Andrew Yang Wants Thorium Nuclear Power. Here's What That Means.

[Rhiannon12866]

Why the Democratic candidate is backing an experimental technology to fight climate change.


Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and Democratic candidate for president, revealed his climate plan this week.

Unlike other presidential candidates, Yang openly endorses a nuclear power known as thorium.

Yang says he would heavily promote thorium research in America, promising that part of "$50 billion in research and development" would go toward thorium-based molten salt reactors.

On Monday, Democratic candidate for president Andrew Yang revealed his climate plan. Like the plans of fellow nominees Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the plan is ambitious. But Yang's sticks out from the others because he openly endorses a type of nuclear power known as thorium.

Nuclear power has divided the Democratic candidates, with a few, like Sanders and Marianne Williamson, outright opposing its extended use into the future. Meanwhile, contenders like Yang, Sen. Cory Booker, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar actively support it. Yang's plan claims that the public's conception of nuclear safety "has been skewed by TV shows like Chernobyl and The Simpsons."

It's worth noting that while nuclear plants in America today are very different than the Soviet plants of the late 1980s, the show Chernobyl gripped Americans partially because it was based on a real event. Incidents like Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and multiple Broken Arrows still loom large for Americans. Polling from Gallup earlier this year showed a country split down the middle, with 49 percent of Americans in favor of the technology and another 49 percent opposing it.

But a thorium plant would be different than the plants with which Americans are familiar.


Read more: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a28820813/andrew-yang-nuclear-power/



Thorium pellets, held by an Indian scientist in a weapons laboratory.
PALLAVA BAGLA/GETTY IMAGES

[Crazyleftie]

1. ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!

Nuclear power was touted as a panacea in the 50's.....to tout this unproven crap to public in an election is irresponsible.....I'd rather buy the brooklyn bridge

[Rhiannon12866]

2. If you read the article, it explains how this is different from what we're used to

I'm not a fan myself either, but I thought this was something we needed to understand - not that I'll get it completely without reading the article over a few more times.

[Miguelito Loveless]

27. It still comes down to economics

A workable Thorium reactor is still decades away, with hundreds of billions in cost and hundreds of billions more in external costs (fuel processing, waste handling, and plant decommissioning costs).

Solar/wind/battery tech exists today, gets cheaper every year, while getting more efficient. Also, these are the only energy generation technologies (along with hydro) where the fuel comes to your power plant without cost, or effort. Sunlight does not require finding, digging, pumping, refining, pumping, etc, before it can be used.

[Celerity]

5. Sorry, completely disagree, ultra advanced fission and hopefully soon fusion

nuclear power is by far the best solution. Renewable energy simply does NOT have the EROEI to sustain the world's demands. It is basic physics.

I suggest you go take a look at the journal of a wonderful DU'er, (and scientist) NNadir for a deeper dive into this.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/~NNadir

Cheers

[ismnotwasm]

10. Holy crap that's Interesting.

Had no idea that poster was a scientist, thank you, I will definitely be checking into him.

[lonely bird]

16. Basically nothing does in terms of er/ei

You can’t get something for free. What is the energy and carbon costs for building thorium salt bed reactors? Construction equipment, clearing of land, water usage just to build it. What about maintenance?

I am not saying do not do it but that nothing is a magic solution.

[Celerity]

18. it is superior to all current renewable forms atm in terms of EROEI though

[Blue_true]

21. The key word that you used is "current".

$50 billion dollars can pay for a buttload of renewables research. Can you really say that what comes from that won't be an improvement over Thorium salt reactors? No you can't. There are a couple of potential innovations ( high temperature superconductors, high voltage storage cells to store generated electricity during daylight or wind and release it when generation stops) that can completely flip the scale on renewable energy, making it impossible for any other form of energy generation to compete on either cost or duty cycle. Why not spend $50 billion on concepts that are already being researched and are theoretically as possible of thorium salt nuclear reactors, without the potential virulent public opposition?

[Celerity]

34. 50 billion is a drop in the bucket, I have zero problems with that

and I am not arguing for thorium alone

[Blue_true]

36. Why not spend the money making current nukes safer and figuring out a better

way to abate nuclear waste?

[Celerity]

38. Do it all. Any and all options should be researched.

[redqueen]

56. Exactly.

We cannot afford to do otherwise.

