Yea, I can definitely see your point that people who don't update their browsers may be at higher risk.
One might also make the case that their target is already incredibly vulnerable and adding more gTLD's to the mix won't make them any more or less vulnerable.
I think an argument could be made in some cases that it would enhance security, but you're right if they are using an un-updated XP and browser and sending money to African monarchs then they could be even more at risk. I guess I just personally don't care about that crowd as they're super vulnerable to a million other things already.
Errm... on small scale CAPTCHA's work brilliantly. For instance, if you've ever installed and administrated a PHPbb forum, the CAPTCHA that comes with has been broken to hell such that as soon as your site is indexed, it's going to be spammed. Adding retardedly simple changes to the CAPTCHA will immediately stop all the spamming until someone specifically re-writes the bot for your site, which is doubtful in most cases.
I didn't specifically do this, but you could change the code to say "Add these 2 numbers together, if you can't add then GTFO my forums." I'm sure you can think of a million minor tweaks you could make to the CAPTCHA or randomised text indicating how or in what sequence the user should enter the CAPTCHA.
So I mean, yes... in most cases a small speed bump is all that's needed. If someone is specifically writing bots for your site on a large scale, the OP makes a little more sense and you'll need to keep ahead of the bots. I'm doubtful that there is a full proof solution in this case aside from some credit card or ID verification.
Well, if it's like you say and a single entity has control of all domains generated off of a particular gTLD, then it will be retardedly easy to find which companies are dumb enough to sell domains to spammers on their gTLD.
For example, people are terrified of the "corn" gTLD. Every browser I use can be setup for phising detection, if the owner of corn is dumb enough to start selling domains to spammers than anything under corn can be flagged as a possibly phishing site.
Considering the cost of owning one of these gTLD's, I can't imagine a corporation wanting to compromise theirs. They may want to sell domains off of it, but they certainly wouldn't want to sell them to spammers. If anything, it makes it easier to flag spammers if they choose to use an open or compromised gTLD, and easy to indicate if a link is legit.
In banking, for example. If I use PNC bank, they may purchase the.PNC gTLD and I make sure I only do my banking if it's under.PNC gTLD.
Having major phishing filters block your gTLD on it sounds incredibly expensive.
I think your fears are overstated and the spam or risks therein would certainly be no worse than today. The "land grab", and ICANN generating a bunch of revenue, I can see though.
Haha, if I drink more than one 12 ounce cup of coffee I have an irregular heartbeat, cotton mouth, cold sweats and am completely unable to concentrate. I have one cup of half decaff and half regular coffee in the morning and another after lunch and it's just enough kick for me. Caffeine sensitivity is a bitch, I feel so pathetic compared to your 40 cup might lol, I'd probably be convulsing on the ground.
Nuclear reactors and nuclear waste recycling exist today, so no that doesn't summarize my post. Breeders also exist, although the technology is young because research and testing in the US was halted in the '70's due to terrible administrative decisions that the rest of the world just scoffed at.
While there are dangers, I personally weigh the very low risk of nuclear contamination, which even if it occurs would be vastly better contained than something like Chernobyl, as a better choice than the pollution of coal plants. I have also been convinced that it is cheaper and more realistic and practical today than current mass renewable technology. We should be using renewables where they are practical and keep pushing both technologies and I think we will at least for the latter which is good but it may be too slow.
Maybe I'm too idealistic though, I don't have the money or power to have an impact on it anyways.
Well, waste disposal is improved with recycling of fuel, both with current methods and technologically feasible but inefficient and economically unproven ones like breeders. I'd like to see a few more reactors started on and more research and tribal knowledge expanded in the states.
Yea, I'd also like to see the scenario you describe of a big working mix of renewables with low emissions, but I think the point of nuclear is that it's presently cheaper and more feasible while we continue research and testing on those options.
I'm not on board with people saying we need to go all nuclear and it's the solution to all the problems. I just see it as a stepping stone to the renewable solution you describe, or possibly others we haven't thought of. Not like I have any control over it in either case lol.
