Thorium is a natural by-product of rare earth mining. Beyond that, monazite sand is the most accessible source of thorium, and there are large quantities in India especially. The real breakthrough though will be extracting thorium from seawater, which is very feasible. See http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

Every time there's a screw up at these Nuke plants there's a litany of excuses and how it can never happen again. Then it happens again for some other reason that no one thought about.

There's a nuke plant south of Los Angeles that's now shut down. It received notoriety because they realized after construction that it was built backwards.

Here in an Australian desert Solar City we're perfectly at ease with solar, both mirror and photovoltaics. Any hobbyists can assemble a DC system for $3000 which will pay for itself in 4 years. Cattle station farmers no longer drive 1,000 km fuelling diesel pumps. Solar is strictly no problem. Dust cleaning problems? LMAO !!! I'll post feedback about what they say at the pub.

So. just because base load requires a natural gas generator we're supposed to give up our nearly free solar?

Wake up folks.

We have two privately run solar stations of several megawatts each in town. In major communities, convex solar heat concentrating provide most power. Users and shareholders making money.

"And all of them are heavily guarded objects."

Re: nuclear power plants, this is not quite true. Please check recent greenpeace action in Sweden. If they had come with malicious intent they could have created havoc.

The issue with energy is that no single solution is perfect.

Please check recent greenpeace action in Sweden. If they had come with malicious intent they could have created havoc.

My simple view on Green Peace is that it is specially made and sponsored organisation acting ONLY with malicious intents.

Just one more thing: even solar power is going to be cheaper than nuclear one very soon. If not yet.

http://theenergycollective.com/node/40559

Since solar subsidies ended here in 2010-11, imported solar panels have got cheaper. Self-finance is now better than the Govt plan ever was.

I am on the road today and will take some pics.

Base load will go nuclear. Greens will do better by keeping the bastards honest rather than trying to stop nuclear altogether and ending up having no dialogue with that industry.

@Vitaliy Yes, it's an old story. They did indeed build one of the reactor domes backwards. http://enformable.com/san-onofre-nuclear-generating-station-foia-archive/

The technical problems at San Onofre have plagued operators since construction as quoted in the July 12, 1982 edition of Time Magazine wrote, “The firm Bechtel was … embarrassed in 1977, when it installed a 420-ton nuclear-reactor vessel backwards” at San Onofre.

Here's your quote:

But news do not show you all the corpses made today on the roads. All the guys dead because of smoking, narcotics or alcohol. And of course, thousands and thousands who died because of coal plants. They even do not show you guys who fell down the stairs and break the neck. Somehow same principle do not work with nuclear.

Okay but we need roads -- while there are alternatives to nukes. Smoking isn't really a comparable issue, and narcotics actually are illegal. Coal? I would like to find out more, all I hear is that it contributes to climate change. Basically the consequences of a nuke accident are catastrophic potentially -- that's the difference.

Anyhow, if we run out of cheap fossil fuel we will undoubtedly give nukes a chance. Vitaliy, you always paint a dire, doom and gloom scenario, I hope you're wrong about all this stuff. In the meantime, I take solace in believing people, at least Americans, can lead far more efficient lives in terms of energy use and still maintain satisfying lives. Dump you SUV buy a bike. Take up hydroponics. Turn off your a/c. Stop eating so much. blah blah.

This, again, goes directly above nature and logic. As US and his satellites constantly fight for resources, food and colonies (now it is called "bring democracy"). So people in US could live the way they live. Otherwise go and check how guys live in Africa or any other slums. It'll be exactly how it'll look as soon as military force will be destroyed and access to energy, resources and colonies will be eliminated.

Who exactly is going to destroy the US military? Should that happen, I suspect the entire planet will look much worse than even the most destitute regions of Africa. You need a pretty big gun to take down Uncle Sam, and he won't go quietly into the night. We have a lot of bombs and stuff.

And I don't see how you can say the US will go from extreme wealth to extreme poverty. That's a binary. Plenty of tolerable levels between the two extremes.

About US resources, don't forget, the US is one of the world's great agricultural regions. Our farms can feed the entire planet if we wanted. Further, there are reports that the US might become the next Mid East -- with regards to energy reserves. Shale reserves are estimated around 1 billion barrels. The other thing, you're an advocate of nuke power. US is easily the most technologically advanced country and has the greatest industrial capacity (sorry China), so who else, if push came to shove, is more capable of implementing a nuke based power grid?

You give good evidence that things are going in the wrong direction. But I don't think you've come any where near proving that the USA is destined to return to the stone age.

OK, I promised to post some solar-type pics from today's road trip:

1) An old (1985) Microwave tower, powered by solar;

2)Two station hands who work for my 89-year-old neighbour. He's too old to change from the old diesel-driven water pumps for his cattle. In today's 41 deg heat, these guys had to drive this barely roadworthy P-Plated vehicle over dangerous, isolated tracks to refill and re-start the pumps. ("P" is for "Pastoral" - some of these vehicles don't even have doors!)

If the old guy'd go solar, he'd water his cows using a button in his air-con office and count them all at the water hole via web-cam like everybody else.

3) Lastly, An old Optical Fibre phone relay station. Note the blank spots where the old panels have been removed. The newer panels are so much more powerful they don't need so many these days.

I wanted to take pics of the multi-megawatt solar power station in town but by the time I arrived it was dark.

(all pics taken with Sigma Foveon Dp1)

green means cold and soon dirty too, the same deputy planned the same plot for water ...

Innovative solar cell structure stores and supplies energy simultaneously

In a quest for a smaller, more self-sustaining solar power source, a UW-Madison electrical engineer has proposed a design for solar panels that can simultaneously generate power from sunlight and store power reserves for later, all within a single device. ... ..He and his students developed the technology as an offshoot of a National Institutes of Health grant to design a self-focusing contact lens

"You could have one solar panel installed that will store the energy the system might need through nights and cloudy days," says Jiang.

From Phys.org June 7, 2013