[Miguelito Loveless]

28. Fusion is still decades away

We need (and have) solutions now. We just need use it. In the last ten years solar PV has dropped in cost from $7/watt installed (rooftop) to $2/watt installed. Commercial arrays are around $1 or less. Panels efficiency in that time has almost doubled. Battery storage has dropped about 85% and production is skyrocketing.

Technically speaking, we have fusion today. The reactor is 93 million miles away, but delivers fuel in about 8 minutes, for free.

[ZZenith]

29. Art Robinson is also a scientist.

Art Robinson believes we should be mixing nuclear waste into the cement in our house foundations for the “health benefits.”

[Celerity]

35. a profound non sequitur nt

[ZZenith]

39. Au contraire.

It completely follows. Some people, including even some people on this very thread, throw around the word “scientist” like some kind of argumentum ad verecundiam, as though science has never in its history gotten things completely wrong. Your “return on investment” fails to factor in so many variables that it’s a completely useless argument.

[Celerity]

41. Wrong. And I simply suggested listening to and reading the postings of an actual scientist.

You used the ridiculous analogy of positing up some crackpot to try and discredit that via the predicate of them both being 'scientists'.

As I stated, a non sequitur.

[ZZenith]

42. I didn't mean to suggest that all scientists are crackpots, for I know that to not be true.

In fact, some of them have stated this -

“Nuclear reactors fueled with thorium and uranium do not provide any clear overall advantages over reactors fueled with uranium alone. All types of nuclear fuels, whether uranium- or thorium-based, generate large amounts of heat during reactor operation, and failing to effectively remove that heat will lead to serious safety problems, as was seen at Fukushima. The US Department of Energy has concluded after a review that “the choice between uranium-based fuel and thorium-based fuel is seen basically as one of preference, with no fundamental difference in addressing the nuclear power issues [of waste management, proliferation risk, safety, security, economics, and sustainability].1 However, the report also notes that “Since no infrastructure currently exists in the U.S. for thorium-based fuels, and the processing of thorium-based fuels is at a lower level of technical maturity when compared to processing of uranium-based fuels, costs and RD&D [research, development and deployment] requirements for using thorium are anticipated to be higher.”
Some people believe that liquid fluoride thorium reactors, which would use a high- temperature liquid fuel made of molten salt, would be significantly safer than current- generation reactors. However, such reactors have major flaws. There are serious safety issues associated with the retention of fission products in the fuel, and it is not clear these problems can be effectively resolved. Such reactors also present proliferation and nuclear terrorism risks because they involve the continuous separation, or “reprocessing,” of the fuel to remove fission products and to efficiently produce U-233, which is a nuclear weapon-usable material. Moreover, disposal of the used fuel has turned out to be a major challenge. Stabilization and disposal of the remains of the very small "Molten Salt Reactor Experiment" that operated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s has turned into the most technically challenging cleanup problem that Oak Ridge has faced, and the site has still not been cleaned up.
Last updated March 14, 2019”

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power/thorium-reactors-statement.pdf

[Celerity]

43. I am NOT fixated on thorium as the only or even the most viable solution. nt

[Crazyleftie]

57. "Advanced fission" is aother false panacea that the gullible masses will accept

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power/thorium-reactors-statement.pdf

[Celerity]

58. Non sequitur

That chiefly deals with thorium, and I do not limit in such manner.

Renewables alone simply do not have the EROEI to make them viable as the main thrust of new energy sources. If and when they do, then I am all in.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

54. We still had tube radios in the 50s and computers filled rooms

Yang is saying the technology has improved - as it has for most things

I'm not saying there aren't downsides, but the lack of carbon impact probably offsets the issues of storing waste.

[TexasTowelie]

3. Yang's proposal is reasonable.

If the costs are controlled and it reduces the volume and environmental dangers of radioactive waste then let science benefit us.

