@kentpitman Kent, have you been following the thorium energy progress in China. Does it give you any hope? I haven't looked closely yet but my impression is that they are getting fairly close to commercial deployment, which they might then push out to the B&R countries. I'm might be full of sh*t though.

Plus with Trump inadvertently giving everyone a push to develop greenER energy....

@sigue

Have I been following it? No, not recently.

There was a day when I thought green nuclear was an option. Not a perfect option, but better than extinction.

Overall, I think we're past the point where it made sense, and I favor solar and other renewable energies.

Still, we are not going about climate response in an organized way, so it's a complex space. I'm not as negative on it as some people might be.

Oddly, one thing that might end up arguing in its favor is that it supports rent-taking. The oil barons hate solar because it is not. But physics doesn't care about rent, and if what it takes is to have a viable solution that the oil barons are not actively sabotaging, then that is maybe worth pondering. Compromises may need to be made, and progress is not always in a straight line.

@kentpitman wrote:
«Compromises may need to be made, and progress is not always in a straight line.»

Most definitely so.

Somewhat related, I read recently that in Germany they are considering increasing electricity production from coal.
Germany, where they <adverb omitted> stopped nuclear power plants several years ago.

NB: this is a story in progress and, as usual, details matter as well.

@sigue

@sigue @vnikolov

It would be interesting to know the reason for that. I'm definitely not an expert in this area, but if I had to guess, the one big reason for backing off from nuclear, even just something that is dirtier, might be that it gets harder and harder to cool these things as the ambient temperature of freshwater sources goes up. Not to mention freshwater being scarce. But that's just a random guess.

I mean, it's possible somebody just gave them a good price on coal and they decided not to care about the future of the planet...

If someone with actual expertise is reading along, they should feel free to offer other/better thoughts.

I, too, would be interested in the differences between the case in Germany and the case in Taiwan.
I easily found out that Taiwan has small coal reserves (unlike Germany).
However, I didn't even try to find out about politics in Taiwan on these matters.
For example, whether there is a Green Party in Taiwan and what their position is, if there is such a party.

@kentpitman @sigue

@vnikolov @kentpitman

It looks like Taiwan got up to the level of 52% of their power mix being nuclear, but the DPP (the "green party") came to power and decided to phase it out. Ironically aligning with environmental groups, it seems.

A personal anecdote, if I may...

My parents, or at least my mother, was strongly anti-nuke in the 70s and I remember going to a protest at the Seabrook NH plant when I was ~10. I can understand it given the lack of awareness about climate change and the waste and proliferation issues (which don't exist nearly as much for thorium).

But even after she knew about climate change my mother reacted with anger seeing a book about nuclear energy on my table. "They got to you" were the words that came out. Sigh, it's hard to change.