Chernobyl was bad and not a good thing. But not making improved nuclear plants is a mistake. The alternative for the past 30 years has been to make more coal plants and use more oil.

Hundreds die every year in coal mining accidents. The volume of material mined for nuclear plants is far less.

Tens of thousands die each year from increased pollution. (Those with asthma and other lung problems).

Thousands of tons of radioactive material is released from the burning of coal. There is radioactive material mixed in the with coal.

The global warming problem has been made worse by not making more nuclear plants.

We should make new Thorium based nuclear plants. Thorium can make plants that do not have proliferation of weapons issues. See one of your blogroll sites Treehugger for an endorsement of Norways consideration of Thorium. Thorium plants also handles nuclear waste.

Hundreds of thousands die in the fight over oil.

Consider the big picture and all of the risks involved. There are plenty of risks in the status quo. The status quo is coal and oil. What are the real risks of a new generation of nuclear power ? What are the risks of using more coal?

Solar and wind are great but they are not ramping up fast enough. The world will need 4 terawatts more power generation in the next 10 years. Will the US, China, India and Europe go into a recession so because of a power shortage? Will those who could profit in the billions by making that power not choose to do so?
Get real. To feed the machines of commerce we all drive cars every year. Every year 1.2 million people die worldwide in car accidents. Almost 50,000 per year in the USA. The real costs of keeping the world economy rolling barely register. Millions die every year and we do not blink.

Let us make practical and pragmatic choices. Since the economy will keep rolling and the new power generation will be made. We will keep moving around in some kind of vehicles. There will be 8 billion + people and they will want not just a current US lifestyle but one that is even better. Let us make the best of it.

Interesting comment, Brian.

I suspect that treehugger.com may not actually be endorsing the use of Thorium. I refer you to this article: Th Solves Global Energy Shortage?. The're entertaining it as a possibility, which is a very different thing. And if they were endorsing it, the fact that Making Waves links to Treehugger doesn't automatically suggest that we should agree with Treehugger's findings.

The findings on Thorium are certainly interesting - but so far, it appears to be the opinion of one man, Mr. Egil Lillestol, professor at the Institute of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen. I don't dispute his research, but I think we need to be a little cautious before embracing this new magical panacea without some serious field testing. Also, bear in mind that it's reckoned it will take 15 years to build one of these nuclear plants. Not a magic bullet by any means.

Nuclear isn't the answer to global warming - for instance, in the UK, it's been calculated that at the "most optimistic build rate, a programme of 10 new nuclear reactors would only deliver a 4% cut in CO2 emissions by 2024".

Plus, perhaps we need to examine how and why we feed "the machine of commerce" - instead of blindly staggering on, and perhaps we need to examine whether or the "current US lifestyle" is sustainable in terms of its energy demands. I don't think it's impossible to combine a high quality of life with a low environmental impact.

Lastly, I'm not sure how you see nuclear fuel has being "clean" - at least in it current state. I refer you to:
Nuclear power: wrong answer.
End the nuclear age »
The Energy Revolution
Wikipedia: Thorium

Perhaps once-through uranium nuclear energy isn't the answer, but efficiently utilized thorium nuclear energy may very well be.

The opinions regarding the use of thorium are not confined to one person. On the contrary, in the 50s and 60s the United States had an active and robust effort to develop thorium nuclear energy. But that effort was not favored by the Atomic Energy Commission for a number of reasons--one of them being that the thorium reactors could not produce the weapons-grade plutonium that military planners craved. Indeed, the fissile fuel produced from thorium (uranium-233) is relatively worthless for weapons because it is inevitably contaminated by U-232, which decays to daughter products that are very difficult to shield sensitive weapons components from.

That's the basic reason that 60 years after its creation from thorium, U-233 has never been used in a production weapon.

By building thorium reactors, we open the door to thousands of years of clean safe energy. Kyoto won't stop global warming, but thorium might--if we get serious and soon.

