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Nuclear Power
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Wind is quite safe. It also doesn't work when it's not windy enough or too windy, doesn't necessarily provide energy when you need it and you need to have 3 times the installed capacity as nuclear to get the same amount of energy.
You'd be surprised at how unreliable nuclear power is.
eg: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/sep/11/9-11-b1-two-nuke-plants-shut-down-last-month/?print
In addition to that you have to include regular maintenance as well which involves a total shutdown for at least a month: http://www.nucleartourist.com/operation/mtce1.htm
Realistically your calcs there are a load of pants. More like 3x what you need for Wind and 2x what you need for nuclear (because we would have so few reactors)
Simple fact is that regardless of the safety fears nuclear is not worth it economically or environmentally.0 -
People also have to remember though that we have lived through an era of cheap oil, enabling us to live in comfort in the developed world. That time is rapidly coming to an end. In the future, energy may not be as abundant as now and people will have to get used to a lower standard of living perhaps.
Ah that old gross underestimation of humankind's ability to innovate.0 -
NoPrevious post on dangers.shedweller wrote: »So fukushima, chernobyl etc are ok then? We can all just move back in. Theres nothing to worry about?
Those places will be uninhabitable for a very long time!
I've linked above. The Chernobyl incident has no more to say about nuclear safety than a car built by me would have to say about car safety.
Fukushima was a once in 1000 year event. The nuclear "catastrophe" was completely trivial next to the actual disaster.
If that's what you're basing the dangers of nuclear power on, you don't know what the word "danger" means.You'd be surprised at how unreliable nuclear power is.
eg: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/sep/11/9-11-b1-two-nuke-plants-shut-down-last-month/?print
In addition to that you have to include regular maintenance as well which involves a total shutdown for at least a month: http://www.nucleartourist.com/operation/mtce1.htm
Realistically your calcs there are a load of pants. More like 3x what you need for Wind and 2x what you need for nuclear (because we would have so few reactors)
Simple fact is that regardless of the safety fears nuclear is not worth it economically or environmentally.
You linked two random pages from the internet. That tells me absolutely nothing about how reliable nuclear power is in general.
I was basing those calculations off capacity factors for different power generation. Capacity factor is how much power you generate compared to the theoretical max power generation (or "installed capacity").
The capacity factor for nuclear plants in the US for 2011 was 89%. I would think that would have to include any maintenance to make sense. And it's an average so while you've linked to two plants being shut down for a month, loads of other ones were humming away nicely.
The source I'm using is the Nuclear Energy Institute. They're a quite possibly biased nuclear power lobby group. If anyone else has something they believe to be a more accurate figure, I'm all ears.
For wind, the capacity factor is about 25%. Could be as high as 40% for some newer ones. I don't know.
The point is, when a politician says triumphantly that they're going to install 1GW of wind power you'll actually see about 25-40% of that.
With Nuclear you'll get 70-90% of that. It's just something to be mindful of.0 -
You linked two random pages from the internet. That tells me absolutely nothing about how reliable nuclear power is in general.
I was basing those calculations off capacity factors for different power generation. Capacity factor is how much power you generate compared to the theoretical max power generation (or "installed capacity").
The capacity factor for nuclear plants in the US for 2011 was 89%. I would think that would have to include any maintenance to make sense. And it's an average so while you've linked to two plants being shut down for a month, loads of other ones were humming away nicely.
The source I'm using is the Nuclear Energy Institute. They're a quite possibly biased nuclear power lobby group. If anyone else has something they believe to be a more accurate figure, I'm all ears.
For wind, the capacity factor is about 25%. Could be as high as 40% for some newer ones. I don't know.
The point is, when a politician says triumphantly that they're going to install 1GW of wind power you'll actually see about 25-40% of that.
With Nuclear you'll get 70-90% of that. It's just something to be mindful of.
I'll admit I was a bit lazy with the links but if you want the facts you should have a look at the Sustainability & Environmental Issues forum. You're a man after SeanW's heart, but the facts do show that Nuclear reactors are not a good option for Ireland.
