Nuclear energy - "Electricity so cheap it won't need to be metered!" procliamed in the 1960's

The comment about the increase in energy demand is a valid point, I see how many homes consume much more electricity than in those days though I would wager a guess that there are many that don't consume a whole lot more than back then, I think it is mainly the middle class families (with kids in the house) where we see the highest usage in homes.

I remember seeing some pricing for industrial electricity usage in the last few years and was amazed at the pricing. I think it may have dropped lower than 2 cents per Kwh in off peak hours and maybe mid 3's during day/peak times. This is places that use something like 1,000 - 100,000 homes worth of electricity at a time.

As far as I've seen from the research on current nuclear options, it seems that Thorium is a solid technology that has abundant and safe fuel (and waste), and the plants can be scaled to smaller units such as factory units, city/county/municipality units and even portable units for military applications like powering bases. From what I read there was something like ~200 years worth of uranium available at the peak usage of nuclear energy but there was 4-4.5x the amount of thorium available and there was some factor (whether efficiency or new mining prospects) which may increase the available amounts to 6-7x the remaining proven uranium reserves.

Since the paper on the amount of uranium was published, there has been a number of reports of the potential vast finds of uranium in some regions I can't remember and I think it may have been Afghanistan or Kazhakistan and possibly Chile & Peru area, and possibly Somolia. When I heard these stories, they were always linked to stories about land conflicts after companies prospected and the results were always kind of nebulous and the findings were of the minerals usually found along with uranium, so it was never confirmed, but uranium's close friends were reported to have been found and they reported that they expected to find uranium if they did proper searching. The one find, which I believe was in Afghanistan, was fairly large, covering a very large area, much larger than the area where it is mined in Australia. I would say that these reports have been in the last 10 years, maybe 15 - if anyone remembers hearing these or anything related, I'd be interested to hear what you remember and also what people think or know about Thorium reactors.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

where is my " flying car " ? ???

its quite dishonest that you hold the " prediction " :

nurclear power electricity will be too cheap to meter

but blithley ignore all other failed " predictions " from furturists of that era

Nuclear energy - "Electricity so cheap it won't need to be metered!" proclaimed in the 1960's

And it would have been , "if not for those pesky kids ...ermmm , I mean hippies or was it Russians(?)"

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: DigginFoTroof

where is my " flying car " ? ???

its quite dishonest that you hold the " prediction " :

nurclear power electricity will be too cheap to meter

but blithley ignore all other failed " predictions " from furturists of that era

That is why US is in deep SH#$ right now.

en.wikipedia.org...

It took us less than 100 years after the plane was invented to create an A-bomb.
Mathematically, there's no logical way we haven't harnessed free energy, or something extremely close.

I used to work with a guy (he quit a year ago) that was an engineer in a bio lab in Utah, that was more secret than Area 51 and most people still don't know it exists. He didn't share much when I probed him, but he did tell me that we have many things people wouldn't believe if it hit them in the face. If people knew of the tech we have secretly there'd be a national collapse because of the rage it would induce in the public. All of our problems are already fixed behind closed doors, everything we deem real is just a dog and pony show for you to suck on until you die.
Republicans, Democrats ... it's all a joke. They've managed to create a religion of an implanted perception, and many many people will fight to death to keep that perception 'true.'