Typical anti-nuclear miss information. Please provide rational, data based arguments. Rational, fact driven studies show Bielorussia having much lower cancer stats than worldwide average, yet, they were downwind of Chernobyl radiation. Less than 100 people died short term from chernobyl radiation exposure, and even the worse case credible study predicts less long term deaths from increased cancer rates long term (total) than people die every year from coal pollution in the USA alone. And the Chernobyl case was an absolute disaster: 1 - The reactor had no secondary containment vessel, something unthinkable essentially anywhere else in the world, if it had a secondary containment vessel, worst case Chernobyl would be a little worse than Fukushima, plus the accident was 100% the result of homer simpson style stupidity from the plant operators. 2 - There was no credible effort to keep the area suffering the worst of the radiation from agriculture, specially preventing milk produced from that land to be drink by people. 3 - Even then, there were villages that were re-populated inside the isolation area (people walked through forests back there), and community leaders say there were no cancers. Don't get me wrong, there are serious radiation risks, some radiation materials will cause cancers, but the anti-nuclear folks take those one in a million scenarios and claim that as almost a certainty. Look no further than all the speculation on the first months after Fukushima, where are the radiation deaths ? Where are the mass cancer cases ?
The reality is except for Chernobyl, the two nuclear bombs used on Japan, and the nuclear detonation tests, there never was a serious nuclear accident/incident, outside of the media frenzy and the anti-nuclear paranoia. Most of their rational is based on conspiracy theories, with very clear parallels to the climate change deniers (cherry picking studies that favor their logic, discrediting everything else as a hoax/dishonesty).
1 - It's 100% true that current nuclear technology is 100% due to military research, the USA invested thousands of times more money on nuclear fusion than on 100% energy oriented nuclear fission research (thorium molten salt reactors). Light water reactors exist because they were the best option for Navy needs. Uranium/Plutonium breeder reactors (IFR) were researched because they were able to produce more plutonium than they consumed. 99% of nuclear reactor research moneys was spent on light/heavy water and IFR reactors. 2 - One of the key minds in development of light water nuclear reactors, Dr. Alvin Weinberg, as in the holder of the original light water reactor patent, wanted molten salt thorium reactors since the days of the Manhattan project, but the nuclear bomb driven process never properly funded molten salt reactor research (less than 2% of the money spent on IFR research was spent on molten salt reactors), because the Thorium fuel cycle only produces fuel very undesirable for nuclear weapons (radiation type that can be detected from satellites anytime that material is transported, the only know thorium based nuclear weapon resulted in lower yield than expected, no know nuclear weapons in the world's stockpiles are based on Uranium 233, the nuclear fuel generated from Thorium). 3 - There are very compelling safety, efficiency and cost reasons to go Thorium / LFTR, the main one against is research on this stuff was essentially liked in the Nixon administration, documents on this stuff were actually ordered destroyed, but saved covertly by those working on LFTR research. Much like the Clinton administration killed the IFR reactor research for political appeasement to the anti-nuclear interests. 4 - Until the population gets an honest, balanced view of true radiation risks, most people will be somewhat anti-nuclear, most of the anti-nuclear activists are very irrational and unwilling to collect hard data to prove their stand, if they did, they would find out at least 90% of what they say is utter bullshit. Look up hormesis, lookup up no linear threshold, hard data support hormesis (a little radiation being good, too much radiation very bad, much like taking one or two aspirin a day is good, one thousand aspirin a day can kill you), no linear threshold pretends the best for humans is zero radiation, ignoring the FACT that we get radiation from several sources naturally: Cosmic rays, sunlight, radon coming from the earth's core, potassium 40, carbon 14. Plenty of places documented for having therapeutic waters or sand are due to naturally occurring radiation (typically from radon/uranium/thorium/radium). Watched that video of the place in Georgia where FDR went before becoming president to try to cure his pollio, those are radioactive waters. If more radiation were bad due to no linear threshold, we would see clusters of cancer cases among flying airline personnel, living in Denver and Salt Lake City would show more cancer than Los Angeles or Miami, but data shows its the opposite (little city or big city notwithstanding, people at higher altitude gets more cosmic rays and solar radiation, yet, we see lower cancer stats). 5 - Your typical pro nuclear guy accepts none of the downsides I pointed out (item 1), dismissing everything as wrong. It's true that water cooled nuclear reactors are safe enough, but the public wants something much safer, and the companies selling water cooled reactors are investing nothing towards revolutionary (as in not water cooled nor IFR designs). General Electric / Hitachi S-PRISM IFR is interesting, and probably would be a little safer than current light water reactors, but have two large downsizes: They need at least ten times more nuclear material on the reactor due to usage of FAST neutrons (increasing the cost of plant startup and risks in case of a meltdown), the usage of Sodium is a risk factor (less than the pundits claim, but much more than the defendants of this alternative claim). Finally, if General Electric actually truly believed S-PRISM was such a great solutio
Obviously. Do you really think Tesla should charge other vendor's EV for free ? The reality is other vendors aren't making no compromise EV's, they mostly care only about qualifying for the green car credits, which have a much lower standard compared to a Tesla. I'll say that again, vendors that sell regular plus EV cars aren't doing it because they want EV's to succeed. They are doing it because they need the green car credits. They are vested in gasoline cars. In 3-5 years Tesla will get big enough the other cars will really start to hurt from lost sales, then magically they will come up with something a little more serious.
Nissan has a special charger (faster than a twin 220V charging) ? I believe the issue is the other vendors don't have a battery nearly as large as the Tesla so they don't have long range driving solutions. Tesla Superchargers are like 4-5 times more powerful than other charging tech, the other cars simply can't take that charge. The simple fact is other car companies just don't have a car that can do everything other cars can (compared to Tesla with the full planned supercharger footprint). Saying that EV vendors don't agree... They do have standards for lower power charging. But Tesla needs something on another league. And they've done it. Of course Tesla isn't interested in giving their tech away for free for other vendors, but they do sell their electric power trains to Daimler Benz and Toyota, and would be happy to sell other tech to others, but the others aren't interested. Elon Musk made it clear he wants competition. And he'll we'll help others if they want to pay for it. But then you have the not invented here syndrome, plus the simple fact most other EV vendors are only doing minimum they need to do to qualify for govt subsidies. Tesla is making a real car, others are making toy EV cars.
