War
- Around 50 unique wars ongoing globally
Poverty
- Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
Disease
- Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.
Malnutrition
- Undernutrition from rural poverty and urban slums, overnutrition from cheap industrialised food and additives.
"Strike at the root sonny" - Grandpa
If there was a single solution that solved all these problems quicker and cheaper than any other would you want that in the hands of the chinese government? All these grave, global issues stem from a single point, and that single point is cheap abundant access to energy. With cheap energy you can lower the cost to developing solutions, with cheap energy there is no need to fight over scarce resources, with cheap energy you can bring people together, each person fighting for their own cause but able to find a common ground and find a solution that is better than any other. Coal made slavery in the west obsolete, it was out performed. The next horizon is a million times brighter.
As a solution to energy concerns, our current intermittent and renewable technologies, such as wind, solar, and geothermal will never produce enough energy to eliminate the need for fossil fuels. These renewables are largely space consuming, unreliable and invasive forms of energy production that require expensive transmission lines and near perfect environmental conditions. Consuming less energy is a beautiful idea, but individually conserving energy has a net negative affect on our standard of living, it disproportionally impacts our way of life more than it does on our dependence on cheap and nasty fossil fuels. Both directions are no path to steer this ship.
As of late my focus has fallen on nuclear technology, but in a non-conventional sense. Conventionally we use one type of reactor with one type of fuel and it is this type reactor and this type fuel that was developed during wartime, for war. As a result, this technology has become stuck, suspended in the sands of time to become the widely accepted and understood practice of nuclear energy without contention. There was a schism in the nuclear energy community at this time around what type of nuclear technology should be pursued, we hear little of this event but it has now resurfaced for good reason.
Over decades of discussion into energy management and our role in its management, influence has risen to the surface to curb the perception on personal responsibility. It has pushed an established lexicon, 'solar, wind, carbon emissions, green energy, polar bears and hockey sticks', provoking very lively debate within this spectrum of acceptability. Clean air and water we can all agree on but it seems progress in the energy department has been stifled by a culture that demands poor alternatives.
As the late Edward Bernays put it, 'Our minds are moulded, out tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of' and regardless of intent, the manipulation of public opinion will persist with or without our conscious attendance. It has been this driving force that has popularised solar and wind and inflated their role in energy creation beyond economic sense, requiring massive subsidies and sacrifices to public good.
There is a new breed of energy making its mark, "You don't get taught this stuff in nuclear engineering school", says Kirk Sorensen, a PhD in aerospace engineering and self professed nuclear history buff. "There will one day be a thorium age" he continues.
The amount of Thorium needed to power the average Americans whole life.
I want to tell you about thorium as a reactor fuel and show you why so many people are getting excited.
- It turns nuclear waste back into nuclear fuel
- The amount needed to power your entire life is the size of a large marble
- It is relatively abundant across the globe
- It cannot be used in the production of nuclear warheads
- And it can be turned into energy today with proven technology
The nuclear reactor developed for the US Air Force
The technology was proven some 40 years ago when it was developed for a nuclear powered bomber, that’s right, a nuclear airplane. This type of reactor had to be radically different to anything developed beforehand, it met its criteria and the Molten Salt Reactor became a valid yet poorly publicised reactor technology.
JFK talking with Alvin Weinberg, a pioneer in Thorium Reactor technology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
A Molten Salt/Liquid Fluoride Reactor:
- Operates at high temperatures, achieving high thermodynamic efficiencies
- Low pressure, self-regulating with a passive safety system
- Can have its waste heat desalinate seawater or synthesise fuel
- Is comparatively compact
- And 10 years of operation produces 1/1000th of a gram of waste
The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment
Cool right?
As of 2009 we used:
- 5, 000, 000, 000 tonnes of coal
- 31, 000, 000, 000 barrels of oil
- 5, 000, 000, 000, 000 cubic meters of natural gas
- 65, 000 tonnes of uranium to produce the worlds energy
One single unimpressive rare earth mine can dig up 5000 tonnes of thorium while looking for other ores, enough to power the world for a year.
How is all this possible?
Nuclear fission is a million times more energy dense than a chemical reaction such as combustion and thorium has a million times the energy density of a carbon hydrogen bond.
It has become apparent to me that nuclear power is grossly under-appreciated and has become extremely smeared for its past capacity for warhead proliferation and hazardous radiation. The word 'Nuclear' itself has been plied from reality and scorned with imagery of death and three eyed fish. As the world of marketing can confirm, perception is everything and facts mean nothing. Today’s perception is that nuclear is an old redundant dangerous energy and we currently occupy the very pinnacle of our nuclear energy capabilities. A plight has developed against ourselves where we are trapped between a series of erroneous perceptions and the very real future of expanding wars over limited resources.
It has been asked, could thorium power our world? "It is powering our world" Sorensen explains, “Thorium has been powering our world for billions of years, and will (continue)… for billions of years." It is interesting that geothermal is actually a thorium and uranium nuclear reaction in the centre of the earth and any argument for 'renewable' geothermal is an argument for thorium as a 'renewable', its abundance is what confuses people.
China has started started developing their Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. Once they establish this technology, we will buy our reactors off of them because we will not be able to compete with our primitive energy sources. "If China’s dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape" says Abrose Evans-Pritchard in his telegraph.co article. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html
Jiang Mianheng (left), the public face of Thorium in China is under house arrest as of June 2016 because of an "anti-corruption" investigation related to his father, Jiang Zemin (right).
If you are anti war you are pro thorium, if you are for eliminating poverty you are pro thorium, if you want to eradicate malnutrition and disease around the world, pro thorium. If your into global warming, your pro thorium. Its the common solution that ties us together, from which we can get to where we want faster.
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