According to the article... "It could produce nuclear energy at relatively affordable costs, without sacrificing safety. And, crucially, the thorium-fueled reactor could generate far smaller amounts of radioactive waste than traditional reactors, potentially taking a step toward gutting long-standing objections to nuclear power." And... "Thorium itself is a weakly radioactive, silver-like metal that naturally occurs in rocks, and isn't currently used in modern industry. It's also a waste product of rare-Earth mining in China, which means it could serve as a viable alternative to uranium, an element that the country has to import at high costs. "Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and so it would be a very useful technology to have in 50 or 100 years' time,"
This sort of thing always feels 10 years away. I suspect it's because within 10 years, the goal posts in terms of safety, financial viability or political optics get moved, and the progress becomes moot. From what I understand, we could do nuclear energy in a few different ways, but the access to nuclear fuel, byproducts, and geopolitics of it all make it seem like a pipe dream. Anyone know anything about fusion technology and the potential weaponization of it? It seems like once it's technologically feasible, it would be incredibly dangerous. But I watch a LOT of cartoons, so I'm not sure if that's real.
We have to be heading towards some reactor based energy production eventually. Nothing else is going to keep up with demand in the future. I don't know anything nuclear technology, but I like when an article talks about the benefits of reduced radioactive waste, safety, better economics and more plentiful fuel sources.
Thorium itself is weakly radioactive, but irradiated thorium becomes a very radioactive isotope of uranium, among other byproduct elements that are only generated in a reactor. At least that was one of the arguments for why countries stop investing in its research as of a few years ago.
This isn't true. Thorium is a weakly radioactive element this is actually one of the reasons it is possible to design thorium reactors considered inherently safe. It isn't a fissile material instead is considered fertile, meaning it actually requires a small amount of fissile material to kick the reaction off and maintain it (this also allows for the use of radioactive byproducts from current reactors and nuclear weapons). In something that shouldn't come as a surprise one of the main reasons the US went full into the Uranium reactors and abandoned the Thorium designs was that the thorium reactors consume radioactive materials that are easy to enrich and make nuclear weapons with while the uranium design produce byproducts that are easy to enrich and make weapons with. Thorium reactors were tested quite a bit in the 60's when the US decided to go the uranium route. The US had an operational Thorium reactor running at Oak Ridge for several years in the late 60s Returning to the inherently safe design aspect, the latest designs seem to be focusing on the molten salt reactors where the thorium is disolved into a salt (fluoride and chloride salts seem to be common choices) For the reaction to remain critical (ie self sustaining) it has to be in the presence of a moderator (this moderates or slows the neutron flying around to a speed conducive to causing collisions with the fuel and causing fission at a rate that will keep the chain reaction going.) So a super simple design choice of placing fusible plugs at the bottom of the reactor will prevent a meltdown. Should core temp go above a safe value the plugs melt and dump all of the molten salts into storage tanks underneath and in doing so removes the fuel from the presence of the moderator thus stopping the reaction since it cannot sustain criticality without the moderator. They are also designed to operate at low pressure usually at around 1 atm pressure range. The salt mixture has a boiling point of typically double the operating point, this combined with the fusible plugs mentioned below means this won't blow up like a hot water tank with a stuck relief valve and bad thermostat. (bad plug isn't a concern with this design is the plug is actually frozen salts this is achieved by cooling the piping to the storage tanks. If the temperature goes too high the plug simply melts, if power is lost to the cooling it the failure mode is to dump the salt and stop the reaction.) These molten salt reactors are meltdown proof. Really the main issues with the tech is just refining it enough to make it commercially viable. On this front china was very wise to begin dumping money into these. They are far from the only one however. There are several companies working on the these in Canada there are at least two companies racing ahead to try and build test reactors. This is the next step in nuclear power and by all indications it will be much safer and more environmentally friendly than all previous incarnations. As such whoever gets a reactor design tested and approved first stands to make a lot licensing and building the reactors worldwide. edit - fixed typo
Something my girlfriend and I have been talking about recently is how climate change has really impacted the viable hiking season. Of course the outcome of a shorter hiking season isn't really the important part here, but it's such a visible effect to people who do a lot of hiking. The winter storms have become highly variable, so some years you get tons of snow (this year the local area we were hiking in had nearly 50% more snow than normal), which means the melt is significantly delayed and is more destructive to the surrounding area. The fire season is coming earlier and is far more intense, and the snows are coming earlier. That leaves your viable hiking season at just a few months in many places. And it's not really better if any of the alternatives happen - less snow or a hotter early season means earlier drought conditions, which means an earlier fire season. The hiking isn't really the point, but it's such an obvious way to see how the changing climate has impacted the seasons.
