Thrive movement

[Tamasin]

American pls go...

[Claeyt]

Green Nuclear is an option but there are other reasons people don't build nuclear plants besides safety. Even the Chinese are planning on 20 years of development just to get to a large scale working Molten Salt Thorium reactor. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done but most of the technology simply hasn't ever been built. Canadian and French heavy water reactors are a much better model for nuclear power with less waste and they've been running for years.

[Jalpha]

MFW you didn't bother looking into the LFTR much...



Meanwhile in China
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/am ... k-to-them/

[Yasso]

pls
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU

[Syndarn]

...Show me an effective business model for transitioning to this hypothetical energy source...

Well i guess that depends if we want to keep making money on energy. If we want to keep the jobs in the energy business, we can never move into a free energy setting (even if we had the tech).
So i think you can see the problem here. I guess it could be done gradually.. but that would still mean ppl lost their jobs. On the bright side, there is more people to do other jobs. But then the question is what could that be? Well it's the real world and we all know it very rarely ends up fair for everyone. We could ofc develop "free energy" and make big "reactors" and generate a ***** of the energy and charge people for it. That'd keep the jobs, but it would make it very unethical and i can't really support that, even if it might be unavoidable. But just so you know, i don't like it.

you are substantially underestimating the number of people who work in energy related areas..

You are probably right, i probably do. So im sorry if i seem ignorant. However sooner or later if we go "free energy" if we can, it will still blow up in our face. So i see it as a unavoidable future. Just because jobs would be lost, can't mean we should stop evolving as a society, planet and as humanbeings.

The Thrive movement is a negative thing, I fail to see how anyone can't see through such an obvious underlying agenda.

Well i don't see them as a bad thing, they claim pretty bold things, and there's a chance they are right. But ofc transitions won't happen overnight.
And at the very least you gotta give them some credit for their visions even if they can't exactly deliver yet.

Look into the LFTR. I'll even provide a link.

I did some research into thorium reactors a few years back so i was not entirely unaware, this movie reminded me alot of things about it and i even learned somethings i wasn't aware of. So i humbly thankyou for a good link.
I can't agree more what the guy says really. It's all good. Thorium reactors should be in use already, and further developed. Shame they are not. We need them.

Im fine with the rest of the world going for this if they want to, but as a individual i can't really have a thorium reactor on my backyard, and even if i had i couldn't really use it to power my car or tractor directly, batteries are kinda out of the question since they suck and would run out in no time. You probably get what i mean.

I don't personally want to pay for my energy. I would rather have small units that power my applications and veichles, that are small scale and portable and reliable. (tesla had his car afterall)
I believe in that case something like zero point might be the only option, unless someone comes up with a badass small size portable battery or a fuelcell that doesn't have a cost for refill. Well times change it could happen.

Anyway..that video is about thorium. Back when they developed fission reactors it was uranium vs. thorium. Today here in this forum it's thorium vs. zeropoint.
Back then uranium was the trend, thorium was abit perhaps worse understood but a viable option with some questionmarks that were exaggerated. Today thorium is the trend, zeropoint or whatever you may call it still has alot of questions. So we can draw a parallel between now and then. Kinda. I don't argue that thorium back then was not only working on paper, but it was also much more better understood compared to zeropoint today. We know almost nothing of it.

Then again we could argue what the guy said. "Daddy why didn't we build thorium reactors back when we started with fission?" or..."Why didn't we develop zeropoint over thorium"? what's the excuse.
I know they are not technically the same thing, and not entirely comparable 1:1, but you probably get what i mean. Basically just saying we shouldn't abandon zeropoint, and settle with less.

EDIT: Small cleaning and adding.

[Jalpha]

Yasso we can't even afford roads that expensive in the developed world so you are fuxt.

Also the only reason we went down the uranium path was because it produced weapons grade material. There's probably less engineering difficulties involved in thorium reactors because you don't have to deal with rods. Instead you have to deal with corrosion problems in the pipes and containment chambers.

[Syndarn]

Also the only reason we went down the uranium path was because it produced weapons grade material.

ah yeah, forgot about that.

solar roadways

The idea is quite interesting. Ive been thinking of a road that keeps a decently good temperature so it could melt snow, so you don't need salting wich again is bad for the cars and the environment.
A few things pop into my mind though..
1. How smooth is that surface, how much noise and vibrations does it deliver into the car, and the surroundings? (it doesn't look very smooth to me).
2. In this setup you would probably need to lay a reinforced concrete foundation so the road base is smooth and strong enough
to keep the solar modules straight and protect from frozen ground and "subsidence" idk if that is the right word. Asphalt is much more forgiving in that sense.
Maybe you could somehow engineer it so that you still use asphalt as the foundation or put it straight on the old road, i don't know honestly.
3. As Jalpha said it's very expensive and he is right. There is not only much more material and different jobs needed, it's much more labour intensive.