Yes, actually I agree that lots of things can go wrong. But, from what I've read modern reactors really have come a long way in prevention and particularly containment of possible disasters. The Chernobyl reactor didn't have any containment at all.
Basically, it would seem that with a modern reactor, if something goes wrong the reactor itself may be compromised, but the area surrounding it is safe.
There's plenty of Uranium, enough to last for a several generations if we figure out how to make breeders work efficiently, this isn't a simple task but it's being worked on in other countries. It's only something like 5% of the Uranium that we actually use, the rest would require breeders to process before being put into a normal plant.
The economic issues with nuclear power have nothing to do with fuel prices, the fuel is cheap relative to other power sources, fuel price would have to quintuple before it became too expensive... "even at the current price of $72 per poundâ¦uranium would need to rise to $500 before it would begin to equate to the cost of fuel for natural gas driven power plants. "
Nuclear plants are mostly just VERY VERY expensive to build. And in the case of breeders, also expensive to maintain and operate.
Chernobyl was ancient technology man, it had no containment. Modern reactors are much much safer. But I completely agree that those disasters have set back the technology by decades. Without them, maybe we'd have efficient breeders today?
Well, the term "slam" was a bit simplistic, but that's really just semantics and I didn't clearly explain what I meant by it. I meant primarily location, in that it can be put anywhere there are people that need the power.
I also very much agree that locations that are conducive to both wind and solar should use wind and solar, but most places aren't like that and in those locations, we should use nuclear over coal.
Maybe there's a middle ground here, I'm on board with doing more research, since the US is way behind the rest of the world's powers on nuclear, since research essentially stopped in the '70's. I think I'd also be happy though to see more functioning plants using modern nuclear technology along with nuclear reprocessing, not talking about breeders, as well as the prototypes of breeders and research you're talking about though.
I've seen a few articles of companies applying to build new reactors. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Large thermal plants are large undertakings that take time and resources to build and operate no matter what you have boiling the water - it takes years to build
What do cost and years to build have to do with plant location? You're countering my point with a separate argument. They can be placed anywhere we have water, which is anywhere we have people. Again, you helped prove my point that nuclear plants have a small footprint and are easily integrated into our present power system by being able to be placed anywhere regardless of environmental conditions (ie, they don't need sun or wind, they work all the time with constant power output regardless of logistics or current environmental conditions).
even if you could start with a commercially viable design, and since we don't have one yet we're also taking about shakedown time of prototypes.
I believe France would argue with your assertion that nuclear power is not viable, considering they are 87% nuclear and they reprocess their fuel.
Your final sentence is also completely wrong - solar and wind are much easier to deal with logisticly due to much smaller unit sizes, the downside there is you don't get much of an economy of scale. A tiny nuclear plant using steam makes as little sense as a huge solar array on the ground using photovoltaics. Some things only work well at paticular scales, so if you are going to build a nuke plant and want to get as many Watts per dollar as you can it has to be big.
So what is your argument really? Since you haven't clearly stated it in this entire discussion. I have asserted that nuclear power is more expensive than coal, but not by an economically nonviable margin and cleaner so it is a better option, and it's presently less expensive and more realistic, on a large scale, than solar or wind power.
What do you think is the best option then? Just keep using coal until we can use solar? Or do you believe, and have some hidden knowledge that solar and wind are currently ready and viable on a large scale, or will be before we get more nuclear running and improving?
And you've also proven my point that they can be slammed down anywhere needed and connected to our current power grid. Anywhere we have human population, we need and already have a large supply of fresh water. The fact that the logistical requirements for nuclear plants are ridiculously smaller than present solar and wind is a very important point.
I never once said it's clean, not once, it's cleanER than coal and cheaper and easier to integrate, on a large scale, into the current system than current renewables. And you need to mine a ridiculously smaller amount of uranium than you need to mine coal. I refuse to attack you personally as you did to me because I respect your opinion and I don't consider this a my cock is bigger than yours discussion.