The actual amount of uptime is the equivalent of your wind figures.
The thing is we're going to have all our eggs in one or two baskets (given the size of stations that are currently being built. You can't compare a country with lots and lots of plants against our country!
The point I'm trying to make is that what happens when the plant is off? We need to have backup power to cover the installed capacity of out largest powerplant for when it goes out. That's just plain ridiculous for such a small country.0 -
We have plenty of backup in the form of CCGT turbines.0
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NoI'll admit I was a bit lazy with the links but if you want the facts you should have a look at the Sustainability & Environmental Issues forum. You're a man after SeanW's heart, but the facts do show that Nuclear reactors are not a good option for Ireland.
The actual amount of uptime is the equivalent of your wind figures.
The thing is we're going to have all our eggs in one or two baskets (given the size of stations that are currently being built. You can't compare a country with lots and lots of plants against our country!
The point I'm trying to make is that what happens when the plant is off? We need to have backup power to cover the installed capacity of out largest powerplant for when it goes out. That's just plain ridiculous for such a small country.
You don't need to have 1 giant 8GW plant.
There's smaller reactors and we could split them between 3 or 4 sites.
And we wouldn't have to go only nuclear either. Even if we got 25% of our power from nuclear and then used natural gas, renewables and interconnectors for the rest we'd be pulling our weight on the carbon emissions front.
There's simply no way that nuclear power has 20-40% capacity factor.
France has 75% nuclear power. It just wouldn't work if it was that bad.
Think about that. For it to be 20-40% nuclear plants would on average have to spend about 8 months a year idle.
That makes far more sense for something like wind because in addition to normal maintenance it also has to deal with environmental factors.
I'd be happy to concede that the 90% figure could easily be biased but it seems an awful lot more plausible that nuclear plants spend 5 weeks a year offline as opposed to 5-8 months.0 -
Nuclear Power . . . . Yes Please! People need to wake up and realize fossil fuel is not going to last and "alternate" energy is insufficient for consumer needs.0
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NoThe thing is we're going to have all our eggs in one or two baskets (given the size of stations that are currently being built. You can't compare a country with lots and lots of plants against our country!
Just like to point out, nuclear powerplants don't have to be large. The reason Uranium plants are large is generally to produce Plutonium in large enough quantities to be weaponised economically. Thorium reactors can be anywhere from 1MW to 330MW, and Thorium is generally found in ore form near lead. It is a bit more sophisticated than bombarding Uranium with neutrons, however.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors
http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs
Carry on.:pac:0 -
You don't need to have 1 giant 8GW plant.
There's smaller reactors and we could split them between 3 or 4 sites.
And we wouldn't have to go only nuclear either. Even if we got 25% of our power from nuclear and then used natural gas, renewables and interconnectors for the rest we'd be pulling our weight on the carbon emissions front.
Not sure where the 8GW figure comes from - had a quick google and I came across this: http://greennav.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/understanding-electricity-demand-in-ireland/
In summary I'll work off a peak demand of ~4GW on an average day.
Now if we look at the size of plants being currently built we are talking about around 1GW capacity: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html
So one power plant will be 25% of our energy needs - my point is that we can't rely on all of them working all the time. If two happen to be out (eg one on regular servicing and one unexpected) then we'd need an extra 50% capacity over what we use.There's simply no way that nuclear power has 20-40% capacity factor.
France has 75% nuclear power. It just wouldn't work if it was that bad.
Think about that. For it to be 20-40% nuclear plants would on average have to spend about 8 months a year idle.
That makes far more sense for something like wind because in addition to normal maintenance it also has to deal with environmental factors.
I'm not going to defend something I didn't say!I'd be happy to concede that the 90% figure could easily be biased but it seems an awful lot more plausible that nuclear plants spend 5 weeks a year offline as opposed to 5-8 months.
this is an average - over several hundred plants.
