In August 2021, China announced the completion of its first experimental thorium-based nuclear reactor. Built in the middle of the Gobi Desert in the country’s north, the reactor is undergoing testing. If the experiment proves successful, Beijing plans to construct another reactor potentially capable of generating electricity for more than 100 000 homes.
China is not alone in its intentions to reap thorium’s unique properties. In the past, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and other countries have demonstrated enthusiasm for research into the possible application of thorium in nuclear power.
What can thorium offer?
Thorium boasts several advantages over the conventional nuclear fuel, uranium-235. Thorium can generate more fissile material (uranium-233) than it consumes while fuelling a water-cooled or molten-salt reactor. According to estimates, the Earth’s upper crust contains an average of 10.5 parts per million (ppm) of thorium, compared with about 3 ppm of uranium.
“Because of its abundance and its fissile material breeding capability, thorium could potentially offer a long-term solution to humanity’s energy needs,” Kailash Agarwal, a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Facilities Specialist at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
Another advantage is that thorium-fuelled reactors could be much more environmentally friendly than their uranium counterparts. In addition these reactors — and nuclear power in general — do not emit greenhouse gases in operation, they also produce less long-lived nuclear waste than present-day uranium-fuelled reactors.
Not without challenges
However, several economic and technical obstacles make the deployment of thorium challenging. Despite its abundance, the metal is currently expensive to extract.
Maritime / China Unveils Plans For ‘Largest Ever’ Container Ship, Powered By Thorium Reactor
January 2024 Report: Jiangnan Shipyard, a division of state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), said the KUN-24AP, featuring a thorium-based Generation IV molten salt reactor, would prove safer and more efficient than the uranium reactors currently used to power warships.
China has an abundant supply of thorium meaning that it could be a cost-effective low-carbon alternative for shipping and other industries.
Did you know Russia is the largest nuclear energy player in the world? I certainly did not. Nor did I know China is building more nuclear reactors than Russia but only two in other countries compared to Russia’s fifteen. The video below, answers how Russia maintains control of the nuclear energy market through business, politics, and money.
VVER-1200 reactor is the flagship nuclear reactor and core product of ROSATOM’s integrated solution. Being an evolution of VVER-1000 reactors that were built in India (Kudankulam) and China (Tianwan) in the 1990s and 2000s, the new design features improved performance across all parameters and a range of additional safety systems preventing radioactive substances from getting out of hermetically sealed containment in cases of emergency. VVER-1200 has a 20% higher power capacity while having a size comparable to VVER-1000. It also has an extended 60-year service life, load following capability, high capacity utilization (90%), and an 18-month refueling cycle. The unit is expected to produce 9.1 trillion kWh per year compared to the VVER-1000’s 7.5 trillion kWh per year. The number of personnel has been decreased by 30% to 40% (on a per MW basis) due to automation, and the centralization of functions and processes. Other innovative design aspects have been employed to cut costs. For example, the project employs only one cooling tower instead of two.
Russia is considered the world leader when it comes to the export of nuclear plant development. Between 2012 and 2021, Rosatom initiated construction of 19 nuclear reactors; 15 of these were initiated abroad. That is far more than the next most prolific providers: China, France, and South Korea. Although China started building 29 reactors during the same period, only two of them were initiated abroad. France started building two reactors abroad, and South Korea four.
Selling nuclear technology is also part of Russia’s effort to gain influence and reap profits in countries that are new to nuclear energy. One of the reasons countries want to cooperate with Russia is that it offers a “whole package” solution. Russia can not only build a nuclear plant and supply fuel, but it also trains local specialists, helps with safety questions, runs scholarship programs, and disposes of radioactive waste.
However, offering attractive loans is probably Russia’s most powerful tool. These loans are usually backed by government subsidies and cover at least 80 percent of construction costs. For example, Russia has already lent $10 billion to Hungary, $11 billion to Bangladesh, and $25 billion to Egypt — all to build nuclear power plants.
Russia has operating nuclear reactors in 11 countries, and more are under construction or being planned. Besides that, Russia has also signed either memorandums of understanding or intergovernmental agreements with at least 30 countries around the world, mostly in Africa. These serve as a declaration of interest in nuclear technology or set an intention to cooperate on the building of nuclear plants, respectively.
X-energy, working in partnership with Cavendish Nuclear, is planning a fleet of up to 40 of its advanced small modular Xe-100 power reactors in the UK, creating thousands of high-quality jobs in construction and operations. X-energy is also proposing to develop a £multi-billion 12-reactor plant at Hartlepool, to be ready by the early 2030s.
