Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium

The Telegraph ^ | 3/20/2011 | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

[Wonder Warthog]

"Why are all these "cutting edge" nuclear plants still using steam engine technology to generate electricity? What's next, nuclear steam locomotives?"

Don't snicker too loudly just yet. One of the interesting things happening now is an apparent successful "cold fusion" reactor (actually and more correctly called LENR..."low energy nuclear reaction"). This discovery (an accidental one) by an Italian (Rossi) seems to have revealed a new and different fusion (or some sort of high energy nuclear) process.

There have been several semi-public demonstrations of the working reactor, which puts out about 20KW (with an 80-watt electrical input), and generates steam with an upper temperature limit of around 550 C. He says that he plans to start up a 1MW demonstration plant in partnership with a Greek company this coming October.

A quick search on {Rossi "cold fusion"}(without the brackets, of course) yields plenty of links. One of the more complete descriptions of the demos is found at LENR-CANR.org.

That latter URL:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/

If this is successful, who knows....we might even have steam-powered cars running on "Mr. Fusion" type reactors.

[mo]

No massive, multi-billion dollar colossus engineering shakedowns of We the People with those suckers...can't allow them here.

cheap, safe energy makes people uppity...

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

The test reactor in Idaho

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory#Fatal_accident>

[tony549]

I didn’t mean to imply that the Indians are working on MSBR’s. You are correct in that they are researching liquid sodium fast breeder reactors. Here’s a reference: (http://www.dae.gov.in/publ/3rdstage.pdf). They are also working on the development of advanced heavy-water Thorium-fueled PWR’s and should have a prototype operational next year or thereafter.

[PATRIOT1876]

The Left would HATE it if we started using thorium. I expect 0bama to be entirely mum on this issue. If too many people start talking about it man-bear-pig or some other government ghoul will tell us how thorium is double-plus ungood and must never be mentioned again. The science against it has been “settled” amoungst your betters.

“The United States is threatened far more by the hazards of too much energy, too soon, than by the hazards of too little energy, too late.”
-Envirowhacko, John Holdren

“Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Paul Ehrlich

These are some serious anti-humanity ideas here.

[PATRIOT1876]

*thorium
Is that like a combination of Thorazine and Valium? *

It’s what Pelosi runs out of the day before she makes a speech