When I was in sixth form, I once wrote a piece that argued the case against Nuclear Power. Part of my argument was that it had huge costs, crazily more than the original promise of "energy too cheap to meter". It obviously had, and still has, its problems on decommissioning spent fuel, and the attendant risks of another Chernobyl if you have a badly designed or maintained reactor. Many, perhaps most, shared these views.So, it's interesting to see how many people, myself included, are rather more positive about Nuclear Power these days, as it appears to be the most reliable large-scale carbon-free energy source around. Some of the more fundamentalist "deep green" environmentalists are still opposing it on principle.I wonder if that will change, now that there seems to be a radically better Nuclear Power option? It was 50 years ago that the Thorium-based option for power generation was dropped in favour of Uranium-based ones, mostly because Uranium helps produce Plutonium for atomic weapons.
Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke is Wired Magazine's article that explains this possible shift in more detail, and shows why it is more than 100 times cheaper, smaller and generally more interesting. And who's now planning to use it at large scale.It appears to be seriously good news, at a time when we really need bright new options in how we produce and consume energy.