I shouldn't even qualify it as new, considering this particular technology has been around since the beginning.
So take that Greenies, and shove your socialist agenda up your ass and ride it out of town, nuclear is coming back with a vengeance.

Cut~~~
The waste from the reactors are not as dangerous or harmful as uranium reactors too, but cannot be weaponized; hence, they were not popular when development began (which is why uranium plants have a 50 year head-start). The products from a LFTR can also be used in other industries. Moreover, LFTR has a small generator footprint on the environment. Lastly, and most importantly, a thorium reactor is at no risk of meltdown: if the reaction goes critical, the reactant expands and the reaction slows down. Therefore, they don't require active systems to stop meltdowns.

Since it was shown in the past the MSRs were highly successful with fluoride, they are definitely viable. But, uranium plants have a 50-year head-start because of their weaponizable products; now, the time gap is being bridged to introduce thorium reactors. Currently, Flibe Energy is working on LFTR research in the US, and not only wants to use them for energy, but also have plans to use LFTR for desalination, district heating, hydrogen production, synthetic fuel production, and more. Flibe Energy hopes to have a utility reactor by 2021.

http://ucs.berkeley.edu/energy/tag/liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactor/

If nuclear was opened up to competition, our society would unbelievably change.

Quote from: taxed on February 10, 2013, 03:12:21 PM
If nuclear was opened up to competition, our society would unbelievably change.

If we can take control once more, this would be the biggest boon to our country since Fracking.
With both kicking ass, we could once again have the cheapest energy on the world Mkt and OPEC would shrivel up and die.
The only thing stopping us is Husein and the libs. Why do they hate our country so much?

Here in Ohio, back in the late seventies/early eighties, a conglomerate of power companies were building the William H. Zimmer nuclear generating station on the Ohio River near Cincinnati. At the same time, the new U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was raising its ugly head and testing its wings.

The original cost estimates for the plant were around $250 million. By 1983, after years of construction delays and regulatory snafus, the plant's costs had swollen to $1.8 billion, but it was 97-98% complete, nearly to the point of fueling the reactors. Within a year, however, the costs of regulatory delays and compliance had rendered the project uneconomic. Cincinnati Gas & Electric, one of the three private utilities building the plant, had invested literally 80% of its net worth in the project.

In the end, the William H. Zimmer plant is producing lots of electricity today. It bears two unique distinctions. It is the largest single-unit generating facility in the United States. And it is the first nuclear generating facility in the world to be converted to coal.

By 1984, that last 2-3% held a price tag of around $1.5 billion, nearly as much as the plant had cost to date, and roughly six times what the entire plant was expected to cost in the beginning. The largest chunk of that cost was regulatory demands and compliance costs. Simple arithmetic showed the builders that for just a touch over $1 billion, the nuclear reactor and all the supportive equipment could be ripped out and disposed of, and appropriate and regulation-compliant coal-fired boilers installed, thereby saving the owners a half billion dollars in capital costs.

What we have done, or allowed to be done, as a country is to regulate ourselves completely out of the nuclear energy business. (Hydropower, incidentally, fell in the same cesspool.) We have permitted a small segment of the society -- which itself purposely infests regulatory government -- to squash viable energy sources and HUGE businesses in the name of "environmental protection." Barring earthquakes and tsunamis (a la  Fukushima, Japan), nuclear energy is probably the safest form of electric generation we know. But we let occurrences like Chernobyl (which was less predictable than it was inevitable) and Three Mile Island (the "Nuke Incident That Didn't Happen") to color what should be a colorless discussion of how we should best supply our energy needs. The same process is happening now with the demonization of fracking and offshore drilling.

To hear "progressives" tell it, we shouldn't be generating any energy at all, by any means. They even hate the cows and oxen and horses the Amish use, not because they create energy, but because they occasionally fart while doing so.

Maybe that's why I hate progressives the way I do. Bad enough that they hate me and everything good, but they occasionally open their mouths while doing so.