Here are the figures from the Energy Information administration for the global picture Notice that the forecast is for hundreds of new coal plants to be built. President Bush has coal as a central part of his energy policy.

The british anti-nuke site says that 10 new plants will take at least until 2024. Perhaps those are for UK plants with UK building regulations. The projected global case is for over 43 gigawatts of nuclear capacity to be added from non-OECD countries. It is only going to take China 4 years to build each new plant. Building the plants can be a lot faster with less bureaucracy.

Improvements to the fuel (hollow cylinders instead of solid rods) and the heat removal liquid will allow current nuclear plants to generate 50% more power. In the USA that is 160GW. This can be done over a few years.

Nuclear waste is a problem. However, nuclear waste is not killing anyone or very few people now. Coal and oil pollution and CO2 are costing lives now. Thorium reactors can process the current waste. So we will not be storing it for 10,000 years but converting it to a more manageable form in decades if we make the right choices.

Nuclear alone is not the only answer, but it is part of a better and realistic solution. Along with carbon sequestering, conservation, efficiency improvements, solar and wind.

Thorium reactors can be brought online faster if we use the liquid-fluoride (molten-salt) reactors. The Norwegians are looking at accelerator based versions. How long things take depend upon choices and how well we plan and execute.

Here are links to my thorium articles

A lot of the information is from Kirk Sorensons excellent Thorium energy blog

Accelerating Futures has an interesting proposal for mass produced Thorium reactors

The other interesting thing is that more Uranium and Thorium are released in to the air by coal plants in normal operation than nuclear plants.

Another interesting point is that more radiation and radioactive material is released from coal plants than from nuclear plants

For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium. The population gets 100 times more radiation from a coal plant than from a nuclear plant.

The nuclear material that gets spewed into the air from coal plants has more energy content than the coal that was burned. Coal plants are not regulated for the nuclear waste they toss out.

What would happen if a nuclear site was reported to be freely exhausting ~27 metric tons (~60 Curies) of radiological material into the biosphere annually? Meanwhile, a strong case can be made that every 1000 MWe coal-fired steam plant does it year after year, and no one cares.

Umm, Brian - Greenpeace doesn't support the burning of coal - at least not in its current guise. Actually, Greenpeace doesn't support nuclear power or fossil fuel power - so there's no need to make this argument to us!

I think what Brian is trying to say (and I agree with him) is that a vote against nuclear is a vote for coal. I know you don't want to believe that, but it's simply the truth.

I know you guys have taken a position that nuclear energy is "bad". Well, examine that position for a moment and consider why you have it. Safety? Radiation? Waste? What's the real nub of the issue? And if thorium nuclear reactors can alleviate the concerns you have, maybe you should consider whether they're worth supporting.

Because if global warming is as real as you say, we have to replace our current energy supplies and quickly. Right now China and India are gearing up to build massive coal plants. We could turn out all the lights in the United States and our CO2 reduction would still be swamped by their new CO2 production. The only hope is to act quickly and massively to get non-CO2 emitting power in their hands. And if you say it's wind and solar, fine. You'll replace about 1% of what they plan to build and the other 99% that's coal will make global warming worse.

The reason I was making the case is that nuclear and other power sources are needed and will be built. I think Greenpeace should choose to back the less bad choices. Delaying nuclear means more coal. Coal is worse. The goal of trying to get rid of fossil fuel and nuclear leave 20% of the power. The power needs are going in the opposite direction. They are increasing. Greenpeace should pick its battles and strategize. The blanket attack is less effective and is resulting in making things worse. Things are worse now because we did not make nuclear plants for the last 30 years. Things will be worse if we do not make nuclear plants. Because we end up with more coal and oil usage. It is linked.

Hi guys - I appreciate your posting your thoughts here and giving your time to commenting.