[mitch96]

4. I watched a PBS program on thorium reactors and the important. Takeaway was

In the event of a runaway reactor, it just turns it self off... No dangerous explosion or radiation leak. As it has less radiation output and there for less efficient than uranium more thorium is needed for a given output of usable energy...Thorium is more abundant than uranium but harder to extract. I think it’s worth a look see before condemning it. Hell doctors thought washing hands was stupid in the beginning also...
M

[Blue_true]

22. People's perceptions change as more is known.

But the question is where is $50 billion better spent? I really don't think that you can present a convincing argument that it is best spent on thorium reactor research, in particular because there are other research being done that can massively boost the utility of renewables, just look at the efficiency gain in solar cells since they became a focus in the early 70s. Even beyond gains in renewable generating efficiency, research of ultra-high voltage storage cells is just in it's infancy. So, to use your hand washing point, can we say that renewables research won't produce innovations that vastly outstrip thorium salt reactors in say 10-20 years?

[mitch96]

24. Safe is the best. And I believe renewables are the way to go

The closest we can get to energy from the sun the better. It’s our original energy source, yes?
Trying to get the research money to the most efficient source is the problem.. It’s a crystal ball thing How do you know what is going to be the safest and most efficient in the future.
And then there is the politics....... uggh
M

[Blue_true]

25. Yes, no one can see the future. If we could, what would life be?

I think politics will loom large in where we go with energy generation, look at the cravenly backwards decisions that are being made by Trump and his thugs like ex-Governor Goodhair and ex-coal lobbyists. The politics of energy innovation is why I feel that super rich people like Steyer and the Starbucks guy should be putting gobs of money into energy research if they want to best impact climate change , instead of running for President, though to his credit in that area, Steyer is funding some energy research at Stanford University.

[mitch96]

31. "I think politics will loom large with energy generation"

And money... got to follow the money.. You know that if the oil companies will make a huge profit on solar/wind they would be there up to their eyeballs. They are still making a shit pot load of money on oil... I don't think we will ever run out of oil. It will just get too expensive to deal with.... YMMV
m

[oasis]

6. Why not give it a try?

[crazytown]

60. Exactly

Why rule out optioned in this emergency?

[True Dough]

7. This would be a boon for India

as long as the mining is done responsibly. India holds close to two-thirds of the world's known monazite supply, which is the best source of thorium.

[Hav]

8. I read about that years ago

in terms of stocks/investment and it sounded like a method that should be so obviously preferably to what we have now. For instance, no worries about what to do with the waste as it wouldn't be toxic after just a few years and that something like a nuclear catastrophe is not possible as the chain reaction would simply collapse without the cooling liquid.
Even opponents of nuclear energy should try to be open to that as a cleaner alternative for energy.

[Vogon_Glory]

9. Worth considering. Solar/renewables can't do it alone

This idea is worth serious consideration, much more than the knee-jerk “No Nukes” rhetoric that has bedeviled the search for ample post-carbon-based fossil fuels.

If we wish to keep a livable planet and an agreeable biosphere, we desperately need to end the use of coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Solar can’t do it alone, especially if we not only continue our current use patterns, but also electrify our ground transportation systems. (People who enjoy the filthy air that bedevils Mexico City, Los Angeles, and occasionally Denver might disagree with me).

Furthermore, if we wish to maintain our oceanic eco-systems, we are not only going to have to retire fossil fuel plants but tear down more of the big dams that currently generate hydropower. We need to gently disabuse our solar idealists that solar can replace fossil fuels AND hydro-power. Thorium looks like a good approach, at least until we FINALLY master fusion as an energy source.

[NNadir]

11. The thorium/U-233 cycle is OK, but is not as sustainable as the uranium/plutonium cycle.

Thorium power fashionable among people who recognize that nuclear power is the cleanest form of energy but do not understand the details of nuclear engineering or the sustainability of nuclear fuel. Thorium gets excellent press.

There is plenty of thorium for future centuries from the mine tailings of lanthanide ores mined to power the useless so called "renewable energy" industry that has not, is not, and will not address climate change, but it is not indefinitely sustainable, because the solubility of thorium, unlike uranium, is not high enough in seawater to effectively recover it.

My oldest son is an enthusiastic Yang supporter. I like Yang, but he is not my candidate.

Any President who does not favor nuclear power will fail to address climate change. That is a fact, and facts matter. Climate change is the result of dangerous fossil fuel waste. It is killing the planet. People who carry on about so called "nuclear waste" are clueless and frankly, in my opinion, just being stupid sheep lead by the selective attention of scientifically illiterate journalists.