There's really nothing to it. I worked for two carriers that have been doing it (POTS over SIP using the straight Internet). Apart from TDD (which we never had to deal with), it just works as long as the customer is using the carrier's ip network (mainly if the customer needs to do FAX or data calls), voice works using third party networks well too. This is the typical case of slowing down the process, just migrate it already. At the same time, there are millions of phone lines running over triple play boxes (typically HFC fiber-coax networks from CATV providers) for at least a decade, the only difference is in that case you're 100% stuck with using the provider's network, but it's IP as well (typically MGCP). This looks like a case of pretending it isn't done already...
Until we can have full access to all of that classified data, I'll keep drawing my conclusions. NSA people are far more concerned with protecting sources and methods than they will ever care about transparency. It's the law of the land in the spy game. If your enemy knows how you will gather the information, he can avoid using that medium. So I'll never trust the NSA, CIA, KGB, FSB, MI6, GCHQ, and I certainly don't trust my domestic ABIN (Brazil's feeble attempt at an NSA). The military is just about the same, their mission is more important than honesty or truth.
All it takes is digesting all the data from Wikileaks and Snowden and applying it to the rest of the issues. It's no psychic anything. Its called deduction. You are right that my logic wouldn't stand in court... Obviously. You probably believe the White House knew nothing about 9/11 before 9/11 happened, and they honestly expected the Iraq war to lead to US friendly democracy in the middle east. The head terrorist (Mohammed Atta) of 9/11 did a lot of stunts while learning to fly, including busting the Cape Canaveral airspace, I was at the airport he rented aircraft from Arthur Dunn Airpark in Titusville-FL when he landed, and there was this huge argument pretty public, yes, unfortunately I met that monster. I was skydiving there back then. The system isn't rigged for the best interests of the average american citizen, it's rigged to help those that funded those in the white house and congress. There is plenty of evidence of that both from the Dubya times as well as the current administration. And plenty of what is done is against the interests of the average american citizen, specially when it comes to national security and wars. That's why I have a tremendous respect for Obama, the only side I think is missing is he should threaten his foes a little bit, people need to believe he's willing to go to war, but that's a great conflict with how to open dialog with long time foes like Iran.
Do you really hope we mere mortals would have hard information about this ? But really, if the NSA is doing industrial espionage on Petrobras, do you think the little American Oil companies would get that data ? The affirmation that only the large corporations that are in bed with govt would get some of that data is essentially a given, no proof needed. It's too obvious. But more focus with being in bed with govt than being big.
Sorry about the long post... But I'm not saying going off grid in huge scale is possible. Matter of fact, I'm a big believer that we'll need lots of nuclear to retire 100% of goal and natural gas power eventually. Nuclear is the only clean energy source that could power 100% of the world. But I do believe that solar will level off at 30-50% of electricity production. I do love solar panels + feed in tariffs, but contrary to others. The primary goal should be to retire all coal usage worldwide. Then all natural gas. This will require lots of nuclear.
Funny you say that... Their power lies much more on being able to block initial funding to projects that kill viable profitable companies after they start. Even though electric cars + plugin hybrids are less than 1% of the worldwide fleet, they are successfully changing the mindset of those who try to argue they're not viable. But it's unlikely that by 2030 that more than 25% will be electric (without internal combustion or fuel cells inside). Just the battery production challenges are enormous. Tesla model S + model X projected production for 2014 would use up 100% of the world's production of the li-ion battery cell type they currently use (which is the most commonly produced battery in the world, the same one laptops and tablets commonly use). They are planning a new li-ion factory which would double worldwide li-ion battery cell production (at the time those plans were announced). And that's just to go from 25000 cars to 40000 cars / year. Toyota alone produces 10 million cars / year. So they need to scale production 400 fold from 2013 numbers to match Toyota. But the Silicon Valley mentality doesn't rule that out (continuing an insane over 50% yearly growth for decades), matter of fact, that's the history of IBM, Dell, Compaq,... I believe Tesla will eventually reach at least 400,000 cars/year. Enough that you'll have hundreds of Teslas in every major city in the world in ten years. What really matters is killing the mith that it can't be done. The mith that there isn't enough Lithium in the world, not enough Aluminum in the world. Once the worldwide population sees that there is a solution to end Oil dependency, the most liberal half will start asking / demanding it. Then the Fossil fuel cabal will be really concerned. But if you look at it, the smart oil countries of the world are diversifying. They are installing huge solar PV arrays (making good use of all that desert), they already have huge investment funds buying large shares of all types of companies. The real question is if we'll be off oil before it ends or if we'll experience the world's worst economic depression once oil reaches US$ 300 / barrel and onwards. Or large portions of NYC, Miami Beach, Rio, New Orleans,.... start to get overrun with water from polar ice caps melting and we need to do what the Netherlands has been doing for generations.
The difference is in the media, liability, and freedom of information. Japan in theory is a democracy, but it's society has deep and strong remnants of its imperial times. The country's symbolic leader is still called "Emperor" It's media in theory is free, in theory. The Japanese culture is very top -> down. The American culture is very down -> top. How many whistler blower cases we had in Japan in the last 50 years ? And in the USA ?
While there surely is rampant media manipulation in the USA, not every channel, site is manipulated, at least not in the same way. And the American justice system actually sins on making it too easy for the common citizen to sue large corporations. Suing really should be easy, my issue is with frivolous suits, focused on caving a settlement instead of winning a trial. Finally, the USA NRC is extremely effective at being a huge PITA in the nuclear power companies. How many people have been killed by nuclear radiation in the USA, ever ? It seems like less than 10 people, and I would be very interested in being proved that at least 100 people died of nuclear radiation in the USA.
Finally, we keep putting the nuclear accident out of context. The earthquake + tsunami killed 20000 people. The Cosmo oil refinery, near the city of Ichihara, Chiba, experienced a massive blaze after the earthquake hit. The fire at its natural gas storage tanks took 10 days to fully put out. That's a fire that took 10 days to put out.
The Fukushima disaster does not rank within the 25 most deadliest energy disasters in 2012.
Just look on youtube for all conspiracy theories that fukushima radiation killed thousands of workers. I try to watch those videos, and notice early on they lack proof of anything. Radiation is easy to measure, buy a Geiger counter and go out taking readings. Like on Pandora's Promise. I would love to see a movie that proves the anti nuclear movie that shows hard radiation data that proves Pandora's Promise wrong. But I think there will never be one, because the people on those movements don't questions their motivations, don't question their data. They are already convinced they are right, there's no debate.
