Windmills vs. Nuclear Energy: Thorium reactors are a whole different game

American Thinker ^ | 06/04/2019 | Jon N. Hall

[SeekAndFind]

Don’t let HBO’s acclaimed five-part series Chernobyl (HBO, IMDb, Wikipedia) demonize all nuclear power in your mind. It made this kid eager to read Mac MacDowell’s important June 3 article here at American Thinker. In “Rare Earth Minerals and Thorium,” MacDowell explains a different type of nuclear reactor that would do more than just help us produce clean energy. “Global Warmists” would do well to read it.

[SeekAndFind]

[cuban leaf]

This is the second Amererican thinker article highlighting thorium in as many days. I see a meme here.

[cuban leaf]

Here’s the other one: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/rare_earth_minerals_and_thorium.html

[Sirius Lee]

That’s a whole lot of bird blenders and spotted owl omelettes.

[volunbeer]

Thorium appears to hold much promise for clean energy. The size of the reactors can be scaled to fit energy needs or chained together with the same design to do the same.

If this is true, why not?

[gibsonguy]

I just have to believe killing millions of birds like this is going to have consequences.

[allendale]

Wind turbines are great for feral cats. They tend to congregate near them. The turbines are not so good for the birds.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The Chinese did it in one of Mao’s Great Leap Forward campaigns.
Getting rid of birds that consumed a bit of grain created an insect bloom that consumed more grain than the bird ate...

[The Great RJ]

In southwestern Minnesota there is a wind farm that stretches along a series of ridges literally from horizon to horizon. I have driven by on several occasions when not one of these hundreds of windmills were turning. The latest green energy folly in Minnesota are solar farms with acres of solar panels..note these produce no electricity at night, on cloudy days, when covered with snow or during raging blizzards. If we are to depend on windmills and solar farms for electricity be prepared for rolling blackouts and to be freezing or sweltering in your darkened homes

[Telepathic Intruder]

46 square miles rendered lifeless in order to protect the environment.

[NewJerseyJoe]

P4L

[cuban leaf]

I’m a huge fan so far. But I confess my knowlege is limited.

[RayChuang88]

Chernobyl was a BAD reactor design to start with. The combination of no containment structure and an inherently dangerous reactor design (see: Windscale reactor accident in the UK in 1957) made the whole situation worse than necessary. Note that at Three Mile Island in 1979, there was actually very little radioactive release because the containment structure worked as designed.

[mountainlion]

The traveling wave reactor can use depleted uranium for fuel so a nuclear waste can be used:

http://www2.technologyreview.com/news/412188/tr10-traveling-wave-reactor/

[Empire_of_Liberty]

Weren’t both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island cases of reactor control exercises gone wrong?

Hard to design for that. The more safety you design in, the more extreme the “testing” becomes. Or so it seems to me.

[Go_Raiders]

You can blame GE, Westinghouse and Hyman Rickover for the state of today’s nuclear industry.

Thorium was not adopted because it couldn’t produce weapons grade material.

[Tenacious 1]

Thorium appears to hold much promise for clean energy. The size of the reactors can be scaled to fit energy needs or chained together with the same design to do the same.

If this is true, why not?

It would be cheaper to just build the wall. (Wait, what?)

[Teacher317]

I’m a huge fan so far.

So is a wind turbine! ;)

[dsrtsage]

“If this is true, why not?”

Cronies of democrats do not own any thorium

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

In a project this size, by the time they complete installation of the last few windmill units...it will be time to replace the first ones put into service. The wear and tear on these behemoths is massive.