Thanks for your comment. The best thing I can tell is google liquid salt reactor. Ken Sorensen I believe is name of good video explanation of LFTR (liquid fluorite thorium reactor). I really think that it is the way forward to the future.

You might be right, I may be crazy. We need more power, and renewable is a minor player for energy production. Yet we keep searching for the magic power fairy. If we had less than a billion people renewable energy might work. The LFTR system is ver different than any system currently on line. If folks got it in their head that nuclear is bad then the solution will be pollution.

@Leutrelle millions of miles of 24/7 river current and ocean waves could power us all..... co-generation is a vast KINETIC RESOURCE including mounting wind vane generators on your gawdamn cooling towers capturing rising heat WITH NO WIND MORE power when the wind increases vane velocity right within feet of the grid. ...discounting renewable is like the tobacco industry denying carcinogens in their addict gravy train. ..pure dishonest greed

@GreenAtheist I under stand your passion. World Wide if you don't include hydroelectric the energy production in the green category is about 7%. There is nothing greedy about LFTR power. I live in the west part of the US, and wind mills are every where and while they my make people feel good they will never be base line power, only supplemental.

Ocean current may be an answer. Everyone liked the hydroelectric model until they saw the devastation to migratory fish. My vote would be to take the dams down. I don't know what harm the ocean current generation may cause, so I an not jumping on that band wagon.

LFTR is the best solution for replacement of fossil fuel electrical power generation. I appreciate your commitment to saving the planet

@Leutrelle how many vent pipes do you see with wind turbines moving from rising heat. ? The fiction of your wind dismissive continues to ignore potential while bias for slow cancer nukes will never sell in USA

@GreenAtheist You are starting to make me chuckle. Never say never If you can get energy from cooling towers then so be it. I would never stand in your way. I just question how much power, and if is base line power? So far alternative energy does not equal base line energy. LFTR could be base line.

@Leutrelle more bs ....the decision where to install wind turbines is not dependent upon your blather instead it's pure time to payback set up costs and obviously transmission lines are shortest @ grid hubs like existing generation stations including solar on any south east or west facing roof tops of the damn power company buildings. ...you're a poster boy for hiding the truth that electric companies don't want to compete against themselves. ...the more solar & wind the lower the output from the existing polluter generator

@GreenAtheist Sorry, but I think you are angry, and really don't want to dialogue, and I sincerely would like to have a discussion.

@Leutrelle I discuss with observers not perpetrators. ...can you really deny the cooling towers releasing radioactive steam as a deadly provocation ? And you've falsely concluded my feelings which in fact are loneliness not anger

@GreenAtheist The LFT reactor does not have a cooling tower. It is completely different from the nuclear reactors that are presently used. LTFR uses molten salt as it's coolant and runs at very high temperatures ( 600 C) with no pressure issues. Sorry for thinking you were angry.

@Leutrelle Is your LFT the same as lithium Chernobyl ?

@Leutrelle and there are way too many cooling towers on this planet compounded by some on earthquake fault zones

Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor. Google it and there are a few videos on LFTR. Ken Sorenson (I think thats his name) explains the origin and the process really well. I am not that thrilled with cooling towers either. @GreenAtheist

I hear ya loud and clear. I thought I would just deep my toe in and see how warm the water is.

As long as people can argue, talk or debate an issue then there's hope that the kinks can get worked out.

This waste is nearly spent. Some say its efficiency is 99%. The waste which will be much less than light water reactors, and the radioactivity is at the high end 200 years. Plus it can use the waste fuel that is currently being stored. It can also burn plutonium. So far alternative renewable energy only a very small % of our energy needs. Read about if you can it gives me hope.

Devils Advocate here; "I think a combination of solar, wind and tidal sources are all renewable and can supply all of our energy needs."
But if you could exchange 3 sources for 1 and exceed the energy needs and combat climate change, why wouldn't you?

@Leutrelle has point out that even nuclear waste is still usable as an energy source on it's own. The 'waste' is just no longer powerful enough to poser major stations, you could setup a well shielded mini generator and shove an 'exhausted' fuel rod into it and power your home for the 100,000 years(depending on the half-life) it'll take to decay to a safe level.

Don't get me wrong, solar and wind are great too but then you got issues where you're changing the currents and causing weather changes if the turbine farm is too large. Solar prevents the earth in that area from heating up since the panels cast shade(maybe not a bad thing with global warming, in fact I think India put some over a canal to stop water evaporation AND generate energy).

My main issue is that people only ever want the one magic fix all and resist change, new ideas and the integration of several partial fixes.