Hmm, personally, I see your "least bad" option as being something of a compromise - trusting what *might* be the lesser of two evils. Given the history of the nuclear industry thus far, we have no real hope that that it will conduct itself any better than in the future than it has thus far.

As for Greenpeace's stance on the nuclear issue - it's pretty well spelled out here on the main website. We *do* pick our battles!

As for Thorium - I'm personally unconvinced by its apparently magical properties - but, we'll have to wait and see, eh?

Fossil fuels vs. nukes is a false choice. And one made at the expense of environmentally friendly energy alternatives. There's only so much money available to build new energy sources and increase energy efficiency.

That investment cash should be spent on proven renewable energy sources (like wind and solar), as well as energy efficiency.

Fossil fuels vs. nukes is a false choice. And one made at the expense of environmentally friendly energy alternatives.

You can say this, you can believe this, but the people who build base-load power stations don't see it that way. And they're the ones who emit all the CO2.

I love solar power systems. I spend much more time working on developing distributed solar power systems than I do on thorium. But I'm an engineer and I run the numbers, and unfortunately they don't add up for solar. It's makes a great distributed source if you're far from the grid, in a sunny place, and grid power is expensive. But it can't replace baseload power in big cities.

(and the solar power concept I'm working on should be 10 times cheaper than solar today, and includes energy storage...)

Yes, I am suggesting that Greenpeace compromise. Choose to be pragmatic. Choose to try to make things better now and next year. Coal power is 40% of the world's energy production now. It is 50% of the US power production now. Coal power is not a little worse than nuclear power. It is over a hundred times worse. So far the cleaner energy choices are not even the majority of the new power that is being added. There is no plan to displace the existing nearly 2 terawatts of production from coal power.

I like solar and wind power. From my website, advanced nanotechnology, I track advanced solar technology and wind power.

Solar power needs to get below $1 per watt installed before it starts making any kind of meaningful gains in the marketplace. Even then it has to scale up.
Global photovoltaic production is 1.73 GW in 2005 Even at 50% annual growth it would be 2017-2019 before the annual growth in electricity demand is met. 200-500GW/year. Solar power is not growing that fast. Plus there will be problems ramping up silicon production. Plus getting the cost down depends upon multiple uncertain scientific and technological breakthroughs. I am a technology optimist and I think a lot of stuff has to go right.

US wind power is at 10GW. Global wind power is at 60GW and grew 25% in 2005. Combined wind and solar will not be able to handle the yearly increase in added global demand until 2016-2025 at the earliest barring the develop of molecular nanotechnology. that would be the earliest date you can start replacing the coal already being used at that time it will be about 8 billion tons per year.

Until solar and wind are the only new power sources added and old dirty sources are started to be replaced then by not adding a nuclear plant you are adding a coal plant.

A dollar not spent on nuclear or thorium nuclear is not a dollar spent on solar or wind. Research only proceeds so fast. New and better ideas and processes sometimes just take time to figure out.

Why doesn't Greenpeace put 100 times the effort into the bigger problem of coal? Why not try to lobby to get them to stop allowing the radioactive material to be spewed out by the thousands of tons? Why not try to stop a problem that is actually killing tens of thousands of people every year? Why not actually push for plans that would address the actual problems you claim to care about.

Wait and see. Wait and watch tens of thousands of people die this year and next year and the year after. Asthma, lung cancer, mining accidents etc... Also, watch global warming get worse.

Time magazine talks about coals bright future 4.6 billion tons used this year.

By 2020, China will be using 2.8 billion tons of coal

What can help this year is supporting increased power generation from existing nuclear plants. Also, push to stop coal plants from emitting radioactive material. Get out of the way of more nuclear plant building permits. Support the research, development and deployment of Thorium reactors. You can still push for solar and wind. For wind, maybe the Kitegen system will work. We would the research to pan out and need to build and deploy a few thousand of the large version.

Brian, again, interesting points. I don't we're about to end a 35 year-old anti-nuclear stance - a stance we don't take lightly. If you keep an eye on the Greenpeace sites, you'll see we've been quite busy on the coal issue too.