The problem is that once every three years the plant must be shut for over a month. In addition plants will shut unexpectedly (otherwise they wouldn't be safe)
I'm not saying that nuclear is bad economically but it won't work in Ireland because we have such low energy needs relatively.0 -
TheBegotten wrote: »Just like to point out, nuclear powerplants don't have to be large. The reason Uranium plants are large is generally to produce Plutonium in large enough quantities to be weaponised economically. Thorium reactors can be anywhere from 1MW to 330MW, and Thorium is generally found in ore form near lead. It is a bit more sophisticated than bombarding Uranium with neutrons, however.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors
http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs
Carry on.:pac:
Going back to my other link: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html - you will notice that virtually all are large because that's what makes economic sense.
And to use the title quote from your second link:Devoted to the discussion of thorium as a future energy resource, and the machine to extract that energy–the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor.
I think we should only discuss established technologies because:- There's no hope of the Government going with an untested technology
- It'll be a while before it'll become actually in use!
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In summary I'll work off a peak demand of ~4GW on an average day.
So one power plant will be 25% of our energy needs - my point is that we can't rely on all of them working all the time. If two happen to be out (eg one on regular servicing and one unexpected) then we'd need an extra 50% capacity over what we use.
I'm not going to defend something I didn't say!
this is an average - over several hundred plants.
The problem is that once every three years the plant must be shut for over a month. In addition plants will shut unexpectedly (otherwise they wouldn't be safe)
Moneypoint is nearly 1GW.
Huntstown is about 750MW.
What would happen if those two plants went offline tonight?0 -
NoI'll admit I was a bit lazy with the links but if you want the facts you should have a look at the Sustainability & Environmental Issues forum. You're a man after SeanW's heart, but the facts do show that Nuclear reactors are not a good option for Ireland.
The actual amount of uptime is the equivalent of your wind figures.
The thing is we're going to have all our eggs in one or two baskets (given the size of stations that are currently being built. You can't compare a country with lots and lots of plants against our country!
The point I'm trying to make is that what happens when the plant is off? We need to have backup power to cover the installed capacity of out largest powerplant for when it goes out. That's just plain ridiculous for such a small country.
The turbines in Dublin are of the order of 350MW and a nuclear plant built with modules of that size of reactor would be quite feasible for Ireland and would allow the required amount of service flexibility.0 -
NoAh that old gross underestimation of humankind's ability to innovate.
Oil is a staggeringly convenient and concentrated source of energy. We suck it out of the ground and burn it et voila; accessible, reliable energy. It is a very precious substance and it is the very basis of modern civilisation. For a human being to create an equivalent amount of energy to burning a single barrel of oil would require, at 8 hours labour per day, over two thousand days. We are using about ninety million barrels every day. We have used the majority of easily accessible oil. The oil left is less efficient due to increasing energy costs of extraction, and much of the remaining oil, such as tar sands, are much dirtier and more destructive than normal crude. Planetary consumption is also steadily increasing; China, India, Brazil and many others have barely even begun getting their economies up to speed. We will be consuming hugely more energy from ever dwindling and dirtier oil sources.
I'm not saying we're doomed, renewables are seeing more and more investment and fusion is being actively worked on, but we are casually glutting ourselves on the greatest resource on this planet and when it is gone it will never be back. If we don't get to a post-petroleum economy we've used up our one chance. You can't have an industrial age burning wood and whale oil.
In a future of indeterminable likelihood our descendents roam our crumbling cities wondering how the ancients had the God-like power to create such immense structures and feed such staggering populations while all they can do is eke out a subsistence tribal lifestyle. It might sound dramatic but empires have experienced catastrophic falls throughout history, and their inhabitants always took their world for granted.
All that said, fission won't save us either. We'd need to build tens of thousands of power plants to meet planetary energy comsumption, and if we did we'd exhaust the planet's supply of uranium in a decade or two. Solar power, interestingly enough, could meet our energy needs several times over, in theory, it is just way too expensive right now. Fusion is the long term survival of civilisation.0 -
NoMan, that post was way too serious for After Hours.0
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Moneypoint is nearly 1GW.
Huntstown is about 750MW.
What would happen if those two plants went offline tonight?
