The UK has closed all coal fired plants and replaced with renewables wqhich now supply 40% of the energy needed. Nuclear fantasists always compare nuclear with polluting coal, nuclear was never going to cut it, ten years to build just one, with millions of tonnes of concrete [heavily CO2 emitting process in manufacture] and people have simply rejected such costly and time consuming non solutions, we need to scrap fossil fuels now, not after a few decades and trillions in costs. The environment has suffered from nuclear; background radiation has risen and risen, where once it was virtually non existent, and the waste disposal has still not been solved, and isn't going to be anytime soon. People are simply too inbtelligent to fall for a 1950s ideas mainly aimed at producing fuel for bombs. All the rest is PR lies.

It's not the environment that has paid dearly. Humanity and the American way has picked up that bloated check...voluntarily, and that was a massive mistake.

I read of two other problems: a) material to contain F and it's chemical combinations at a wide range of temperature, b) the lack of engineers and faculties / schools to educate and train and qualify enough people to build and operate the reactors. I guess, materials have to be developed first, so we can build long term and stable, supportable experiments.

@@ankeunruh7364 The most common MSR designs use a forced convection system, meaning that the salt is not just sitting statically in a tank but it is actively circulated in and out of the core and over heat exchangers, all by means of conventional pumping. This means that you need to design not only the core itself and the containment vessel but also piping, pumps, valves, flanges etc. all from materials which need to be resistant to corrosion at high temperatures. On top of that, you will likely need to actively suppress corrosion by chemical means i.e. by keeping the fuel salt in a reduced state. However, corrosion will still occur, no matter how slow, so you need to also periodically inspect all of your salt loop for signs of wear and tear. Radiation damage is another reason why you need periodical inspections. Finally, the fuel salt itself is also quite a challenge from a chemistry perspective. Producing sufficient quantities of salt in extremely high purity is not trivial. On top of that, during operation, fission products accumulate in the salt and need to be dealt with. Some fission products "poison" your reactor, others form microscopic particles which will attach to to walls and all other surfaces which could created blockages. Yet other fission products will simply adversely affect the thermophysical properties of the salt as they accumulate. This means either shutting down the reactor, draining the fuel salt and re-fuelling with fresh salt or developing processes for the removal of fission products during operation. None of these challenges are impossible to overcome, mind you. But they do make the design and development of MSRs challenging.

'Atoms for peace' was a PR campaign to make the weapons cuddly, while supplying enriched uranium and plutonium for bombs. It was never intended to power the world, nor could it. All the thousands of gigawatts released are added to the already heating planet.

Of course you need funding, that's what it's all about! Nobody wants it, so rather than accept the majority [it's called democracy by the way] and start decomissioning these appalling things the PR campaign tries to change the common view to one like yours. But you're badly wrong and misinformed. Nuclear isn't any kind of answer to how to supply energy and continue to reduce emissions as fast as possible, it takes at least 10 years, costs billions and all the energy released is added to the heat already trapped by fossil fuels. Renbewables on the other hand take energy out of the energy reaching Earth from the sun, is thus sustainable and will be available until the sun dies, and the energy trapped and used to accomplisg work is returned to the environment, no net gain. The thousands of gigawatts nuclear releases worldwide is a net addition to the ecosphere, if fossil fuels disappeared tomorrow, nuclear would continue heating up the environment for thousands of years. Nuclear is a deranged cult of true believers who insult those whgo oppose it because they represent a danger to their expected funding for these costly, dangerous and ultimately useless ego projecrts almost always by men of a certain age. It must make them feel powerful and important. Whereas PV panels and wind turbines don't get their testosterone flowing at all.

Shadow banned

18 months is nothing for any large scale infrastructure project. According to their (Seaborg Technologies) road map - full-scale prototype is currently scheduled to go online in 2025

The idea is certainly popular around the world in the nuclear industry. The main obstacle, as far as I can tell, aside from all the engineering challenges, is the licensing. Governments around the world heavily rely on accumulated operational experience in the licensing of nuclear power plants. In other words, the only reason why we can license new power plants of existing designs is because we have accumulated thousands of years of operational experience. So getting a conventional reactor licensed is possible. Getting a new, experimental design licensed on the other hand is close to impossible. There are simply too many open questions and uncertainties and not enough operational experience to rely on for regulators to be comfortable with these new technologies.

A 2L bottle of soda filled with Thorium could run a 100K person sized city for a year. The waste would fit in a babyfood jar and be radioactive for 300 years(not 300,000 years).

That's why this type of high-temperature reactor is so important. Electricity is just one of hundreds of industrial applications.

You need critical thinking.

Windscale was a first generation nuclear reactor. Aldermaston was a nuclear weapons factory that shouldn't exist and isn't needed in this age. Not to mention Aldermaston would exist with thorium fueled reactors.

There is a crisis. Rising temperature changes a lot for many many people, for nations, for agriculture. It's ok to call this a crisis. But humans will find ways - whether as 10 billion or as one million individuals.

@@ankeunruh7364 You did not answer Baron V point. What do you consider the idealt CO2 level to be.

As far as I get it, the problem is not primarily the level of CO2 i the atmosphere, but the rate of change. And it has risen steeply for a while, and looks set to continue. The system has enormous hysteresis, and is slow to respond, but the response is coming, and will be next to impossible to stop.

1. well, it depends 2. your choice how you get there, you could simply wait since over geological times co2 tends to get lower through the Carbonate-silicate cycle. Also you could do a more aggressive approach and and make graphite out of atmospheric co2 in the Bosch reaction and dump that carbon somewhere (maybe for later use?).

There is no ideal level of CO2. But the fact that it increases changes the climate that humanity adapted to. Moving billions of people to some other areas, adapting our food supply etc. is, let's say, problematic. Maybe you're OK with more wars, hunger, draughts etc. many people aren't

Not so sure