Quote from: TboneAgain on March 09, 2013, 08:01:06 PM
Here in Ohio, back in the late seventies/early eighties, a conglomerate of power companies were building the William H. Zimmer nuclear generating station on the Ohio River near Cincinnati. At the same time, the new U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was raising its ugly head and testing its wings.

The original cost estimates for the plant were around $250 million. By 1983, after years of construction delays and regulatory snafus, the plant's costs had swollen to $1.8 billion, but it was 97-98% complete, nearly to the point of fueling the reactors. Within a year, however, the costs of regulatory delays and compliance had rendered the project uneconomic. Cincinnati Gas & Electric, one of the three private utilities building the plant, had invested literally 80% of its net worth in the project.

In the end, the William H. Zimmer plant is producing lots of electricity today. It bears two unique distinctions. It is the largest single-unit generating facility in the United States. And it is the first nuclear generating facility in the world to be converted to coal.

By 1984, that last 2-3% held a price tag of around $1.5 billion, nearly as much as the plant had cost to date, and roughly six times what the entire plant was expected to cost in the beginning. The largest chunk of that cost was regulatory demands and compliance costs. Simple arithmetic showed the builders that for just a touch over $1 billion, the nuclear reactor and all the supportive equipment could be ripped out and disposed of, and appropriate and regulation-compliant coal-fired boilers installed, thereby saving the owners a half billion dollars in capital costs.

What we have done, or allowed to be done, as a country is to regulate ourselves completely out of the nuclear energy business. (Hydropower, incidentally, fell in the same cesspool.) We have permitted a small segment of the society -- which itself purposely infests regulatory government -- to squash viable energy sources and HUGE businesses in the name of "environmental protection." Barring earthquakes and tsunamis (a la  Fukushima, Japan), nuclear energy is probably the safest form of electric generation we know. But we let occurrences like Chernobyl (which was less predictable than it was inevitable) and Three Mile Island (the "Nuke Incident That Didn't Happen") to color what should be a colorless discussion of how we should best supply our energy needs. The same process is happening now with the demonization of fracking and offshore drilling.

To hear "progressives" tell it, we shouldn't be generating any energy at all, by any means. They even hate the cows and oxen and horses the Amish use, not because they create energy, but because they occasionally fart while doing so.

Maybe that's why I hate progressives the way I do. Bad enough that they hate me and everything good, but they occasionally open their mouths while doing so.

This is the same exact reason we closed Rancho Seco, the left learned they could project costs (via lawsuits) well beyond the profit margin, and as any good Capitalist, you cut your losses early by closing the plant.
Leftists learned long ago to use our laws against us, it's time we turned that around on them and made them pay ten times the cost in penalty when they lose these frivolous lawsuits.

Okay I Don't Like Socialism, Obviously, But Can Someone Explain To Me How Energy Works? I'm Undecided About Green Or Nucleic Energy For Now.


Thanks
Laura

Quote from: ScandiPrincess on March 30, 2013, 06:16:05 PM
Okay I Don't Like Socialism, Obviously, But Can Someone Explain To Me How Energy Works? I'm Undecided About Green Or Nucleic Energy For Now.


Thanks
Laura

  Do your wish the short version of the long versions.   As there are people on this board that can go on for a month or more on each one.

Quote from: ScandiPrincess on March 30, 2013, 06:16:05 PM
Okay I Don't Like Socialism, Obviously, But Can Someone Explain To Me How Energy Works? I'm Undecided About Green Or Nucleic Energy For Now.


Thanks
Laura

It's really simple, if you don't mind paying 20 times the price for your electricity, then Green is the way to go.
Don't get me wrong, I love alternative energy, lived on it exclusively for over two decades, but it has absolutely no place on the public grid, period.

Quote from: Solar on March 30, 2013, 08:12:06 PM
It's really simple, if you don't mind paying 20 times the price for your electricity, then Green is the way to go.
Don't get me wrong, I love alternative energy, lived on it exclusively for over two decades, but it has absolutely no place on the public grid, period.

That the short version ScandiPrincess.

