Thorium

[switters]

All this talk about oil running out and fear about arab revolutions.

Seriously, who gives a s%£t. If our policy makes got their hands out of BigOils pocket and developed Thorium reactors, we wouldnt need oil (apart from for plastics)

Do some research. They built reactors in the 60's that were safe and simple. They went the Urnaium route because, guess what....

they wanted plutonium for their bombs!

Thorium, it's the answer

[LittleSteroid]

hmm, I am betting on Fusion or Antimatter

[corevalue]

All this talk about oil running out and fear about arab revolutions.

Seriously, who gives a s%£t. If our policy makes got their hands out of BigOils pocket and developed Thorium reactors, we wouldnt need oil (apart from for plastics)

Do some research. They built reactors in the 60's that were safe and simple. They went the Urnaium route because, guess what....

they wanted plutonium for their bombs!

Thorium, it's the answer

What do you propose for transport fuel?

[ken_ichikawa]

What do you propose for transport fuel?

The USN has been running for the past 3 years a prototype process whereby excess energy from their nuclear powered ships can be used to synthesise jet fuel. It requires enormous amounts of energy though so much that the ship can't move while they synthesise this fuel. Could just be electrolysing water to turn to hydrogen tbh.

With thorium reactor fuel being so abundant you could electrolyse water and turn it into hydrogen as an energy state/carrier. So we burn through 2500 years of fuel in 200 years but in 200 years it'll be some other persons problem or Fusion will be cracked by then.

[ken_ichikawa]

Theres no reason why small self contained reactors using thorium couldnt be used as pseudo battery packs for the larger vehicles like trains or lorries for examples.

There is, have you seen how dumb the average man on the street is sometimes? Consider that 50% of the population make this guy look smart. From the kitchen at work I can see a petrol station and almost every other day I see people sticking petrol in diesel cars or diesel in petrol cars. If they can't manage something like that you think they can use thorium which has a nasty habit of spontaneous combustion in contact with oxygen?

Why not just have massive massive ones (where you can concentrate both security and get efficiency effects) and use the national grid to move the electricity around and use the infrastructure we already use.

[ken_ichikawa]

You missed the bit about self contained....

But people like to tinker with things, when cat exhausts came out for cars people removed them and they mess about with the sensors on FI systems to get better performance.

With regards to security, is it better to have all your eggs in one basket or spread out in mobile units?

I'm not sure, it's been debated 100s of times in military forums before. I'm personally for a massive one egg in a very well protected basket type. Probably because of an old PC game homeworld when my entire bomber and fighter wing were destroyed in less than 2 seconds by a well placed burst bomb.

[jonb]

Theres no reason why small self contained reactors using thorium couldnt be used as pseudo battery packs for the larger vehicles like trains or lorries for examples.

The US embessay in London will have its own nuclear reactor (branded as its own independant power supply) and I would suggest its no different to the types used in subs already.

http://www.timesonli...icle7038550.ece

http://www.guardian....ng-view-embassy

As far as I'm aware, they power steam engines, which require regular supplies of water. You can expect a range of about 26 miles on a tank of water.