Go out and watch a few movies by Kirk Sorensen on youtube. He has two masters (in aerospace and nuclear engineering) and in getting a PhD in nuclear physics or engineering. He often explains why the NRC standards on nuclear power plants are 10x harder than they should be, due to lack of any incentive on being fair (same problem with the FAA, FDA and other regulatory agencies dealing with health / risk of life issues).
Solar panels payoff in less than 5 years with current prices, and this should drop to 3 years by 2020. So if you need to fully replace the panels every 20 years its still a great bargain. Wait, after 20 yrs, solar panels are still producing electricity, even if they're at 40% original capacity. Instead you might opt to add 50%-100% more panels, and keep using the old ones as well. The only reason it might make sense replacing is we can assume the latest panels are cheaper and more efficient, perhaps 300% better performance than your vintage panels, at some point producing 400% of our electricity needs in the summer solstice (so that can still break even in the shortest day in the year), store that in batteries. But heating our houses with solar in the winter... That's unlikely.
Now the bad:
Some people live in apartments, can't have their own solar panels. Some people don't have a roof with a good view of the sun. Some people are forbidden from installing solar panels due to stupid community agreements. Even if you cover 100% of NYC metro area with the latest panels, it might not even produce all daylight electricity requirements in the best summer day (and fall way short in nov/dec/jan). But how are you going to heat those houses in the winter, even if they get the best weather proofing money can buy. Maybe one day we'll have 70% efficient solar panels. Even 50% efficiency isn't expected.
But no, the concept of the electricity grid dying 100% isn't going to happen. At least not by 2030. Not even 2040. Baseload electricity will be needed. Large hydro dams are very cheap electricity.
In less than 10 years we'll have LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) that produce electricity at less than half the install costs of new uranium/water nukes, generating 1% the nuclear waste per GWh generated, with fuel that is essentially free (search thorium problem monazite sands, spoiler alert, we need a use for the thorium that comes with the sands). All with walkaway safety reliability (no humans or computers needed to shutdown the plant in case of a serious accident, the plant shuts it self down with simple melting of the freeze plug upon loosing electricity).
The problem with nuclear isn't safety, it's cost. Cost is high because the nuclear powers completely neglected developing the safest, most efficient nuclear power plant, molten salt cooled using Thorium fuel. Because it doesn't produce plutonium or U-235 for bombs. The Uranium/Water cooled plants were more of a let's leverage all this money already spent on military nuclear needs and help the civilian side, this has been known since the 60s. Light water nuclear reactors are for subs, aircraft carriers and large ships, but the pentagon notorious cost inefficiency allowed those reactors to get so expensive they can't afford them in destroyers and cruisers.
The safety problem with nuclear is a huge awareness challenge. Nobody died from Fukushima radiation, nobody died from three mile island, Chernobyl did killed less than 100 people (it was said one million would die right after the accident happened). The problem is summed by a very wise saying from a very cheesy movie: "Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." We need to approach nuclear energy just like we approach fire. We're always told not to play with fire. We're educated to respect it. The same needs to happen with Nuclear, but right now we need to show people radiation is 1/1000th of the problem green peace wants us to believe. But unlike fire, radiation is everywhere. If you live in Denver-CO or fly for the airlines, you're subject to tens of times more radiation than a nuclear worker that gets the closest to an operating nuclear reactor. Part of the obscene cost of nuclear reactors is the extreme view that the NRC (and related agencies in other countries) take to nuclear power plant generated radiation. Far more radiation is put in the environment by a coal power plant in a
Except solar panels payoff in less than 5 years with current prices, and this should drop to 3 years by 2020. So if you need to fully replace the panels every 20 years its still a great bargain. Wait, after 20 yrs, solar panels are still producing electricity, even if they're at 40% original capacity. The only reason it might make sense replacing is we can assume the latest panels are cheaper and more efficient, perhaps 300% better performance than your vintage panels, at some point producing 400% of our electricity needs in the summer solstice (so that can still break even in the shortest day in the year), store that in batteries. But heating our houses with solar in the winter... That's unlikely. But some people live in apartments, can't have their own solar panels. Some people don't have a roof with a good view of the sun. Some people are forbidden from installing solar panels due to stupid community agreements. Even if you cover 100% of NYC metro area with the latest panels, it might not even produce all daylight electricity requirements in the best summer day (and fall way short in nov/dec/jan). Maybe one day we'll have 70% efficient solar panels. Even 50% efficiency isn't expected.
But no, the concept of the electricity grid dying 100% isn't going to happen. At least not by 2030. Not even 2040. Baseload electricity will be needed. Large hydro dams are very cheap electricity.
In less than 10 years we'll have LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) that produce electricity at less than half the install costs of new uranium/water nukes, generating 1% the nuclear waste per GWh generated, with fuel that is essentially free (search thorium problem monazite sands, spoiler alert, we need a use for the thorium that comes with the sands).
The problem with nuclear isn't safety, it's cost. Cost is high because the nuclear powers completely neglected developing the safest, most efficient nuclear power plant, molten salt cooled using Thorium fuel. Because it doesn't produce plutonium or U-235 for bombs. The Uranium/Water cooled plants were more of a lets leverage all this money already spent on military nuclear needs and help the civilian side, this has been known since the 60s.
The safety problem with nuclear is a huge awareness challenge. Nobody died from Fukushima radiation, nobody died from three mile island, Chernobyl did killed less than 100 people (it was said one million would die right after the accident happened). The problem is summed by a very wise saying from a very cheesy movie: "Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." We need to approach nuclear energy just like we approach fire. We're always told not to play with fire. We're educated to respect it. The same needs to happen with Nuclear, but right now we need to show people radiation is 1/1000th of the problem green peace wants us to believe. But unlike fire, radiation is everywhere. If you live in Denver-CO or fly for the airlines, you're subject to tens of times more radiation than a nuclear worker that gets the closest to an operating nuclear reactor. Part of the obscene cost of nuclear reactors is the extreme view that the NRC (and related agencies in other countries) take to nuclear power plant generated radiation. Far more radiation is put in the environment by a coal power plant in a year than a normal nuclear power plant will put in its lifetime. Coal has uranium, thorium and a few other radioactive elements, and unlike the nuclear plant, they are allowed to just throw this into the atmosphere. It also has mercury, cadmium, arsenic (plus buckloads of sulfur). But the coal problem isn't the radiation, it's those metals are poisonous. But people aren't protesting outside every coal power plant in america, but are protesting outside many nuclear power plants.
