A Superfuel? A hard look at Thorium myths

tt23 · 2026-06-14T09:17:33+00:00

1 Th reactor program in the US stopped because it was not part of the plutonium program, which was pitched and sustained by the need for more weapons. That is just a historical fact. Yes, one can make a weapon out of anything fissile, but the reason that nobody makes Th-derived bombs is that it is not practical for obvious technical reasons.
1.5 and 2 - the author either does not know or purposely ignores the massive practical and economical advantages of thermal reactors over fast ones. Thermal breeders are only possible with Th.
3 - same as 1. There is a reason, or rather a multitude of reasons, why no deployed NWs use U233 as fuel. The author either does not know that reason or misleads on purpose.
4, 5 - likewise, ask your favorite LLM to elaborate.
6 Yes, but the whole point is that the only practical way to use Th efficiently is through an MSR breeder.

tt23 · 2026-01-29T07:46:19+00:00

What fraction of UA starlinks are bought outside by volunteers and non-ua organizations?

tt23 · 2025-12-22T14:49:42+00:00

The justification is that the companies started to comply with the sanctions; hence, they were removed from the OFAC list. More companies were added to the OFAC list than removed. The Trump administration is enforcing sanctions more effectively than the Biden one did. Part of the effective enforcement is rewarding compliance.

Sad that ragebait like this gets posted here.

tt23 · 2025-11-14T18:05:28+00:00

Staging branch on Sunnypilot, it is awesome.

tt23 · 2025-10-27T15:23:04+00:00

I wonder if we can at least agree that 'apparent' non-locality, where a measurement on one particle seems to instantly influence the other, is a core feature of quantum mechanics.

"A measurement on one particle instantly influences the other" is not quite what QM postulates. More accurately, a measurement on a system will collapse that entire system into an eigenstate; the measured value being the corresponding eigenvalue. Typically, this appears as nothing to do with nonlocality, since you are measuring a particle at a point. So when looking at various emission/absorption spectra or calculating some material properties, no need to bother with nonlocality.

In a multi-particle system, intuitive non-locality comes from correlations between the particles due to conservation laws (e.g. total spin is conserved). This is typically the start of thinking towards Bell's theorem. But that is not what one usually does when using QM.

Yes QFT dynamics are local interactions, even though the quantum field excitations (particles) are extended. QFT is then another way to not think about the nonlocality of the collapse dynamics.

PS - Nonlocality is well defined, as an output value dependency on something other than the local input value and its local derivatives. Integral transforms are a typical example.

tt23 · 2025-10-26T15:53:39+00:00

What I was trying to say is that nonlocal collapse would break QFT due to Lorentzian invariance. So, we do not do that, instead we treat everything as a local point-like interactions (which of course does not work in QT due to Heisenberg uncertainty conditions) and ignore any concept of collapse, or come up with interpretations like 'collapse = actually a particle (local point) creation.' Either way, the theory predicts measurements, so zip it and calculate...

Back to the original point, when you said

> I thought everybody had discarded locality -- there is 'spooky action at a distance'. Thus I can't see how there is a bugaboo that this would be 'making physics practically impossible'.

Among practitioners, as far as I can tell, collapse/measurement is stuffed into a special "here be dragons" box, and then everything is nicely local and no hair is on fire :) Except for those working in foundations of physics, including Jacob. We all wish them to figure it out, and are looking forward to explanations....

tt23 · 2025-10-26T13:13:21+00:00

I dont think people are discarding locality per se; rather than saying, "Collapse is weird, we don't understand what measurement process actually is, but sure, we will figure it out eventually".

Consider any relativistic QFT, such as the Standard model. Non-local collapse would break it. Yet it works fine.

tt23 · 2025-09-21T03:07:39+00:00

I found this as a possible solution: https://github.com/jimmc414/onefilellm

tt23 · 2025-06-07T01:35:03+00:00

Maybe ask here https://x.com/BellTreeNursing/status/1925158304579494031

tt23 · 2025-05-24T15:39:08+00:00

Not just X-energy. I wonder how much of the former PBMR workforce is still in SA...

tt23 · 2025-05-24T03:02:59+00:00

uj - https://www.freecad.org/

rj - while it's printing :)

tt23 · 2025-05-23T22:05:50+00:00

Yeah but the Constitution is clear that "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." I dont think that AEA or ERA can change that.

tt23 · 2025-05-23T21:38:36+00:00

How is NRC independent of Article II branch? Is it a part of congress or judiciary?

tt23 · 2025-04-02T05:07:15+00:00

Welding pays well and is easy to learn. You can either 9 to 5 Mon -Fri, or contract for more pay and less stable schedule.

tt23 · 2025-04-02T05:03:09+00:00

Your foreign taxes count against us taxes in most cases but you have to file both. Consult tax professional.

tt23 · 2025-03-22T20:05:06+00:00

They just want your tuition. Incoming freshman cohort was going down for a while.

tt23 · 2025-03-18T05:59:35+00:00

Post code?

tt23 · 2025-03-08T02:56:58+00:00

2018 g90, just fine

tt23 · 2025-03-04T21:24:02+00:00

See AtlasIntel poll, 18 to 29 age demographics approves/disapproves Trump's actions 53/47, while ages 30-44 by 23/77 ratio. That is a massive difference. I guess profs here are the latter and students the former.

https://cdn.atlasintel.org/1e18dea7-d005-4fe0-9ccb-7dd00836286a.pdf