Elithrion comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 March 2013 10:45AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (341)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 March 2013 07:48:59PM 13 points [-]

I don't understand why we can't simply build an LFTR. I can't find anything online about why we can't just build an LFTR. I get the serious impression that what we need here is like 0.1 wild-haired scientists, 3 wild-haired nuclear engineers, 40 normal nuclear engineers, and sane politicians. And that China has sane politicians but for some reason can't produce, find, or hire the sort of wild-haired engineers who just went ahead and built a molten-salt thorium reactor at Oak Ridge in the 1960s.

Comment author: Elithrion 03 March 2013 12:41:04AM *  7 points [-]

I think looking at politicians as insane is entirely the wrong approach. Most of them are sane enough, they just operate under some perverse incentives (and I wouldn't bet on China's being too reasonable either). That said, allegedly China does have plans for thorium, although I'm not too familiar with the details. (Also, recent article suggesting plans are still going.)