You ask a question that we get different versions of all the time - "Why doesn't Greenpeace put 100 times the effort into the bigger problem of coal?"

We also get
"Why doesn't Greenpeace put 100 times the effort into saving whales?"

There's only so many of us working on these things, and we've only got so much resources. Which is why we're always asking for more support!

I repeat my previous question--if nuclear reactors can be built that address the issues of concern that Greenpeace has with today's nuclear technologies, would they reconsider their opposition?

Kirk - that's a pretty bizarre question that sort of cancels itself out.

It's a bit like asking "if Greenpeace didn't have a reason to question nuclear power, would Greenpeace still question nuclear power?"

Surely its self-evident that if Greenpeace was 100% happy with a source of energy, then it follows that we wouldn't have an issue with it.

I'm not going to say that what Greenpeace would or would not do about Thorium, because as far as I can see, it's all, for now, hypothetical. So far, the Thorium discussion seems reminiscent of the promises made bye prophets of the nuclear age, half a century ago.

Kirk - that's a pretty bizarre question that sort of cancels itself out.

Let me ask it in a different way. Right now, Greenpeace seems to approach "Nuclear" like it's this big, monolithic, single-expression technology. It's not. There are hundreds of different kinds of reactors. For a variety of reasons, some good, some bad, the world is currently dominated by one kind of reactor: the light-water reactor, using low-enrichment nuclear fuel that is typically thrown away after being irradiated.

Liquid-fluoride thorium reactors can address many of the issues that that I see levied against "Nuclear" power (i.e. light-water uranium reactors). They are not hypothetical reactors. Two were built and operated, very successfully. They will still require more development before being fielded, but they are not hypothetical.

So far, the Thorium discussion seems reminiscent of the promises made bye prophets of the nuclear age, half a century ago.

That's an interesting point you bring up. You know what? When I studied the history of nuclear energy I began to realize that the folks who were making grand predictions about nuclear energy back in the 1950s weren't thinking about the kind of reactors that we have today (light-water uranium reactors). They were thinking about fast-spectrum uranium reactors or thermal-spectrum thorium reactors...reactors that can utilize all of the nuclear fuel that they are loaded with. The light-water reactor was not even considered advanced enough in the 1950s for the main AEC labs to work on it. It was considered a stop-gap reactor, derived from a submarine, that would get nuclear energy going for a few decades but would need to be replaced as soon as possible by a more efficient reactor. That is why the AEC poured money into fast-breeders in the 1960s, and why when the liquid-fluoride reactor threatened that investment, it was squashed by the AEC.

Alvin Weinberg, one of the great pioneers of nuclear energy, passed away Wednesday night at the age of 91. He wrote about how the AEC squashed the fluoride reactor in his book "The First Nuclear Era" and how it was a short-sighted decision then and now.

I bring this history up because Greenpeace needs to start looking at the features of reactors, and considering whether they are worthy of consideration, rather than this simplistic "No Nukes" stance. The coal burners just love it.

For some reason, I'm put in mind of this exchange from V For Vendetta.

V is in Delia Surridge's house, in order to deliver his vendetta upon her...

Delia Surridge:
Oppeinheimer was able to change more than the course of a war. He changed the entire course of human history. Is it wrong to hold on to that kind of hope?

V: I've not come for what you hoped to do. I've come for what you did.

Sorry dude...not following you...

If you're implying that there needs to be some vendetta exercised against nuclear power for all the energy it's generated over the last forty years (carbon-free) then we'll just have to disagree.

The reason getting rid of or lowering the impact of coal use matters more than whales and other issues.

Coal is the primary cause of global warming. Global warming is killing thousands of species. Therefore fixing coal addresses the other issues down the line. Trying to save the whales instead of root causes is like giving body armor to your favorite children during a global war.

