We are dependant on fossil fuels, and they are killing us at the same time. This is why we need LFTR as soon as humanly possible http://videosift.com/video/Liquid-Fluoride-Thorium-Reactor-Google-Tech-Talk-Remix

Another interesting video on Thorium.
http://videosift.com/video/Liquid-Fluoride-Thorium-Reactor-Google-Tech-Talk-Remix

Thorium reactors, designed about the same time as uranium ones, produce very little waste and are far more energy efficient and safe. The US has a huge stockpile of thorium, enough to last for a very long time. They were shelved as a concept because they don't produce weapons grade byproducts...

http://videosift.com/video/Liquid-Fluoride-Thorium-Reactor-Google-Tech-Talk-Remix

This is why there is no energy independence. Good ideas are buried for one reason or another and ignored. The only thing to give up here is the ability to nuke the planet a few thousands more times, the science is done and they are relatively cheap and quick to build...

The same for dozens of other good ideas that are buried. They don't fit with corporate or government plans and are forgotten. I daresay there wouldn't be a politician who'd even heard of a thorium reactor for example.

"The system makes the reactor self-regulating: When the soup gets too hot it expands and flows out of the tubes- slowing fission and eliminating the possibility of another Chernobyl."

Please read the article in Wired...it points out that most of the existing nuclear power waste is in the form of Thorium, which requires no further processing to be used as fuel for this reactor.
For another thing, this is interesing:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/robertsteinhaus/gGxKNV
~cheers
>> ^Stormsinger:
I'll support nukes -after- we have some place to safely store the waste for a few millennia. If several decades of need hasn't provided sufficient motivation, I see no reason to think we're going to get better in the future.
This continual desire to take the easy road and crap in our nest first, while leaving the cleanup for later is what got us into this mess.

Good catch. Fixed!

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
I just noticed the email I'm getting from the sift for * qualities is this:

"Greetings from VideoSift!

This message is to inform you that your post titled 'Liquid Fluoride
Thorium Reactor - Google Tech Talk Remix' has been flagged as a
quality contribution to the VideoSift community and earned you a star
point. To view this post, visit the following address:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Liquid-Fluoride-Thorium-Reactor-Google-Tech-Talk-Remix


- Siftbot"

The part about the star point seems to be leftover from when it was a Sift Talk only invocation, amirite?

No, this is the holy grail of energy:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Liquid-Fluoride-Thorium-Reactor-Google-Tech-Talk-Remix

That was not really a debate, there was only 1 side given in the report.

Also he says that nuclear power is a failed technology from the 20th century, he's wrong in that nuclear energy has huge untapped potential (as long as it's done right), the fact it's from the 20th century means nothing, should we give up food cause that was like, you know, so last century.

Having said that, leaking tritium sounds incredibly bad, substances with a half life of over 12 years shouldn't really be leaking into water supplies.

As far as putting money into this tech and not solar etc, did Obama not sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act a while ago which gives $90'ish billion to those kind of techs? Or did solar/wind power tech's get completely overlooked even with that huge investment, maybe someone has more information on that.

Lastly, the liquid flouride thorium reactor talked about at the google tech talk looked promising, i wonder if this kind of tech was even considered
http://www.videosift.com/video/Liquid-Fluoride-Thorium-Reactor-Google-Tech-Talk-Remix

>> ^dag:
Great post. All Green-minded activists should get behind this zero emission technology. We need to get over our cold war era phobias around nuclear. It's the future.


First, @demon_ix - thanks for posting this. Very interesting and informative video. This summation will cause me to seek out the full talks.

@dag - I think the major issue is the lack of information; although, some people have a completely closed minds to nuclear solutions. The "zero emission" descriptor seems a little disingenuous. The issue has never been the emissions, but all the other waste products. Well Chernobyl has emission issues. But they ran with a positive temperature coefficient, had horrendous maintenance practices, and bypassed safety values for a test... and meltdown.

I just noticed the email I'm getting from the sift for * qualities is this:

"Greetings from VideoSift!

This message is to inform you that your post titled 'Liquid Fluoride
Thorium Reactor - Google Tech Talk Remix' has been flagged as a
quality contribution to the VideoSift community and earned you a star
point. To view this post, visit the following address:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Liquid-Fluoride-Thorium-Reactor-Google-Tech-Talk-Remix


- Siftbot"

The part about the star point seems to be leftover from when it was a Sift Talk only invocation, amirite?

Let's not forget thorium fluoride fission reactors.... compared to the uranium reactors we use we have plenty of fuel, much safer, nuclear waste safe much quicker.

Here is a longer and more in depth presentation by Steven Chu at Google Tech Talks. This guy seems serious about change in energy policy. Finally!

Thanks gluonium, good find. You might find this interesting:

It's a lecture by Craig C. Mello, who won the Nobel in 2006 for the discovery of RNA interference. He's a pretty good speaker. Of course it doesn't hurt that this is one of the most promising areas of medicine.

Return to the RNAi World: Rethinking Gene Expression and Evolution - Google Tech Talks April 9, 2007
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7104884525024111858&q=rnai&hl=en

This is important. It's long, but it's important. If you have the time to listen to Dr. Robert Bussard you will be convinced about clean, cheap power. It's available and it's now. We can do this.

Here's the back-story from Google's page:

Google Tech Talks November 9, 2006

ABSTRACT This is not your father's fusion reactor! Forget everything you know about conventional ... all » thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past. Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that's been made new. While the international community debates the fate of the politically-turmoiled $12 billion ITER (an experimental thermonuclear reactor), simple IEC reactors are being built as high-school science fair projects.

Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), has spent 17 years perfecting IEC, a fusion process that converts hydrogen and boron directly into electricity producing helium as the only waste product. Most of this work was funded by the Department of Defense, the details of which have been under seal... until now.

Dr. Bussard will discuss his recent results and details of this potentially world-altering technology, whose conception dates back as far as 1924, and even includes a reactor design by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the scanning television).

Can a 100 MW fusion reactor be built for less than Google's annual electricity bill? Come see what's possible when you think outside the thermonuclear box and ignore the herd.

This is Google Tech talk describing the extraordinary restoration, imaging and deciphering effort of the Archimedes Palimpsest (a palimpsest is a manuscript which has been re-used by scraping off the original text and writing over the top).

(The following is quoted from http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8211813884612792878)

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a 10th Century medieval manuscript that is the subject of an ongoing technical, scientific and conservation effort at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 1999, the multidisciplinary team has been disbinding, conserving, imaging, analyzing, transcribing and studying the 174 parchment folios – yielding approximately 400Gb of data to date.

The Palimpsest, which the team affectionately calls “Archie,” includes at least seven treatises by Archimedes: The only copies of two of his Treatises, The Method and Stomachion; the only copy in Greek of On Floating Bodies; and copies of the Equilibrium of Planes, Spiral Lines, The Measurement of the Circle, and Sphere and Cylinder.

It also contains 10 pages of text by the 4th century B.C. Attic Greek orator Hyperides; six folios from a Neo-Platonic philosophical text that has yet to be identified, but may be commentaries on Aristotle; four folios from a liturgical book; and twelve pages from two different books, the text of which has yet to be deciphered.