<story><title>Thorium nuclear reactors: a possible solution of the energy crisis? (video)</title><url>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LeM-Dyuk6g</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rmason</author><text>I&apos;ve studied this for years and haven&apos;t found any credible reason why we couldn&apos;t do this today.&lt;p&gt;But there are a lot of forces allied against Thorium in both the government, energy companies and the current nuclear industry.&lt;p&gt;Senator Hatch (R) Utah with support from Harry Reid (D) Nevada has introduced a bill annually for five years to fund $200 million to research to commercialize Thorium power.  Yet every year the bill never even gets voted on.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=releases&amp;#38;ContentRecord_id=25d9273f-1b78-be3e-e03d-75506902df40&amp;#38;ContentType_id=7e038728-1b18-46f4-bfa9-f4148be94d19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=releases&amp;#38;Cont...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is stopping Google itself from funding this I don&apos;t know?  Our country should make this a major initiative similar to the race to the moon and get us off coal, oil and gas.</text></comment>
<story><title>Thorium nuclear reactors: a possible solution of the energy crisis? (video)</title><url>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LeM-Dyuk6g</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Create</author><text>This is project pursued by many[1]. The main hurdles are:&lt;p&gt;1. political [2], which Kirk mentions (it is no coincidence, that the pellets that the rods contain are as standard as the NATO bullet) -- the industry and power has a very different interest&lt;p&gt;2. technical: Kirk always mentions, that the fuel is not solid. It is liquid. The latter means, that you do have higher concerns about corrosiveness, hence (useful) reactor lifetime...&lt;p&gt;Also, the issue of scale, which tends to lie between 1. and 2. Uranium &quot;won&quot;, because you got the real stuff with it (weapons as in actual projection of power, or the capability of threat to project power) and because you could make it work on a massive scale (current reactors are an order of magnitude larger than any LFTR design, and capitalism is based on the leverage of and concentration of power).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://energyfromthorium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://energyfromthorium.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thorenergy.no/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thorenergy.no/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thoriumenergy.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://thoriumenergy.com.au/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;... besides China, India, France and (even) Czechs.&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom....&lt;/a&gt; -&amp;#62; see Seaborg interview part</text></comment>