Coal plants are like dirty nuclear and pollution bombs that go off every month by the thousands. 10,000 mining deaths per year (over 5000 each year in China alone) That is more than 3 times the 9-11 casualties and 200 times the Chernobyl casualties. 22,000 pollution deaths in the US and over a milllion world wide. Again 30 times more than the 4000 who are sick and dieing from Chernobyl. Global warming is making the weather worse and causing more Katrina's. How much oil does it take to dig up and move 4.6 billion tons of coal every year by rail and trucks? How many traffic accidents occur when moving billions of loads of coal? How much of a strain and cost is there on infrastructure to move the coal? Money into more frequent repairs of roads and rail. Plants, animals, fish and people are killed by the pollution.

On the thorium and better nuclear reactors. Really look at the real details and facts. Have an open mind. Otherwise you will never find the specific different source where you could be 100% happy. But consider being 99% happy, so we can start accelerating the saving of millions of lives every year and animals, plants and environment.

Also, consider that if the west, china, India built thousands of the new thorium reactors and we had new biofuels and went full speed with nuclear and the other good tech. In 20 years maybe we would not need to import Middle east oil. No more oil causing more wars there. There probably will still be fighting but there would be less if oil was not a factor.

Details and facts matter.

Kirk - "V for Vendetta" was the name of a movie that came our recently. At no point did I suggest that anyone should launch a vendetta - please don't put words in my mouth.

My quote referred to how the road to a messed-up environment can be paved with good intentions - I'm sure that in the past there have been plenty of people involved in the nuclear industry who believed in a future of safe, clean energy.

The reality, however, has turned out somewhat differently to what they envisioned.

Kirk - "V for Vendetta" was the name of a movie that came our recently. At no point did I suggest that anyone should launch a vendetta - please don't put words in my mouth.

Sorry about that. My apologies.

My quote referred to how the road to a messed-up environment can be paved with good intentions - I'm sure that in the past there have been plenty of people involved in the nuclear industry who believed in a future of safe, clean energy.

I agree wholeheartedly.

The reality, however, has turned out somewhat differently to what they envisioned.

Yes, and "why" that has happened has been some of the biggest surprises to me. When the Atomic Energy Commission was formed in 1946, as a sort of civilian continuation of the Manhattan Project, the production of weapons-grade nuclear material (highly-enriched uranium, weapons-grade plutonium) was their first, second, and third priority. Making electrical power from nuclear reactors was scarcely even on their radar.

I was surprised to discover that when Rickover began working on his nuclear submarine project in 1949, no one in the Navy supported the project. They wanted someone to figure out how to send nuclear bombers off aircraft carriers because that was "where the money was".

Rickover launched Nautilus in 1954, and at the time, it was the only reactor producing electrical (or shaft) power in the whole country. And it was floating in the water!

What shocked them out of their complacency was when England and Russia turned on their first power reactors in 1956. Then Eisenhower turned to the Navy and basically said, we need a power reactor yesterday!

As Weinberg relates in his book, the Navy was all too happy to oblige, by taking a reactor design they intended for a future nuclear aircraft carrier and putting it on the ground. That was the Shippingport reactor in Pennsylvania, that went critical in 1957.

Weinberg, who held the patent on these light-water reactors, advised the Navy and the AEC against building LWRs for civilian power. He knew about the potential of fluid-fueled thorium reactors and was actively in the midst of developing two different kinds at ORNL (the liquid-fluoride and the aqueous homogeneous). He knew these reactors had safety features far beyond LWRs and that they could burn thorium, enabling energy for millenia.

But the gov't, driven by political expediency, forced the development of LWRs and then strong-armed the utilities into building them. They didn't want to. It took carrots like the Price-Anderson act, the promise to take spent nuclear fuel, and finally a threat to nationalize utilities to finally make them start building reactors.

