When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?

[nctnico]

Thorium has been touted as the future of nuclear power since the 1960s.   Decades later it is still in the R and D phase.  Why is that?

Like others already noted: Thorium reactors don't produce materials for nuclear weapons so Nixon shut the Thorium projects down.

It seems India is leading in Thorium reactor research and it seems there are a couple of dozen Thorium reactors running across the globe.

[mtdoc]

From the late 60s until the mid 2000s there was basically nothing going on. The wikipedia page shows various "activities" since the mid 2000s, but they are mostly tinkering. Some, like the "Canada could put thorium in a CANDU reactor" effort seem to miss the point - its the liquid fluoride salt design which brings most of the attractions in the 1960s thorium research work. Who has had research reactors up and running, really pushing forward with the idea, since the 60s?

I added  this link which gives more detail on the multple research projects involving multiple countries throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Who, even now that a lot of fresh interest has been garnered, is seriously on the way to having a reactor up and running?

Well what do you mean by seriously?  The Wikipedia article details multiple projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars.  But perhaps it's because widespread use Thorium reactors remains one of those "always in the future" technologies that will save us, like fusion reactors, better battery technology, etc, etc.

[Kjelt]

What we really need is objective researchers because all the glory stories about Thorium are either from misinformed green environmental persons or companies/universities that just want money.
Since with the current tech there are no gains compared to nuclear technology IMO it would be better to research other  cleaner alternatives like fusion, hoping to get a break through. Probably not this century 

[mtdoc]

Thorium has been touted as the future of nuclear power since the 1960s.   Decades later it is still in the R and D phase.  Why is that?

Like others already noted: Thorium reactors don't produce materials for nuclear weapons so Nixon shut the Thorium projects down.

Not accurate.  See the second link I posted  It details 2 large US research reactors active in the 70s and 80s.  There were also several projects ongoing in other countries during that time.

[DougSpindler]

Thorium reactor have some very serious technical issues.  Conspiracy theorists like to say it was Nixon who wanteed neucelar weapons.  While it is true the US did have over 80,000 nuclear weapons at one time we also know Thorium has many technical issues which we still have not figured out.  China was suppose to have a working Thorium reactor in a few years.  But like everyone else they encountered the same technical libations which they were unable to solve.   Just last year they abandoned the project and like everyone else, came to the conclusion it’s not feasible.

Width the progress being made with next gen nuclear, there is no reason for a Thorium reactor.  Sorensen has been trying to get funding for a Thorium reactor for years.  To date no one has provided him with any funding this includes the billionaires.  The billionaires have all invested money in Next Gen Nuclear not Thorium.  There’s a reason they are not funding Thorium as in it’s just not feasible.  Where as Next Gen Nuclear is far more promising.

[Marco]

People have been pumping billions into sodium cooled reactors for decades, they burn well.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Accept that fossil fuels are a generally bad idea. Help to change things where you can. Drive the old gas guzzler as long as your conscience permits.

Fossil fuels are the dog's bollocks, the only pity is that, they won't last forever.

[wraper]

Fossil fuels are the dog's bollocks, the only pity is that, won't last forever.

Then visit some city in China like Harbin and realize that very often you don't want to go outside without a gas mask. 

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Also: Accept that some people are genuinely happy with their electric cars. A lot of them have more than one car and still choose the electric one for the daily commute. By choice! Go figure!!

I know, I have one, but ICEs are still better and proven and cost less to buy and to repair and have longer range and you can fix them yourself and there's abundance of third party repair parts and don't come loaded with silly gadgets that no one wants nor asked for nor faulty half cooked fake "autopilots" that want to kill you nor have custom ultra heavy hyper expensive batteries -that can catch fire spontaneously- with a date of expiry hidden somewhere and that only work ~ well in cool-ish climates.

Other than that, yes, I like torque more than power. In that EVs get an A+. Only in that.

[nctnico]

Fossil fuels are the dog's bollocks, the only pity is that, won't last forever.

