Comment Re:Sure, I favor doing more of it (Score 1) 195
"irregardless of..."
"irregardless of..."
The other big problem is that the Oil companies bought all the patents for NiMH batteries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
NiMH are much smaller.
It's coal!
Which is nearly as bad!
Wealthy oil companies have a financial incentive to block efforts that would ultimately compete with their offerings.
You mean like buying up battery patents, etc., so nobody can put decent batteries in cars?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yeah, they do that.
The complications of the molten salt reactors are much more numerous than thorium reactor proponents would suggest, the reactor in Oak Ridge was hardly at commercial scale.
Weirdly enough, the solution to most of the complications is right there in the Wikipedia article (alongside the complication).
It's what we should have been investing in until renewables are advanced enough to take over.
But hey, we got the F35 instead. Winner!
I've got to hand it to the oil cartels: Telling the USA they'll have to drive tiny little cars if they want to save the planet was a smart piece of advertising.
It's not true though. You can knock a few liters off the engine in your SUV and get about the same power just by remapping the ECU. Rev the engine a bit instead, maybe add a turbo, you'll pull away from the lights just as well as before. Trying to produce big torque from a gasoline the engine running at 1500RPM is just a stupid waste of gasoline.
PS: SUVs and pick-ups would actually feel _better_ with diesel engines - and you'd halve the fuel consumption.
Thorium reactors could use most of that stockpiled waste as fuel.
Electric transport is around the corner. Oil for heating would be uneconomical if electricity was done properly. What's left? Only a fraction of the current oil consumption.
Aha! But it *does* re-enter the environment. How do you think it got underground in the first place?
The reactors you're currently familiar with were _designed_ to have the 'radioactive waste' problem - it's what makes them useful for manufacturing atom bombs. Thorium reactors don't have that problem.
Thorium reactors have been around nearly as long as Uranium reactors. One operated for 20 years in the USA from the 1950s to the 1970s. The only reason they were never fully developed was political, not technical (they needed those bombs!):
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
FWIW, we could have got them working and be running the county on unlimited, safe energy for much less than (eg.) the cost of the F35 program. If there was any political willpower.
"In spite of..."
And investment in renewables and clean-nuclear is almost non-existent. Color me shocked!
PS: Fracking is being given a totally free pass too!
Country run by oil barons does nothing when there's an oil problem!?!
Film at 11.
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh
