I know nuclear power is bad, but...

4 years ago Environment

..what if there was a type of nuclear power that:

Nuclear power stationThree Mile Island Nuclear power Station. Image By US Government

  • Was radioactive for a few hundred years, not millennia
  • Could not meltdown
  • Could not be used to make weapons-grade materials
  • Burns up existing high-level radioactive waste and weapons material?

There is. Or may be, if the current research versions of Thorium reactors pans out. I still don't think nuclear is the way to go, and I still think that conservation should be the number one priority, but if this technology could be made to work, I could get behind it as a temporary measure.

The problem always comes, of course, when vested interests get their hooks into the government and arrange subsidies and favourable regulations for their industry, thus eliminating both competition and more efficient ways of doing things. And this type of nuclear power would be no different unless we make our governments much more transparent and accountable - and unless we prioritise sustainable power generation.

Keep in mind that there are no perfectly clean electricity generation options. Dams destroy habitat and use enormous amounts of concrete - with the corresponding vast amounts of CO2 that are released during its manufacture. Solar panels use all kinds of exotic and toxic materials and chemicals to make. Wind turbines are made of metal that must be mined and smelted.

Even direct solar, or passive, requires glass, and it is not adequate in our climate. Active combined with passive solar can do the trick, but again this requires mined and manufactured materials like copper and glass.

The most attractive feature of these new types of reactors is that they degrade current highly radioactive and extremely long-lived wastes into much less radioactive and relatively short-lived wastes. If we get stuck for energy because of governments that have dithered too long, and if it looks like nuclear is going to be pushed down our throats, let's at least make it Thorium. For a very thorough article and easy-to-comprehend article, check out Cosmos Magazine

Brian Gordon is a Canadian Green Party member and candidate trained by Al Gore to present An Inconvenient Truth.

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Comments

Old Comments

kahn says

Dec 15th, 2009 at 12am
There are many things wrong with this and i will tell you some: 1) Nuclear power IS clean, as it doesnt put anything out but radioactive waste 2) Scientists and Engineers at Chernobyl have found a fast growing fungus that absorbes radioactivity like a sponge soaks up water. This is very useless as its easily culticvated and the cost of cleanup is reduced. 3) A nuclear neltdown of the reator would be contained by the dome that is constructed above it. The reason Chernobyl caused so much damage was because it didnt HAVE a dome, or any other containment measures as it was built on an ever decreasing Soviet budget. I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T use Thorium, but we can still use uranium (among other fuels) as long as there is adquate security and counter measures.

kahn says

Dec 15th, 2009 at 12am
1. It is very safe, there are an insane number of safety measures, just like you don’t worry about your car, filled with explosive gasoline to kill you. 2. Meltdowns DO NOT = mushroom clouds, they are simple large releaes of rediation, even Chernobly (wich was a piece of shit even by Russian 1980 standards) had ALMOST ALL of its 4000 deaths within the first week and, as also mentioned by me before, the domes that are built over them are built to withstand a meltdown so there would NEVER BE another Chernobyl. Infact people live on the outskirts of Chernobyl to this day. 3. All the waste we have made in 50 years can only fill a football field 10 feet deep. Anyway nuclear waste can be reprossesed to make it MUCH LESS radioactive AND go away in just a few hundred years. Adding to this, as mentioned before by me, there is a fungus that can easily soak up all the radioactivity out of the waste. 4. It makes an insane amount of power, It CAN AND WILL power us for the next 10000 years (both fission and fusion). 5) Nuclear Fusion is very powerful, far more powerful than fission And to the advocates of wind power, you should know that it would take all the land on earth, plus about half of hte oceans to power half the number of countries on Earth? Hell it would take the area of China (with a wind turbine3 every INCH) to power the USA!! for crying out loud. Nuclear power is the way to go as it can potentially put out yottawatts (10^24 watts Figures from estimates based on large modern power stations around today.

Brian says

May 11th, 2009 at 12am
THPW is the company that knows how to burn Thorium safely and are presently helping India do so. We should as a country get on board and stop sending so much money to the middle east for oil for our power plants.

Mateo says

Apr 1st, 2009 at 12am
There already is one and its not thorium. It is called reprossesing, its very simple we get used nuclear fuel and USE IT AGAIN its like recycling. It works because used fuel retains 95% of its energy. Plus it also reduces waste to low level waste that only lasts a few hundred years. Also since it uses old fuel we wont have to mine more so it is CO2 free and with large scale we could supply ourselves power for 10's of thousands of years. It is already being done a lot in France and Japan. It comes down to one thing, If the French are doing it, are we too pussy to do it?

