Posted on 08/29/2010 12:01:55 PM PDT by Nachum
If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years. We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Wow. Let’s do it. Shame on the left for not promoting this.
This leftist blogger has been promoting thorium for years:
http://left-atomics.blogspot.com/
Someone needs to give us the downside of thorium-based reactors. There have to be some. Possibly the liquid fuel cycle is too touchy or the lifetime of the reactors is too short. It certainly can be done but economic considerations must be holding it back.
Please, please let’s not have our Federal Government throw billions of dollars toward a hoped-for a thorium-power breakthrough. We have over 70 years of nuclear research behind us. If thorium-based power production was clearly superior to uranium, we’d be using thorium now.
Haven’t heard a word about thorium until today. The pols certainly aren’t talking about it. They are too busy funding programs to stop Chinese prostitutes from drinking alcohol in excess . . . in China.
Nuclear power, like the space program, were dual use programs: i.e. both civilian and defense.
The technology for rockets to the moon applied to ballistic missiles used to carry nuclear warheads.
Uranium cycle reactors produce plutonium used to make the warheads. The thorium cycle produces no fissile material and is of little use to the defense side of the coin. That is why uranium became the fuel of choice. Thorium has the particular advantage in that it cannot be used to make warheads if it gets into the wrong hands.
Thorium cooks very similarly to U238. But it couldn’t fission like U235, IIRC.
The US wanted U235 and Plutonium, so Thorium research got pushed aside in favor of Uranium reactors.
That’s how I remember it anyway.
The guy that received the most from BP in the last twenty years, is not going to upset the apple cart.
Good article.
It’s nice to know we really have nothing to worry about in the long run.
Whenever we think we have a real, serious problem, we can use Thorium.
We don’t have an energy problem, really, I guess. Good stuff.
Good grief!
True.....
.....Our problem is the left has shut down our truly affordable first step energy (domestic petroleum, coal, and conventional nuclear energy).
We have a political problem. The left wants America as we know it destroyed.
“Let’s empty your bank account first to try it, wiseguy.”
It says in the article only $2 billion is needed to build one of these. That’s peanuts (Google alone has $30B cash on hand). If this were a no-brainer concept, one would think the private sector would leap on it. I’m all for clearing out whatever excessive regulations stand in the way of trying such plants out, but I think the history of government funding technology development is pretty dismal (remember synfuels plants under the Carter administration? How many taxpayer billions went down that rathole?).
Neither Thorium nor Uranium production’s by-products are as versatile as those from coal or crude Oil.
Plastics,
Lubricants,
fertilizers,
inks, dyes, polymers, etc.
Get the IDEA?
Going “carbon Free” is insanity!
It’s always good to have more information talking about how some new technology will solve our energy problems sometime in the future.
And sure, Obama and the Dems are glozis as are some RINOs.
After adjusting for inflation, you could fund dozens of "Manhattan Projects" for the cost of the various payoffs bailouts the Dems have squandered our grandchildren's money on.
Absolutely. Why would you want to waste perfectly good organic carbon feedstock by burning it?
Don't you think if that high quality feedstock for all of those useful products was not being burned, then the price of the crude would fall and in turn cause the price of the finished product to fall as well?
You’ve just nailed the issue on the head.
People need to remember that most of what went on inside the DOE in the 70’s and 80’s was weapons-related. The whole Carter-era hippy energy binge was just a diversion.
Matter of fact, I’d go so far as to predict that any alternative energy plans that actually work will not come out of the DOE.
Agreed.
I'm interesting in the thorium question. Seems like we had a two branch road and followed only one. I think I will begin looking for answers.
I wonder how many other radioactive elements could be used to generate electricity.
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