To be honest it'd probably be sorted by the morning.
Nuclear plants go offline in style. ie no power for weeks/months.
But legacy power supplies tend not to have the same issues as Nuclear. How often do you see coal plants break down for? Look at the stats for nuclear - google it and you'll see that individual plants do have issues.
When you have lots of plants it's grand. You've diversified the problem away! We don't have that luxury.0 -
To be honest it'd probably be sorted by the morning.
Nuclear plants go offline in style. ie no power for weeks/months.
But legacy power supplies tend not to have the same issues as Nuclear. How often do you see coal plants break down for? Look at the stats for nuclear - google it and you'll see that individual plants do have issues.
When you have lots of plants it's grand. You've diversified the problem away! We don't have that luxury.
We have between 7 and 8GW of generation on the island.
There is no shortage of generation. That's my point, if we had a nuke and it went offline, there is still plenty of plant on the system to generate.0 -
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We have between 7 and 8GW of generation on the island.
There is no shortage of generation. That's my point, if we had a nuke and it went offline, there is still plenty of plant on the system to generate.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that much of it is turn onable at short notice?
And surely the idea is to replace some of the current capacity?0 -
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that much of it is turn onable at short notice?
And surely the idea is to replace some of the current capacity?
A lot of it is CCGT so it can be brought up relatively quickly.
Even if something like Moneypoint is replaced with a nuke and used as base load, there is STILL excess generation capacity on the island.
Also, there is the likes of Turlough Hill and peaking plants to meet any immediate deficit while the CCGT plants ramp up in the event of an unexpected failure..... as is the case currently.0 -
The safety record of nuclear power, in terms of lives lost per unit of electricity delivered, is better than every other major source of power in the world.
How many people died drilling for oil?
How many people died due to nuclear power?0 -
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A lot of it is CCGT so it can be brought up relatively quickly.
Even if something like Moneypoint is replaced with a nuke and used as base load, there is STILL excess generation capacity on the island.
Also, there is the likes of Turlough Hill and peaking plants to meet any immediate deficit while the CCGT plants ramp up in the event of an unexpected failure..... as is the case currently.
But if we need the backup generation capabilities now, then how will adding a nuclear station not increase the potential variation? Moneypoint at the moment is unlikely to have any long term failures!
Thus we'd need more power capabilities?0 -
The safety record of nuclear power, in terms of lives lost per unit of electricity delivered, is better than every other major source of power in the world.
It's an ironic fact alright!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/0 -
But if we need the backup generation capabilities now, then how will adding a nuclear station not increase the potential variation? Moneypoint at the moment is unlikely to have any long term failures!
Thus we'd need more power capabilities?
We have nearly double the required generation capacity.
If a power plant is offline for a whole year, there is plenty of reserve plants to take up the slack.
What is so difficult about that to understand?0 -
We have nearly double the required generation capacity.
If a power plant is offline for a whole year, there is plenty of reserve plants to take up the slack.
What is so difficult about that to understand?
Nothing hard to understand, what's the breakdown of that capacity?
I assume you'll grant there is a reason that our installed capacity vastly exceeds our needs?0 -
No
You said:I'm not going to defend something I didn't say!
My wind figures were 25-40%.The actual amount of uptime is the equivalent of your wind figures.
What did you actually mean?
I pulled a ballpark figure out of my arse for illustrative purposes.Not sure where the 8GW figure comes from - had a quick google and I came across this: http://greennav.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/understanding-electricity-demand-in-ireland/
In summary I'll work off a peak demand of ~4GW on an average day.Now if we look at the size of plants being currently built we are talking about around 1GW capacity: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html
So one power plant will be 25% of our energy needs - my point is that we can't rely on all of them working all the time. If two happen to be out (eg one on regular servicing and one unexpected) then we'd need an extra 50% capacity over what we use.this is an average - over several hundred plants.
The problem is that once every three years the plant must be shut for over a month. In addition plants will shut unexpectedly (otherwise they wouldn't be safe)
I'm not saying that nuclear is bad economically but it won't work in Ireland because we have such low energy needs relatively.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
There's a list of smaller nuclear reactors.