Quote from: walkstall on March 30, 2013, 08:56:37 PM
That the short version ScandiPrincess.

Are you saying I can be long winded?

Quote from: Solar on March 30, 2013, 09:02:07 PM
Are you saying I can be long winded?

ONLY if ST is not home.   

Quote from: ScandiPrincess on March 30, 2013, 06:16:05 PM
Okay I Don't Like Socialism, Obviously, But Can Someone Explain To Me How Energy Works? I'm Undecided About Green Or Nucleic Energy For Now.


Thanks
Laura

It is fairly simple to understand, I think, that "green" energy is not only horrendously expensive (as Solar points out), it suffers further from being notoriously unreliable because some days the sun doesn't shine, the wind won't blow, or the river runs dry.

In the US, ethanol made mostly from corn is being crammed down our throats as a renewable biofuel replacement for gasoline, even though it is a poor substitute, costs many times more than gasoline to produce, especially in terms of energy, reduces fuel mileage in many vehicles, and actually attacks the plastics in fuel systems on older cars and other gas-powered equipment. The amount of corn we convert to ethanol under government mandate today would require a single unbroken cornfield larger than the state of Connecticut, or roughly half the size of Holland or a third the size of Sweden about 10% of all the arable land in the US. Because of soils and climate here, corn (maize to Europeans) is the fodder of choice for ethanol production, and that gigantic cornfield represents more than four bushels out of every ten our farmers now produce. Thanks to this monumental boondoggle, the commodity price of corn has tripled, which because of the predictable acreage shifts has dragged the prices of other crops, especially soybeans, wheat (and straw) and hay up with it. Grocery prices have shot up in recent years as a direct result of this harebrained scheme, especially prices of meats and dairy products. A study done last year by researchers at Texas A&M University estimated that Americans currently pay $40 billion each year in inflated food prices as a direct result of the forced diversion of corn to ethanol. In addition, the US taxpayers paid over $6 billion for direct subsidies for ethanol blenders in the most recent year I have figures available (2011). Already the US government mandates for blending ethanol into gasoline probably represents the largest "stealth" tax hike on the American people in the nation's history, and unless the law is changed and the USEPA reined in, it just gets worse down the road. Within ten years, the EPA's schedule for mandated ethanol roughly triples, meaning that we can't make enough out of corn even if we divert every ear we can grow to its production. There will be no alternative to ramping up the import of foreign-made ethanol, which puts us right back in the position of depending on foreign suppliers for motor fuels. And for all this expense and heartache, right now we get a measly 2-3% reduction in the use of petroleum-based fuels.

The entire scheme is so incontrovertibly stupid, only a government could come up with it. You may have noticed by this point that I don't care much for corn-based ethanol. While I burn the crap in my vehicles, I drive twenty miles to the nearest marina and pay 70 cents more per gallon for non-ethanol gasoline to use in chainsaws, mowers and other 2-cycle equipment I have. (Boat owners don't much care for getting stranded out on the water because a group of greenies in DC thinks ethanol is the bee's knees.)

Getting back to the electrical grid (sorry, I get wound up sometimes), anyone with a functional brain can noodle out that nuclear is the only way to go. Large-scale oil-fired generation is out of the question. Coal-fired generation is currently the least expensive and the best-known, but it's fuel is limited by the practicalities of coal mining, and its continuation is threatened by ever-increasing government regulation and emissions mandates, especially under the Kenyan's administration. Natural gas is currently a feasible alternative to coal, but again, production is being curtailed to the extent possible by the greens in our government, including most especially our president.