I'm not basing my conclusions off of PR, I'm basing it off of posts and articles I've read from nuclear physicists and engineers. It's cheaper, easier, realistic and proven more possible to use nuclear power than it is to use solar and wind and it's cleaner than coal. The only things I've read to the contrary are from political writers or people with no scientific background, being an engineer myself I tend to believe the scientists over the politicians when it comes to these sorts of things.
Ultimately the goal is to go all renewable, but due to the above facts I'll repeat myself in saying that nuclear (and nuclear recycling) is the stepping stone away from fossils towards true renewables.
New plants obviously wouldn't use designs from the '70's, they'd be modern designed plants. Utilizing technology from the countries you mentioned as well as present researchers and in the process creating a generation of new American nuclear engineers who can push the technology to be cleaner and more efficient.
By "slam anywhere" I mean that it will fit into our existing power infrastructure, it can be located anywhere (by anywhere, I mean you don't need wind, sun or a lot of moving water) and it doesn't require a massive change to our power grid or massive amounts of land. It can, absolutely, be slammed down anywhere.
I am making no reference to cost or the time for construction when I say that the technology is absolutely available today to build a modern nuclear reactor that isn't a 20 year old design and to reprocess spent fuel. Nuclear reactor design has been ongoing, not as much as it could be I'm sure, but it is ongoing. I recently read an article saying it takes about 10 years and 17 billion dollars to build a nuclear reactor.
Everything I've seen and read has indicated that, presently, solar or wind power would be more expensive and much less realistic with current technology, when we're talking about large scale, than nuclear.
Solar and wind require way way more land (which is a big cost), massive changes to feed the power into our grid, they are very dependent on the environment in which they're located and they are more expensive than nuclear.
So, I mean, we have the technology now, we have the fuel, it has less impact on the environment than coal, maybe not as big with natural gas but we already know that burns pretty clean and it's in limited supply.
We already know nuclear plants aren't as cost effective as coal, but they're cleaner and more cost effective than present renewables. The majority of the cost is in the construction and the fuel is cheap, so the cost effectiveness increases over time with a nuclear plant.
I'm really saying that I believe more nuclear reactors should be built, the fuel should be reprocessed on site in the US and breeders and closed cycle reactors should be researched and tested more in the US. At the same time, renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, should be pushed and built on the scales that they can work on. Who knows, by the time we are weened almost entirely off of fossil fuels, maybe some new and better renewable will be discovered, but we shouldn't wait for that point.
Meanwhile the USA has done NOTHING in the way of civilian nuclear energy research, the nuclear lobby just expects a big handout to build and operate old technology.
If we did things totally due to economy, we'd be using nothing but coal with no questions asked. The problems with coal are obvious.
A bunch of power companies are trying to get new nuclear reactors built. They're really not that far off of fossil fuel plants as far as cost effectiveness. PLUS, they don't release C02.
Nuclear power and reprocessing technology (not just breeder reactors) is available today and can be amped up while we perfect solar, wind and possibly discover other renewables.
I mean, you can straight up just slam down a nuclear reactor just about anywhere and tie it into our existing power system. I wish we could do the same with solar or wind, but we can't. Eventually we can adapt to this, but nuclear (and reprocessing of nuclear) is the cheaper, faster and more immediately available solution.
As for putting all of our eggs in one basket, I think we should keep existing fossil fuel plants as backups.
Journalists usually make the mistake of saying "so many of X could supply all of the continental US" but the only sane informed people that advocate "one true energy" are lying to sell things. For example - Tidal power in the Bay of Fundy could supply the continent but at slack water what do you do? A mixture can play to the advantages of each method.
The problem with your nuclear suggestion is that it is twenty years out of date - Superphoenix exposed a few problems that showed fast breeders are a dead end. Accelerated thorium may achieve the same end however since it has no military applications it has received very little funding so there is not yet a working prototype. Nuclear has to show they are capable just like all of the other alternative energies and deliver some prototypes that work well before anybody goes out and builds a lot of them for civilian purposes. If there is something good enough it won't even need taxpayers money to build and operate it.
