It is interesting that at just the very time the British government is accepting contracts for private sector nuclear power stations to be built in England operated by foreign state owned companies from France and China, a new twist to that folly enjoys what Margaret Thatcher once called "the oxygen of publicity".
Into this Alice Through the Looking Glass situation unleashed by the Atlanticist entrists in the Cameron Clegg coalition steps a new actor into the picture, but one with ancient roots. I refer to the postmodern philosophers stone of modern alchemy the element called Thorium, known affectionately by its elemental symbol Th and whose atomic number is 90...it was named after the Norse God of Thunder Thor. Excellent, it could save the world!
Actually there is nothing new at all about Thorium which was first discovered in 1828, which was used in gas mantles and has been a contender for 'clean' nuclear fuel for half a century at least.
Thorium is not like the nuclear fuel it is competing with, namely uranium, Th is fertile not fissile and that changes everything.
Wikipedia note - Fertile material is a material that, while not itself fissionable by thermal neutrons, can be converted into a fissile material by neutron absorption and subsequent nuclei conversions.
Proposed applications for fertile material includes a space-based facility for the manufacture of fissile material for spacecraft nuclear propulsion. The facility would notionally transport fertile materials from Earth, safely through the atmosphere, and locate them at a space facility at the Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange
point where manufacture of fissile material would occur, eliminating
the safety risk of transport of fissile materials from Earth.[2]
So NASA and other space agencies think Thorium is safe and of course the US military are interested in finding ways to make this peaceful element into a weapon of death and global domination as indicated in the video clip below from the horses mouth, so to speak. The US military have assigned resources to the research, but so far as civil nuclear energy is concerned Thorium is the obvious answer to most of our current problems. It is plentiful and it is safe, too safe for comfort so far as the military industrial banking elite and neoimperialist Atlanticists are concerned, but maybe that is changing?
The interest of the NATO hawks is paradoxically quite a good sign for Thorium based energy in general because it was exactly those people who suppressed its development in the United States more than 30 years ago and put us back a generation in the first place.
It is not amenable to nuclear weapons production.
Now the US military industrial complex is suddenly very very interested, because China or Russia might get the technology up and running first... as is happening in Norway and India already of course.
The unmitigated and still unfolding disaster at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan has finally alerted even the most fanciful, optimistic and/or dullard elements of the energy establishment - that there is something very wrong in the nuclear power gamble as is and it should be abandoned.
It is not amenable to nuclear weapons production.
Now the US military industrial complex is suddenly very very interested, because China or Russia might get the technology up and running first... as is happening in Norway and India already of course.
The unmitigated and still unfolding disaster at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan has finally alerted even the most fanciful, optimistic and/or dullard elements of the energy establishment - that there is something very wrong in the nuclear power gamble as is and it should be abandoned.
Thorium has been consistently rejected by governments because it was much too safe!
Th was bypassed in the past only because governments wanted the plutonium from certain conventional reactors to make atomic bombs.
Now Fukushima has confronted Japan and the whole world with completely unstable and unpredictable outcomes the somnambulists in government, the military and the energy industry have awoken with an alarmed start....not so David Cameron and the Con-Dems though, they plan to create another potential catastrophic disaster area initially at Hinkley Point in Somerset, southwest England... without any reference to the insoluable problems caused by this outdated technology all around the world... they still want to throw our money away on the white elephant today despite the unlearned lessons of Windscale [1957], Chernobyl [1986], Three Mile Island [1979] and Fukushima today.
This unhappily is equally true of Ed Milliband's Labour Party and the artificially constructed parliamentary opposition in Britain's hydra-headed one-party state, where there is total concensus on all major issues and in the UK parliament they only squabble over details, nuances and trivia.
British tax payers are going to be fleeced as per usual, this time to pay off EDF shareholders while facing greater risks to the environment by the
Hinkley Point deal, the plan is more of the Atlanticist diabolical aim
to screw the ordinary people for the sake of the profiteering and
criminal elite whose interests they serve... than anything to do with energy security for the people of this country who count for nothing in the Con Dem equation.