X-energy’s intrinsically safe advanced small modular reactor (“SMR”) and TRISO-X fuel greatly expand applications and markets for deployment of nuclear technology relative to other SMRs and conventional nuclear. Its high-temperature gas reactor (“HTGR”) technology can support broad industrial use applications through its high-temperature heat and steam output. In addition, it can integrate into and address the needs of both large and regional electricity systems through more efficient load ramping and can support intermittent renewable (solar and wind) and other clean energy options with reliable baseload generation.
“This is a huge opportunity for Teesside and the country as a whole. There is a skilled nuclear workforce, with decades of experience of high temperature gas reactor technology, already in place at Hartlepool Power Station and the plant will be reaching the end of its life just as our project entered development and construction,” said Carol Tansley, X-energy’s Vice President of UK New Build Projects. “We can provide high quality local jobs and the broadest range of decarbonisation options for the area’s industrial base, and then use that experience to benefit similar regions across the UK.”
“Nuclear energy offers a major boost to industrial clusters seeking to rapidly reduce emissions and improve competitiveness by providing stable, local, low-carbon energy with long-term price certainty,” said Dr. Philip Rogers, Director at Equilibrion. “The opportunities on Teesside are clear, and with another five large industrial clusters around England and Wales, the potential national socio-economic benefits are huge, enabling long-term, economy-wide decarbonisation of transport and industry.”
Electricity use is responsible for less than a quarter of the UK’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, whereas demand from heat and transport represent more than twice the amount.
X-energy already has a project underway on the U.S. Gulf Coast which will produce high-temperature heat and power for the Seadrift, Texas, manufacturing facility of the materials science company Dow. Construction on X-energy’s four-reactor project in Texas is expected to begin in 2026 and to be completed by the end of this decade. The project is focused on providing the Seadrift site with safe, reliable, zero carbon emissions power and steam.
Surely the Australian government is aware of these developments and if so why are they not considering nuclear as part of our energy supply?
There are many different views of God. How do these compare with the Christian view? I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the video “Which God” as the Australian organisation that produced it is not flush with money. I would use it and I suggest you take a look at it and let me know what you think.
Elon Musk explained why he bought Twitter in a tweeted note in which he spoke about promoting a “digital town square” where various beliefs can be expressed within limitations. “The reason I acquired Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated healthily without resorting to violence,” he wrote in a tweet.
However, Musk repeatedly said that he shelled out the $44 billion necessary to acquire Twitter for tworeasons. The second is in reality the primary reason. Musk wants to make his dream of an everything app, a reality. The name X.com was Elon’s first company. It became PayPal when X.com merged with Confinity in 2000. PayPal was eventually bought out by eBay. PayPal is a niche payment system. It never aspired to be what Musk wanted for X.com to take over the world’s financial system. Musk’s idea for X.com, was to create an “everything-store for all financial needs: banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans.
According to his biographer Walter Isaacson, Musk had been planning to rebrand Twitter to X in a bid to fulfill his dream from the ’90s since before he took over the company.
A major plank of Elon Musk’s plan for expanding X into an “everything app” has been grafting a payments network onto its main social networking service. The details of this project have remained blurry, but dozens of documents the company has submitted to state regulators—which have not previously been made public—give a new view of the business. Those plans include a Venmo-like payments feature that will let users store money on their X accounts, pay other users or businesses, and even buy goods and services in physical stores.
Expect an announcement from Musk on X.com’s expansion into financial services before the end of 2024. Considering his success with PayPal, Tesla, Space X/Star Link, and now X.com, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, it is reasonable to conclude that X.com (previously Twitter) will shake up the world’s financial system.
This is all part of the Biblical prophesied end times scenario playing out in our day. Musk is the richest man in the world and he is becoming the person the world is looking to for answers. Undoubtedly, he has a brilliant mind and says the right things such as he wants what is best for humankind in all that he does. But as he comes from South Africa he is not a candidate for the Antichrist.
There seem to be many paradoxes in Scripture. Not in the sense that the Bible contradicts itself, but that the Bible proclaims truth that makes no sense to those who are not in Christ. Even for believers, we’re struck by the unfathomable workings of a God who makes all things work together for good to those who love Him.
For instance, Scripture proclaims that, for the Christian, to lose is to gain. We read that to be humble is to be exalted. Perhaps most amazingly, the Bible proclaims that Christ’s victory over the grave means that to die is to live and to live abundantly. But what I’m sure confuses many, in or out of the church, is this concept Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, where he makes the case for how our weakness is our strength. It’s interesting, especially given the fact that weakness is often considered a grave flaw, and something meant to be hidden.
“ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”2 Corinthians 12:9-10
How are we expected to boast about our weaknesses? We are far weaker than we ever care to admit. It is in ignoring our weaknesses that our lives become harder. In fact, Christianity only makes sense when you’ve reached the end of yourself.” Think about it — it is the proud who most believe they have no need for God. The plague of thinking, “I can do it,” has hurt countless relationships. But Christianity declares this profound truth that what often makes Christianity most understandable is rooted in the fact that we need help. We need saving. Why? Because we are weak and helpless.
James 1:9 tells us, “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger,” we shrink back in shame as we reflect on the fact that, more often than not, we’re actually slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to resort to anger.
And if you take a step even further back, it becomes clear just how quickly we fail in many other areas of life — especially when compared to how Scripture calls us to live. We often covet, lie, steal, and cheat. We may not be as heinous as a murderer, yet murder occurs frequently in our hearts.
Thankfully the Bible provides stories such as David and Bathsheba: Scripture tells us that David is a man after God’s own heart, and yet David not only sleeps with Bathsheba and gets her pregnant but he tries to cover it up and when that is unsuccessful he conspires to kill Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband.
“In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In it he wrote, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.”2 Samuel 11:14-15
Though David made a horrible decision, he took responsibility and had remorse for his actions. He earnestly sought God’s forgiveness. David penned Psalm 51, “A Contrite Sinners Prayer for Pardon,” after his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. In this Psalm, David brokenheartedly confesses his sin and asks for God’s forgiveness and restoration. David never stopped worshipping God.
Jealousy is such a blinding emotion that consumes us easily, and our hearts are hardened toward those we feel have wronged us. Scripture says to “bear with one another in love,” forgive “seventy times seven,” and “value others above” ourselves, but how often do those commands actually take priority in our lives?
Suddenly, when the world is crashing down around us, and we can’t seem to get anything right, we realize: “Wow, I truly am weak.” And it’s not just the rude awakening of becoming aware of said weaknesses that hurt, but the harsh reality of the fact that the world is quick to use them against us. Far too commonly, weakness is abused in the machinations of manipulation and mockery. And if the world was all we had to turn to, we’d likely find ourselves wondering: what’s the point of it all?
But thanks be to God because He does not define us by these weaknesses. Indeed, Psalm 103 declares, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. … The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. … He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” Don’t you see? We may struggle, fail, or feel dismayed, but our God does not treat us as weak, failing sinners. He treats us as forgiven and free children of His promise!
Perhaps among several seemingly paradoxical yet joyous truths in Scripture is this understanding of our weakness being our strength, for it is in embracing our weaknesses that we can see Christ’s strength. And this strength resides within us, for Galatians 2:20a states, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are new creations, and yet we still fail Him daily grieving the Holy Spirit. And yet, He never fails us. We neglect time with Him and time in His word, yet He never leaves us nor forsakes us. We made it necessary for God to send His Son to die on the cross, yet He has loved us with an everlasting love that leads us into eternity with Him. We take blessings for granted, yet He never stops blessing us. How astounding and unfathomable, this God we serve. May we never tire of singing His due praises, just as He never tires of holding us in His embrace of sovereign grace.
Adapted from an article in The Washington Stand 19/07/2024: Embracing Weakness Allows Us to Understand Our Strength Is Found in Christ by Sarah Halliday
Jordan Peterson interviews Elon Musk and discusses life’s deep things, like life’s meaning and purpose. It reveals the depth of intellect of both men. It is one of the most interesting interviews that I have watched and I strongly recommend it, but you need 2 hours to watch it. It was fascinating to hear Elon try and explain how consciousness evolved from hydrogen. It demonstrates to me that it is a spiritual issue, even intellectuals can be blinded to acknowledging their Creator to whom they are responsible. During the interview, Jordan often introduces Bible stories to make a point. It results in Elon saying he is a cultural Christian. God has used Jordan to challenge Elon about the existence of a Creator but not evolution. My prayer for Jordan therefore is that God will bring a PhD Creationist across his path who will be able to show Jordan that there is evidence to support the Bible’s young earth history and that evolution is a failed theory.
Elon Musk has twelve children and it was fascinating to hear him talk about them. He even disclosed that he was tricked into signing a document that allowed one of his sons to be given puberty blockers which in effect sterilised him. He has even challenged Newsom the Governor of California that if he passes the Bill allowing young people to be “mutilated and sterilised” he will move his companies from California.
