Topic: LFTR and Market Failures - page 5. (Read 8529 times)

I watched the entire video, but the only part that was relevant, really, to the question asked was that 5-6 minute segment where he speaks about the AEC and the Wash report. There's an earlier segment where he mentions another factor, I don't remember the time stamp, so I'll just paraphrase it here: "It's not the money, it's the risk attached to that money. I can go to a bank and say I need X million dollars to build an oil rig, and I'll get it, because I can say it will take this long to build, this long to pay itself off."

So, all the factors that I can see as to why LFTR isn't being built in the private sector in the US right now:
1. The DOE puts massive barriers to entry in any atomic project, above and beyond those naturally there such as development costs.
2. Because those barriers may change, or become completely impassable, on a bureaucrat's whim, no private bank will fund such a risky project.
3. Government invested heavily in "traditional" nuclear power during the war. Shifting gears would be seen as a waste, or simply make them look bad, and is thus avoided.
4. Because of the DOE's massive barriers to building a new nuke plant, It's not very profitable to do so, when you can at all. So most of the effort and money goes into supplying the existing plants with fuel, which is quite profitable, especially since each reactor can really only take one kind of fuel.
5. As was pointed out numerous times throughout the video, LFTR is no good for making a bomb. The entire fuel chain is useless for blowing shit up. And we all know how much government loves to blow shit up. There's no incentive to get out of LFTR's way.
6. Another factor was mentioned later: Thorium is considered a radioactive contaminant by the EPA, and so mining sites which contain Thorium are avoided due to the harsh regulations.

So, to sum up, LFTR isn't being done in the US, because neither government nor the private sector has much incentive to change. Despite how profitable many of the waste products of LFTR would be, it's much more profitable to supply the current generation of reactors with fuel, because it's real hard to beat a monopoly for profits.

Nuclear technology was developed during a WAR. It was heavily wrapped in tape labeled "OFFICIAL SECRET" and kept from prying eyes. There's no way the private sector could have "beaten them to the punch", because the government had already tested their first nuke before anyone in the private sector knew there was even research being done. Had it not been for that war, private sector nuclear research would have been focused on efficiency, rather than bomb-making potential, and guess which reactor has efficiency?


LFTR was shot down long before the current situation with GE et al supplying the remaining reactors with platinum to burn (that's the analogy he uses, since the fuel used in modern reactors is roughly as scarce as platinum). LFTR was shot down by the AEC because they had invested too heavily in "traditional" nuclear already, and were not prepared to make the change.

You also seem to be conflating "unrealized profits" with "loss". They would not have "lost" that money, they would simply not have made the huge monopoly-level profits that they are making now.


If you didn't, you'd be able to remove your blinders, and see how much government is distorting the current energy market.

Also, just because your world-view is completely polarized on this childish level of "gov'ment" vs. "Free-Market Utopia" doesn't mean that mine is.  It doesn't mean that I'm going to worship the inverse of what you worship simply because I disagree with what you worship.  I choose not to worship anything. And I'm totally willing to see and understand the government's failures, because I know that the government is really just a concentrated representation of the society at large; not some type of mystical monster or "Leviathan" with its own corresponding mythology.  Our problem, and why you see our government stifling technological development is for the very reason that it is influenced, financed, and largely controlled by various oligarchical interests.  In this case in point it was the various energy industries, most pronounced being the Traditional Nuclear Power industry.

Problem: you took that tiny snippet of the video and deemed that that information was enough for you to conclude anything really intelligent or wise regarding what happened to cancel the program.  Of course, when one's world-view is so simplistic as to have to only keep an eye out for "the gov'ment" to knee-jerk a conclusion regarding something so complex, then one's "lookout" and "watch patrol" will never go far without being satiated on this superficial (and ultimately meaningless) level.

I'm glad I started this line of conversation, I've got Libertarians actually discussing real historical events rather than their unimaginative thought-experiments.  

Here's some obvious problems with your shoe-horning of this situation in regard to this real historical event:

*  FACT: The Technology happened solely due to government funding.  QUESTION YOU SHOULD HAVE:  Why did the Private Sector not beat them to the punch?
*  FACT:  After the traditional nuclear power industry realized that they could monetize the nuclear fuel industry these events happened and LFTR was shut down.  QYSH:  How much money would all these energy industries have lost, had LFTR's potential been realized?  ANSWER:  It's in the TRILLONS of dollars.

Because the people in your precious "public sector" discouraged them, and in one instance (see above) flatly told them no, you cannot do it. And now, all the private sector money is tied up in delivering fuel to the technology that the "public sector" pushed so hard to get going. So, it's as I said all along: Not market failure, market distortion, by government action.

The "market failure" part is that the technology has been available to the world for a while and no one in your precious "private sector" took up the challenge of attempting to make it.

OP question is answered at ~56 minutes in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4&t=56m

"market failure"? No. The atomic energy commision shot it down.

Yes.

Put ITER on hold, divert funds to intensive pursuit of Thorium/U233 power generation.
After LFTR solves the world's energy problems, fusion could again become an option.

LFTR needs way less magic, money, basic science and engineering breakthroughs to be commercially successful in a huge way.

Green-left-environmentalist resistance to safe and sound nuclear in place of coal seems to be an inherited remnant from cold war nuclear-is-bombs-is-chernobyl thinking.

A massive push for thorium would save the world in more ways than one. Really. No, really!

LFTR in 5 Minutes is an awesome introduction indeed.

THORIUM POWAH!

Aggression: Initiation of violence, the threat of violence, or fraud. It's not a hard definition to understand, It's the same things your mom told you growing up: Don't hit, don't bully, don't lie, don't steal.

I thought I responded to this...weird. There was also a post elsewhere showing a wine called "Ponzi" that got deleted.

Anyway, I think the difference lies in that the distribution of rewards and responsibilities is obviously different between an individual and a group, so direct application of the NAP would seem to be more complicated. I think the NAP fails because people can define what aggression is for themselves anyway.

Landlords are any of the following:

- Individuals
- Partnerships
- LLCs
- Corporations

I've thought along similar lines as this but never really articulated it this well. I think the problem I have with it has something to do with the analogy of govt=person, but can't really put my finger on it.

LFTR has the potential to be cheaper than coal, though more development needs to happen first to determine if it is the case.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/healing-statism-93868

But it also demonstrates the silliness of the guy claiming the government is coercive. He's just a tenant. The nation is the landlord.

That's genuinely interesting.  I've never thought of it that way.

And the better statesmen have acted in close alignment of what we can understand the spirit of the NAP to be. 

Do you rail at a cloud for blocking your sun? No... but you might ask a person to move, if they did the same. If you think about the difference between those two scenarios, it will answer all the questions you posed.

They fail to recognize that despite property rights, we're all tenants of our governments, and the taxes we pay are rents. The governments themselves are the libertarian members of a pseudo-NAP based society called the world.

In the romanticism of the Libertarian's mind, they ignore that we are no longer frontiersmen and can't simply go homesteading wherever we like.  Every bit of land is owned on the planet.  New people born into the world that don't inherit any land are to do what according to the Libertarians?

How about the relationship between landlords and tenants? Homeowner associations and the homeowners?

How is the individual who cannot afford property not under the coercive control of his landlord? How is a homeowner not under the coercive control of the homeowner's association? How is any individual in a NAP society not under coercive control any time he steps off his property onto the property of another?