Existential Crisis

The world is watching developments on the Korean Peninsula with trepidation and disbelief. How could we have come so close to a nuclear war? The time has come for an imaginative solution and a massive step forward in human consciousness. Researchers in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee in the 1960s ran a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) for almost five years before the experiment was terminated. It proved however, that nuclear power could be derived from a Thorium fuel cycle that has many potential advantages over the water cooled reactors which were chosen. • Much higher efficiencies are achievable – approximately 50% fuel burn rather than the 0.7% being achieved by conventional uranium fuel rods. • Operation at high temperature but ambient pressure – so no danger of melt down and explosion as at Fukushima or Chernobyl; a truly fail-safe arrangement. • Relatively low radiation waste products with much lower isolation periods – 300 years rather than 100,000. • Potential for true reprocessing of spent nuclear materials and redundant warheads into isotopes requiring reduced isolation periods. • No easily fissionable products for use in nuclear weapons – which renders the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty obsolete. The availability of Plutonium from the Uranium cycle was a major factor to the US Navy when choosing which technology to fund. So now we have an opportunity to show a world response to a global crisis. Instead of imposing ever tighter sanctions on North Korea, let’s invite the US government to donate engineering expertise to an international MSR research project that will de-escalate military tensions and effectively provide limitless, pollution-free energy to the world. If they wish, the US could limit their expenditure to the sums annually spent on their military exercises in the Pacific. China, as North Korea’s key ally, is well advanced in its MSR research and has a pressing need to lower air pollution in its major cities. We already have a motivated and trusted broker. Let’s strengthen their hand and replace this macho posturing with something of true value to humanity. In addition to avoiding immediate nuclear annihilation, a bonus outcome is an end to power generation from fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases. So we get to keep the polar ice caps, our Pacific islands and the major port cities in every part of the world. Like good health, peace has no downside. Human progress is possible if enough of us want it.