Comments on: McCain’s non-straight talk on nuclear power

By: JCH

JCH — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:28:21 +0000

What, no 4′ners have uranium for our dependence?

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:26:23 +0000

Vladimir is more likely to say “замечательный”, but I suppose he might say “превосходный”.

By: Kirk Sorensen

Kirk Sorensen — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:13:48 +0000

Nuclear power is going to be essential to our energy independence, but I think it will be thorium rather than uranium that gets us there.

By: Pradeep

Pradeep — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 04:55:04 +0000

@Kirk:
We (USA) do not currently does not reprocess spent nuclear fuel. I think that spent fuel reprocessing and using alternative raw materials (such as thorium) might be the key to avoid the Russian import dependence.

By: Pangolin

Pangolin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:44:21 +0000

Will the person with the blueprints to the mythical, thorium-powered, plutonium consuming, molten-salt, fast-breeder reactor please forward them to John McCain so he can build the damn thing. While I have read long screeds by nuclear advocates claiming (seemingly correctly) that 95% of current nuclear waste can safely and easily be processed into fuel and consumed but I have yet to hear of such a thing being built.

So somebody please, put up and build your nuclear shmoo or shut up.

By: Kirk Sorensen

Kirk Sorensen — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:14:56 +0000

Pangolin, there’s nothing mythical about a molten-salt, thorium-burning reactor. It’s not a fast-breeder and it’s no good for making plutonium (which is why the thing never got green-lighted in the first place in the 60s). About 4GB of documents relating to its technology and construction are available here if you are interested:

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/

By: Lars Jorgensen

Lars Jorgensen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:03:43 +0000

The French have been making steady progress with the Thorium molten salt non-moderated reactor. But we will need a bold political leader to step forward and push for a prototype reactor to be build or it will continue to slog along on the 30 year plan. From what I’ve read it looks like the waste from one current reactor will get one new reactor going. By the time we are ready to shut down the new reactor more than 90% of the waste is gone and what’s left isn’t as bad as our current stuff.

By: John Johnson

John Johnson — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:12:49 +0000

This is all hog wash. Wind, Geothermal, Hydro Thermal are all viable sources of energy especially at the current prices of oil. However this is all about exaggeration, and fraud. Global warming is not being caused by cars, or trucks. Volcanoes spew out more carbon dioxide that all the cars in the world combined. The sun is in a solar cycle, and is heating up. All the planets in the solar system have increases in temperature. The surface is heating not the atmosphere. This is all about money. How can we fool the people into accepting a new tax, and governance. The IEA (i.e. UN is pushing Global Warming along with a number of environmental groups on “computer models” that model whatever data you put in. This data is highly subjective - meaning you have to guess what you think the number should be, not what they actually are.