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February 26th, 2010Bill Gates speaks about energy, CO2
February 24th, 2010I’ve been a critic of Microsoft’s products and business practices over the years, but I have always admired how Bill and Melinda Gates decided to use their money. In this TED talk, Gates describes his vision for the future of energy and carbon emissions:
Thorium’s Hammer
February 15th, 2010In 2000, a NASA engineer dug up a report about “fluid fuel reactors” from the 1950’s. He started this blog dedicated to Thorium-based fluid reactors. Some of the benefits include:
- Thorium reactors produce minimal waste
- Thorium waste only needs to be stored for a few hundred years (as opposed to hundreds of thousands of years for traditional Uranium waste)
- Thorium is plentiful in nature
- Byproducts of Thorium reactors cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons
There are, of course, some concerns. Critics are not convinced that Thorium fuel can be safely stored for extended periods. Some nuclear engineers have called the Thorium reactor system “chaotic” because it does not use control rods and cooling towers like traditional nuclear reactors.
This technology looks like a promising step towards clean, safe nuclear energy. Read more here: http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/
Source: Wired #18.01 (January, 2010)