Thai environment, energy, safety issues

Solar Power

By Anonymous, Created on: 29/03/2005, Last updated on: 31/03/2015

» I dont understand why Thailand is not using the sun which is there 365 days/year. Can anybody tell me ? I am in the process of building a house but when it comes to solar energy i might have to import myself to only then be confronted with a high import tax on such products. And that while closing...

• hawaiiman commented : People are so strange! they like to use power all odd hours of day or night. They want their beer cold whether the sun is out or not, if ManU is on at 1:00 am, they want to watch it, etc They talk about being eco friendly, and then put in a system that requires lead acid battery back-up. Sorry, I know most of these points have been covered. My point? Uhhh.....wait...Oh Yeah! LFTR technology! It was developed at Oak Ridge in USA in the late 50's and a working plant was in operation for 10 years. This technology is so safe and stable, they could just turn the thing off Friday evening and switch it back on Monday morning. It uses low pressure fuel, so no hydrogen or steam explosion like in Japan and no chance of meltdown like Chernobyl. It recycles it's own fuel, so instead of 5-7% utilization like current plants, it uses above 99%, so no long term waste. Fuel is Thoreum which is common in the earths crust, and doesn't require the whole centrifuge complication to purify it (chemical rather than isatopic purification). So why didn't we go with it? The powers at the time were into making nuclear bombs and it is no good for that, unlike the systems we see today. Why don't we change now? GE and other heavy hitters make a good chunk of change selling nuclear fuel. Who is smart enough to do it? Chine (yup) sent a team to Oak Ridge and copied the existing files from the previous reactor and research. They will have first plants online in less than 5 years. With wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, you have to put the plant where the source is, then power lines to where the users are. Line loss 10%. LFTR can be small plants near the users.' Nuff said

• 58 replies, 163,778 views