon car guy who could make the thorium supply chain and infrastructure happen if he needed extra juice for his AI and robots.
Turbines that use supercritical CO2 as a working fluid instead of steam are getting closer to practical reality. Molten salt reactors (Thorium or otherwise) would operate at higher temperatures than conventional water-moderated reactors, which is a good fit for supercritical CO2 turbines.
That’s a mighty big cat proportionally.
We are used to a large cat, so the ones in the AI picture I created using Google Gemini do not feel that out of proportion to us. For over 30 years we always had wienerdogs... when the last one died we were heart broken, but a couple years later a stray cat showed up on our back porch. We live in an area past the edge of town where people often abandon cats, so we put food out for the feral cats that wander through.
After a few months Teddy decided to make friends with us. We took him to the vet to see if he had a chip in case he had been lost. I am allergic to cats, so we were then looking for a home for him. But it didn't take long to discover that despite his fluffy long fur and his scrawny matted stray cat appearance that he didn't actually bother me as much as other cats.
The vet said that he was a Siberian and about a year old. She joked that we finally ended up with a cat and he was larger than all of the dogs that we had in the past. Of course he has completely taken over the house.
I can cook on the stove when the power goes out.
My wife really likes a fire. :-)
My installation looks close to this one, except I vent out the back through the 100 year old stacked rock fireplace and rebuilt chimney.
“Jive” refers to a corrupted way of speaking.
That's why you locate on lakes and rivers.
If you use cooling towers, some is lost to evaporation, that is the white cloud rising from the towers the enviro whackos think is pollution, just steam.
What about diLithium Crystals?
What about diLithium Crystals?
“Pure Energy!”
A nuclear reactor is nothng but an exotic way to boil water.
Here is more information if you are interested. Your question is a fair one, but we shall see how it is dealt with.
Bottom line-these are not your father's nuclear reactors! (this is a post I put up on FR from back in December 2025)
LINK: It’s Atom-Splitting Time!
It is a nice high level discussion about what is afoot on this front, and it discusses the first IV Generation Nuclear Power plant scheduled to be built and operated in the United States by 2026...this year! (The link is from late 2025)
I would like to hear opinions here on Free Republic from our members who have experience in the field, are interested, or simply wish to comment, since I believe this is our path forward. I don't advocate this for "green" purposes (though nuclear power is indeed that) and we have been neglecting this for decades. I thought this has the potential for excellent discourse on the subject. Personally, I have had no direct participation in the industry, though I did work in Nuclear Medicine for years, so I understand the nature, handling, and safety of radioactivity better than most, as well as the truths and largely spread lies about it.
The Trump Administration publicly stated its goals in an Executive Order signed in May 2025 to: Reform the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC): In May 2025, the administration signed executive orders to significantly speed up nuclear reactor licensing, including establishing an 18-month deadline for the construction and operation of new reactors. It also aims to modernize regulatory standards and reconsider license terms to enable longer operation for existing plants.
(NOTE: The other components of this Trump EO address expansion of nuclear capacity, prioritizing federal loans and guarantees to restart closed plants and complete unfinished construction projects, facilitating power uprates for existing reactors, supporting the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies, including small modular reactors (SMRs), domestic fuel production and waste management, national security and AI infrastructure, workforce development, and last (but not least) the promotion of exports to compete for commercial projects worldwide.)
Basically, it is fast tracking nuclear power.
The bureaucracy was so slow from the NRC, EPA, DOE, etc. that the byzantine nature of it, in conjunction with the environmentalists and legal system roadblocks, that it made exploitation of nuclear power, all but impossible, with permits taking decades and environmental and other legal challenges designed solely to kill nuclear power.
Here are some specifics about the Natura Resources project mentioned above by Bill Whittle, full disclosure, I asked AI to summarize it for me to make it easier, and from what I see it is relatively accurate, so if anyone sees errors or inconsistencies, feel free to offer corrections or clarifications. Here is a link to the Natura Resources website article about this project: LINK: Natura Resources Advancing Nation’s First Gen IV Nuclear Reactor.
Here is a link from April 28, 20206 on the status of their newly installed molten salt reactor:
LINK: Natura Resources Completes 1,000 Hours Operating its Molten Salt Test System to Advance Development of its Molten Salt Reactor (MSR)
They discuss aspects of the operational pilot, the MSR-1 (I assume it stands for "Molten Salt Reactor") and is very small, only 1 MW capacity, but it is a pilot. (NOTE: This is in contrast with Communist China (which AI apparently considers the "world leader" which is using gas-cooled units already in production. But as far as I know, safety of these is unknown, and they are not designed as the Natura Resources project is, to be safer, scaleable, and modularly produced which is what we should be aiming for.)
Here is the AI Summary, which I have edited mostly for readability:
Summary
Natura Resources is an advanced nuclear developer leading the deployment of the first Generation IV (Gen IV) reactor in the United States. The project centers on a liquid-fueled molten salt reactor (MSR) designed for enhanced safety, efficiency, and waste reduction. Some key facts about the project:
I think I know that guy. I think he's related to Kirk Sorensen. /s
Thorium is fertile not fissile.
You must bombard it with neutrons and get it to capture them and then wait for it to decay to U233 which is fissile. This means you need U235 or Pu239 as the breeder starter fuel there is no way around this fact. You could use a particle accelerator at unthinkable expense to provide said neutron flux but thorium is not fuel it is breeding material nothing more. If you at a breeding fissile isotopes there is not one better than Pu239 it is the perfect fissile isotope only Np236 has a smaller crit mass and it’s super rare. Again if you are breeding fuel Pu239 is the goal , stop being ninnies about plutonium Jane Fonda is a commie lunatic. The French, Russians and Chinese all reprocess and burn MOX and we should too. There is ten thousand years worth of U238 for breeding just sitting as UF6 in cylinders at enrichment plants as waste right now today we don’t need to mine a single gram more. We need the political will to use the technology the USA invented but Clinton shutdown the IFR it worked flawlessly.
U233 is easier to chemically vs isotopic separate from thorium vs U235 is from U238 or Pu239 from spent fuel.
U233 is all bomb grade from the start unlike U239 which will always have Pu240/241 in reactor spent fuel. It’s never bomb grade. You need dedicated weapons reactors with very short irradiation cycles to make weapons grade Pu , thorium breeders do it as par for the course.
We don’t need new tech we need to have some Fing balls and make IFR reactors at scale.
I have friends and alumni working at Aalo in Austin they are the ones doing sodium cooled reactors for AI centers right now they have a working reactor at the National lab expected to go first crit on July 4th as part of the DOE renaissance program. They fully expect to burn Pu239 in the near future they chose sodium cooling specifically to be able to switch to the fast spectrum as soon as the USA grows a pair of balls.
We spend billions on the development of batteries that have with even future technology only a slim chance of being able to store enough energy to light a small city let alone power an AI center. This research is being funded to fix the problem of so called renewable sources that don’t generate any power when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Perhaps it is time to look at thorium
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