It has been hinted at here, but the historical fact is that we have civil electrical power reactors that are based directly from weapons technology and every country to this day (from Iran to the US) all claim to have legitimate civil power needs to justify operating them. Nevertheless, the safer and more efficient electrical power-generating reactor is a liquid fuel system based on thorium. Whether you like nuclear power or not, the science and engineering is pure and simple – it is not easy to make bombs from a liquid system. The nuclear inventory is very low in a thorium-based system and you cannot afford to steal many neutrons since the reaction stops fairly quickly (another safety benefit). There is no enriched fuel material being transported about and thus no proliferation/terrorist issue. And if you care to read all the details, there are many other obvious benefits from a system that was operated successfully at the start of the nuclear age. You can join the rest of the world and lie to yourself that there is no difference or you can recognize that the approach using solid fuel, uranium reactors is to keep a highly-skilled weapons capability available, whether you are a small nation wanting a single device or a major player. Sometimes, I start to believe the conspiracies and think the left and the right advocacy groups are just all part of the same system to “keep the status quote” as is. Otherwise, there would be more interest in debunking the technical if it was just another form of the same old nuclear technology we have today.

Here is a synopsis outlining the dangers of mined Thorium. I vote no to new extraction, and no to new Nuclear plants. Other technologies are already available...and advanced technology breakthroughs are coming!

Germany proved you can move forward quickly to establish renewables through better incentives and community-based generation.

It does make some sense to shift some existing plants to use up as many man-made nuclear waste by-products as possible. Still, this substance Thorium is NOT an affordable, or safe form of nuclear fuel.

Equivalent investment in PV Silicon manufacturing will vastly reduce the cost of Solar, and this electricity and heat source requires NO refueling. We are working to develop new PV Silicon manufacturing in the Northwest USA now.

With fair cost analyses Solar is already on par with Coal. 40 year panels are still in use, & warranties extend to 20-25 years. Eliminate Least-Cost planning restrictions and factor in operational savings to get a more accurate Cost Basis adjustment. New PV Silicon manufacturing can and will make the difference. STOP ALL NEW NUKES & COAL.

Thorium info Source:

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/thorium.htm

Thorium-232 has a half-life of 14 billion (14x109) years, and decays by alpha emission, with accompanying gamma radiation. Thorium-232 is the top of a long decay series that contains key radionuclides such as radium-228, its direct decay product, and radon-220. Two other isotopes of thorium, which can be significant in the environment, are thorium-230 and thorium-228. Both belong to other decay series. They also decay by alpha emission, with accompanying gamma radiation, and have half-lives of 75,400 years and 1.9 years, respectively.

However, Man-made thorium isotopes are rare, and almost never enter the environment.

How does thorium change in the environment?

As thorium-232 undergoes radioactive decay, it emits an alpha particle, with accompanying gamma radiation, and forms radium-228. This process of releasing radiation and forming a new radionuclide continues until stable lead-208 is formed. The half-life of thorium-232 is about 14 billion years.

For those who think that Greenpeace hassles the nuclear industry and not anyone else - last week we temporarily shut down a coal-fired power station in the UK:

Activists shut down UK's Didcot coal-fired power station

Didcot Power Station: Greenpeace occupation ends!

pdxJules, to say "no" to thorium because it is radioactive makes no sense. Gaia, Mother Earth, however you want to think about it, has dispersed millions and millions of metric tonnes of thorium across the world. It's in every rock; it's in the Moon, Mars, and every asteroid--it's everywhere.

Life is still here, after billions of years of the radioactive "onslaught". So maybe you have to consider that thorium's not so dangerous?

One thing that people forget is that long-half-life = very low radioactivity. You can't be radioactive for 14 billion years (about the age of the universe) if you're throwing out lots of radiation. Thorium decays exceedingly slowly (as does uranium) which is why it's still around.