PS: I like nuclear energy, however I have no roses for GE, Westinghouse, Areva, Hitach, and all water/uranium nuclear reactor producers. They must put their billions in making Thorium LFTR reactors happen. But they aren't.
Perhaps you should talk to a few model S owners, ask them if they feel the car is beta quality. Most will say it's the best car they have ever driven. Just because the car has room for improvement in its software, and the first user's experience and feedback help in the process of improving the software, it doesn't make it beta quality. It's amazing how many people try really hard to say bad things about a Tesla, without a single test drive.
The nuclear accident at Fukushima has been greatly overblown. My family owns a condo in the city mentioned in Pandora's Promise (Guarapari-ES-Brazil), where a Geiger counter reads 20 micro sievert/second, while a half mile away from Fukushima Daichi plant it reads about 4 micro sievert/second these days. That spot isn't isolated, it's in a beach right in the downtown area, people have been sunbathing right there for generations. hundreds of thousands of people flock every summer to the beaches there. There has been studies and studies trying to find a pattern of elevated cancer in that city. There's none ! The real problem isn't radiation per se. It's the leak of radioactive materials (that in turn produce radiation), mostly Cesium. With the containment areas and everything, you'd need to actually ingest that material in order to get sick (in large enough quantities).
People mix up the hydrogen gas explosions (which is not radioactive), trying to make the case that it is.
The interesting fact is should the plant operators decided to keep it going, the accident would have been prevented.
Radiation is everywhere. Our body produces radiation from Potassium and other elements that have naturally radioactive isotopes in small concentrations.
It's possible in the days right after the accident it was dangerous, but the risk now is beyond tiny considering the area they relocated people from.
True, and that's why I have no respect for Tea Party / Libertarian folks. Their bottom line is we don't own anybody else anything, we want the right to keep all profits to ourselves. Of course, there are those who are unwilling pawns of the scheme, that have been brainwashed into believing something that is against their own interests. That doesn't mean I'm in love with labor unions BTW.
In Economics parlor, ever increasing productivity is destroying the middle class. There are many enablers of the never ending productivity gains the world is seeing, including ultra low cost world wide communications (internet being just one form of that), ever advancing computers / it technology, robotics, more fuel efficient transportation. Blaming it on the Internet shows the author has a very strong agenda against the internet. Instead of an interest in exposing the whole issue.
It's no longer an issue of performance. People used to only be able to think Windows. With Android and iOS, not they know there are alternatives. But both are phone / tablet OSes. Hopefully they will see the light and install some complete Linux OS like OpenSuSE or Ubuntu. OpenSuSe has matured enormously over the last 3 years. Ubuntu has become kind of evil, with it's owner (Mark Shuttleworth) splintering in lots of ways from the common Linux way of doing things.
Except the source code to Android is available. We can study it, understand it, customize it. Google is a different type of supplier. Still a corporation, so somewhat evil. But Google's open source roots make some of the stuff they do forcibly open, flexible, not a straight jacket. Android IS Linux. Android IS Linux. Under the hood.
The reason it didn't is your premise is wrong. I for instance am writing this using Linux, and have no windows (except for a VM that has been offline for years) for the last 12 years. I am a Linux professional and want nothing to do with Windows or Apple things. But even some companies that migrated their users to Linux had lots of complaints, users find issue with a button with a different name, a tiny difference in behavior from MS Office to Open Office. Plus 95% of users never hearf of Linux until their employers force the to move. It would never dawn on them to try Linux at home. Marketing rules the world. And Microsoft has been playing extra dirty to avoid large migrations to Linux. They have essentially given Windows for free to strategic users (that if migrated to Linux would likely cause millions of Windows seats to migrate to some years after). Finally, Linux developers are too technical. They're not marketing people. That's one of the reasons Google tried really hard not to associate Linux with Android (although Android is Linux).
Of course, it's easy to compare safety with the ugly side of energy (coal / oil / natural gas). Comparing safety with solar and wind, of course solar and wind wins. But then there's the density and cost comparison. In order to displace all coal / natural gas with solar, massive land would be required beyond everybody's roof. If you use desert lands then large transmission structures are required, which costs lots too. Nuclear could replace all coal / natural gas and power as many electric cars as we need.
Experimental molten salt reactor where operated for 10000 hrs in the 60s (Oak Ridge National Labs, MSRE experiment, 1965-1969). And killed for 100% political reasons by the Nixon administration, the Nixon administration wanted plutonium breeder reactors and wanted that action in CA, not in TN. The guy in charge of ORNL at the time was none less than Dr. Alvin Weinberg, the owner of the Light Water Reactor patent, he said it very clearly that LWR were good for military applications, but for civilian MSR were THE solution. Waste disposal from throrium is soooo much better than LWR that it can be compared and shown to be far smaller than most non nuclear waste disposal challenges. The key to understand is that LWR waste is 3% waste, 97% unused fuel. Thorium was is 99% waste which makes it like two orders of magnitude safer than LWR waste, plus it contains lots of very expensive nuclear isotopes used for cancer treatment, space exploration, food irradiation and other industrial processes. Waste means fission products (atoms that can't be split anymore). The nasty stuff is kept in the reactor until burned because the fuel is liquid, the fuel can be frequently processed to remove waste without stopping the reactor, using very simple processes compared to solid nuclear fuel reprocessing.
But what really matters is cost. There are simple FACTS that make LFTR cost about 1/3rd than similar power LWR, and today the presence of Thorium is preventing rare earth mining (the EPA creates insurmountable barriers due to the presence of Thorium in monazitic sands for instance). So the LFTR operators would be doing the rare earth mining folks a favor by taking that thorium away from them, enabling monazitic sands mining for rare earths. So compared to today's uranium fuel preparation, thorium would essentially be free as it would be recovered together with rare earths. Remember China having an almost monopoly in rare earth mining due to the problem I allude ?
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Typical anti-nuclear miss information. Please provide rational, data based arguments. Rational, fact driven studies show Bielorussia having much lower cancer stats than worldwide average, yet, they were downwind of Chernobyl radiation. Less than 100 people died short term from chernobyl radiation exposure, and even the worse case credible study predicts less long term deaths from increased cancer rates long term (total) than people die every year from coal pollution in the USA alone. And the Chernobyl case was an absolute disaster:
1 - The reactor had no secondary containment vessel, something unthinkable essentially anywhere else in the world, if it had a secondary containment vessel, worst case Chernobyl would be a little worse than Fukushima, plus the accident was 100% the result of homer simpson style stupidity from the plant operators.