I fail to see how Superphoenix proved that breeder reactors are a dead end. It was officially never re-opened due to funding and unofficially never re-opened due to green group's opposition. There are also other breeder projects that were shut down due to BS government moves in the '70's prohibiting the recycling of fuel.
So we'll never know if it's economically viable until that legislation is revoked or India or France perfect the technology. We SHOULD be pushing research on breeder reactors and get rid of the legislation against them. I can't see it taking that long to work out, considering we had working breeder reactors 30+ years ago. I mean, the first nuclear reactor ever built worldwide (by the US in 1951) was a functioning breeder reactor. The US hasn't commissioned a new nuclear reactor since the late 1970's.
The real reason we don't have breeders and better nuclear reactors is not economics or science, it's politics.
I don't think nuclear is a permanent solution. But it's a better solution than fossil fuel and with fuel recycling it'll last at least several hundred years, and that's if we use ONLY nuclear power which wouldn't happen. At that point other alternative energy sources will become more viable.
Pushing and relying more on nuclear power SHOULD be the next of many steps.
Read Morbius's replies. No need for me to re-invent the wheel on the nuclear argument. But... pretty much... you're wrong about limited supplies, risk and cost. Don't drink the anti-nuke-aide.
Ok, so now that we've established the reward, what's the risk?
Cheap power for the next 1000 years without hurting our environment.. err uhh.. halting our reliance on fossil fuels and reducing nuclear waste with breeder reactors.. err crap.. you got me.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, I can definitely see your point that people who don't update their browsers may be at higher risk.
One might also make the case that their target is already incredibly vulnerable and adding more gTLD's to the mix won't make them any more or less vulnerable.
I think an argument could be made in some cases that it would enhance security, but you're right if they are using an un-updated XP and browser and sending money to African monarchs then they could be even more at risk. I guess I just personally don't care about that crowd as they're super vulnerable to a million other things already.
Errm... on small scale CAPTCHA's work brilliantly. For instance, if you've ever installed and administrated a PHPbb forum, the CAPTCHA that comes with has been broken to hell such that as soon as your site is indexed, it's going to be spammed. Adding retardedly simple changes to the CAPTCHA will immediately stop all the spamming until someone specifically re-writes the bot for your site, which is doubtful in most cases.
I didn't specifically do this, but you could change the code to say "Add these 2 numbers together, if you can't add then GTFO my forums." I'm sure you can think of a million minor tweaks you could make to the CAPTCHA or randomised text indicating how or in what sequence the user should enter the CAPTCHA.
So I mean, yes... in most cases a small speed bump is all that's needed. If someone is specifically writing bots for your site on a large scale, the OP makes a little more sense and you'll need to keep ahead of the bots. I'm doubtful that there is a full proof solution in this case aside from some credit card or ID verification.
Well, if it's like you say and a single entity has control of all domains generated off of a particular gTLD, then it will be retardedly easy to find which companies are dumb enough to sell domains to spammers on their gTLD.
For example, people are terrified of the "corn" gTLD. Every browser I use can be setup for phising detection, if the owner of corn is dumb enough to start selling domains to spammers than anything under corn can be flagged as a possibly phishing site.
Considering the cost of owning one of these gTLD's, I can't imagine a corporation wanting to compromise theirs. They may want to sell domains off of it, but they certainly wouldn't want to sell them to spammers. If anything, it makes it easier to flag spammers if they choose to use an open or compromised gTLD, and easy to indicate if a link is legit.
In banking, for example. If I use PNC bank, they may purchase the .PNC gTLD and I make sure I only do my banking if it's under .PNC gTLD.
Having major phishing filters block your gTLD on it sounds incredibly expensive.
I think your fears are overstated and the spam or risks therein would certainly be no worse than today. The "land grab", and ICANN generating a bunch of revenue, I can see though.