[Celerity]

13. [phone]

[Blue_true]

26. I totally disagree with you on clean energy, but I will get back to that.

You seem to understand reaction chemistry and materials solubility well, so, isn't it true that if Thorium is not soluble in sea water, that means there are deposits of the element as an insoluble salt on the ocean floors? Getting to it is another thing, that would likely require deep-sea submersible mining robots, which would be a infant industry, although deep-sea robots are being used in the oil drilling industry (reference the deep-sea collapsed structures cleanup by robots during the Deepwater Horizon fire/oil spill disaster).

Now, back to renewables. I believe there is one potential renewables technology that if it gets innovated, will essentially be the "Holy Grail" of all possible energy sources, since it would have an almost endless generation cycle over a period that could stretch for years before maintenance is required. I won't go into more details because I am doing some thinking in that area and have an idea of how to go about the difficult task of making such a source a reality. It is fortunate that during my engineering career in corporate America, I gained a number of skillsets that all are useful in such an effort.

But what I described on the renewables front is a moonshot, you seem to be looking at possibilities that are more grounded. From reading your post, it seems that you are not sold on Thorium salts nuclear reactors, but like the idea of nuclear energy to solve our energy needs. In light of the last sentence, would an expenditure of $50 billion be better spent improving the efficiency, safety and waste abatement of regular nuclear reactors?

The renewable energy innovation that I glanced on is better handed by limited government research funding (which is happening now to a level), but certainly NOT $50 billion thrown at it because the risk of failure is so large, or better yet, it gets funded by private sources that are comfortable with blue-sky innovation efforts.

[NNadir]

30. Money spent to make nuclear reactors "safer" would be a tremendous waste of money.

Nuclear energy is spectacularly safe in terms of deaths per GWh produced. Why spend 50 billion dollars to save, well, how many lives, exactly? Five? Ten? Each life "saved" from nuclear energy is worth a billion dollars per life, while the life of a person dying from diarrhea from contaminated water isn't worth $50?

The idea that nuclear energy is "unsafe" is supremely ignorant, and is based solely and totally on the awful and toxic belief that all other forms of energy can kill on a scale of millions of people per year unless nuclear energy is perfect. Nuclear energy need not be perfect to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else.

Nuclear energy saves lives. It might have saved more lives than it has - calculated to be about 1.8 million - were it not for fear and ignorance and selective attention.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

It saved these lives while being under attack as being not "safe," by people who don't think clearly, this while 7 million people die every damned year by air pollution. That's 19,000 people today, about 160 people in the time to write this post.

The "moonshot" fantasy for so called "renewable energy" is a claim that has been experimentally shown to be not viable. The fact is that we have spent more than two trillion dollars on this trash in the last ten years for no result, other than the acceleration of climate change.

This information is here, in the UNEP Frankfurt School Report, issued each year: Global Trends In Renewable Energy Investment, 2018

The degradation of the atmosphere is now proceeding at a rate of 2.3-2.4 ppm of higher carbon dioxide concentrations per year, unprecedented in recorded and in reconstructed geological history.

So called "renewable energy" has not worked, is not working and will not work because it is diffuse and has huge mass requirements which are not sustainable. There is a reason it was abandoned at the beginning of the 19th century after being the only source of energy for tens of thousands of years. That was because most people lived short miserable lives of dire poverty, even more so than today.

I cannot envision a form of so called "renewable energy" that will prove sustainable, simply because of the mass requirements and I oppose any and all further government subsidies for its use. It is not and never will be as clean and sustainable as nuclear energy, either fission or fusion. Fission is here now and available at the time of the currently observed collapse of the climate; fusion sounds pretty, but it's not here now and will not be here until we are much farther into "too late."

As for the question of thorium deposits, on the ocean floor, in order to be concentrated by partial solubility. The solubility thorium oxide is too low for this process to take place. The element is widely distributed in rock, but not in recoverable forms. I am not familiar with the geological formation of lanthanide/thorium ores, but I would imagine that their formation would involve selective crystallization from other types of solutions, specifically magma solutions, with further enrichment taking place by leaching with aqueous solutions that dissolve everything but the thorium and lanthanides. But this is speculation, not knowledge.

Thorium is an excellent fuel for the next five or ten centuries, and it has the advantage of being able to degrade the isotopic vector of uranium to make uranium less available for use in nuclear weapons, but the same task can be accomplished over the very long term by the use of the americium/curium system available from the plutonium cycle, with the happy intermediate neptunium.