@DreadlySmart The LFTR can use spent fuel pellets. The thorium is liquified in fluoride, and as they spilt the thorium atoms and the become radio active there is another process at work. Some thorium atom gain an electron and become ur233, thus after a period of time and fluoride medium is saturated with ur233 it automatically cools down because ur233 is not a good fuel. They use a catalyst refresh the medium allowing the splitting of the ur233 and thus converting it back into thorium. repeat repeat...until the fuel is exhausted. They can add the spent ur235, and burn it in a similar way. I am sure you can help out and correct some of the details

@DreadlySmart I am aware that the French figured out a way to recycle nuclear waste to reduce the amount of non-usable waste. However, most nuclear plants in teh U.S. dont' use this process. To use statistics form outside the U.S. to justify use of nuclear energy inside the U.S., to me, is not genuinely beign honest or factual. I doubt that most people who read the statistics realize that the data isn't form any process actually used in the U.S. Granted, there are a few companies in the U.S. that send nuclear waste to France to be recycled for reuse. However, most nuclear waste in the U.S. isn't recycled.

Even when recycled,, the 1-3% (1% is claimed above, bu6t from wha ti read it is actually closer to 3% in reality) that cant' be recycled is still radioative, and will remain so for thousands of years. Most of the costs of having to stor and guard that waste are "hidden costs" and a burden put onto taxpayers.

@snytiger6, you make it sound like science cares about imaginary borders... "To use statistics form outside the U.S. to justify use of nuclear energy inside the U.S., to me, is not genuinely beign honest or factual."

The beauty of scientific research is that it could take place on the moon and still justify or support actions we take on earth.

The Large Hadron Collider spans beneath 2 non-US countries, France being one of them, but it's the only valid source for research in particle physics because the american public thought one here would create a black hole or something...

Hell, people that are patriotic should be all "Well if those sissy Frenchmen can get 3% we can 0%" (not my take but I feel I captured the proud american well)

"Most of the costs of having to stor and guard that waste are "hidden costs" and a burden put onto taxpayers." And that's why I mentioned that the waste, apparently pellets and not rods, can be used for smaller items; house, car, or things similar to phones if the radiation is too weak, I'd exclude phones since the housing to prevent exposure may be too encumbersome to be practical, though maybe one day I guess...

The ultimate irrelevant nuke story about a so called natural reactor. ....bait and switch blathering about the obsession to boil water. ...Native Americans burned dried bison dung to cook and heat. ...not obsessed just mass murdered by the steam railroad boys

@GreenAtheist, yes it was a little irrelevant, but I thought it was fascinating and there was no bait and switch, the boiling water is how the reactor was moderated... Honestly I find the concept of burning animal dung equally interesting (was it stored or gathered as needed, did they identify better forms of dung, if so how, I have loads of questions there) and know that beyond bison, people have tried siphoning methane(i think) from livestock waste.

Slow cancer nukes are much worse than putting people to work installing green power that requires direct involvement locally at homes and businesses and the cancer nuke advocates are either lying or brainwashed

Meaning 'cold fusion'? Because fusion is what powers our sun and really the math is not in favor of cold fusion. For one, there is an atomic binding force that must be overcome that is so great, even in Hydrogen the simplest atom, that we would likely always lose more energy than we gain unless we had a gravitational force that could lend the atoms kinetic energy.

I am just glad you replied, maybe in time fusion will become a reality. I believe at some point in reading there a mention fusion with the LFTR.

@DreadlySmart No... not cold fusion.

@DreadlySmart I remember quite a few years ago they had discovered H3 in the moon rocks, and was supposed to make fusion possible. I do remember that all the big players were mapping territories out on the lunar surface. It was believed that this was a major energy break through.

@Leutrelle, H3? like a stable molecule(ex O2) or an isotope(ex 14C)? Because the former would be impossible since Hydrogen can only bind once which means at best you get H2. However, 3H is possible and can be found in H2O sources on earth, they call water with that isotope 'heavy water' because it contains 2 neutrons and the 1 proton that distinguishes it as hydrogen.

Going from there I do think I recall something about a demand for it in nuclear physics, but not with cold fusion, though maybe I wasn't understanding it then. I do know that heavy water does not have the same properties as normal water because the extra neutron de-polarizes the water molecule, which is what causes water to expand when frozen. I would think that frozen heavy water would sink instead of float, but I digress it's just an interesting topic.

@DreadlySmart You know my memory is fuzzy. I only know for sure that it was a new type of hydrogen and it did come from the moon, and a relatively small amount could produce enough power to supply the US for year. It was still a theory though about perfecting the fusion process.

I appreciate that. I was apprehensive about posting that.

I started with that in mind at least hope there is a question there. I hoping to encourage dialogue. I could have got wrapt up in the detail left that part out