It would be incredibly easy to block that spam using "allow only" filters for .com, .org, etc.
The Parent and GP are missing the point. Publishers want their content in Google News -- they just want Google to pay them for it.
*WHAM!*
That's the sound of the hammer connecting with the nailhead.
Haha, if I drink more than one 12 ounce cup of coffee I have an irregular heartbeat, cotton mouth, cold sweats and am completely unable to concentrate. I have one cup of half decaff and half regular coffee in the morning and another after lunch and it's just enough kick for me. Caffeine sensitivity is a bitch, I feel so pathetic compared to your 40 cup might lol, I'd probably be convulsing on the ground.
Nuclear reactors and nuclear waste recycling exist today, so no that doesn't summarize my post. Breeders also exist, although the technology is young because research and testing in the US was halted in the '70's due to terrible administrative decisions that the rest of the world just scoffed at.
While there are dangers, I personally weigh the very low risk of nuclear contamination, which even if it occurs would be vastly better contained than something like Chernobyl, as a better choice than the pollution of coal plants. I have also been convinced that it is cheaper and more realistic and practical today than current mass renewable technology. We should be using renewables where they are practical and keep pushing both technologies and I think we will at least for the latter which is good but it may be too slow.
Maybe I'm too idealistic though, I don't have the money or power to have an impact on it anyways.
Well, waste disposal is improved with recycling of fuel, both with current methods and technologically feasible but inefficient and economically unproven ones like breeders. I'd like to see a few more reactors started on and more research and tribal knowledge expanded in the states.
Yea, I'd also like to see the scenario you describe of a big working mix of renewables with low emissions, but I think the point of nuclear is that it's presently cheaper and more feasible while we continue research and testing on those options.
I'm not on board with people saying we need to go all nuclear and it's the solution to all the problems. I just see it as a stepping stone to the renewable solution you describe, or possibly others we haven't thought of. Not like I have any control over it in either case lol.
Yes, actually I agree that lots of things can go wrong. But, from what I've read modern reactors really have come a long way in prevention and particularly containment of possible disasters. The Chernobyl reactor didn't have any containment at all.
Basically, it would seem that with a modern reactor, if something goes wrong the reactor itself may be compromised, but the area surrounding it is safe.
Ack, watch out for that meteor!
Or that God doesn't support ads and is pissed about the blocker?
There's plenty of Uranium, enough to last for a several generations if we figure out how to make breeders work efficiently, this isn't a simple task but it's being worked on in other countries. It's only something like 5% of the Uranium that we actually use, the rest would require breeders to process before being put into a normal plant.
The economic issues with nuclear power have nothing to do with fuel prices, the fuel is cheap relative to other power sources, fuel price would have to quintuple before it became too expensive... "even at the current price of $72 per poundâ¦uranium would need to rise to $500 before it would begin to equate to the cost of fuel for natural gas driven power plants. "
Nuclear plants are mostly just VERY VERY expensive to build. And in the case of breeders, also expensive to maintain and operate.
Chernobyl was ancient technology man, it had no containment. Modern reactors are much much safer. But I completely agree that those disasters have set back the technology by decades. Without them, maybe we'd have efficient breeders today?
Well, the term "slam" was a bit simplistic, but that's really just semantics and I didn't clearly explain what I meant by it. I meant primarily location, in that it can be put anywhere there are people that need the power.
I also very much agree that locations that are conducive to both wind and solar should use wind and solar, but most places aren't like that and in those locations, we should use nuclear over coal.
Maybe there's a middle ground here, I'm on board with doing more research, since the US is way behind the rest of the world's powers on nuclear, since research essentially stopped in the '70's. I think I'd also be happy though to see more functioning plants using modern nuclear technology along with nuclear reprocessing, not talking about breeders, as well as the prototypes of breeders and research you're talking about though.
