Quote:
Originally Posted by mapuc
I hope we will see this in a very near future
Thorium-based nuclear power [...]
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There is hope, and then there is humanity. From your link:
"Science writer Richard Martin states that nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg, who was director at Oak Ridge and primarily responsible for the new reactor,
lost his job as director because he championed development of the safer thorium reactors.[7][8]
Weinberg himself recalls this period:
[Congressman] Chet Holifield was clearly exasperated with me, and he finally blurted out, "Alvin,
if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it may be time for you to leave nuclear energy." I was speechless. But it was apparent to me that my style, my attitude, and my perception of the future were no longer in tune with the powers within the AEC.[9]
Martin explains that
Weinberg's unwillingness to sacrifice potentially safe nuclear power for the benefit of military uses forced him to retire:
Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. ... his team built a working reactor .... and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed.
Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program,
wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.[10]"
I doubt that with people like Putin, Kim, Xi Jinping or other idiots as the leaders (!!) of this planet there will be logical evolution and progress, aside from trying finding out how to kill each other better?