In any case, an excellent monograph that I have in my home library exists on the subject of the aqueous behavior of the lanthanides.

It is this one: U-Th Series Nuclides in Aquatic Systems, Volume 13 1st Edition.

If one is interested in this topic, I recommend it highly. It, and a few other places, was where I recognized that thorium is not as infinitely sustainable as uranium is.

Again, I like thorium, but it's not magic. It has some risks associated with it, but as is the case with all energy systems, "risk free" is impossible. We can only minimize risk, not eliminate it, and the energy system most risk minimized will be nuclear energy, because of its extraordinary energy to mass ratio. Uranium is more sustainable because it is infinitely sustainable, at least in the case where there is oxygen in this planet's atmosphere, which, for the time being, there is.

[Blue_true]

40. I guess "moonshot" is relative. I have a considerable amount of expertise in the technologies that

i seriously doubt that you have the level of expertise that I have in those areas. I envision can be used to make henceforth unknown composites (and the key piece will be one particular type of composite). If you can't possibly imagine those things then there is no reason why I should try to explain them further. There are many things in common use today that at earlier points in history were "beyond imagination".

You can call people "ignorant" all you want to, the fact is the general public and a number of scientists have issues with the current design of nuclear plants. It is perfectly safe?, we have only had Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukishima in the last half century. If populations had not been evacuated from near all, there would have been plenty dead, in fact since the origins of some cancers and illnesses like respiratory illnesses are often difficult to trace, how can you say that the three meltdowns that we have had did not kill a lot of people? Until human beings can be eliminated from the mix and the robotic controls that replace them are 100% failsafe, it is totally asinine to call nuclear energy 100% safe, it can never be under those conditions.

Where did you get the $2 trillion wasted on renewable energy? That sounds a bit fantastical.

I actually agree with you that no significant public funds should be spent on renewables research. I would rather see determined private funding, that is the only way that I see the end results that I believe are possible becoming reality. Public funding at anything beside a minor level opens the process up to the unpredictability of politics, you seem to be an avid supporter of Senator Warren, I have just contributed to her campaign, but here we are trading punches over energy policy, imagine what happens when republicans get thrown into the mix - such is why I believe a national policy on renewables research is bound for failure, especially if large amounts of money are to be spent.

On thorium deposits, a lot of mineral deposits that are on the seabed and on land originated from deep within the earth where conditions were more suitable for their formation. I am not a Geologist, so like you, I can't say much about the distribution of Thorium.

[NNadir]

44. I provided a link to a reference for the two trillion dollar figure, put out the UNEP Frankfurt...

...School. The report is behind a firewall, but I have downloaded it.

My copy is the 2018 report, but this link is available from an open sourced journalist webpage, which reports 2.5 trillion between 2010 and 2019, this on a planet where well over a billion people lack access to improved sanitation: Renewable Energy Investment to Surpass USD 2.5 Trillion for 2010-2019, UNEP Report Finds

What exactly do we have to show for all that money, more than the GDP of India, a nation with well over a billion human beings living in it?

These reports can be found in any good science library; I have, for more than 30 years, spent 5 to 10 hours, sometimes more, doing research in them. My journal in this space is filled with commentary on the primary scientific literature, much of it on energy and the environment. I care. I don't wave my hands in the air. I have both the 2017 and 2018 UNEP Frankfurt Renewable Energy Investment Reports in my personal library. I didn't realize that 2019's was out, but I'll pick it up.

By the way, the reports are written in a tone of triumph, this while climate change remains unaddressed. This is insane as a Trump cabinet meeting.

I have worked for more than 30 years on my own time to understand energy and the environment which is not the focus of my career, by the way. I frequently post here on the topic, now almost exclusively in the Science forum, my journal is filled, probably better than 85% with commentary on primary scientific reports: NNadir's DU Journal

I am not stupid. My journal here speaks to what "expertise" I have, whatever you may doubt, but as things stand right now, there is no evidence available to me that you have the "expertise" you vaguely assert. I will say this. I have read over many thousands of energy schemes in the last 30 years, many of them nuclear and many of them involving so called "renewable energy." People bring me this stuff all the time, both on line and in person. Over the years, I've changed my mind about many things connected with energy. I only changed my mind about whether or not so called "renewable energy" was worthwhile about 10 years ago. I would say that my experience over the last 30 years on reviewing various schemes less than 5% can be considered serious, and of that 5%, only a small percentage might prove viable.