They vary in size from 25MW to 335MW.Today, due partly to the high capital cost of large power reactors generating electricity via the steam cycle and partly to the need to service small electricity grids under about 4 GWe,b there is a move to develop smaller units. These may be built independently or as modules in a larger complex, with capacity added incrementally as required (see section below on Modular construction using small reactor units). Economies of scale are provided by the numbers produced. There are also moves to develop small units for remote sites. Small units are seen as a much more manageable investment than big ones whose cost rivals the capitalization of the utilities concerned.
I'm fairly sure there's small self-contained modular reactors which are completely replaced when their fuel runs out. It's kinda like the difference between an engine that requires fuel to generate electricity and a battery which is simply replaced when it runs out of charge. Perhaps something along those lines would make sense. It would presumably limit the amount of tech we'd need to invest in on site.
We could have 20 100MW reactors at 4 different sites and reduce the risk you're describing.
My general point is that we don't need a big 4GW behemoth power plant that would make sense in bigger countries. We don't automatically have to follow the same model.
Now, again, they may not be economically viable, but I much prefer debating on those lines rather than tired horse**** about safety that's been debunked a million times.
It's like the GM debate where you'r trying to debate about the merits of having corporations control crops and then you get someone coming in waffling about GM mutating babies.0 -
You said:
My wind figures were 25-40%.
What did you actually mean?
Ah I see where I was confusing... I meant that you said we need 3x wind over our needs where we only need 1x if we use nuclear - But I was disputing the 1x figure..I pulled a ballpark figure out of my arse for illustrative purposes.
:mad: ... actually this is AH - what did I expect!?I'm fairly sure there's small self-contained modular reactors which are completely replaced when their fuel runs out. It's kinda like the difference between an engine that requires fuel to generate electricity and a battery which is simply replaced when it runs out of charge. Perhaps something along those lines would make sense. It would presumably limit the amount of tech we'd need to invest in on site.
Toshiba reactors I think is what you're talking about - it's not remotely established as a technology...Now, again, they may not be economically viable, but I much prefer debating on those lines rather than tired horse**** about safety that's been debunked a million times.
It's like the GM debate where you'r trying to debate about the merits of having corporations control crops and then you get someone coming in waffling about GM mutating babies.
I'm not(haven't) making that argument... so yay for economics?
(although I would make the environmental argument against nukes)0 -
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Decade after decade the mantra remains the sameLot's of reasoning and no facts.
Nuclear power is incredibly safe.
Read back about 1 or 2 pages where I go into it at length.
"Tomorrows nuclear power plants will be safe because we've learnt from the mistakes in the past"
"our untested designs will be more efficient and safer"
Nuclear is a sideline. There is enough proven uranium reserves to supply the equivalent of current global electricity usage for 10 years. If all of today's reactors are replaced at the end of their working lives then there is just about enough fuel to keep the replacements running for their design lives. This is kinda important since capital costs are so large that a reactor takes so long to break even.
There are no breeder reactors (the closest the French Superphoenix had only 8% uptime)
There are no thorium cycle reactors
There are no burner reactors
There is uranium in seawater, same is true of gold
There are no more soviet warheads , all the spare ones have already been converted into fuel.
[edit]There are no pebble bed reactors, the German one jammed and the Toshiba ones never left the drawing board[/edit]
The improvements achieved / proposed for each new generation of nuclear plant ( ~7% every 20 years) are about the same as photovoltaic makes every year ( for the last 30 years).
Photovoltaic uses many different technologies - some are more efficient , some are cheaper.
IBM reckon they can print out 500 GW of panels per year using readily available copper, zinc and tin That's more than all existing and planned nuclear plants again. And those panels are only 1/3 the efficiency as the best commercially available one. The latest trend in the lab is to use infra red light which constitutes 40% of sunlight so expect efficiencies of some panels to take a major jump.