2 - There was no credible effort to keep the area suffering the worst of the radiation from agriculture, specially preventing milk produced from that land to be drink by people.
3 - Even then, there were villages that were re-populated inside the isolation area (people walked through forests back there), and community leaders say there were no cancers.
Don't get me wrong, there are serious radiation risks, some radiation materials will cause cancers, but the anti-nuclear folks take those one in a million scenarios and claim that as almost a certainty. Look no further than all the speculation on the first months after Fukushima, where are the radiation deaths ? Where are the mass cancer cases ?
The reality is except for Chernobyl, the two nuclear bombs used on Japan, and the nuclear detonation tests, there never was a serious nuclear accident/incident, outside of the media frenzy and the anti-nuclear paranoia. Most of their rational is based on conspiracy theories, with very clear parallels to the climate change deniers (cherry picking studies that favor their logic, discrediting everything else as a hoax/dishonesty).
1 - It's 100% true that current nuclear technology is 100% due to military research, the USA invested thousands of times more money on nuclear fusion than on 100% energy oriented nuclear fission research (thorium molten salt reactors). Light water reactors exist because they were the best option for Navy needs. Uranium/Plutonium breeder reactors (IFR) were researched because they were able to produce more plutonium than they consumed. 99% of nuclear reactor research moneys was spent on light/heavy water and IFR reactors.
2 - One of the key minds in development of light water nuclear reactors, Dr. Alvin Weinberg, as in the holder of the original light water reactor patent, wanted molten salt thorium reactors since the days of the Manhattan project, but the nuclear bomb driven process never properly funded molten salt reactor research (less than 2% of the money spent on IFR research was spent on molten salt reactors), because the Thorium fuel cycle only produces fuel very undesirable for nuclear weapons (radiation type that can be detected from satellites anytime that material is transported, the only know thorium based nuclear weapon resulted in lower yield than expected, no know nuclear weapons in the world's stockpiles are based on Uranium 233, the nuclear fuel generated from Thorium).
3 - There are very compelling safety, efficiency and cost reasons to go Thorium / LFTR, the main one against is research on this stuff was essentially liked in the Nixon administration, documents on this stuff were actually ordered destroyed, but saved covertly by those working on LFTR research. Much like the Clinton administration killed the IFR reactor research for political appeasement to the anti-nuclear interests.
4 - Until the population gets an honest, balanced view of true radiation risks, most people will be somewhat anti-nuclear, most of the anti-nuclear activists are very irrational and unwilling to collect hard data to prove their stand, if they did, they would find out at least 90% of what they say is utter bullshit. Look up hormesis, lookup up no linear threshold, hard data support hormesis (a little radiation being good, too much radiation very bad, much like taking one or two aspirin a day is good, one thousand aspirin a day can kill you), no linear threshold pretends the best for humans is zero radiation, ignoring the FACT that we get radiation from several sources naturally: Cosmic rays, sunlight, radon coming from the earth's core, potassium 40, carbon 14. Plenty of places documented for having therapeutic waters or sand are due to naturally occurring radiation (typically from radon/uranium/thorium/radium). Watched that video of the place in Georgia where FDR went before becoming president to try to cure his pollio, those are radioactive waters. If more radiation were bad due to no linear threshold, we would see clusters of cancer cases among flying airline personnel, living in Denver and Salt Lake City would show more cancer than Los Angeles or Miami, but data shows its the opposite (little city or big city notwithstanding, people at higher altitude gets more cosmic rays and solar radiation, yet, we see lower cancer stats).
5 - Your typical pro nuclear guy accepts none of the downsides I pointed out (item 1), dismissing everything as wrong. It's true that water cooled nuclear reactors are safe enough, but the public wants something much safer, and the companies selling water cooled reactors are investing nothing towards revolutionary (as in not water cooled nor IFR designs). General Electric / Hitachi S-PRISM IFR is interesting, and probably would be a little safer than current light water reactors, but have two large downsizes: They need at least ten times more nuclear material on the reactor due to usage of FAST neutrons (increasing the cost of plant startup and risks in case of a meltdown), the usage of Sodium is a risk factor (less than the pundits claim, but much more than the defendants of this alternative claim). Finally, if General Electric actually truly believed S-PRISM was such a great solutio
Obviously. Do you really think Tesla should charge other vendor's EV for free ?
The reality is other vendors aren't making no compromise EV's, they mostly care only about qualifying for the green car credits, which have a much lower standard compared to a Tesla.
I'll say that again, vendors that sell regular plus EV cars aren't doing it because they want EV's to succeed. They are doing it because they need the green car credits. They are vested in gasoline cars.
In 3-5 years Tesla will get big enough the other cars will really start to hurt from lost sales, then magically they will come up with something a little more serious.
Nissan has a special charger (faster than a twin 220V charging) ?
I believe the issue is the other vendors don't have a battery nearly as large as the Tesla so they don't have long range driving solutions.
Tesla Superchargers are like 4-5 times more powerful than other charging tech, the other cars simply can't take that charge.
The simple fact is other car companies just don't have a car that can do everything other cars can (compared to Tesla with the full planned supercharger footprint).
Saying that EV vendors don't agree... They do have standards for lower power charging. But Tesla needs something on another league. And they've done it.
Of course Tesla isn't interested in giving their tech away for free for other vendors, but they do sell their electric power trains to Daimler Benz and Toyota, and would be happy to sell other tech to others, but the others aren't interested.
Elon Musk made it clear he wants competition. And he'll we'll help others if they want to pay for it.
But then you have the not invented here syndrome, plus the simple fact most other EV vendors are only doing minimum they need to do to qualify for govt subsidies. Tesla is making a real car, others are making toy EV cars.
Just deploy SIP over a dedicated VLAN plus endpoint isolation, so you can't even ping the ATAs from the internet, nor between on another.
There's really nothing to it.
I worked for two carriers that have been doing it (POTS over SIP using the straight Internet).
Apart from TDD (which we never had to deal with), it just works as long as the customer is using the carrier's ip network (mainly if the customer needs to do FAX or data calls), voice works using third party networks well too.