I've seen a few articles of companies applying to build new reactors. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Large thermal plants are large undertakings that take time and resources to build and operate no matter what you have boiling the water - it takes years to build
What do cost and years to build have to do with plant location? You're countering my point with a separate argument. They can be placed anywhere we have water, which is anywhere we have people. Again, you helped prove my point that nuclear plants have a small footprint and are easily integrated into our present power system by being able to be placed anywhere regardless of environmental conditions (ie, they don't need sun or wind, they work all the time with constant power output regardless of logistics or current environmental conditions).
even if you could start with a commercially viable design, and since we don't have one yet we're also taking about shakedown time of prototypes.
I believe France would argue with your assertion that nuclear power is not viable, considering they are 87% nuclear and they reprocess their fuel.
Your final sentence is also completely wrong - solar and wind are much easier to deal with logisticly due to much smaller unit sizes, the downside there is you don't get much of an economy of scale. A tiny nuclear plant using steam makes as little sense as a huge solar array on the ground using photovoltaics. Some things only work well at paticular scales, so if you are going to build a nuke plant and want to get as many Watts per dollar as you can it has to be big.
So what is your argument really? Since you haven't clearly stated it in this entire discussion. I have asserted that nuclear power is more expensive than coal, but not by an economically nonviable margin and cleaner so it is a better option, and it's presently less expensive and more realistic, on a large scale, than solar or wind power.
What do you think is the best option then? Just keep using coal until we can use solar? Or do you believe, and have some hidden knowledge that solar and wind are currently ready and viable on a large scale, or will be before we get more nuclear running and improving?
And you've also proven my point that they can be slammed down anywhere needed and connected to our current power grid. Anywhere we have human population, we need and already have a large supply of fresh water. The fact that the logistical requirements for nuclear plants are ridiculously smaller than present solar and wind is a very important point.
I never once said it's clean, not once, it's cleanER than coal and cheaper and easier to integrate, on a large scale, into the current system than current renewables. And you need to mine a ridiculously smaller amount of uranium than you need to mine coal. I refuse to attack you personally as you did to me because I respect your opinion and I don't consider this a my cock is bigger than yours discussion.
I'm not basing my conclusions off of PR, I'm basing it off of posts and articles I've read from nuclear physicists and engineers. It's cheaper, easier, realistic and proven more possible to use nuclear power than it is to use solar and wind and it's cleaner than coal. The only things I've read to the contrary are from political writers or people with no scientific background, being an engineer myself I tend to believe the scientists over the politicians when it comes to these sorts of things.
Ultimately the goal is to go all renewable, but due to the above facts I'll repeat myself in saying that nuclear (and nuclear recycling) is the stepping stone away from fossils towards true renewables.
New plants obviously wouldn't use designs from the '70's, they'd be modern designed plants. Utilizing technology from the countries you mentioned as well as present researchers and in the process creating a generation of new American nuclear engineers who can push the technology to be cleaner and more efficient.
"but they're cleaner and more cost effective than present renewables"
I meant to say they're cleaner than fossil fuel and more cost effective than present renewables.
By "slam anywhere" I mean that it will fit into our existing power infrastructure, it can be located anywhere (by anywhere, I mean you don't need wind, sun or a lot of moving water) and it doesn't require a massive change to our power grid or massive amounts of land. It can, absolutely, be slammed down anywhere.
I am making no reference to cost or the time for construction when I say that the technology is absolutely available today to build a modern nuclear reactor that isn't a 20 year old design and to reprocess spent fuel. Nuclear reactor design has been ongoing, not as much as it could be I'm sure, but it is ongoing. I recently read an article saying it takes about 10 years and 17 billion dollars to build a nuclear reactor.
Everything I've seen and read has indicated that, presently, solar or wind power would be more expensive and much less realistic with current technology, when we're talking about large scale, than nuclear.
Solar and wind require way way more land (which is a big cost), massive changes to feed the power into our grid, they are very dependent on the environment in which they're located and they are more expensive than nuclear.
So, I mean, we have the technology now, we have the fuel, it has less impact on the environment than coal, maybe not as big with natural gas but we already know that burns pretty clean and it's in limited supply.
