Monthly Archives: January 2010
Hooray Good News For Nuclear Energy Panel
Thorium and LFTR advocate Kirk Sorensen had this to say on his EnergyFromThorium.com discussion “This is so big. So big. This may be the biggest thing to ever happen to the prospects for thorium and the liquid-fluoride reactor. The DOE’s announced their commission, and Per’s on it. Not only is he on it but he is pretty much the only nuclear engineer that I can see on the commission.” He’s talking about one of their own forum members Per Peterson of UC Berkeley who has been appointed to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future announced today by Steven Chu.
With all that’s been said about the advantages to LFTR and the fact that Per Peterson is a strong believer in this technology it’s not hard to see why it’s a very positive step. It seemed like so little progress was being made in the Obama administration but this makes for a promising return to Alvin Weinberg’s vision.
Weinberg might finally be taken seriously on his pet project of the 60’s and 70’s.
An open letter to members of the pro nuclear community
DV82XL explains how Nuclear Power for energy consumption and Nuclear Proliferation have nothing to do with each other.
It’s the tendency the nuclear nerds have to want to share their knowledge that is the Nuclear Energy advocate’s Achilles heel. The best counter argument to any claims by anti nukers is to let the historical record demonstrate that no parallel has ever existed.
At the risk of offending some individuals, certainly not my aim, I’d like to give an analogy. Let’s assume you are a politician and tempted by a beautiful woman to pay her for sex but the woman turns out to be an undercover police woman. You are arrested for taking the bait so to speak. Well, kind of an extreme example but when an anti nuker raises the proliferation issue as a concern to nuclear energy investment or research, by responding at the technical level you are taking the anti-nuker’s bait and you look foolish in the eyes of the frightened masses.
So a jedi or samurai or zen master might suggest you take a breath and relate to the less technical minds rather than the 2% who might have some idea of what you are saying.
It’s the non-technical minds that need winning over.
Make it a history lesson not an esoteric science discussion.
ThoriumMSR 
