Along with India we have most of the known Thorium reserves in South Africa. Unfortunately it takes about 40 years to 'breed' U235 from Thorium, but there are other developments in the use of Thorium:

http://www.physics.org/featuredetail.asp?id=60

ADSR reactors seem like an ideal stopgap untill we manage to optimize our fusion reactions.

On a side not, so many decrie nuclear power due to the radiation caused, especially the radiation of the by-products. What they don't know is that one of these Thorium mines is many, many times more radioactive than whatever contribution a nuclear plant might make. I don't think people realize that there's radiation going on all around them all the time...

Current nuclear plants are not the future as they also need fuel (uranium or whatever), but they are still a viable option. And please remember, what  happened in Fukushima was after an 8.9 earthquake AND a tsunami. How many countries have those menaces? Not Germany, that's for sure.

Shhh!

<Put's on tinfoil hat>

 Haven't you ever heard of the water powered car that those evil oil companys bought and destroyed to save their business? Do you really think that Assassins Creed is only a game? That it's all fake? You foul!

You can use Thorium to produce U233, another fissile product. The "problem" with Thorium is that isn't as studied as U235, because you can't use it to create nukes, so this is why the governments decided to create nuclear plants with U235 as the fuel.

It's totally fine, but it shouldn't be used until the end of the century. Foremost because of the atomic waste and not so much because of the danger of a meltdown caused by natural disasters. (depends on the region of course, but I'd say that the risk here in Germany is incredibly small)


The current renewable energy just isn't efficient enough yet. The real future is as some of you mentioned nuclear fusion.

^Yeah, fusion power is the future... BELIEVE! Since... 1960s =)

I remember watching old movie about physicists that captured the moment of romantic attitude towards scientific and technical progress of humanity, it was just around the corner it seemed to the people of that era. 50 years later we still haven't seen ground-breaking results in that field, and that ITER project afaik is expected to be finished somewhere around 2040. Metaphorically speaking the pendulum of technical progress is about to swing the opposite way.

Thanks, Do other turbines not use this? Are there any other alternatives?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/induction_motors

Ummm...Fusion reactors are already possible. They are just a little too expensive to build.

You basically have the fuel floating in a magnetic trap in the form of a high temperature, high pressure plasma. They are able to make fusion energy in this way. There are still a few developments needed for this to be fully practical, all that is needed is big funding. Unfortunately fusion isn't being supported as much at the moment.

I actually work at a nuclear power plant. It's rare that I get to go inside the reactor or anything but I've been there and seen the goings on. I will admit that if something were to go wrong (there's tons and tons of fail safes and contingencies to prevent that--it's top secret, though), the results could be disastrous. But from what I've seen, the environment is sterile. Outside agencies police us all of the time (the Nuclear Regulatory Committee and others). The slightest amount of radiation is checked. We even have these necklaces that we wear all the time that measures our radiation exposure over an amount of time and we have our bodies scanned annually.

I walked in the front door skeptical of what that job would do as far as my long term health was concerned. I figured that being a mutant would be offset by the amount of money they would pay and I was willing to make that sacrifice to provide a better life for my family (it didn't help that the woman giving our orientation had two thumbs on the same hand!! I'm not joking!!). Now, I'm 100% behind the nuclear industry. At least, at our facility, the severity of an environmental disaster is taken seriously (and I'm sure its industry wide). It's a great form of energy and will only become more so in the future.

--I heard that, following Japan's nuclear crisis, some countries are planning to decommission their nuclear power programs. I think its a mistake on their parts. But then again, my place of work (Plant Vogtle, if you're concerned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant is actually building the first new nuclear reactors in the United States in 30 years. I may be a little biased.

Expensive financially or also energetically?
Noone does energy balances around these things, which doesn't make sense at all from a sustainability or engineering point of view.

Nuclear power should be used as a transition power souce not coal. I mean Nuclear Power plants can be combine to produce hydrogen or methane. It's unfortuate that most current plants were made ages ago. All the new high tech platns will never be made.