We already know nuclear plants aren't as cost effective as coal, but they're cleaner and more cost effective than present renewables. The majority of the cost is in the construction and the fuel is cheap, so the cost effectiveness increases over time with a nuclear plant.
I'm really saying that I believe more nuclear reactors should be built, the fuel should be reprocessed on site in the US and breeders and closed cycle reactors should be researched and tested more in the US. At the same time, renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, should be pushed and built on the scales that they can work on. Who knows, by the time we are weened almost entirely off of fossil fuels, maybe some new and better renewable will be discovered, but we shouldn't wait for that point.
Meanwhile the USA has done NOTHING in the way of civilian nuclear energy research, the nuclear lobby just expects a big handout to build and operate old technology.
If we did things totally due to economy, we'd be using nothing but coal with no questions asked. The problems with coal are obvious.
A bunch of power companies are trying to get new nuclear reactors built. They're really not that far off of fossil fuel plants as far as cost effectiveness. PLUS, they don't release C02.
Nuclear power and reprocessing technology (not just breeder reactors) is available today and can be amped up while we perfect solar, wind and possibly discover other renewables.
I mean, you can straight up just slam down a nuclear reactor just about anywhere and tie it into our existing power system. I wish we could do the same with solar or wind, but we can't. Eventually we can adapt to this, but nuclear (and reprocessing of nuclear) is the cheaper, faster and more immediately available solution.
Right, because modern reactors are anything like Chernobyl .
Journalists usually make the mistake of saying "so many of X could supply all of the continental US" but the only sane informed people that advocate "one true energy" are lying to sell things. For example - Tidal power in the Bay of Fundy could supply the continent but at slack water what do you do? A mixture can play to the advantages of each method.
The problem with your nuclear suggestion is that it is twenty years out of date - Superphoenix exposed a few problems that showed fast breeders are a dead end. Accelerated thorium may achieve the same end however since it has no military applications it has received very little funding so there is not yet a working prototype. Nuclear has to show they are capable just like all of the other alternative energies and deliver some prototypes that work well before anybody goes out and builds a lot of them for civilian purposes. If there is something good enough it won't even need taxpayers money to build and operate it.
I fail to see how Superphoenix proved that breeder reactors are a dead end. It was officially never re-opened due to funding and unofficially never re-opened due to green group's opposition. There are also other breeder projects that were shut down due to BS government moves in the '70's prohibiting the recycling of fuel.
So we'll never know if it's economically viable until that legislation is revoked or India or France perfect the technology. We SHOULD be pushing research on breeder reactors and get rid of the legislation against them. I can't see it taking that long to work out, considering we had working breeder reactors 30+ years ago. I mean, the first nuclear reactor ever built worldwide (by the US in 1951) was a functioning breeder reactor. The US hasn't commissioned a new nuclear reactor since the late 1970's.
The real reason we don't have breeders and better nuclear reactors is not economics or science, it's politics.
I don't think nuclear is a permanent solution. But it's a better solution than fossil fuel and with fuel recycling it'll last at least several hundred years, and that's if we use ONLY nuclear power which wouldn't happen. At that point other alternative energy sources will become more viable.
Pushing and relying more on nuclear power SHOULD be the next of many steps.
Read Morbius's replies. No need for me to re-invent the wheel on the nuclear argument. But... pretty much... you're wrong about limited supplies, risk and cost. Don't drink the anti-nuke-aide.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=156759
I agree that windmills wouldn't be a likely terrorist target.
Ok, so now that we've established the reward, what's the risk?
Cheap power for the next 1000 years without hurting our environment.. err uhh.. halting our reliance on fossil fuels and reducing nuclear waste with breeder reactors.. err crap.. you got me.
This might do the trick:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/14/0132216
Also considering we would still have the plethora of fossil fuel reserves and existing plants ready to be fired up in the case of an emergency.
Plus your points of the logistics of these being spread all over. If anything, I think this makes us even safer from terrorist attacks.