But then again, who am i to judge when i haven't experienced the end product first hand.

[Claeyt]

Also the only reason we went down the uranium path was because it produced weapons grade material.

ah yeah, forgot about that.

solar roadways

The idea is quite interesting. Ive been thinking of a road that keeps a decently good temperature so it could melt snow, so you don't need salting wich again is bad for the cars and the environment.
A few things pop into my mind though..
1. How smooth is that surface, how much noise and vibrations does it deliver into the car, and the surroundings? (it doesn't look very smooth to me).
2. In this setup you would probably need to lay a reinforced concrete foundation so the road base is smooth and strong enough
to keep the solar modules straight and protect from frozen ground and "subsidence" idk if that is the right word. Asphalt is much more forgiving in that sense.
Maybe you could somehow engineer it so that you still use asphalt as the foundation or put it straight on the old road, i don't know honestly.
3. As Jalpha said it's very expensive and he is right. There is not only much more material and different jobs needed, it's much more labour intensive.

But then again, who am i to judge when i haven't experienced the end product first hand.

I didn't see how expensive they are but plain roads sure aren't cheap either. I can see it being competitive if it just came down to price.

You could technically have a non-concrete base for roadways. Many roads, sidewalks and basketball courts already use recycled rubber and non-concrete asphalt materials. Concrete is just the cheapest.

I don't know how they warm the road but I seriously doubt they can thaw a foot of snow in a timely manner. LED lights do not heat up as so many communities that are switching to LED stop lights are learning. The stop lights actually require a warming mechanism to be installed to stay clear. They are more visible. If they include some warming mechanism then that's going to downgrade their electrical output considerably.

Salt is incredibly cheap. Modern cars have very few salt affected parts. Really only the frame and exhaust is affected now and even those are treated for rust protection. Salt is not that horrible for the environment either, except for the immediate area surrounding the road. Salt does not run off that much into the local water sources at least as much as people think. It generally will stay in the ground surrounding the local roadway. In a city it will drain into the storm drains but unless you live in a mountainous state or a state with very small waterways your water salinity won't rise enough to hurt anything. In the U.S. the only states that don't use salt are the mountainous states with protected mountain streams with low flow volumes.

[Jalpha]

The point is that a foot of snow doesn't fall in an instant. The snow is melted gradually as it falls and is the basis of many heated pathways, roofs, gutters and driveways already. I like the idea because it has the potential to provide constant power to capacitors on electric vehicles, heavily reducing the reliance on batteries for long drives. It would be a huge leap toward overcoming the current image of electric vehicles.

As for salt... Please buy all our Australian salt. I can sell it to you for cheap. **** you can have it for free if you pay the cost of freight...

Salinity is obviously not as wide spread a problem there as it is here. I assure you if anyone here tried to sprinkle salt on anything other than their food the public outcry would be deafening. Thankfully we don't have snow.

[Syndarn]

Modern cars have very few salt affected parts. Really only the frame and exhaust is affected now and even those are treated for rust protection.

Well as long as the panels are plastic, then they won't rust. Modern cars are made of a self-supporting frame which means they don't actually have a "frame" the panels themselves support the weight cause of geometrical stiffness. Some cars still have a actual frame though. In the states where it's quite dry rust isn't really a problem. Up here in Finland rust is a big problem. Cars are made lighter nowadays and it means that the panels are much thinner and they rust much faster. It's true that the cars are rust protected and it works, but it doesn't mean it lasts forever.

Another thing is that salt is not good for the asphalt either. I believe it weakens it somehow. I can't prove it, but it does seem that we are doing much more maintenance or resurface work than before. It might just be me. That we use winter tires and that we have much more traffic must also affect it. But really this much maintenance work, can't we come up with something that is much more durable? alternatively the asphalt is made weaker on purpose, just like all electronics nowadays are made to break so the consumer has to buy a new one. Who knows. The cycle must continue right? xD http://cfile21.uf.tistory.com/image/1575CD4C4F1BCFB4317FFD