When California enacted a school secrecy pact last week, Elon responded with surprising intensity. The law, which would require school personnel to lie to parents about their child’s gender identity was “the final straw” for Musk, who announced plans to relocate his businesses’ headquarters to Texas (Tesla’s headquarters relocated to Texas in 2021, but now SpaceX and X are set to follow).
He said that “the teachings of Jesus are good and wise” and called forgiveness “essential,” but he also put caveats around the teaching of Scripture and said he is “not a particularly religious person.”
But Jesus did not allow people to think of him merely as a good and wise teacher. Jesus claimed to be God. If Jesus’s claim was true, then he must be worshiped as Lord. If it was false, then Jesus ought to be considered a liar and a charlatan, and no proper source of ethical wisdom.
Essentially, Musk admires Christian teaching, but he has not received it for himself. In his personal life, Musk is unconstrained by a biblical worldview of human sexuality; he has divorced two women three times and has had children with at least four different women. He remains on the outside looking in, unable to access the great benefits of Christianity, including eternal life, which are only available through faith in Jesus Christ and submission to him as Lord.
It is interesting to learn why Musk has switched from supporting the Democrats to now supporting Trump and the Republican Party.
Why aren’t our politicians following what is happening in Canada specifically in Ontario. Watch the video below and hear from Ontario politicians on what they believe about nuclear power.
(CAMBRIDGE, Ontario – April 19, 2024) – BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT) announced today an investment to expand its Cambridge manufacturing plant. Already one of the largest nuclear commercial manufacturing facilities in North America, the site’s increased footprint will enable greater capacity to support ongoing and anticipated customers’ investments in Small Modular Reactors, traditional large-scale nuclear, and advanced reactors, in Canada and around the world.
The expansion, estimated to cost C$50 million, will increase the facility’s footprint 25 percent to 280,000 square feet. Additionally, over the next few years, BWXT will invest approximately C$30 million in advanced manufacturing equipment for the facility that has designed and manufactured hundreds of large nuclear components. This total estimated C$80 million investment will increase capacity significantly, improve productivity and create more than 200 long-term jobs for skilled workers, engineers and support staff in the area.
John MacQuarrie, president of Commercial Operations, BWXT, stated, “Our expansion comes at a time when we’re supporting our customers in the successful execution of some of the largest clean nuclear energy projects in the world. At the same time, the global nuclear industry is increasingly being called upon to mitigate the impacts of climate change and increase energy security and independence. By investing significantly in our Cambridge manufacturing facility, BWXT is further positioning our business to serve our customers to produce more safe, clean, and reliable electricity in Canada and abroad.”
Mike Rencheck, president and CEO of Bruce Power said, “The nuclear industry is powering Ontario’s economy, by supplying clean, reliable electricity, life-saving medical isotopes, and creating thousands of good jobs. We are supporting advanced manufacturing while providing a deeply decarbonized grid to attract new businesses to our province. The expansion at the BWXT facility in Cambridge is another great example of the positive impact our industry can have in communities all across the province. Clean air, cancer-fighting medical treatments, and economic expansion leading Ontario to a better future.”
Ken Hartwick, president and CEO of Ontario Power Generation (OPG), said, “As we refurbish our existing nuclear facilities and build new, OPG is also generating jobs and economic activity in Ontario’s robust nuclear supply chain. BWXT’s planned expansion is a great example of how building out a system to meet Ontario’s increasing clean energy needs is also paying dividends for our province’s economy.”
Premier of Ontario Doug Ford said, “We’re thrilled to see BWXT expand its footprint and create hundreds of new jobs in Cambridge. As our province continues to lead the future of nuclear energy, the company’s investment will help provide Ontario families and businesses with access to clean, reliable, and affordablepower.
The article in The Australian this weekend by Timothy J. Lynch, professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne, “The Assassin’s bullet shows why the left gets history all wrong” shows how academia and a society, that has rejected God as Creator, and His sovereignty over His Cosmos, will view events such as the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump. He provides an analogy of the similarities of the assassination attempts on Trump and Hitler, to underscore not how similar Trump is to Hitler, but rather, how chance and luck – good and bad – often decide history.
Lynch’s assessment of where academia and society are at is strangely accurate: “We have built a culture on a misplaced sense of mastery, that we can control the weather, that gender is fluid, and that grand theories are better than simple explanations for the death of kings and survival of presidential candidates.
He says, “I’ve spent a career in the social sciences. We tend to favour big causes of things. The economic determinism of Karl Marx was an inescapable part of the humanities for 150 years. Today, class-based analysis has been eclipsed by research programs setting out to show the explanatory power of race and/or gender. Entire university careers can be spun out sifting data to fit a chosen structural theory. Critical race theory is in vogue, especially in the US.
