Alan,

Laser powered fusion reactors will likely be commercially viable within 5 to 10 years. Once they are, Thorium reactors will go into the dustbin of history.

Geoff

That's a pretty wild call Geoff. Do you have access to some real facts, most of us don't?

What ever, I sure hope you are right. The fact that it is not the bomb might be just the difference needed to get it past a brain washed population, terrified of anything nuclear.

mhaze
You stated:

"We know that temperatures have been higher than the present for fully 25% of the past 12000 years."

Jeremy Shakum comments on matter:

"It’s been warmer in the past…
This statement is absolutely true, but it’s often used to imply that humans aren’t changing climate now or that warming is no big deal, both of which are ill-conceived. Nature can and does change climate, but this doesn’t prove that humans can’t as well (the evidence listed above shows we have in fact). As an analogy, there have been forest fires for millions of years, but that doesn’t mean humans can’t cause those too. Also, while the world has been warmer in the past, it was a different world when it was, with higher sea level and different rainfall and vegetation patterns. The question isn’t if the earth can cope with climate change – it has for four billion years and will again – the question is how well we’d do with unchecked global warming, which is less certain since we haven’t experienced a big climate change before. One last, more subtle point that is often missed by people downplaying current warming by highlighting big past climate changes is that the larger climate variability has been in the past in response to natural climate forcings, the larger it likely will be in response to anthropogenic forcings. "

From:

http://www2.bc.edu/jeremy-shakun/global_warming.html

Charlie Vernon, a recently retired expert on coral, states the Great Barrier Reef is in dire trouble.
Charlie Vernon, knows more about corals than anybody commenting here.

http://www.theage.com.au/good-weekend/charlie-veron-the-dire-environmental-prognosis-we-cannot-ignore-20170711-gx8tqr.html

Quote:

"He has identified more than 20 per cent of the world's coral species, and has been likened by David Attenborough to a modern-day Charles Darwin."

It is not just the Great Barrier Reef that is at risk; but coral reefs generally.

That is so true Raycom.

I took the entire board, & management from the Marine park authority, plus a bunch from AIMS & James Cook out to our facility at Hardy reef one day. The boss lady of the Marine park authority was an English professor, who had as you can imagine, a great knowledge of things marine, & coral in particular

Most of the "scientists" never got very far from the bar, but one of the AIMS scientists who did spent half an hour telling me we would be out of business with in a year. Apparently he, & his people predicted the Crown Of Thorns were going to finish destroying the area with in that time.

Strangely I had 2 permanent staff, both keen scuba divers living out there, & a marine biologist doing her thesis on the effects of tourism living out there about half the time. I also took 2 dive instructors & a bunch of their students out there 4 days a week. All of these combined had seen only 7 Crown of Thorns in the area in a year. I did wonder, but did not ask, if he had ever actually seen one.

Of course, Ant would have believed him, & probably still does.

Geoff. Think you may have been referring to laser excited thorium as a miniaturized system; that may power your electric vehicle for as many as 100 years, without refueling, with just 8 grams of thorium.

Something being worked on now in China and elsewhere?

Don't know if it'll be a water based heat transferred thorium powered steam engine though, but some sort of energy transfer that turns/compells electrons into electricity?

And maybe as part of that process turns pig iron into platinum or gold as the sacrificial anode gives of many of its electrons as part of the neutron exchange? Expect some exciting announcement 01/04/2018?

Fusion is dead easy, containing the reaction for more than a few microseconds, has to date, defeated some of the best brains ever to don a lab coat!

The Swedes reinvented the steam engine some years ago, as a gas powered almost instantaneously powered up, steam engine, where after impressive power application, condensation replaced the boiled water, once it had been used in a miniaturized Saab turbine?

Round and round it goes where it hides or becomes, nobody knows.

Levity aside, it seems to me a laser excited thorium power plant would provide as much usable heat, if not considerably more than gas.

And while the whole outfit could be heavy, possibly not as heavy as the battery bank we'd need to get useful range out of an electric vehicles?

The advantage with this particular concept, would be the almost limitless range one would achieve; and through, keep it simple stupid, as applied management policy?

And given the rank collusion and (politically assisted?) manipulation of/inside our energy market!

It'd be quite a pleasure driving past that last outpost service station, honking loudly, without ever stopping for gas/diesel, for a lifetime of driving pleasure, or freight forwarding!
Alan B.