No major change in the usage of energy since the beginning of the last century. We still rely on power plants built 1/2 a century ago. Cars run on the same hydrocarbon fuels, except now we can lug around heavy batteries too.
For every 1% increase in efficiency the world is using 2% more energy.
Yep Jevon's Paradox the more efficient the technology the greater the consumption.
At least it means we are finding efficiencies though take the nuclear energy industry no new capacity since the 1970s but it still retains the same market share due to improvements over the decades.
I'm hoping India's thorium projects will provide some critical success and show an alternative to the current fuels used in modern reactors. That is a project that has a 50 year vision, not the week by week energy policy of the US.
I think that Thorium was a smarter idea than uranium as an energy fuel historically the main reason uranium was used was because it was possible to build a nuclear weapon out of it while thorium reactors while not impossible to make nuclear weapons with was more difficult to use.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/fact-sheets/Thorium%20and%20Nuclear%20Weapons.pdfThere were already thorium reactors 30 to 40 years ago experimental types but they were destroyed in favor of a Uranium based alternative, that said India has a lot more thorium than uranium so it makes sense for them to switch over to that instead to power their cities.
Still if the world had thorium and uranium reactors built simultaneously instead of favoring one over the other as the founder of the nuclear navy General Rickover wanted the sustainability of alternative energy systems would probably have substituted oil and as long as proper care is given and we don't end up with Three Mile Island or Fukushima incidents.
That said this is also the same man who helped to develop the efficiencies of Uranium based reactors to its current standard by always seeking to improve it so he deserves some credit for that as well, although he did purge Weinberg in the process as a non-negotiating person.
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/admiral-rickover-missed-the-boat-on-thorium-and-doomed-us-all/4496The idea of using thorium for nuclear energy has been around for decades. But it has always taken second place to uranium because — get this — it is hard to make bombs out of it.
That's right; when the world's superpowers were waging the Cold War, the last thing they wanted was nuclear power that wouldn't destroy their enemies. The result of this was that Admiral Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, pushed uranium over thorium.
The scientists who worked for the military went on to civilian life after the war and replicated what they knew, and that was uranium-based reactors.
The sad part is that thorium beats uranium in all aspects of electricity production. It is cheaper, safer, faster, scalable, more efficient, and produces much less waste.
