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The meltdown at Japan's Fukushima plant knocked public confidence in nuclear power. But is there some thong called safe nuclear power generation? Is thorium a clean, green and safe as its supporters claim it to be?

Read more : http://www.power-technology.com/feature ... eneration/

What are your thoughts on this:

THorium is a less well developed nuclear technology. Early implementations are going to be as prone to design errorrs and engineering failures as early uranium designs. Given the 40+ year lifetime of new build reactors, I would rather stick with known technology. I would rather stick with no new nuclear, because in 40 years time we will not have the resources to safely decommision any reactor.

Fukushima shows you cannot design out human error, hubris and corner cutting.

Is thorium a better nuclear fuel than uranium? is a rather silly question. We are being asked which is the better of two bad options.

JMS, welcome to the forum.

I refuse to answer loaded questions, though I appreciate the very silly thread title.

biffvernon wrote:Is thorium a better nuclear fuel than uranium? is a rather silly question. We are being asked which is the better of two bad options.

That was exactly my reaction to this poll. It's s a leading question.

At the moment Thorium technology sounds like a slightly safer bet than the U-sual. But that's probably because, being less developed/deployed, it has had less of an opportunity to go wrong.

That's a coincidence. I've just finished Fred Pohl's great ´The Space Merchants'. It mentions thorium, and was published in 1952!

"Science is always a step ahead of the failure of natural resources. After all, when real meat got scarce, we had soyaburgers ready. When oil ran low, technology developed the pedicab."

And:

"The world was like an oyster. But we ate that oyster."

Damn Consies!