I have a similar requirement for so called "renewable energy" systems as the patent office has for perpetual motion machines: Show me a working model. We have working models of wind turbines and solar cells, with trillions of dollars behind them. They aren't working. Carbon dioxide is accumulating at the fastest rate ever.

The Pressurized Water Nuclear Reactor has been a spectacularly successful device, which has saved human lives. This said, I do not believe that it is an ideal type of reactor. It was based on engineering from the 1950's and early 1960's. We can and should do much better. The burn-up is too low, and the solid phase fuel does not allow for continuous recycling. The thermal cycle lacks neutronic efficiency, and thus does not maximize mass efficiency.

I understand that there are some people who have "issues" with nuclear plants, but it is a fact that nuclear plants of the current common designs have operated for half a century. Where are all the dead that these people have "issues" can report from this observed state of affairs.

Seven million people die every year from air pollution, with slightly less than half of those dying from the combustion of "renewable" biomass. You know what that is? That's dangerous fossil fuel and dangerous biomass waste, and yet people who want to talk about nuclear energy always hand out bullshit about so called "nuclear waste."

The pressurized water reactor might have saved tens of millions of more lives that were lost to air pollution, were it not for the acceptance of the absurd claim that people who had "issues" were not out of their minds, but experimental data - lives saved from deadly air pollution - suggests they were, are, and always will be.

Aircraft have killed more people than nuclear reactors. We don't abandon air travel every time an aircraft crashes. We engineer away design flaws. Automotive accidents have killed more people than nuclear reactors. We don't abandon them when they kill hundreds of thousands of people - although arguably we should.

Anti-nukes prattle on about "cost" as if climate change was without cost. Which will cost more, 1000 nuclear plants or the death of the planet's seas. It's all useless bull. Anti-nukes are perfectly pleased to spend trillions of dollars on stuff that doesn't work, claim it's cheap while ignoring the internal and external costs of the necessary redundancy and then claim they are wise.

It's bull, worthy only of contempt.

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

Where can the people who have "issues" justify their "concern?" Is it just Pavlovian bullshit, or can they support their case in any way? If they chant "waste, waste, waste, cost, cost, cost, about nuclear energy and only nuclear energy while in a stupor about everything else, is this just to the future generations who will have to live with the consequences of their fear, their ignorance, and their wishful thinking?

I am not claiming that the general public, with "issues" is all that well educated; the case might be made that they're crazy as loons. Have you noticed who is in the White House? Appeal to popularity is a common logical fallacy. It is not true that the most popular car is necessarily a good or safe car, or that the most popular soft drink is good for you. That's advertising, not truth.

The truth is that by experiment the nuclear case - including the worst case, Chernobyl - has been explored, and it is not as dangerous as the best case with the status quo. I changed my mind about nuclear energy after Chernobyl, because Chernobyl was definitively the worst case, the reactor core burned for weeks, volatilizing the full inventory of volatile radionuclides."

Did life in Europe cease? How about Ukraine? Last I heard - it seems to have been in the news recently - Ukraine is still there and there are still people living in it. You know I grew up believing that a Chernobyl type event would kill millions of people, because I was uneducated and I was letting other people equally uneducated tell me what to think because of the guise of their arrogance.

Here is a little more, um, reality, again with references, since I don't make stuff up:

In this century, world energy demand grew by 164.83 exajoules to 584.95 exajoules.

In this century, world gas demand grew by 43.38 exajoules to 130.08 exajoules.

In this century, the use of petroleum grew by 32.03 exajoules to 185.68 exajoules.

In this century, the use of coal grew by 60.25 exajoules to 157.01 exajoules.

In this century, the solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which people so cheerfully have bet the entire planetary atmosphere, stealing the future from all future generations, grew by 8.12 exajoules to 10.63 exajoules.

10.63 exajoules is under 2% of the world energy demand.

2018 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38 (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)

Success? Triumph? The entire wind and solar industry didn't even match, in this century, the individual growth in dangerous coal, dangerous natural gas, or dangerous petroleum, all of which kill people during normal operations, without requiring accidents, although the fatal accidents are there and regular albeit with little attention paid.

