I admittedly don't know much about the science of MSR's, but the argument made in the article essentially boils down to "yeah but it's not a silver bullet and isn't really as profitable."

Fine. That's fine. So, lets just keep burning all the coal and oil until it's gone and then we'll switch to the next least expensive but also the most terrible for all living organisms option? If we're lucky, maybe everyone's skin will melt off before we ever have to worry about people paying the true cost for their energy.

Hell, I just thought this was about having salt to put on things after the big one is how little I know. This is really informative.

Renewables are now cheaper than traditional nuclear power.

Just need to spend the money to build enough of it to make a dent.


Can worry about salt reactors when we run out of sun, wind, waves, tides and geothermal

No, I'm not a nuclear scientist. But if MSRs as safe as they seem to be, and hey, added bonus--you can get their fuel from LWRs waste...Seems like it's worth looking into.

-MAYBE- building a couple would be good as a way to get rid of existing waste.

But the research, development, and building costs of any nuclear reactor are so freaking high that you get a lot more return by using that same money to build a bunch of solar and wind farms.

(plus nuclear projects typically go billions over budget, and you're almost held hostage by the company that owns it, since you get zero return on investment unless the whole project is done, while a wind farm can still produce energy if you stop half way)

They mention this in the clip, but really you can't appreciate what a problem corrosion is unless you actually mess with melting salts. I imagine it's easier with lower temperature salts, but still... everything ends up in the salt after a while. Also, any moisture at all will trigger a steam explosion. For example, you've got a pot of salt melted, and you want to top it off. You can do this safely by taking a small chunk of the fused salt and heating it over the burner. Just enough to get the surface moisture off. Then you can drop it in with nothing but a bit of bubble. If you don't do that, the results are sudden, dramatic, and potentially fatal.

https://youtu.be/BzKAlMM65WQ?t=10m2s

The CEOs of oil and coal companies want to protect their paychecks, but they also want to protect the jobs and livelihoods of the millions of employees who's educations will likely become null and void if they are forced to move to new technology. It all comes down to a typical lack of human foresight, being unable to see what might happen in 50 years, or a downright inability to comprehend what things could even possibly be like in 200 years or so.

It's going to take some sort of crazy sociological revolution to make technology to allow unification and to create sciences that actually allow mankind to predict the consequences of their actions within the near future.

It seems like it would be a lot easier and cheaper to save watts here and there through energy efficiency than to generate watts through building a turbine. Nuclear is cool and all but it's not the best tool we have to reduce the amount of power we need, which I think is the ultimate goal?

Most power generation methods are shitty for the environment in some way, there are problems with the fuel, or the technology is expensive. Oil is the best for stuff like vehicles but there's a limited supply. Also every hydrocarbon you burn is a pollutant, or is mixed with pollutants. Plus all the CO2. We should probably use it so much less.

But like, every alternative sucks in some way. There's a lot of stuff we use a ton of energy for though, like heating and cooling, where there's like, passive geothermal and passive solar as alternatives that don't require nearly as much electricity to do the same damn thing. Better to invest in that over nuclear IMHO.

I think the stigma is starting to fade now that this generation is more pro-science and technology than those screechy hippy shitstains. You would think that struggling Millenials making minimum wage would welcome cheap nuclear energy.

Actually I think most of this is in my town.