This is the typical case of slowing down the process, just migrate it already.
At the same time, there are millions of phone lines running over triple play boxes (typically HFC fiber-coax networks from CATV providers) for at least a decade, the only difference is in that case you're 100% stuck with using the provider's network, but it's IP as well (typically MGCP).
This looks like a case of pretending it isn't done already...
Until we can have full access to all of that classified data, I'll keep drawing my conclusions.
NSA people are far more concerned with protecting sources and methods than they will ever care about transparency. It's the law of the land in the spy game.
If your enemy knows how you will gather the information, he can avoid using that medium.
So I'll never trust the NSA, CIA, KGB, FSB, MI6, GCHQ, and I certainly don't trust my domestic ABIN (Brazil's feeble attempt at an NSA).
The military is just about the same, their mission is more important than honesty or truth.
All it takes is digesting all the data from Wikileaks and Snowden and applying it to the rest of the issues.
It's no psychic anything. Its called deduction.
You are right that my logic wouldn't stand in court... Obviously.
You probably believe the White House knew nothing about 9/11 before 9/11 happened, and they honestly expected the Iraq war to lead to US friendly democracy in the middle east.
The head terrorist (Mohammed Atta) of 9/11 did a lot of stunts while learning to fly, including busting the Cape Canaveral airspace, I was at the airport he rented aircraft from Arthur Dunn Airpark in Titusville-FL when he landed, and there was this huge argument pretty public, yes, unfortunately I met that monster. I was skydiving there back then.
The system isn't rigged for the best interests of the average american citizen, it's rigged to help those that funded those in the white house and congress. There is plenty of evidence of that both from the Dubya times as well as the current administration. And plenty of what is done is against the interests of the average american citizen, specially when it comes to national security and wars. That's why I have a tremendous respect for Obama, the only side I think is missing is he should threaten his foes a little bit, people need to believe he's willing to go to war, but that's a great conflict with how to open dialog with long time foes like Iran.
Do you really hope we mere mortals would have hard information about this ?
But really, if the NSA is doing industrial espionage on Petrobras, do you think the little American Oil companies would get that data ?
The affirmation that only the large corporations that are in bed with govt would get some of that data is essentially a given, no proof needed. It's too obvious. But more focus with being in bed with govt than being big.
Sorry about the long post... But I'm not saying going off grid in huge scale is possible. Matter of fact, I'm a big believer that we'll need lots of nuclear to retire 100% of goal and natural gas power eventually. Nuclear is the only clean energy source that could power 100% of the world. But I do believe that solar will level off at 30-50% of electricity production.
I do love solar panels + feed in tariffs, but contrary to others.
The primary goal should be to retire all coal usage worldwide. Then all natural gas. This will require lots of nuclear.
Funny you say that... ... .... start to get overrun with water from polar ice caps melting and we need to do what the Netherlands has been doing for generations.
Their power lies much more on being able to block initial funding to projects that kill viable profitable companies after they start.
Even though electric cars + plugin hybrids are less than 1% of the worldwide fleet, they are successfully changing the mindset of those who try to argue they're not viable.
But it's unlikely that by 2030 that more than 25% will be electric (without internal combustion or fuel cells inside).
Just the battery production challenges are enormous.
Tesla model S + model X projected production for 2014 would use up 100% of the world's production of the li-ion battery cell type they currently use (which is the most commonly produced battery in the world, the same one laptops and tablets commonly use).
They are planning a new li-ion factory which would double worldwide li-ion battery cell production (at the time those plans were announced).
And that's just to go from 25000 cars to 40000 cars / year.
Toyota alone produces 10 million cars / year.
So they need to scale production 400 fold from 2013 numbers to match Toyota.
But the Silicon Valley mentality doesn't rule that out (continuing an insane over 50% yearly growth for decades), matter of fact, that's the history of IBM, Dell, Compaq,
I believe Tesla will eventually reach at least 400,000 cars/year. Enough that you'll have hundreds of Teslas in every major city in the world in ten years.
What really matters is killing the mith that it can't be done. The mith that there isn't enough Lithium in the world, not enough Aluminum in the world.
Once the worldwide population sees that there is a solution to end Oil dependency, the most liberal half will start asking / demanding it.
Then the Fossil fuel cabal will be really concerned.
But if you look at it, the smart oil countries of the world are diversifying.
They are installing huge solar PV arrays (making good use of all that desert), they already have huge investment funds buying large shares of all types of companies.
The real question is if we'll be off oil before it ends or if we'll experience the world's worst economic depression once oil reaches US$ 300 / barrel and onwards.
Or large portions of NYC, Miami Beach, Rio, New Orleans,
The difference is in the media, liability, and freedom of information.
Japan in theory is a democracy, but it's society has deep and strong remnants of its imperial times. The country's symbolic leader is still called "Emperor"
It's media in theory is free, in theory.
The Japanese culture is very top -> down.
The American culture is very down -> top.
How many whistler blower cases we had in Japan in the last 50 years ? And in the USA ?
While there surely is rampant media manipulation in the USA, not every channel, site is manipulated, at least not in the same way.
And the American justice system actually sins on making it too easy for the common citizen to sue large corporations. Suing really should be easy, my issue is with frivolous suits, focused on caving a settlement instead of winning a trial.
Finally, the USA NRC is extremely effective at being a huge PITA in the nuclear power companies.
How many people have been killed by nuclear radiation in the USA, ever ? It seems like less than 10 people, and I would be very interested in being proved that at least 100 people died of nuclear radiation in the USA.
Finally, we keep putting the nuclear accident out of context. The earthquake + tsunami killed 20000 people.
The Cosmo oil refinery, near the city of Ichihara, Chiba, experienced a massive blaze after the earthquake hit. The fire at its natural gas storage tanks took 10 days to fully put out.
That's a fire that took 10 days to put out.
The Fukushima disaster does not rank within the 25 most deadliest energy disasters in 2012.
Just look on youtube for all conspiracy theories that fukushima radiation killed thousands of workers.
I try to watch those videos, and notice early on they lack proof of anything.
Radiation is easy to measure, buy a Geiger counter and go out taking readings. Like on Pandora's Promise. I would love to see a movie that proves the anti nuclear movie that shows hard radiation data that proves Pandora's Promise wrong. But I think there will never be one, because the people on those movements don't questions their motivations, don't question their data. They are already convinced they are right, there's no debate.
