Other Energy Resources: Nuclear
If you're a typical American, you already have strong negative feelings about nucelar-derived power. But not all nuclear is dirty, dangerous, or weapons-ready.
Nuclear power's comeback: National Geographic, April 2006.
Uranium supplies and shortages? Post and discussion at The Oil Drum, Feb 2009.
Series of posts on The Oil Drum: "The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction." Framed as neutral expert analysis, but heated discussions suggest that the original posts are neither neutral or expert. Worth reading, but continue beyond the original posts.
Part I: Nuclear fission energy today (Aug 2009)
Part II: Secondary uranium resources (Aug 2009)
Part III: Uranium resource data (Sept 2009)
Liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs): Post and discussion at The Oil Drum, Jan 2009. Note LFTRs are a type of Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). [Welcome to alphabet-soup land.]
Thorium-based nuclear power: The road to green, sustainable nuclear power: Downloads a 70-slide PDF presentation that is effective despite lack of accompanying text (Sorenson, 2007).
LFTRs go (sort of mainstream): A reasonably complete, comprehensible summary in Wired (Dec 09): Uranium is So Last Century: Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke.
Generation IV reactors: Theoretical designs under development, goal is 2030 (LFTR/MSR included, though one was operational by the early 1960s).
A brief history of LFTRs (a small pilot plant generated power in the mid-1960s).
Two other nuclear designs that are making progress (Discover, June 2009).
A hugely succesful facility for generating abundant energy from nuclear fusion. Other than this, no fusion resources on this site....it is still, as it has always been, a few decades away....