Then visit some city in China like Harbin and realize that very often you don't want to go outside without a gas mask. 

But that is not due to fossil fuels. That is due to not reducing / filtering NOx and SOx emissions.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Then visit some city in China like Harbin and realize that very often you don't want to go outside without a gas mask. 

No way we would be almost 8 billion now if it were not for the fossil fuels. How about that?

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Human lives have blossomed all over the earth thanks to fossil fuels, or, put it another way, fossil fuels have saved thousands of millions of starvation. Like it or not, that's the facts, put it in your head fanboys.

[wraper]

Fossil fuels are the dog's bollocks, the only pity is that, won't last forever.

Then visit some city in China like Harbin and realize that very often you don't want to go outside without a gas mask. 

But that is not due to fossil fuels. That is due to not reducing / filtering NOx and SOx emissions.

As if those come from nowhere  , not to say that smog is not limited to China. Say USA is affected as well. Also you cannot filter all emissions at reasonable expense.

[Fungus]

Human lives have blossomed all over the earth thanks to fossil fuels, or, put it another way, fossil fuels have saved thousands of millions of starvation. Like it or not, that's the facts, put it in your head fanboys.

Historically speaking, most of that was due to horses. How many horses do you keep?

[coppice]

Human lives have blossomed all over the earth thanks to fossil fuels, or, put it another way, fossil fuels have saved thousands of millions of starvation. Like it or not, that's the facts, put it in your head fanboys.

Historically speaking, most of that was due to horses. How many horses do you keep?

Try looking at a graph of the world's population over time. It grew slowly but steadily from the earliest time for which they can get a reasonable estimate until 1770. After 1770 the world's population started to explode, starting in the UK, then Europe, and slowly the rest of the world. In 1769 James Watt patented the first efficient steam engine. There is a connexion. The UK population is about 12 times what it was in 1769.

[Fungus]

Then visit some city in China like Harbin and realize that very often you don't want to go outside without a gas mask. 

No way we would be almost 8 billion now if it were not for the fossil fuels. How about that?

Everything you say here my first thought is, "Is that supposed to be a good thing?"

[nctnico]

Fossil fuels are the dog's bollocks, the only pity is that, won't last forever.

Then visit some city in China like Harbin and realize that very often you don't want to go outside without a gas mask. 

But that is not due to fossil fuels. That is due to not reducing / filtering NOx and SOx emissions.

As if those come from nowhere  , not to say that smog is not limited to China. Say USA is affected as well. Also you cannot filter all emissions at reasonable expense.

You can. In West Europe we have been doing that for decades and the lower SOx levels compared to the US and China show the result. Over 25 years ago I visited a coal power plant which used filters to get rid of NOx and SOx. A by-product was plaster which got used by the building materials industry.
It is not a new phenomenon either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London All in all it is just a matter of how important your health is to your government.

[Kjelt]

London in Victorian era was even worse.

[wraper]

You can. In West Europe we have been doing that for decades and the lower SOx levels compared to the US and China show the result. Over 25 years ago I visited a coal power plant which used filters to get rid of NOx and SOx. A by-product was plaster which got used by the building materials industry.

But can you filter CO2 without spending so much energy that it's basically pointless? Particularly here, I notice climate change quiet a lot during last decades. Weather, especially during winter is nothing like it was 20-25 years ago. In China population is much denser, therefore effects are more noticeable. Also they are not nearly the worst ecology offenders. If China created as much pollution per person as US, it would be much worse than it is.

[nctnico]

You can. In West Europe we have been doing that for decades and the lower SOx levels compared to the US and China show the result. Over 25 years ago I visited a coal power plant which used filters to get rid of NOx and SOx. A by-product was plaster which got used by the building materials industry.

But can you filter CO2 without spending so much energy that it's basically pointless? Particularly here, I notice climate change quiet a lot during last decades. Weather, especially during winter is nothing like it was 20-25 years ago. In China population is much denser, therefore effects are more noticeable. Also they are not nearly the worst ecology offenders. If China created as much pollution per person as US, it would be much worse than it is.