For a more honest and intelligent approach than that of squirming politicos like the Con-Dem mouthpiece coalition energy secretary Ed Davey can offer... here is what Dr Paul Dorfman, from the Energy Institute at University College
London, said about the proposed deal at Hinkley Point 'C' Nuclear plant ...
... "what it equates to actually is a subsidy and the coalition said they would never subsidise nuclear"
He added:
"It is essentially a subsidy of between what we calculate to be £800m to £1bn a year that the UK taxpayer and energy consumer will be putting into the deep pockets of Chinese and French corporations, which are essentially their governments."
"It is essentially a subsidy of between what we calculate to be £800m to £1bn a year that the UK taxpayer and energy consumer will be putting into the deep pockets of Chinese and French corporations, which are essentially their governments."
Thorium could solve the world's energy problems in conjunction with locally sourced renewable energy sources. The reason it hasn't already done that, or at least made a major contribution is that psychopaths and charlatans have blocked the progress of a technology that does not further their own nefarious ends.
I don't usually post lengthy videos, but the one below which runs for a little over 28 minutes tells all we need to know about Th and the current crisis in energy planning brought about, largely behind the scenes, by the unprecedented scale of the nuclear accident that happened at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant damaged by the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011. . . Thorium could help save the planet, I think we need to get behind it if we aren't there already?
I will have to get back to the Thorium film tomorrow, AA, but I can concur with you on similar projects in the USA that nuclear power plants are just becoming more and more costly to go on line--and, as far as I know--never come in on budget. One would think a majority of British taxpayers would do well to examine the history of such white elephants in the USA before underwriting this turkey. (And I haven't even gone in on the Fukishima-style disasters that undermine such a reckless development.)
ReplyDeletePer the BBC article, the cost of generating energy from the Hinkley Point "upgrade" is already too costly compared to other forms of energy that apparently are lagging behind somewhere on the remote end of the Cameron-Clegg agenda.
I wonder if there is a viable plan to dispose of the nuclear waste as well.
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ReplyDeleteThere's no question, AA, that the main energy source powering the political/corporate sphere is money. Globalized nuclear, coal and tar sands are environmental disasters. The nuclear option and the waste and storage problem is a Faustian bargain even Dr. Faustus would have passed on!
DeleteHave you seen the reports of major smog problems coming out of Beijing and Hainan in China? The air looks like something you'd find on Mars! No wonder the Chinese are off the mark on Thorium. It's great to see some scientists working on this in America and other places but where is the government funding. Certainly this is something to explore and for all individuals to promote, and not something to be left behind because of flaws in 1970s technology.
As for anything that limits the power of the corporate/political revolving door, I think you're continued development of localized options and de-evolution to municipal power could be a testing point in England and beyond to get societies, finally, off the nuclear and coal nightmare. Thanks for spreading the word on Thorium.
Thanks for adding to the discussion further Doug. I have now invented my own ideology called Communicipalism which actually has a lot in common with a lot of other people's therories and beliefs but I got the name first, so I'm sticking with it.
DeleteActually for a 15 letter word communicipalism fair rolls off the tongue I think.
To me Communicipalism is the latterday Digger movement with many of the same convictions about justice and fairness as they had.
It is a ground up community movement with activists in pretty well every area across the world and its the only thing that can save us now! Thorium has to be a technology all governments should invest in and probably would do that if they actually controlied anything, which for the most part seems rather unlikely to me, to tell you the truth Doug..
Yes indeed Doug, but it has to be said that a majority of British tax payers are about as powerful as a majority of US tax payers, that is to say not very powerful at all. Historically we always had to smash something to move forward. Happily we only have to smash the establishment monopoly on information at the present time and that project is going very well indeed I think. But introducing logic into the political system is a very tricky business, it always loses out to money, profit and privateering in the mother of parliaments I'm afraid. Parliamentary politics is a lost cause, it is a charade of the former nation states which have effectively been abolished by corporate power and globalism (North Korea excepted). Governments have no power to decide anything anymore all we have is the virtual remains of the state system everything is either global or local there not anything of significance in between except the rituals of stateship.