Nuclear powerplants, from a practical standpoint, present two primary concerns with regards to operation: safety and disposal of the spent (but still radioactive) fuel. Neither of these concerns is insurmountable. But what is really tough to get around is the usual leviathan, the national government of the United States of America, and especially its EPA and NRC. The Three Mile Island incident in 1979, and especially its aftermath, including the Hollywood propaganda movie The China Syndrome, (starring our good friend "Hanoi" Jane Fonda) had a chilling effect on nuclear power development in the US. Our federal government to date has not granted a single license for a new nuke plant since 1979. When the TMI incident took place, the NRC had approved 129 licenses for new nuke plants in the US; dozens were already under construction or nearing completion. But largely due to public outcry resulting from the movie and high-profile celebrity protesters, and especially because of the exponentially-increased cost of complying with what many would term the outlandish demands of local governments and the NRC and EPA, only 53 were ever completed. Some of the abandoned nuke facilities -- such as the Zimmer plant in Ohio which was 97-98% complete by 1982, ready for fuel rods -- were converted to coal-fired boilers. Ripping out the reactors and installing coal furnaces was actually cheaper than completing construction in compliance with NRC and EPA demands.

It should be noted that the Three Mile Island incident killed no one and nothing, injured no one and nothing, and caused no environmental damage. Unit 2 (of four) was badly damaged and subsequently permanently shut down, but the other three units are operating today. Not one death, shortened life, or injury, inside or outside TMI, has ever been shown to have happened as a result of the release of radioactive elements during that incident. No environmental damage occurred. Claims of livestock casualties that ensued have been completely debunked. In essence, permitting of new nukes in the US was ended in 1979 due to fears over what didn't happen.

These days in this country, the real circus is watching the greenies fight amongst themselves. They will agree only on one issue -- anthropogenic global warming and its end-of-the-planet consequences. (It doesn't seem to strike them that if their worst projections come true, human presence on this planet will be decimated and life will be reduced to Stone Age technology, and the planet they claim to care so deeply about will quickly recover.) AGW is what puts bread on their tables and money in their bank accounts.

But these days, we get to see one group of greenies promoting the hell out of wind turbines, and another group of greenies decrying the slaughter (and it IS slaughter, what with the blade tips humming along at nearly 200 mph) of birds trying to fly through the arc of the turbine blades. Right now, a utility out west is facing a potential $200,000 federal fine because ONE golden eagle was killed by a wind turbine blade. (That particular bird seems to have garnered a lot of attention not so much because it was an example of a protected species killed by a wind turbine, an event that occurs wholesale every day, but more because the utility that owns the turbine that killed it had neglected to purchase the proper license from our federal government which would allow its turbines to kill such birds and not be prosecuted. Interesting concept, no?) We have groups who think hydroelectric is an ideal non-polluting source of clean energy, and other groups who complain about the inundation of precious lands behind dams (all of which seem to be utterly unique, irreplaceable habitats) and the constant grinding of fish (all of which seem to be utterly unique, irreplaceable fish) who get sucked into the turbines. We have greenies who have dedicated their lives to sucking at the public tit promoting solar panels in desert regions, and other greenie groups who can't stand the fact that the panels alter the formerly perfect desert habitat beneath them by shading the ground, and thereby reducing the temperature and light levels in those microcosmic habitats, which of course are all utterly unique and irreplaceable.

It is to laugh! 

As others have noted, there's a lot to be said on the subject, and a wealth of information all over this board.  Please enjoy. And keep asking those wide open questions! We windy bastards just love 'em! 

Quote from: ScandiPrincess on March 30, 2013, 06:16:05 PM
Okay I Don't Like Socialism, Obviously, But Can Someone Explain To Me How Energy Works? I'm Undecided About Green Or Nucleic Energy For Now.


Thanks
Laura

Maybe this can put it in perspective for you.

"The Germans are spending about $110 billion on subsidies for these solar panels," said Lomborg. "The net effect of all those investments will be to postpone global warming by 37 hours by the end of the century."

"All those billions, for 37 hours delay?," asked Stossel.

"Yeah," said Lomborg, "so remember them in [the year] 2100 and say, 'Wow.'"

Stossel clarified, "You believe in global warming and man-made--"

"Global warming is real," said Lomborg, "and it is we need to fix. But we should fix it smartly, and not in a very, very costly way as we're doing it now. Germany is probably spending $660 for every ton of CO2 they're cutting."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/claim-germany-spends-110-billion-delay-global-warming-37-hours_712223.html