Dear Greenpeace:
two things: About the Thorium nuclear plants, I refer you to Hamilton Press, September 10, 2008, page 11: an article by Alista Fow talking about what he seems to be hopeful for: a New Zealand Thorium nuclear power station, using West Coast, NZ, thorium from the beaches. I'm alarmed for more than one reason. I've been researching on the net, and typing an article to post anywhere about Thorium nuclear power plants. No-one has said anything about "depleted uranium" type weapons, so I'll bring you up to date about the USA in the Middle East: the USA Defense Department got it's hands on some old radioactive waste, powdered it extremely finely, gave US troops a new type of face-mask, and then dropped the "depleted uranium" onto the land, water, air, all of it, and then someone from the USA Defense Dept. was quoted in reply to a woman in Iraq who said: "our children are playing in radioactive dust, what do you say about that?" He said: "oh,that's only depleted uranium: AND IT DOES NOT HURT". Of course, when the first few radioactive particles get to someones' bones, it cannot be felt, it's agony, yet, we ALL KNOW that cancers hurt most of all of almost any disease, as bad as aids or worse. About the new anti-radiation fighting suits with those new masks: practically speaking, the USA Defense Department was unlikely to continue with that for it's own troops, since the particles and radioactivity was too fine and found it's way into the noses of the troops. They called THAT a problem. Really.
IF any nation had a Thorium reactor, and says: "oh,it's ok since it won't meltdown and it cannot EASILY be used for nuclear bombs", that's also silly. D.U. or ANY ARTIFICIAL SPLIT ATOM PRODUCT, is a real menace, since someone made it up as a "great way to get rid of our radioactive waste, we'll powder it and drop it on the people we hate the most" (sometimes called: hurting anyone we LIKE: what a lie: it's hurting anyone we HATE.
Thats' the menace of Thorium made into an artificially split atom. Its' against The Logan, from Spirit, the Law, including Kharmic Law, states, according to Silver Birch, "do NOT split the atom". Greenpeace does know all about why we, humankind, is NOT to do that, at all.
I do note from my printing trade (bad stuff) experience, in fact, that they go on about: "not EASILY made into weapons-grade fuels". That's not quite the same as: "cannot", its' not easy, however, if I'm right about this: it CAN be done with difficulty. And, the way the nuclear scientists are going they will if paid enough for long enough, find their new bombs from Thorium products: a new type of bomb. I do feel, a sense of: probably, already, some high-ranking official in some Defense Dept. somewhere, is signing huge cheques to fund secret research, on the books as "medical research" or similar (since medicine does use isotopes, you see their manipulations of the truth, done always by half-truths and IMPLICATIONS)? Some researchers will, I think, already be researching all that from thorium, with other scientist talking, theorizing and working on similar probjects. Scientific research? Some of this is only about logic, a terrible one that says: since weapons of mass destruction are being made, there's probably more on the way, with more and worse, as long as it SEEMS it can wipe out a nation, they will research it. LACK OF MORALS is causing that, and I do NOT like the look of this world, already.
I'm very concerned about the Thorium in New Zealand BECAUSE OF THE TIMING OF THIS, RIGHT BEFORE AN ELECTION, it's due in November 8th or 9th (that was announced on the radio yesterday), so we need to find more and more ways to prevent the NEXT Government avoiding the issue and then rushing through a new Thorium plant, since there have been no mentions of d.u. and other radioactive waste powders as a weapon, well, what to do? I SUPPORT GREENPEACE, as much as I can, I do have confidence. The risk of nuclear power is TOO GREAT.
My mum died of cancer, her body was in agony for months, her body hurt more than any of ourselves, as we wept, cared about her, cared for her, and could not believe the number of months she moaned in agony on her deathbed: and then some stupid person says: "d.u. does not hurt" (and it's because it decays rapidly), no, the split atom ACCUMULATES, unless another new technology comes up and re-balances it, and thats' the fact for most poeple, around 9.999999 people. The only person I think would be immune to cancers from that, if exposed long enough, would be The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, I'M NOT JOKING.
Regards
Jessica Peaches