In any case, I'm sure you believe in your "expertise" but I'm not impressed by any of the "evidence" you've offered here of it, or the rationale for the objection to nuclear power. I've heard it all before, thousands upon thousands of times. It is nonetheless a fact that after half a century of nuclear operations, all the accidents, all the accumulated used nuclear fuel, all the uranium miner health risks do not equal the number of people who will die in the next 48 hours because we don't embrace nuclear power.

I can, and do support what I say, usually with references.

Have a great work week.

[SidDithers]

45. ...

Sid

[Blue_true]

46. You mixed "investment" up with expenditures.

It is not like governments were investing all of that money, private energy companies were investing the majority of it. The world uses around $8-9 trillion dollars of electricity PER year, a $2 trillion dollar investment over TEN YEARS to expand the clean energy share of $80-$90 TRILLION of energy use is small potatoes in comparison. So let's dealin relevance, that makes the discussion easier.

When was the last nuclear power plant built in this country? Why is France, which does build nukes slowing that effort? Those are pertinent questions. If it takes 10-15 years to get a nuke plant up and running in this country, isn't the investment in renewables during the meantime pertinent? Afterall, without renewables, the VAST majority clean, fossil fuels would be burned - that would have made greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere worse. If we can build nuke plants in 1-2 years in this country, then your argument in their favor would be valid, but we DON'T build such plants in 1-2 years, more like not since the seventies (you may scratch up one or two more recent ones, but they certainly WILL NOT have the climate impact that you keep claiming.

I won't comment at length on your pepetually energy machine insult, other that to point again that the claim of "impossible" has been made throughout history, many times wrongly. I would rather rely on what I know and logical paths that I believe are possible. Innovation never is or has been a sure bet, even strong ideas sometimes yield nothing, but such is the process of discovery, if not for people following it, we still would be living in caves.

[defacto7]

32. Hear hear!

[DrFunkenstein]

12. My First Thought Is: What Happens If Terrorists Attack A Thorium Plant?

From the scientific journal Nature:

Although thorium offers some benefits, we contend that the public debate is too one-sided: small-scale chemical reprocessing of irradiated thorium can create an isotope of uranium that could be used in nuclear weapons, raising proliferation concerns.

Only 1.6 tonnes of thorium metal would be required to produce the 8kg of
233U required for a weapon. This amount of 233U could feasibly be obtained by this process in less than a year. The separation of protactinium from thorium is not new. We highlight two well-known chemical processes — acid-media techniques and liquid bismuth reductive extraction — that are causes for concern, although there may be others. Both methods use standard nuclear-lab equipment and hot cells — containment chambers in which highly radioactive materials can be manipulated safely. Such apparatus is not necessarily subject to IAEA safeguards.

We have three main concerns:

First, nuclear-energy technologies that involve irradiation of thorium fuels for short periods could be used covertly to accumulate quantities of 233U by parallel or batch means, perhaps without raising IAEA proliferation flags.

Second, the infrastructure required to undertake the chemical partitioning of protactinium could be acquired and established surreptitiously in a small laboratory.

Third, state proliferators could seek to use thorium to acquire 233U for weapons production.

https://www.nature.com/articles/492031a?proof=true&draft=marketing

[NNadir]

14. Oh please...

[NNadir]

15. These concerns are representative of very, very, very, very bad thinking.

Which has killed more people in this century, petroleum diverted to make weapons of mass destruction, or protactinium (or plutonium) diverted to make weapons of mass destruction?

Does anyone concerned about terrorism actually count the number of deaths from terrorism and more importantly, the methods by which terrorists act?

Oklahoma City? Protactinium or diesel fuel?

WTC? Plutonium or Jet fuel?

Does any person carrying on inanely about terrorism have any idea about the complexity of nuclear fuel separations?

The reason that the climate is being destroyed is purely selective attention and the ethically unconscionable tendency of people to elevate their "could" fantasies over what is happening.

What is happening is that 19,000 people die every damned day from air pollution, dangerous fossil fuel and biomass combustion waste and the planet's atmosphere is collapsing and being destroyed essentially by fear and ignorance.

[c-rational]

52. Well stated and thank you for all your posts. Our time is quickly running out and near term

decisions need to be made and acted upon if we are to avoid the tipping point of climate change. We have dithered too long.

