/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.6134896]

>thorium
>2030
why aren't we using it now? pic related

[Anonymous No.6134907]

>>6134896
It's a hoax. Engineers use it to spot armchair scientists.

[Anonymous No.6135411]

>spot armchair scientists

excellent idea

[Anonymous No.6135421]

>>6134907
What's the popsci level above armchair? I think i'm a sofa scientist.

[Anonymous No.6135434]

>>6135421

So, below armchair then?

[mothergoose !!DUwV6rmVW4k No.6135443]

was hoping this was the one that has HL3 at the very bottom

[Anonymous No.6135444]

>>6134896
>MUH THORIUMS
>MUH SAFE ENERGY
>MUH IGNORANCE
>MUH STOOOPIT BRAIN

[Anonymous No.6135492]

>>6135444
>MUH OIL

[Anonymous No.6135508]

>>6134896
Because you need to breed it first, which makes the logistic more complicated, and requires large investment.

If you live in a country that does not have already invested heavily in uranium nuclear, they are probably not ready to make the investment in thorium either.
Unless you're India because they have the biggest reserves worldwide.

[Violent Simians Guy No.6135550]

We don't use thorium for power since we use uranium for power, and we only use uranium for power since it's weaponizable. In other words, we only have a civilian nuclear power industry because we first had a military nuclear program.

Because thorium can't be used for weapons, we won't use it for power. There's no economic link from one to the other, so it won't be accomplished. It will never be accomplished. We're violent animals and our intrinsic need to attack each other is really the only socio-economic motivation for anything we do.

> M-M-MUH THORIUMZ

Give it a rest, Thoriumorons. You don't understand economics and you don't understand Humans.

[Anonymous No.6135553]

>>6135550
Are you implying there are coal bombs?

[Anonymous No.6135557]

>>6135550
I was hoping you were on holiday.

[Violent Simians Guy No.6135572]

>>6135492

Hey bitch, oil drives most of everything you do, and if it's not oil, then it's coal, and if it's not coal, then it's natural gas. YOU'RE CARBON'S BITCH. Nuclear power can't replace what long-cooked hydrocarbons do for you every fucking day.

[Anonymous No.6135576]

>>6135572
>>6135550
Not you again

[Anonymous No.6135578]

>Programmable matter
What is this, like a holodeck?

[Violent Simians Guy No.6135579]

>>6135553

Stop distracting. The enormous investment to develop a nuclear power source came from our monkey need to kill each other. Nothing else. If we didn't find a need to use those atoms and nuetrons to kill each other, we would have naturally found no compelling economic reason to expend capital to make those atoms split for our power. Then again, a gentler simian than us might actually make investments for gentler profit. It's hard to tell since there's no gentle simian to compare to us, probably because WE FUCKING KILLED IT OFF ALREADY.

[Anonymous No.6135589]

>>6135553
VSG is making stupid leaps of logic from real premises. The reason we use uranium in our nuclear reactors is because we started from nuclear weapons research - which can't be done with thorium - and then we built up our nuclear program because it had plutonium as a by-product.

However, since electricity demand and demand for non-oil power sources is rising, while the political demand for expansion of the nuclear arsenal is declining (or at least holding stable), there's a current very real market incentive for thorium power. (And for fusion, but that's, you know, *fusion.*)

[Anonymous No.6135613]

>>6134896
The other people in the thread gave a lot of the answer already. Uranium reactors produce weapons grade uranium and plutonium which we used to keep up our end of the cold war arms race, so billions of dollars of research went into how to build them.

While Thorium reactors are not that much more complex than uranium reactors, it does take well over a decade to test a prototype reactor, and then a first version of a functional reactor, before you can actually start building thorium reactors at will. and the above reasons mean there's been little incentives for major nations to research such reactors.

[Anonymous No.6135631]

>>6135589
>>6135613
Exactly this. We're not using thorium power because you'd have to research a very new type of fission energy quite different from what we're used to using, and test reactors are both slow and VERY EXPENSIVE - which limits the number of organizations with both the ability and inclination to build a prototype thorium reactor.

[Anonymous No.6136159]

>Space Tourism by 2020

top kek

[Anonymous No.6136221]

>>6135550
well why does that chart say we will thorium in the future?

[Anonymous No.6136243]

>>6136159

Read the news.