Rebutting Rees in the Ecologist and the Guardian
Eifion Rees wrote an article for the Ecologist and later republished it in the Guardian. The article was called “Don’t believe the spin on thorium being a ‘greener’ nuclear option.”
Eifion Rees wrote an article for the Ecologist and later republished it in the Guardian. The article was called “Don’t believe the spin on thorium being a ‘greener’ nuclear option.”
Unrelated, but Kirk, any chance you could give some sort of update on the discussion forum being down?
David LeBlanc
Good article. It seems that Rees is guilty of confirmation bias. He started with a prejudice and then looked for supporting evidence. When he found none, he crashed and burned with a load of red herrings and other logical fallacies.
I'm all for solar and win power. Unfortunately, they are not the panacea they dream they will be. Sadly, as others have pointed out, the Chinese are likely to be the ones to bring this to market first.
Let me add my voice to David's. Web is sad without the occasional dose of the EfT forum!
The Rees rebuttal was all well and good and it was easy to identify flaws in his article. I was much more concerned that there was no real rebuttal of the conclusions of the 2010 NNL Report, cited by Rees.
The latter seems typical of the sort of conclusions that will be drawn by establishment nuclear experts who assume conservatively that business will continue as usual with evolutionary rather than revolutionary change in energy policy. They thus correctly conclude that there will be no really strong push from governments for rapid deployment of 4th Generation nuclear and that, in consequence, no private companies or investors will be willing to risk R&D funding on the new technology, preferring, instead, to invest in the old with little thought for the future.