[ExI] Written for another list

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Fri Aug 3 16:48:56 UTC 2012


On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 12:00:47PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 3:41 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> 
> > Again, I encourage y'all to look fast/slow breeders alternative
> > fuelcycles. Most of what John has said was the usual thorium polyanna talk.
> > Do read the technical papers and look at the history what happened. You'll
> > find that
> > it's not that what happened, and not for the reasons claimed.
> >
> 
> I'd like to debate this but basically all you're saying in your

I ordinarily would take you up on the kind offer, but I've already
spent an inordinary time on the Internet rehashing the thorium
debate with believers, and the conversion factor was negligible 
as the tendency to follow long, technical debates of some complexity which
is outside of people's area of expertise is low, so people
tend to side with an already based opinion.

This doesn't mean you're not accessible to reason, in fact
I'm pretty sure you are. But none of us two have got the time.

> cross-examination is "no";  so in my redirect I'll just say "yes".

No, my argument to other readers was to follow up the points
you made by doing own research. There are plenty of technical
report on operation experience, or, rather, absence, known
incidents, breeding factors, kinetics of bootstrap, inventory 
in-core, CANDU and liquid-salt types, proliferation risk of 
U-233, and so on.
 
> > Our future will be decided within 30-40 years. This sounds melodramatic,
> >
> 
> Yes it does sound melodramatic. I recall that 30 years ago environmentalist
> were saying that if we didn't make profound changes within 30 years about
> the way we used energy it would be too late and the human race will be

Well, it is too late. If we started R&D and conversion in 1970s we
wouldn't have this conversation. There wouldn't be anything to discuss,
as everything would be hunky-dory. How bad things are going to get
we'll know for sure in less than 20 years.

> doomed, well today we have not done so to their satisfaction so lets just
> agree that we're doomed and get on with life.

We (me and you) are not doomed (unless the conflict culminates in a total
nuclear exchange, which is possible but probably not very likely).
Chalk it up to our privilege.
 
> By the way I don't think conserving energy is enough, the government should

I never said a single thing about conserving energy. We need 50-100 TW
by 2050, and if we can't fill that envelope the population will react
adaptively. 

> pass a law making us conserve angular momentum too. I'm thinking of
> starting a advocacy group.

I'm think the people in Nigeria will be investing in machetes
and AK-47s. Forming advocacy groups is the last thing on your
mind if you're dying of hunger.

Of, and if you think corn prices doubling to tripling won't do a thing
to Mexico and South America... they will.



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