Fissile Thorium Reactor

[kandrathe]

Accidents were virtually impossible. But things are safer now -- so how safe were they back then?? We've had at least two accidents with 1970's tech (were we informed about all of them?) One of them was catastrophic.

I would point out that TMI was a containment success actually, which shows that even when all the wrong things were done containment happened with very little release of vent gases. Yes, the core melted and dripped onto the containment floor, and it might have been worse, but it wasn't mostly due to the design.

The other, Chernobyl, is an invalid comparison because this ancient graphite design would never have been used to build power plants. At that time, the Soviets built all their infrastructure without adequate safety and containment, and in their weapons programs killed thousands(perhaps hundreds of thousands) with radioactive contamination. I think it is unfair to ascribe that lack of compassion, or outright ignorance on the rest of humanity. Chernobyl is an example of what happens when you do everything wrong on a badly designed reactor.

In the US, it was adequately safe in the 70's, and with improvements in sensing and technology has only become safer. I think also, with better funding in science we would be further ahead in fuel technology maybe even finding a fissile fuel/process that creates nearly inert by products.

I'm not blaming the liberals, I'm blaming the people who politically marched around with "No Nuke" signs and squelched science and innovation. In my experience it was the same people who yearned for those commune days from the 60's when it was all about love man. The same people who lied about glow in the dark mollusks in the rivers. The same people who scared the general public about the massive risks to forward their own misguided quest for the nirvana of alternative energy. In my mind, they were wrong, and still are wrong. They either don't understand science, or they choose not to understand, or they understand and keep silent because it forwards their political agenda and they don't really care about the environment.