Saturday, August 20, 2011

Salt Lake Tribune: Utah moving closer to getting its first nuclear power plant

by Brandon Loomis

In response to this article, Kirk Sorensen says that they should consider LFTR's instead of a LWR. Utah is pretty dry, and the LFTR's are an air-cooled design. A LFTR would be easier on the environment. Not to mention that it is a safer and cheaper design.

Why consider anything else?

Because there's a lot of money in building these things, and there are those who would rather spend a lot of money as opposed to spending less money in order to accomplish the same thing. So the most expensive design, the LWR will get built, as long as somebody doesn't stop it first. In the meantime, they get no power, and probably waste a lot of time and money.

Update:

Sorensen tweeted a link to this article, which I will link to here.  The striking thing was that it was written in 1959.  These problems aren't new.   Yet we are not making sufficient progress in solving them.


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