Wind costs are falling by about 14% every time capacity doubles ( since 1984)
Remind us again how much cheaper the next generation of nuclear power will be ? (please backup any prediction with previous industry cost trends)
Improvements in LED lighting and Insulation can help. Back in 2006 nineteen percent of global electricity was used for lighting. That's five percent more than nuclear power provided.
If we switched to LED lighting we wouldn't need Nuclear power.
Dr Roland Haitz's law says that LED lighting costs are dropping by a factor of 10 every decade. He predicted 200lm/watt by 2020.
254lm / watt was announced in April
If the billions needed for new nuclear power plants were invested in LED technology or in providing extra insulation for buildings there would be no need for more reactors.0 -
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Money point has three 305MW generating units and there are two 400KV lines to Dublin.But if we need the backup generation capabilities now, then how will adding a nuclear station not increase the potential variation? Moneypoint at the moment is unlikely to have any long term failures!
Thus we'd need more power capabilities?
Most of the proposed reactors are in the 1.5GW class. Very different if one that size were to go off line.0 -
NoAh I see where I was confusing... I meant that you said we need 3x wind over our needs where we only need 1x if we use nuclear - But I was disputing the 1x figure..
What I meant was that you need three MWs of installed capacity of windmills for each MW of installed capacity of nuclear.
Because 1MW of installed wind is 0.25MW and 1MW of installed nuclear is 0.75MW.
Didn't mean to imply that you were.I'm not(haven't) making that argument... so yay for economics?
(although I would make the environmental argument against nukes)Capt'n Midnight wrote: »Nuclear is a sideline. There is enough proven uranium reserves to supply the equivalent of current global electricity usage for 10 years.
Do you have a source for that?Capt'n Midnight wrote: »Photovoltaic uses many different technologies - some are more efficient , some are cheaper.
You need sunlight for that. There's none at night and night gets pretty long this far north during the winter.
Again, just the same as any electricity that is based on the weather, it needs either power storage or a massive interconnected grid across a huge area (without massive energy losses) to have any hope of viability.Capt'n Midnight wrote: »Improvements in LED lighting and Insulation can help. Back in 2006 nineteen percent of global electricity was used for lighting. That's five percent more than nuclear power provided.
If we switched to LED lighting we wouldn't need Nuclear power.
Dr Roland Haitz's law says that LED lighting costs are dropping by a factor of 10 every decade. He predicted 200lm/watt by 2020.
254lm / watt was announced in April
If the billions needed for new nuclear power plants were invested in LED technology or in providing extra insulation for buildings there would be no need for more reactors.
While LEDs will certainly help (we bought a bunch for our house and although they cost **** all to run the light the provide is ****e) your logic is deeply flawed to assume that we won't need nuclear because of it.
Even if lighting energy consumption went from 19% down to near 0% of global usage that doesn't make all the coal plants disappear.
If you're taking all fossil fuel out of the equation (because we have to) except perhaps some gas turbines in reserve (because they're handy) then all you are left with is nuclear and renewables. Right now and for the forseeable future renewable energy can't cut it on it's own.
We can either go nuclear or stick to fossil fuels.
Which is exactly the kind of populist ****e Germany has embarked on.
Windmills and Solar panels will have to get an awful lot more efficient to make up for their intermittency and even still they'll need to be backed up by other sources that can quickly ramp up power, interconnectors or storage of excess power generated when they're producing more than we need.0 -
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yes it is a tad more sophisticatedTheBegotten wrote: »Just like to point out, nuclear powerplants don't have to be large. The reason Uranium plants are large is generally to produce Plutonium in large enough quantities to be weaponised economically. Thorium reactors can be anywhere from 1MW to 330MW, and Thorium is generally found in ore form near lead. It is a bit more sophisticated than bombarding Uranium with neutrons, however.
it produces 0.5% the high level waste that uranium cycle does
and in theory it lends itself to actinide burners so most of that 0.5% can be zapped with neutrons - sounds great
there is just one tiny fly in the ointment
we've had full scale nuclear reactors since 1944 and the thorium cycle was publicised in 1946 and we still haven't managed to build such a reactor0
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