[SidDithers]

17. We like our CANDU reactors here in Ontario...

We get about 65% of our electricity, on average, from Nuclear. Some of that capacity also gets sold into the grid to power upstate NY and PA.

http://www.ieso.ca/


Sid

[Devil Child]

20. As you should!

Bruce Nuclear Generating Station is quite an impressive construction.

[Devil Child]

19. Sensible policy. Too much irrational fear surrounding nuclear power.

[Crazyleftie]

23. You are all lemmings hoping for a magical panacea

A little knowledge(or not enough) is sometimes dangerous...
please see the union of concerned scientists statement on this issue:

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power/thorium-reactors-statement.pdf

[defacto7]

33. It seems much of the main argument comes from a statement

from 2009. The date of update mentioned is the date this article was last accessed not updated. 10 years is an incredibly long time in science research terms.

Personally, I think your lemming/panacea statement is a bit of a projection.

[Crazyleftie]

47. Do some research please.

eom

[defacto7]

48. That's exactly the kind of answer I've come to expect

from someone who wants to maintain their dogma. It makes one feel they've accomplished some goal when all they've done is create a logical fallacy. If I were arguing you position and wanted to have a logical answer some possibe replies could be, "I don't wish to comment ", "I refute your comment with...", "I guess you're correct", "I respecfully disagree." Or any number of other resonable statements.

[Crazyleftie]

49. fyi

https://wiseinternational.org/nuclear-energy/thorium-new-and-improved-nuclear-energy

[Crazyleftie]

50. fyi

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power/thorium-reactors-statement.pdf

[struggle4progress]

37. Backers overstate benefits

... Because thorium-232 is not fissile it requires significant amounts of fissile materials (ie plutonium-239 or uranium-235) to generate the neutrons necessary for transmute some of the thorium to uranium-233 - a fissile material that has a critical mass comparable to Pu. Unlike Pu, U-233 does not require implosion engineering to set it off, and can more readily be used in an improvised nuclear device. Several U.S. nuclear weapons were successfully tested using U-233.

• The main reasons interest waned in the use of uranium-233 for weapons were its radiological hazards and related costs. Of particular concern is exposure to uranium-232, which is co-produced and is 60 million times more radioactive than uranium-238 ...

• Another factor that may have influenced the decision to abandon the thorium fuel cycle is that thorium itself is more radioactive than uranium and thus requires additional precautions ... A worker spending time inside a thorium storage facility could ... In a little over six working days .. could reach the maximum annual U.S. occupational exposure limit of 5 rem.

• A molten salt reactor .. developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the late
1960's .. was abandoned and is costing the U.S. taxpayer ~$100 million to clean up the mess from this project.

• After several failed attempts to establish a thorium fuel cycle, the commercial nuclear industry also walked away from thorium fuels ...

https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/factsheets/thoriumbackersoverstatefacesheet.pdf

[DetlefK]

51. Proponents of nuclear power don't account for the nuclear waste from PRODUCING nuclear fuel.

What do you think where nuclear fuel comes from? It must be mined as ore, it must be cleaned and refined. It must be chemically dissolved and sorted into isotopes via centrifuges, so each pellet has the same composition.

And all of that leads to radioactive chemical waste. RADIOACTIVE CHEMICAL WASTE that we must somehow dispose of.

As nice and comfortable as nuclear power is for the consumer, it's an extremely dirty and dangerous business from front to end for the environment.

[ancianita]

53. Earth needs at least 880 plants; it's currently got 400+ and has NO chance of beating the

2 degree Celsius threshold in time to slow down climate cascades.

This all should have been worked out back in the days of Gore.

It's too late and is an argument offered as a distraction for other clean energy transition plans that WILL work.

Not that you're doing that. But you must understand the timeline Earth has to slow down climate change. This is not the answer we can run with.

[redqueen]

55. This is the kind of rational leadership we need.

if we are serious about addressing climate change, we need nuclear energy. It's that simple.

Thorium is one option. I don't believe he is married to it, he cites is as an example of what we need to look into - options.

We have seen what happens when nuclear energy is banned. We have seen what is possible when it's used as parr of an effort to reduce carbon emissions. We should learn from the examples around us.

K&R

[Sherman A1]

59. Excellent!

Yang is thinking about 3 steps ahead of everyone else.