Go out and watch a few movies by Kirk Sorensen on youtube. He has two masters (in aerospace and nuclear engineering) and in getting a PhD in nuclear physics or engineering. He often explains why the NRC standards on nuclear power plants are 10x harder than they should be, due to lack of any incentive on being fair (same problem with the FAA, FDA and other regulatory agencies dealing with health / risk of life issues).
First the good about solar:
Solar panels payoff in less than 5 years with current prices, and this should drop to 3 years by 2020.
So if you need to fully replace the panels every 20 years its still a great bargain.
Wait, after 20 yrs, solar panels are still producing electricity, even if they're at 40% original capacity. Instead you might opt to add 50%-100% more panels, and keep using the old ones as well. The only reason it might make sense replacing is we can assume the latest panels are cheaper and more efficient, perhaps 300% better performance than your vintage panels, at some point producing 400% of our electricity needs in the summer solstice (so that can still break even in the shortest day in the year), store that in batteries. But heating our houses with solar in the winter... That's unlikely.
Now the bad:
Some people live in apartments, can't have their own solar panels. Some people don't have a roof with a good view of the sun. Some people are forbidden from installing solar panels due to stupid community agreements. Even if you cover 100% of NYC metro area with the latest panels, it might not even produce all daylight electricity requirements in the best summer day (and fall way short in nov/dec/jan). But how are you going to heat those houses in the winter, even if they get the best weather proofing money can buy.
Maybe one day we'll have 70% efficient solar panels. Even 50% efficiency isn't expected.
But no, the concept of the electricity grid dying 100% isn't going to happen. At least not by 2030. Not even 2040.
Baseload electricity will be needed. Large hydro dams are very cheap electricity.
In less than 10 years we'll have LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) that produce electricity at less than half the install costs of new uranium/water nukes, generating 1% the nuclear waste per GWh generated, with fuel that is essentially free (search thorium problem monazite sands, spoiler alert, we need a use for the thorium that comes with the sands). All with walkaway safety reliability (no humans or computers needed to shutdown the plant in case of a serious accident, the plant shuts it self down with simple melting of the freeze plug upon loosing electricity).
The problem with nuclear isn't safety, it's cost. Cost is high because the nuclear powers completely neglected developing the safest, most efficient nuclear power plant, molten salt cooled using Thorium fuel. Because it doesn't produce plutonium or U-235 for bombs. The Uranium/Water cooled plants were more of a let's leverage all this money already spent on military nuclear needs and help the civilian side, this has been known since the 60s. Light water nuclear reactors are for subs, aircraft carriers and large ships, but the pentagon notorious cost inefficiency allowed those reactors to get so expensive they can't afford them in destroyers and cruisers.
The safety problem with nuclear is a huge awareness challenge. Nobody died from Fukushima radiation, nobody died from three mile island, Chernobyl did killed less than 100 people (it was said one million would die right after the accident happened). The problem is summed by a very wise saying from a very cheesy movie:
"Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."
We need to approach nuclear energy just like we approach fire. We're always told not to play with fire. We're educated to respect it. The same needs to happen with Nuclear, but right now we need to show people radiation is 1/1000th of the problem green peace wants us to believe.
But unlike fire, radiation is everywhere. If you live in Denver-CO or fly for the airlines, you're subject to tens of times more radiation than a nuclear worker that gets the closest to an operating nuclear reactor.
Part of the obscene cost of nuclear reactors is the extreme view that the NRC (and related agencies in other countries) take to nuclear power plant generated radiation. Far more radiation is put in the environment by a coal power plant in a
Except solar panels payoff in less than 5 years with current prices, and this should drop to 3 years by 2020.
So if you need to fully replace the panels every 20 years its still a great bargain.
Wait, after 20 yrs, solar panels are still producing electricity, even if they're at 40% original capacity. The only reason it might make sense replacing is we can assume the latest panels are cheaper and more efficient, perhaps 300% better performance than your vintage panels, at some point producing 400% of our electricity needs in the summer solstice (so that can still break even in the shortest day in the year), store that in batteries. But heating our houses with solar in the winter... That's unlikely.
But some people live in apartments, can't have their own solar panels. Some people don't have a roof with a good view of the sun. Some people are forbidden from installing solar panels due to stupid community agreements. Even if you cover 100% of NYC metro area with the latest panels, it might not even produce all daylight electricity requirements in the best summer day (and fall way short in nov/dec/jan).
Maybe one day we'll have 70% efficient solar panels. Even 50% efficiency isn't expected.
But no, the concept of the electricity grid dying 100% isn't going to happen. At least not by 2030. Not even 2040.
Baseload electricity will be needed. Large hydro dams are very cheap electricity.
In less than 10 years we'll have LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) that produce electricity at less than half the install costs of new uranium/water nukes, generating 1% the nuclear waste per GWh generated, with fuel that is essentially free (search thorium problem monazite sands, spoiler alert, we need a use for the thorium that comes with the sands).
The problem with nuclear isn't safety, it's cost. Cost is high because the nuclear powers completely neglected developing the safest, most efficient nuclear power plant, molten salt cooled using Thorium fuel. Because it doesn't produce plutonium or U-235 for bombs. The Uranium/Water cooled plants were more of a lets leverage all this money already spent on military nuclear needs and help the civilian side, this has been known since the 60s.
The safety problem with nuclear is a huge awareness challenge. Nobody died from Fukushima radiation, nobody died from three mile island, Chernobyl did killed less than 100 people (it was said one million would die right after the accident happened). The problem is summed by a very wise saying from a very cheesy movie:
"Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."
We need to approach nuclear energy just like we approach fire. We're always told not to play with fire. We're educated to respect it. The same needs to happen with Nuclear, but right now we need to show people radiation is 1/1000th of the problem green peace wants us to believe.
But unlike fire, radiation is everywhere. If you live in Denver-CO or fly for the airlines, you're subject to tens of times more radiation than a nuclear worker that gets the closest to an operating nuclear reactor.
Part of the obscene cost of nuclear reactors is the extreme view that the NRC (and related agencies in other countries) take to nuclear power plant generated radiation. Far more radiation is put in the environment by a coal power plant in a year than a normal nuclear power plant will put in its lifetime. Coal has uranium, thorium and a few other radioactive elements, and unlike the nuclear plant, they are allowed to just throw this into the atmosphere. It also has mercury, cadmium, arsenic (plus buckloads of sulfur). But the coal problem isn't the radiation, it's those metals are poisonous. But people aren't protesting outside every coal power plant in america, but are protesting outside many nuclear power plants.