DeleteI have invented a new term for my own poilitical persuasion which is politics from the street, park, neighbourhood, community -up.
In C'ism all political divisions break down because its is a collective solution to enthlightened self interest, a new liberatory movement of the 21st century that cannot be pidgeonholed as either left, right or centre, it the new way of doing things as direct democracy replaces representation in a devolved social order where the worker has been replaced by the consumer as the primary revolutionary unit. I have to rush to a meeting now, but I'm sure the discourse will continue one way or another....thanks again for your comments Doug, they are much appreciated. British energy slaves will pay tithes to foreign governments sold out by the Con Dem banksters, that can't be right can it?
I continue to thank the protesters of the past in Aotearoa that we are a nuclear-free country. Whether we will continue to remain so does tend to remain in the balance but the pro-nuclear idiots in this part of the world have at least been given pause since the disaster in Japan. Nuclear reactors do not belong in earthquake-prone countries.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more Iri, nice to see you here. Hopefully the madmen in Aotearoa are not quite as bonkers as the ones here who want taxpayers to forever line the pockets of public officials in France and China with Cameron's harebrained plan to build this new nuclear disaster zone here (my apologies to hares).
ReplyDeleteNuclear reactors don't belong anywhere really I think, but of course you are absolutely right ...especially not in earth-quake zones, that really IS madness.
What has happened in Japan is totally desperate, unprecedented, anyone with half a tadpole brain is sitting up and taking note, but not David Cameron and friends
They'll do anything for the IMF and a fast buck for themselves of course. That's Dave Snooty's mates for you though.
Long may Aotearoa ever remain nuclear free!
Kia ora. Nice to be back too.
DeleteHi Aaron, just sat through the whole video and it was very interesting, a half hour well spent I think. .I wont pretend to understand all the scientific stuff, but I do understand how short sighted and profit led our leaders are. Every thing seems to come down to a short term profit calculation. No one is willing to invest in something/ anything that doesn't show a financial return within a couple of years, which is a crazy way to run a country and exactly the reason why important decisions need to be removed from this stupid profit motivated way of thinking,but I'm not holding my breath on that. Even the nuclear accident wasn't enough to change the way we do things. Maybe that's because the accident and its consequences were a long way off from people here or in the U.S. Makes me think only a disaster of epic proportions in our own back yard will make any difference. Interesting that while happily building and reaping profit from new reactors here, the Chinese are quietly involved in this new technology back home. Thanks for posting this Aaron.
ReplyDeleteHi Loretta. Thorium based nuclear energy does does make perfect sense to me and yes you are right when you say that short-termism is the only thing that matters to our political and economic 'leaders'. Maybe we should rename MPs 'short termites' ...that seems to sum most of them up quite well I think.
DeleteI don't want to sound unduly alarmist but the accident at Fukushima could yet have massive global consequences that distances would not significantly diminish.
A private contractor Tepco is currently attempting to remove the fuel rods from the stricken plant, an act with risks unparalleled in the whole of human history.
If the fuel rods, some of which may be damaged, come too close to each other, there is a chance that the nuclear chain reaction would resume, which would be catastrophic in the presence of so much fissile material, as well as extremely difficult to stop. If, on the other hand, a fuel rod breaks or is exposed to air and ignites, this would release into the atmosphere a massive amount of radiation, likely necessitating the evacuation of the plant
The total amount of radiation present in the Fulushima pool is estimated at 14,000 times that released by the atomic bomb dropped at Hiroshima, or about the same as in the combined cores of the three reactors that have melted down.
The corporate media is being very quiet about this but the dangers inherent in this technology which Cameron and co want to impose upon us again at Hinkley Point are beyond comparison, but we are literally playing with fire here and we have no idea how to respond if at all goes wrong.
Our government is not only made up of incompetent greedy bastards of the most despicable kind, they truly are the enemies of the people and of all earthly existence for that matter. Evil incarnate!
In my view that is no exageration at all. If this country and even this planet is to survive they must be removed as a matter of utmost urgency and the current plague of 'short-termites' must be neutralised once and for all.