Hold your horses! CO2 is not causing smog!!! It is the by products (like NOx and SOx) from burning fossil fuels which cause smog.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

You can. In West Europe we have been doing that for decades[..]

But can you filter CO2[..]

CO2 is colourless, it's not the fog in that picture.

[coppice]

You can. In West Europe we have been doing that for decades and the lower SOx levels compared to the US and China show the result. Over 25 years ago I visited a coal power plant which used filters to get rid of NOx and SOx. A by-product was plaster which got used by the building materials industry.

But can you filter CO2 without spending so much energy that it's basically pointless? Particularly here, I notice climate change quiet a lot during last decades. Weather, especially during winter is nothing like it was 20-25 years ago. In China population is much denser, therefore effects are more noticeable. Also they are not nearly the worst ecology offenders. If China created as much pollution per person as US, it would be much worse than it is.

You are confusing two completely separate issues:

• CO2 is colourless and largely harmless at the ground level. In fact a modest increase in CO2 makes plants grow faster. CO2 is a problem in the higher atmosphere where it acts like a greenhouse, reduces the earth's heat loss, and makes the Earth warm up.
• Smog and acidic rain damage to forests and cities are the results of sulphur and nitrogen oxides, resulting from burning dirty fossil fuels, and burning under such extreme conditions that atmospheric notrogen becomes oxidised.
  When I was a small child in 1950s London smog was awful, and killed large numbers of London's weaker citizens each winter. The problems came when there was fog, and the sulphur and nitrous oxides dissolved in the water droplets, resulting in a thick yellow acidic atmosphere - this is smog. They passed a clean air act, banning the domestic use of dirty coal for heating and demanding improved industrial pollution control, and within a few years the air in London became fairly civilised. Since then power stations across Europe have filtered much of the sulphur and nitrogen based gases within their flues, and the output of these acidic pollutants had dropped a lot. Low sulphur diesel fuel has improved diesel vehicle pollution a lot, but the higher temperatures in modern highly turbocharged small capacity diesel vehicles can cause a lot more atmospheric nitrogen to be turned into nitrous oxides, and we've seen various scandals related to cheating on that front.

Sulphur and nitrous oxides from industrial systems are only present in fairly small amounts, and in many cases there are simple ways to catch them in liquid or solid form. CO2 and water and the dominant results of most combustion. There is a lot of CO2, and its basically carbon ash. So, its not the most reactive of materials to be able to chemically catch it, and it doesn't dissolve in huge quantities. Most proposed carbon dioxide grabbing schemes have centred on catching and storing the CO2, but that's tough. Nobody has successfully demonstrated a practical way to do that on a large scale. There have been various attempts (try Googling for carbon dioxide sequestration), but they've pretty much all shut down in failure.

By the way, some of the worst pictures you see of terrible city air in China are due to fine dust blown hundreds of kilometres from arid dusty countryside. Other cities were plagued by rapid construction, without dust catchers covering the towers during construction. They use nets to catch most of that now. Other cities are plagued mostly by combustion related pollution.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

EV news: Another Tesla catches fire spontaneously "out of the blue" in LA:

[wraper]

EV news: Another Tesla catches fire spontaneously "out of the blue" in LA:

"Our initial investigation shows that the cabin of the vehicle was totally unaffected by the fire due to our battery architecture, which is designed to protect the cabin in the very rare event that a battery fire occurs," the company noted in a statement.

Probably battery was pierced from the bottom as in a few previous cases. AFAIK they increased mechanical protection on the bottom at some point of time.
FWIW Ford Kuga owners in SA were/are driving with a brick on a nearby seat to smash window and get out of a car if fire happens. More than 50 of those catched fire in SA alone, including man trapped inside and burned alive. Kuga/Escape fires occurred elsewhere too. If you think than other ICE cars don't catch fire, you are wrong as well.

[wraper]