Mateo says

Apr 1st, 2009 at 12am
You people don't seem to understand that nuclear power is so REDICULOUSLY POWERFUL that it could ELIMINATE the need for all other power source. 1. It is very safe, there are an insane number of safety measures, just like you don't worry about your car filled with explosive gasoline to kill you. 2. Meltdowns are DO NOT = mushroom clouds, they are simple large releaes of rediation, even Chernobly (wich was a piece of shit even by Russian 1980 standards) had ALMOST ALL of its megare 4000 death within the first week. Infact people live on the outskirts of Chernobyl to this day. 3. All the waste we have made in 50 years can only fill a football field 10 feet deep. Anyway nuclear waste can be reprossesed to make it MUCH LESS radioactive AND go away in just a few hundred years. 4. It makes an insane amount of power, It CAN AND WILL power us for the next 10000 years (both fission and fusion as fission makes more power + more resources that way). 5. Solar and other renewables (exept wave in the 30-90 year future because the ocean is fucking huge) can not power us, they are expensive and make small amounts of energy. The only place solar has in on houses to make sure there are not blackouts and we have extra power.

maddy says

Mar 18th, 2009 at 12am
i think we should use wind power GO GREEN NO COAL NO NUCLEAR ENERGY NO HYDRO ELECTRICITY WIND ALL THE WAY

Mateo says

Feb 18th, 2009 at 12am
There is one but, it is not currently deveoped it is called FUSION it uses duterium and NO weapons can be made out of fusion. Fusion also does not explode.

Nu Clean Air says

Jan 29th, 2009 at 12am
Nuclear power IS the solution. Just because all of this is POSSIBLE, does not mean that it will happen. Look at the nuclear industries deaths, and then compare them to: smoking, coal mining, car accidents. You can't hardly even compare. No one historically has died in the US from nuclear power and in the last year thousands have died in car accidents. You can't just say that nuclear energy is bad, you have to look at the positives!!!

Rad Worker says

Dec 13th, 2008 at 12am
When all you people over 40 who don't have their heads on straight die, the world will be run by my generation. A generation (not without its flaws) that is not still constantly looking over its shoulder for the Commie Red Russkies, and screams holocaust at the slightest mention of the words nuclear or atomic, and nuclear power will finally be free from the paranoia, misinformation, dramatization, and misunderstanding that it has endured since its creation that unfortunately coincided with the Atomic bomb. A reactor is not a bomb, it cannot be a bomb, the laws of physics dictate this, not some safety systems (plentiful though they are) or human operators. Reactors are engineered from the atomic level to shut themselves down in the event of an accident. the circumstances that led to Chernobyl were: bad design, poor training, human error, and poor disaster management. Three Mile Island was a non-event, more of a lesson learning process, no one was hurt or even exceeded federal radiation exposure limits (which are incredibly strict), and what happened at both of these reactors is physically impossible (not just highly unlikely... impossible). As for the waste problem, nuclear waste is also a non-issue. Since the creation of nuclear power the total amount of waste from all nuclear reactors would cover one football field 10 feet deep. That's 50 years of waste. On top of that 98% of that waste can be reprocessed. When fuel is removed from power reactors it is not because it is all burned up, its because there are neutron poisons built up in the fuel that can be removed. The removal process also liberates minute amounts of Pu 239, which led to the Carter Administration banning the process (which france has pursued whole heartedly)because of public fear. The plutonium is also not an issue because it can be combine with Uranium in what is called MOX (mixed oxide) fuel, and burned up in reactors. The cost of a power plant installation is vast, but they pay for themselves in less than 10 years. Mining uranium is not particularly dangerous as far as mining goes because natural uranium emits negligible radiation, so it is no more dangerous than any other manual labor job. THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH NUKE IS THE FEAR OF STUPID PEOPLE, GET INFORMED, GET NUKE.

Le Sniss says

Dec 7th, 2008 at 12am
Given the modeling predictions regarding burning fossil fuels into the future, the hazards of nuclear/ supplemented by renewable energy sources seem trivial. If a billion citizens (15% of earths humans) were to be killed by nuclear energy (a disastrous worst case scenario of extreme unlikeliness) in the next two hundred years, this toll would still be less than the death toll predicted by many climate change models. Nuclear power can eliminate greenhouse emissions. It can provide the electricity needed to power the "emissions- free" vehicles we will purchase soon. Yes, nuclear power will kill people. But a lot less people than climate change. We should use it now, it will give us time to figure out fusion.