Glowing In The Dark

Makes for a very quiet neighbor.

I'd like to see some emphasis on the thorium reactor. I've heard a lot of good things about it, and very few negative comments.

ted talk - /kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel

Hear hear.

a nice addition to the thread thanks

If you mean that old thing there, it is old tech. I would not want that around, as it is not fuel efficient. These plants only burn up about 5% of the fuel, leaving 95% in the "hot waste pile".

The new class of molten salt reactors will totally leave these in the dust (on thermal efficiency, and on % fuel burn), as they take what the other plants cast aside and consume well over 95% of it into fission products, and a very high percentage of this has very short half-life (in other words, pound for pound it really is "hot" stuff), but dies off to safe levels in relatively short order.

In only a few more years fusion reactors will be powering trucks, tanks, maybe even large aircraft, not to mention ships, subs, and stationary sources of power.

Or you could make your own like this kid did...

A good read!

Radioactive Boy Scout

Well, as a matter of fact....Shhhh. Mine is condensed matter reactor (electrolysis, cold "fusion"). LENR is real despite the nay sayers, but not yet commercial, just getting nearer.

Yeah, the Molten Salt Reactors look like a much better design than the old 'water-cooled' reactors.

As for Fusion powered trucks, I don't see that anytime soon, there will be a LOT of scrutiny on the stationary reactors before any agency allows the reactor to power a vehicle (we had nuclear subs pretty quickly, but that was because there was a war going on, and military personnel are considered 'expendable' when testing out new weapon systems in wartime).

Lockheed has been pretty quiet since their announcement last year, but I suspect they are way past ver. 2.0 and probably working on 10.0. Smaller fusion reactor = faster design correction turnaround.

they aren't the only team working on it. I'm sure they've had 100+ "test shots that successfully began the reaction, I also think they're further ahead than has been reported to the public

Agreed.

Nuclear is probably the way to go currently. It just has so many advantages over alternative base load generation, and advances continue to be made. Natural gas and geothermal are great, but they cannot solve everything. Hydro is good but has its.....problems.

Yes Nuclear has had some problems, but all in all it is very safe when taken over its combined operational life world wide. Haven't most of accidents been due to cost cutting and incompetent staff and not a breakdown in the fundamental engineering design and construction (which is safe)? Yes the Japanese plant had it's problems.

What's more dangerous, a very rare flashy leak hyped up and splashed all over the news or a quiet continuous decline in our and our planets health from all the polluting coal and oil power plants belching toxins into our atmosphere.

Toxins? What toxins? Hold on a second while I focus my third eye. Oh you mean THOSE toxins. I bet photosynthetic organisms all over the world are worrying about that evil CO2.

Now the coal fired plants in Northern Mexico are a problem to Texas and Southern New Mexico (United States for those geographically challenged). They do belch out the highest known levels of Mercury, SOx, and NOx, and particulates any where, because everything done legally (as if legal mattered down there) in Mexico would get you a long Federal prison sentence in the U.S.A.

Americans think we have to be so pristine with our generation, but wtf in the world does it matter when the rest of the world is dirty as hell?

Yeah, fire up the nukes. Especially the new generation 5.0 nukes.

If you can create a corporation that is not focused on cost-cutting, and doesn't have any incompetent engineers (remember cost-cutting?) then perhaps I would be more likely to trust the nuclear industry. I trust good engineers and good designs far more than I trust corporations to actually use them.

However, with the time and money it takes to design, approve, and build a new nuclear plant, you could install the equivalent of far more solar power on rooftops, and include energy storage to match.

But solar power is not base load, its variable peak generation. I am only talking about base load generation (nuclear, coal, gas, hydro, geothermal).

You have to have the bulk of your power generation as base load generation or you end up like Hawaii. The existing power network and grid requires the base load for the system to remain stable. We are no where near the point where we can rely on variable peak generation sources powering energy storage with the energy storage covering when the variable sources aren't producing.

Solar is still dirty, it takes a lot of base load generation to provide the power to mine, refine and manufacture the solar panels and associated inverters don't forget.

There are some "base" load style solar plants. The just don't all operate overnight.

It is theoretically, and in many ways practical to operate CSP plant all night, given sufficiently large molten salt storage of heat (energy), relative to the desired base load power draw expected.

I'll still go with nuclear.

Cost Cuttings comes in many forms, Try using a smaller more refined paint brush.

good points and I think we are almost there with solar storage.....batteries, I expect flow batteries to be everywhere soon

Last time I checked a 1MW sized flow battery system was about the size of a 747 hangar.