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Exactly. The takeaway should be that Yang is approaching this issue from a position of technical merit and not on an irrational emotional basis like most others
by sjwright 7y ago
Exactly. The takeaway should be that Yang is approaching this issue from a position of technical merit and not on an irrational emotional basis like most others. This is to his credit. Properly technocratic leadership is rare in the USA and it's beyond time for them to experiment with it.
In my opinion the analysis linked to from HN is laughably flawed. It's not exactly wrong, but it's so terse and reductive that it might as well be. For example— while the waste from the thorium fuel cycle could be used to make weapons, but the fuel would always include some Uranium 232 (a gamma emitter) and therefore it's more difficult to handle safely and your entire weapon manufacturing pipeline is able to be monitored from afar by foreign governments.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoTechnically the big gamma emitter is Tl-208 which is in the decay chain of U-232. Careful about downplaying the U-233 weapons potential. Phenomenal nuclear weapons can be derived from Thorium. Here's a good declassified hint from 1966: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/79078 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/79078
- tabtab 7y agoRe: Yang is approaching this issue from a position of technical merit and not on an irrational emotional basis like most others. Unfortunately, politics is not rational. Energy sources that kill slowly but gradually make less news and attention than "death spike" patterns even if their long-term-average numbers are better. If you don't address political patterns, then you will be bulldozed by trolls and demagogues who leverage emotion and vague impressions. If you go on the news with death-rate charts, you'll be ridiculed by the same people who beat up and shunned nerds in school. I'm just the messenger.