What ever Loudmouth is one, can he, she, it tell us, so we can avoid that diet!

Re Solent Green... hmmm not a bad idea, and much less polluting than coal or nuclear power.

Seriously, you have covered every human woe, but the article was about nuclear power, so... what words of wisdom do you have on the topic?

wooah.. guys.. nuclear power is NOT the safest, nor the cleanest.. and given its propensity for things that, when they DO go wrong, to go wrong in a big big big way.. its just flat out not a route ANYBODY wants to go down. This is electoral driven foolishness. Its a distraction, a thought bubble put out by climate deniers trying to look green-ish.. at election time. Leaving power aside for a moment; theres the matter of storage of waste. NOTHING AND NOBODY can guarantee a safe storage facility that will maintain its 100% effectiveness and its total integrity for the required 1000s of years. Nobody. This is just pipedream stuff being pushed by the people trying to flog us uranium and thorium and to build nuclear power stations. Is it better than coal? Heck, almost anything is better than coal. Coal is flat out filthy climate wrecking compressed dirt formed from decayed many million year old plant matter thats been destroying the biosphere since the early 1800s; as recognised by the British Admiralty since at least 1911. Is it better than oil? See coal. Is it better than gas? Only marginally so. Is it better than hydro? No. Is it better than solar and wind with battery and energy pump backup? Hell no. It is now 100% possible to achieve complete and total, 100% reliable base load power affordably and completely cleanly. Total 'flick of the switch' reliable. Which is NOT the message the fossil fuel industry wants to tell. Its now cheaper by far to produce power using these methods than using coal.. which is cheaper than oil, or gas, or nukes. So no. 100% no. Its not the answer the fossil industry or the nuclear industry or the investment houses flogging uranium and thorium as the latest be all and end all. The age of coal is gone. Its an 18th century solution which fails to address the needs of 21st century problems. Cleantech wins hands down.

Of course, we should rethink nuclear power! The only way you could be harmed standing next to a nuclear reactor? Is if it were not shielded. That said, look at these comparisons.

A conventional light water reactor burning uranium burns less than 1% of that fuel. In the process creates 99% as highly toxic waste.

A 350 MW enriched uranium reactor will require during an operational 30 years, some 2551 tons of uranium, creates more than 2550 tons of nuclear waste.

Whereas an MSR thorium burns just one (1) ton of thorium during the same period in a reactor that, because it's unpressurised, can be sited almost anywhere. Moreover, produces during a comparable period. Less than 1% waste. Waste with most of the energy component burned completely out.

Waste however, eminently suitable as long life space batteries. Further, any gamma radiation leakage safely and completely contained by a surrounding unpressurised water jacket and a concrete box.

For the money required to build one 350 MW conventional reactor. One could likely build as many as 7 MSR thorium ones?

Why?

Because conventional reactors operate at 150+ atmospheres and need continual sharp-eyed supervision to maintain critical mass without ever accidentally exceeding it.

And means any flaw in the pipes drawing heat away from the 7-inch thick solid steel reactor vessel can lead to a rupture and the instant vapourisation and decomposition of the water, which instantly becomes a highly explosive mix of hydrogen and oxygen.

Which was essentially the Chernobyl disaster.

Fukushima, blatantly poor design and stupid site selection!

In MSR thorium, the medium is molten, melts at 400 C, Only boils above 1400, operates in a sweet spot, safe zone of between 700 C and 1200 C and designed thus so.

Therefore a meltdown, not a viable outcome. Further, because of expansion when hot and a completely natural contraction with temperature reductions, the medium automatically controls the reaction which slows with temperature increases and advances when it reverses.

And means an MSR thorium could safely percolate away for several months completely unattended, walk away safe.

TBC, Alan B.

Alan, you may have read this:-

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx

But if you haven't, I would suggest that widespread use of Thorium is some time off yet, if ever.

David

Hi Alison Jane,

Sorry, I took umbrage at Ateday's airy declaration to destroy entire human populations, to accord with his particular fantasy.

As for nuclear power, I'm in SA, so of course I'm all for it. But apart from that, it is, after all, the cheapest and safest for of power generation (Chernobyl was thirty-year-old technology, thirty years ago; who in their right mind would build Fukushima, a nuclear power station on a fault line and only a few metres from the beach, knowing of regular tsunamis ?; the Three-Mile Island accident was forty years ago now, using twenty-year-old technology).

Let's be realistic: India is as entitled to rely on electricity as we are; but can adequate solar and wind power infrastructure be built across India to satisfy its future needs ? So, rather than coal-fired power stations (in the short run), nuclear is probably the way they will go eventually, like it or not. Solar and wind power generators and storage are fine for sparsely-populated countries like Australia, but perhaps not India.

Unless Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics can be reversed, (i.e. with no loss of energy generated into the environment, or through friction) there will be limits to solar and wind power, and most well-populated countries will have to use either fossil fuels or uranium/thorium etc. to generate enough electricity (especially once we're all using electric cars, all being charged up at 2 a.m. [hello, Snowy 2]) at acceptable prices.

Cheers,

Joe

The Author is correct when comparing the energy component of uranium with other energy-dense products. And useless if all or most of the energy is unavailable and extremely expensive to access. Requires constant vigilance and monitoring to maintain safe reaction limits.

I a 7-inch thick, solid steel, tightly packed reactor vessel, expansion is a very dangerous, possibly explosive outcome. Pellets of ceramic enriched uranium are packed into metal rods inside the reactor.

Swell with entrapped xenon, when left to long. Potentially rupturing the vessel, allowing the water to instantly flash to white-hot hydrogen and oxygen, a fuel bomb that has to explode! (Chernobyl?)

Therefore needs to be moved from the centre of a tightly packed reactor to the outer internal circumference, every 18 months, replaced every 4.5 years with brand new replacements!!

The reason we should not emulate Chernobyl's example/conventional nuclear power! Instead, build on the highly successful research done at Oak Ridge, between the fifties-seventies, by Alvin Weinberg, the patent holder of the first operational nuclear reactor. But, MSR thorium.

Thorium is the most energy dense material on the planet. So abundant we can never ever run out of it. Moreover, less radioactive than a banana. Needs to be left in the blanket of a reactor for around a fortnight to convert it to U233, Which then sustains a thermal reaction and creates miracle cancer cure bismuth 213.

AN ALPHA PARTICLE, ISOTOPE THAT'S ATTACHED TO AN ANTIBODY THAT THEN EXCLUSIVELY TARGETS THE CANCER CELLS!

Has been reportedly trialled against many death sentence including stage four ovarian, pancreatic, myeloid leukemia and some very nasty brain cancers.

The first and last of which have exceeded the annual road toll for in excess of thirty years.

Why?

Because we don't have bismuth213, nor its precursor, MSR thorium!

Why?

Because the caring "CHRISTIAN" community in the houses of parliament in Canberra have created regulations/rules that forbid it!?

Were this not so? Could/ve embraced MSR thorium over half a century ago, with it, enough bismuth 213, to have cured thousands of cancer victims!
Alan B.