Thorium has been theoretical for quite a while, but hasn't become practical because no one has really invested in it. Uranium works just fine, and has the benefit of breeding weapons grade materials which was a priority for most nuclear powers throughout the cold war. Fusion is sort of anti-weaponized if that makes sense. Unlike fission reactions, which are chain reactions that have to be moderated, fusion reactions are individual reactions that have to be induced. The only way to make a fusion bomb is to compress so much fuel into such a small space that it fuses all at once and explodes. So far the only way we know how to do that is with a fission bomb as a first stage. Even a fully functional fusion reactor would only have enough energy to keep the comparatively tame reaction from sputtering out. No pyrotechnics.
I detest the arguments where people say I'm only one person so nothing I do has any effect at all, it's true that individually your actions are minuscule but if everyone had that attitude then women wouldn't have the vote and we'd still be using slave labour. You can only control your actions but if everyone says I'm not going to because he didn't then nothing will ever change. Australia keeps talking about how our percentage of emissions is less than 1% of global totals but 40% of global totals are made of countries that generate small amounts and we have a horrendous track record, our environmental minister in the last two weeks has just announced two coal mine approvals. The Western world has profited off the resources of poorer countries for decades and there are options now to help them supercharge their growth using renewables but if we sit there and say our voice or actions don't matter then the world will continue on as it always has. Like Fiveslide said earlier in the thread, by consciously choosing one product over another companies take notice of that stuff, I'm still hopeful that things will turn a corner but it's looking a bit grim at the moment.
I did the math once. The amount of energy contained in the deuterium of Boston Harbor is 30x greater than the entire oil reserves of the United States.
Um, so while on one hand I agree with you that individuals should still act, the arguments about individual responsibility for climate change are less, "one person is meaningless so why bother," and more, "individuals as a whole have a limited ability to effect change here." Your examples are not really relevant as they dealt with civil rights. The issue here is often one of either limited choice, or limited impact. Limited impact is a big one, as the lion's share of carbon emissions are not generated by consumers, and a lot of what is generated by consumers is generated by a tiny fraction of them (the richest 10%). A study indicated that about 100 companies were responsible for over 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Now, for sure, those companies would emit some amount less during some reduction in demand for their services, but that least me to the other point, which is... Limited choice. In many of the largest ways, it's hard to actually make meaningful changes because you simply don't have lots of options. How is someone in the US, for instance, supposed to reduce their car usage? Incur the huge financial cost of moving closer to work, which may not even be feasible depending on how much it costs to live near work? Take public transit systems that are under-funded and sparse, not even existing in most places? Spend tens of thousands of dollars to replace their vehicle with an electric one? If you don't like your electricity provider burning coal, what is the alternative? When you shop, do you know every brand that Nestle owns so you can make greener choices? So sure, cut optional consumption, make the best choices you can. Nobody is arguing that, just that the issue here isn't what you stated - "I'm only one person" - it's that the lion's share of the problem is literally not within the immediate influence of individuals. The biggest thing individuals can do is stop supporting shitty politicians who would happily burn down the entire Amazon rainforest if it meant the CEO of Exxon showed up at their fundraising banquet.
That is the same thing to me, it's the blanket argument that nothing they do has any meaning so why should they care and they extend it to their voting principles.
Okay. A few people in this thread (including myself) specifically commented about how limited an individual's influence is on this issue, but nobody is saying that voting is a waste of time in this area. It's not the same thing. There is a lot of public discourse around making better individual choices, including from big companies responsible for large chunks of global CO2 emissions. It's mostly a false dichotomy, though, because consumers simply aren't given meaningful choices. I think it's important to observe that this discourse is trivial, at best and at worst it is directly harmful because it deflects from the real problem, instead blaming things on Bob's hour commute to work - despite depressed wages forcing Bob to live in cheaper housing in the suburbs and public transit options being nonexistent. edit: reworded some of the above for clarity
yeah climate change has basically turned me into a 2 issue voter now: climate change, legalize medicinal marijuana