> But I do agree we should have made a lot more LFTR style ORNL reactors.
Its fascinating reading about all the research online into molten salt designs in the 60's wrt nuclear and its promise that just went ignored (if you take the word of people who worked on it on their blogs) because of things that sounded very much like:
> Oil has owned our military, political, and industrial landscape.
I'm just glad that the rest of the world is not limited to build out for large scale renewable systems (i.e. freaking chile has +200MW and 17.5h molten salt storage sans direct solar radiation CPVCSP plant bidding for under 4 cents/kwh in 2021 and the US has nothing, what a joke the US is for renewable despite all the past research in related fields, but good on other countries taking advantage of it).
I suspect even the sCO2 turbine research will go nowhere towards broad commercialization/utilization in the US and get broad adoption outside of it despite its applicability to nearly every system that converts heat into electricity now.
Sadly, I think nuclear will still go nowhere outside a few places as long as fears around weaponization remain (even the thorium stuff has its downsides from the protactinium -> u233 route, and i've at least seen this stuff pursed for awhile in few EM's leveraging US researchers/companies/consultants).
Its fascinating reading about all the research online into molten salt designs in the 60's wrt nuclear and its promise that just went ignored (if you take the word of people who worked on it on their blogs) because of things that sounded very much like:
> Oil has owned our military, political, and industrial landscape.
I'm just glad that the rest of the world is not limited to build out for large scale renewable systems (i.e. freaking chile has +200MW and 17.5h molten salt storage sans direct solar radiation CPVCSP plant bidding for under 4 cents/kwh in 2021 and the US has nothing, what a joke the US is for renewable despite all the past research in related fields, but good on other countries taking advantage of it).
I suspect even the sCO2 turbine research will go nowhere towards broad commercialization/utilization in the US and get broad adoption outside of it despite its applicability to nearly every system that converts heat into electricity now.
Sadly, I think nuclear will still go nowhere outside a few places as long as fears around weaponization remain (even the thorium stuff has its downsides from the protactinium -> u233 route, and i've at least seen this stuff pursed for awhile in few EM's leveraging US researchers/companies/consultants).