PS: I like nuclear energy, however I have no roses for GE, Westinghouse, Areva, Hitach, and all water/uranium nuclear reactor producers. They must put their billions in making Thorium LFTR reactors happen. But they aren't.
Perhaps you should talk to a few model S owners, ask them if they feel the car is beta quality.
Most will say it's the best car they have ever driven.
Just because the car has room for improvement in its software, and the first user's experience and feedback help in the process of improving the software, it doesn't make it beta quality.
It's amazing how many people try really hard to say bad things about a Tesla, without a single test drive.
That's right, radioactive bananas, every single one of them is radioactive.
http://chemistry.about.com/b/2011/07/10/bananas-are-radioactive.htm
Full list of radiologic materials found in nature
http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm
The nuclear accident at Fukushima has been greatly overblown.
My family owns a condo in the city mentioned in Pandora's Promise (Guarapari-ES-Brazil), where a Geiger counter reads 20 micro sievert/second, while a half mile away from Fukushima Daichi plant it reads about 4 micro sievert/second these days. That spot isn't isolated, it's in a beach right in the downtown area, people have been sunbathing right there for generations. hundreds of thousands of people flock every summer to the beaches there.
There has been studies and studies trying to find a pattern of elevated cancer in that city. There's none !
The real problem isn't radiation per se. It's the leak of radioactive materials (that in turn produce radiation), mostly Cesium.
With the containment areas and everything, you'd need to actually ingest that material in order to get sick (in large enough quantities).
People mix up the hydrogen gas explosions (which is not radioactive), trying to make the case that it is.
The interesting fact is should the plant operators decided to keep it going, the accident would have been prevented.
Radiation is everywhere. Our body produces radiation from Potassium and other elements that have naturally radioactive isotopes in small concentrations.
It's possible in the days right after the accident it was dangerous, but the risk now is beyond tiny considering the area they relocated people from.
True, and that's why I have no respect for Tea Party / Libertarian folks.
Their bottom line is we don't own anybody else anything, we want the right to keep all profits to ourselves.
Of course, there are those who are unwilling pawns of the scheme, that have been brainwashed into believing something that is against their own interests.
That doesn't mean I'm in love with labor unions BTW.
In Economics parlor, ever increasing productivity is destroying the middle class.
There are many enablers of the never ending productivity gains the world is seeing, including ultra low cost world wide communications (internet being just one form of that), ever advancing computers / it technology, robotics, more fuel efficient transportation.
Blaming it on the Internet shows the author has a very strong agenda against the internet. Instead of an interest in exposing the whole issue.
It's no longer an issue of performance.
People used to only be able to think Windows.
With Android and iOS, not they know there are alternatives.
But both are phone / tablet OSes.
Hopefully they will see the light and install some complete Linux OS like OpenSuSE or Ubuntu.
OpenSuSe has matured enormously over the last 3 years. Ubuntu has become kind of evil, with it's owner (Mark Shuttleworth) splintering in lots of ways from the common Linux way of doing things.
Except the source code to Android is available.
We can study it, understand it, customize it.
Google is a different type of supplier.
Still a corporation, so somewhat evil.
But Google's open source roots make some of the stuff they do forcibly open, flexible, not a straight jacket.
Android IS Linux. Android IS Linux. Under the hood.
There's nothing fundamentally bad about Android. It's just not meant to run on a notebook. It's a phone / tablet OS.
The reason it didn't is your premise is wrong.
I for instance am writing this using Linux, and have no windows (except for a VM that has been offline for years) for the last 12 years.
I am a Linux professional and want nothing to do with Windows or Apple things.
But even some companies that migrated their users to Linux had lots of complaints, users find issue with a button with a different name, a tiny difference in behavior from MS Office to Open Office.
Plus 95% of users never hearf of Linux until their employers force the to move. It would never dawn on them to try Linux at home.
Marketing rules the world. And Microsoft has been playing extra dirty to avoid large migrations to Linux. They have essentially given Windows for free to strategic users (that if migrated to Linux would likely cause millions of Windows seats to migrate to some years after).
Finally, Linux developers are too technical. They're not marketing people. That's one of the reasons Google tried really hard not to associate Linux with Android (although Android is Linux).
Of course, it's easy to compare safety with the ugly side of energy (coal / oil / natural gas).
Comparing safety with solar and wind, of course solar and wind wins.
But then there's the density and cost comparison.
In order to displace all coal / natural gas with solar, massive land would be required beyond everybody's roof. If you use desert lands then large transmission structures are required, which costs lots too.
Nuclear could replace all coal / natural gas and power as many electric cars as we need.
Experimental molten salt reactor where operated for 10000 hrs in the 60s (Oak Ridge National Labs, MSRE experiment, 1965-1969).
And killed for 100% political reasons by the Nixon administration, the Nixon administration wanted plutonium breeder reactors and wanted that action in CA, not in TN.
The guy in charge of ORNL at the time was none less than Dr. Alvin Weinberg, the owner of the Light Water Reactor patent, he said it very clearly that LWR were good for military applications, but for civilian MSR were THE solution.
Waste disposal from throrium is soooo much better than LWR that it can be compared and shown to be far smaller than most non nuclear waste disposal challenges.
The key to understand is that LWR waste is 3% waste, 97% unused fuel. Thorium was is 99% waste which makes it like two orders of magnitude safer than LWR waste, plus it contains lots of very expensive nuclear isotopes used for cancer treatment, space exploration, food irradiation and other industrial processes. Waste means fission products (atoms that can't be split anymore). The nasty stuff is kept in the reactor until burned because the fuel is liquid, the fuel can be frequently processed to remove waste without stopping the reactor, using very simple processes compared to solid nuclear fuel reprocessing.
But what really matters is cost. There are simple FACTS that make LFTR cost about 1/3rd than similar power LWR, and today the presence of Thorium is preventing rare earth mining (the EPA creates insurmountable barriers due to the presence of Thorium in monazitic sands for instance). So the LFTR operators would be doing the rare earth mining folks a favor by taking that thorium away from them, enabling monazitic sands mining for rare earths. So compared to today's uranium fuel preparation, thorium would essentially be free as it would be recovered together with rare earths. Remember China having an almost monopoly in rare earth mining due to the problem I allude ?