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The Forum > Article Comments > Clean electricity, cheap electricity, safe electricity > Comments

Clean electricity, cheap electricity, safe electricity : Comments

By Alex Goodwin, published 23/12/2009

The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor can save on carbon emissions, produce electricity and desalinate water.

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Elustran you are misinformed. I have all the 21st century mod cons with the exception of airconditioning but even though the temperatures can get up to 45 the house's design is such that the internal temp never exceeds 28. My home is solar powered giving me on average 13KWh per day - this means that I feed in about 2kwh back into the grid. I have batteries that kick in whenever the grid drops out. MacKay (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/ps/1.112.pdf) would agree with you that we can never go 100% sustainable but again like yourself he assumes that we will continue to use our inefficient technologies; sustainable power also implies that we use efficient appliances. Our whole 21st century lifestyle has been designed around the assumption that limitless, cheap energy will continue to be available - you only have to look at the way homes and offices are designed.
Posted by BAYGON, Sunday, 3 January 2010 9:52:41 AM
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A more balanced description of the current state of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor can be found here:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/compose-message-article.asp?article=9857

The comments are well worth reading:

- The post by PhilBiker which compares where conventional reactors are at versus LFTR.

- The posts by lfennec13 and JBert give some insight to my earlier question, where I asked why these things aren't poping up like weeds.

- The posts from thomasrex and quixote2 question whether LFTR is truly proliferation safe.

Unlike this article which raised more questions than it gave answers, you come away from the wired article thinking you have a feel for why the current state of play is where it is - and changes of it changing.
Posted by rstuart, Sunday, 3 January 2010 1:26:02 PM
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In cities all over the world lights and air conditioning in commercial buildings are left to run all day and all night. Fairy lands! Very pretty and can be seen from space. There are street lights every few metres which could be at least halved. Some buildings have become solar powered but not that many. Yet here we are, the average householder being told to cut our useage more.

Well, we try and, to an extent, succeed, miniscule savings in the scheme of things really. Many of us cannot afford to go to solar and sell back credits etc, so we are stuck paying the exorbitant and ever growing bill. I see some posts here about how well you are doing with conserving energy and getting credits, well bully for you.

I think I will just stop caring anymore because big business doesn't, the government doesn't try to use less energy and they won't consider nuclear power, just expensive wind farms and the like. I read where Kevin Rudd is going on another crusade to stop nuclear profliferation or some such diploptic seeking adventure on the world stage, so he won't consider nuclear power while he is in government. He can't be seen to be two-faced about uranium can he? Although he may, if still in office, sell it to the Chinese one day, he seems to want to sell everything else to them. But then they basically own us now.

I am fed up with all the nanny statements and dire warnings. We can't do more than we are doing so stuff it all. I will suffer the cold in winter and heat exhaustion in summer, not much different than when I was younger and there was no air conditioning. But the young people won't do that. They don't give a sh#t and neither do I anymore.
Posted by RaeBee, Sunday, 3 January 2010 5:04:55 PM
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RaeBee I share your sentiments. If this government was serious it would start by mandating energy efficiencies. For example an Australian invention the shaw airconditioning system is designed to be either installed from scratch or retrofitted to commercial buildings - it has demonstrated a 50%+ savings in power bills - has been adopted by China and is part of the Clinton Climate Change initiative. Australia has steadfastly ignored it to the point that the technology has been sold to the USA. We continue to allow the importation of cheap electrical appliances for both domestic and commercial use that are inefficient and drive up our power demands. Instead of initiating policies that drive down demand we have the absurd Carbon Pollution reduction Scheme a model that has been shown to simply create windfall profits for the same crowd that initiated the GFC without doing one little bit to reduce levels of CO2.
And then there are the posts in this thread - this preoccupation with AGW is a bit like navel gazing - doesnt get us very far. Surely regardless of what you believe you should be concerned that the government is not demanding that in all of the commerical buildings it owns it uses the most cost efficient means of heating and cooling. the Art gallery of SA had the shaw system retrofitted - in two years they made sufficient savings in their energy bills to cover the cost of the retrofit. I get annoyed when I find that my taxes are being spent on inefficient systems - just think what could be achieved with those savings we could do something about the homeless, about our health system about our education system instead we have governments that put out glossy pamphlets to create the impression that they are doing something.
Posted by BAYGON, Sunday, 3 January 2010 6:02:21 PM
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That's the thing Baygon, it is all rhetoric with our politicians. They are full of grandiose statements about cutting carbon emissions to keep "climate change" at "an agreed" 2 degrees increase rather than 4. That has to be the greatest load of absolute bullsh#t that I have ever heard, more than that, these politicians think we believe this. They think we are either illiterate or brain dead. The whole 'global warming' scenario is fascicle and a way to introduce more taxes. They can't control the climate any more than the power saving measures we take will make any difference in the slightest.

All the leading politicians in this country care about is kowtowing to the Chinese or the Americans or any other power. Giving millions to Indonesia to help meet their Kyoto targets, WTF! what can you say to this type of thing?

You can see I am very angry and fed up with Mr. Rudd and his fuzzy green BS. But it hardly matters Howard was abiding by the Kyoto Protocol even though he didn't sign it. Spare me, they are all the same.

And you are quite right, they don't give anyone with good ideas and inventions any encouragement or help so we lose out. They will not even think about water collection at the top end because it is to, to expensive but they give money to the Indonesians who hate our guts. Go figure.
Posted by RaeBee, Sunday, 3 January 2010 7:20:45 PM
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TheMissus: "If business could make a cut of 15% and households cut 20% then at least would buy time"

It sounds nice. Who knows you might even get households to cut back 20%. But there is no way business will cut back 15% out of the goodness of their hearts, and you are wrong to ask them to. In fact if they are doing their job, they will not cut back, they will instead absorb the excess 20% capacity released by the households. They will do that because we require them by law to maximise their profits.

The only ways to get business to reduce their CO2 emissions is to force them to via legislation, or to make emitting cost them money via tax or emission trading. Out of those, emission trading gives businesses the most flexibility, letting them invent their own ways to solve the problem.

Ideally, the government will implement the ETS, and use the money made from selling emission permits to build infrastructure like high speed trains. As for alternate energy sources, beyond financing lots of little experiments like small scale test plants I'd prefer to see them stay out of it. In an uncertain field like alternate energy, the government should not be picking winners - LFTR or any other.
Posted by rstuart, Sunday, 3 January 2010 8:00:58 PM
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