Comments on: Here’s Your Sputnik Moment

By: dwwood76

dwwood76 — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 05:11:31 +0000

“And I’ll go door-to-door for any candidate who hedges such a plan against the solar singularity.”

I don’t understand why one technology must be hedged against the other, as if it were a zero sum situation. Money and political capital should be poured into both technologies, if only for the fact that both have their own unique benefits. Solar is no ‘corn ethanol’ boondoggle, as I’m sure you agree, even though it is more fashionable politically and socially than thorium molten salt reactors.

I am also excited about the developments in nuclear energy, but lets not the vapid adoration of solar that some ‘environmentalists’ have vs. nuclear to make us turn cold on solar.

Apologies if I read to much into that statement I quoted!

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 05:07:39 +0000

He sounds great! Going door-to-door might be a bit of challenge, though.

By: blwang

blwang — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 05:07:09 +0000

So then you will be supporting the next president of China. Xi Jinping.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/04/china-academy-of-science-annual-budget.html

China has announced the development project for a Thorium molten salt reactor (Jan 2011) and this is funded via the Chinese Academy of Science which has $3 billion per year in funding and growing at increases of up to 70% per year.

By: secondjab

secondjab — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 04:57:57 +0000

Totally and utterly support you on this (and you know where I live Phil). The Fukushima plants in Japan are forty years old and even in a 9 mag earthquake and 10-15 meter tsunami wave, far beyond the imagined worse case scenario, they was no Chernobyl scale disaster. If anything it proves just how safe nuclear power is despite their age. Newer Thorium reactors are many many times safer than that.
Not relying on nuclear has given us global warming and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. The Banqiao Reservoir Dam failure for example killed 171,000 people and made 11 million homeless.
It is also extremely likely that we will get all we need from metamaterials and solar in just a few decades. Modern nuclear technologies will see us cleanly, and safely, to this future.

Jab

As I write this an oil company in Ireland believes they have found a trillion euros worth of oil of the coast of ireland (my original home).