Original Proposal -- Nuclear Fusion and 50 More Years Wandering in the Wilderness Shunning the Promised Land -- April 9th

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Many of you will recall our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns following our Feb 2014 and Oct 2012 meetings in which stated, inter alia, that (1) LFTR’s (Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors) require minimal containment chambers because meltdowns are physically impossible since LFTR’s operate near atmospheric pressure, (2) LFTR’s do not require elaborate cooling systems because they operate well below the boiling point of molten salt and can be passively cooled, (3) thorium has such an incredibly-high “burn-up” that there is virtually no long-lived radioactive waste, and (4) thorium is so stable that it is impossible to make a nuclear weapon from thorium which is why the U.S. turned to uranium and plutonium instead of thorium.

And implored both President Obama and the DOE Secretary to make Thorium FISSION a reality as soon as possible.

Accordingly, it is shocking and appalling (at least at first blush) to see that the 3/3/2014 issue of The New Yorker is putting its weight behind a nuclear fusion project which has already consumed zillions of dollars over MORE THAN 50 YEARS and is projected to require AT LEAST ANOTHER 10 YEARS (IF EVER) to completion!!!

And requires magnets weighing 2 MILLION POUNDS to suspend in a vacuum the nuclear-fusion material because there are no substances on earth capable of containing it!!!

[No mention in The New Yorker article about what happens if the electric current powering the magnets fails -- for example whether there is an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a nuclear bomb.]

It appears obvious from reading between the lines of The New Yorker article that nuclear fusion suffers from the same problem as uranium-fission reactors = they are both, in essence, trying to control a nuclear/thermonuclear bomb explosion in order to extract energy -- in contrast to thorium which, as mentioned in our e-mail campaigns, is incapable of exploding.

And even if the nuclear-fusion technology after another decade proves feasible, The New Yorker article ignores the horrendous expense of all of the massive equipment comprising each fusion power plant. And how incredibly expensive will be the power-transmission lines for distributing the electricity.

In contrast to the thorium reactors which need no containment chambers. And can be so small (and cheap) that one is located in every basement, making obsolete the incredible expense of power-transmission lines.

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Cal Burgart (PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the US National Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN), who served as our nuclear-engineering expert for our 10/10/2012 meeting on Thorium Nuclear Reactors and our 4/13/2011 meeting on the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, will participate in our 4/9/2014 meeting.

Please help us gather and evaluate this and more information about a project that is highly controversial, even though The New Yorker does not seem to think so.

And help us decide whether to send strong rebukes to the Editor of the New Yorker and to U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein who, per the article, is responsible for wasting the U.S. government’s funds on this project.
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