Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Sorensen on Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors

Tom has been posting some very important energy related blogs here; pointing out what I also think are some key issues around our current global approach to energy and some potential limitations and environmental issues.

Here is a video by Thorium Nuclear "crusader" Kirk Sorensen on the intriguing aspects of that potential global energy source. It is a long video (1:37:00) but is well worth the time. The first few minutes of the video are summary cuts of the formal presentation so you can watch that and it may whet your appetite for knowledge. Many peripheral issues come up such as the Fukishima nuclear melt down, general safety designs, Chernobyl, climate change, atmospheric carbon, water desalinization, effects of radiation on our bodies and of course politics.

In his public awareness campaign, Sorensen seems to be on a parallel path with MMT as far as he has little to no funding to support his public awareness campaign, is using the new media to leverage his information and personal efforts, and doesnt seem to have any corporate sponsorship and little to no government policy support or even awareness.

So perhaps consider "helping a brother out" and invest some time here, you will learn something I guarantee it.

5 comments:

Vytautas Vakrina said...

"In his public awareness campaign, Sorensen seems to be on a parallel path with MMT as far as he has little to no funding to support his public awareness campaign, is using the new media to leverage his information and personal efforts, and doesnt seem to have any corporate sponsorship and little to no government policy support or even awareness."

MMT doesn't need corporate or government sponsorship. MMT'ers just need to create a taxonomy and implement chartalist monetary framework for that taxonomy for the attention economy. It's not so difficult.

Tom Hickey said...

As a macro theory holding that only real resources constitute an economic constraint, MMT needs to be focusing more attention on this dwindling availability in its analysis and presentation. Availability of real resources is the elephant in the room that most economists are ignoring or dismissing.

A credible macro theory for setting policy has to engage at the level of the fundamental problems. These problems are global in scope —idle or under-utilized human resources and growing scarcity of real resources in the face of population growth and emerging economies.

Matt Franko said...

V,

What do you mean by "create a taxonomy"? Resp

Anonymous said...

No one is denying the possibility and effect of cost-push inflation. We're just not in that situation yet. Resources are under-utilized, which is symptomatic of a recession or lower economic activity. Only when resource constraints manifest themselves as price increases will economists of all stripes focus on it.

Politically, the only problems worth solving are immediate ones, real or imagined. And this is in part due to the election cycle.

Vytautas Vakrina said...

My answer to Matt seems to be filtered by spam filter.