Its proponents claim that all issues, from the everyday interactions of men and women to global inequalities, can (and must) be tied to the racism of white people. In the Anglophobe West, you would be hard-pressed to find a college campus or government department that does not pay some sort of homage to this theory. It is only a theory, after all.
However, Trump’s narrow escape has no significant structural explanation. He was plain lucky. He moved his head, just as Hitler stood at the strongest part of the table, at just the right moment.
Academics hate this stuff. We are uneasy with the unexpected, the contingent, and the accidental.
We dismiss it as too epiphenomenal – as too unrelated to the big structural pressures we need to see manifest. To have world history turn on the turning of Trump’s head is impossible to model, measure, and predict.
We are still too close to know how the events in Pennsylvania will be remembered. But already, like those in Dallas on November 22, 1963, large causes, even conspiracies, are being found for what was simply one insignificant young man choosing to kill his significant peer.
The real agents of history turn out to be men such as John Wilkes Booth (who killed President Abraham Lincoln), Gavrilo Princip (who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand), and Lee Harvey Oswald (who killed President John F. Kennedy).
The structure within which each man acted is a historical curiosity, incidental or irrelevant. Their skill, and certainly their luck, changed history. So why, in our explanations of events, do we grasp for structure over agency?
One important reason, I think, is ideological: agency as an explanation makes people accountable for their actions. Oppressed people cannot be responsible for, much less accountable, for their oppression. Intersectionality, the faux science of progressive academia, fits everyone onto an oppressor v oppressed scale.
This leads to a contemporary discourse where the individual is exculpated from the consequences of his poor decisions. George Floyd, for example, did not make dumb life choices leading to him to Minneapolis that 2020 day. His killing could not simply be a chance encounter with a bad cop. Rather, his fate was explicable wholly in terms of the racism of the city’s police, itself part of the “white supremacy” and “structural racism” of the wider system. For the left, his agency was irrelevant; he had none.
A second related reason is the need to condemn a “great man” theory, that the history of the world is but the biography of great men. The new left recoils at the notion that great white men are the engines of history – what about all the forgotten women and people of colour? – while claiming these individuals are the progenitors of contemporary injustice.
The irony is the left’s implicit faith in the diagnosis of history as an inescapable structural force by one of history’s greatest men: a 19th-century Jewish economic theorist called Marx.
A third reason we prefer structure to agency is psychological. It is much more reassuring to blame society for what ails us than to admit that miscalculation and bad luck account for our lot. The popularity of psychology as an academic discipline, especially among young women, speaks to a deep-seated need for answers that religious faith used to provide. Instead of individual repentance for sin as a guarantor of salvation, we now encourage groups to find blame in structures they cannot control but must work to change.
Life and death do not work this way. I’d wager your greatest love and most profound tragedy will have more to do with chance and fate (the goddess worshipped by Romans as Fortuna) than with any systemic, structural, or social force.”
Lynch mentions that the once-held religious faith provided the answers to the big questions and what is required for salvation. But a world that has rejected God’s history of the world given to us by God in His Word, the Bible, is now facing the wrath of God. Fulfilled prophecy proves God’s Word provides the true history of the world. We should therefore believe the future end times prophecies of God’s coming Trumpet (Revelation 8;6-) and Bowl (Revelation 16:1-) judgements.
God is foundational to our existence; seeking replacements will be a futile attempt to achieve ultimate fulfillment. Adam was made in the image of God. Man is a trinity just as God is a Trinity. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we are Body, Soul, and Spirit.
Importantly, man’s spirit was designed to contain the Holy Spirit (oil), enabling him to be the “lamp of the Lord” on Earth and to be in a relationship with God.
“The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.” Proverbs 20:27
Sadly, the Holy Spirit departed Adam’s spirit when he rebelled against God at the time of the Fall.
In his epoch-making theological treatise, Knowing God, J. I. Packer put it this way:
“What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination, and lays hold of our allegiance, and this the Christian has, in a way that no other man has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?”
Once the grace of God has been tasted and peace is established with the Almighty all else becomes incomparable. God’s grace captures a believer unlike anything else. Hence, evangelism should become the communication of desiring grace for others as they react to God.
Stereotypically, people perceive Christianity as having to attend weekly church meetings, reciting prayers, having a narrow worldview, and restricting one’s lifestyle to do’s and don’ts. When in fact, the Gospel is freedom, fulfillment, and “unspeakable joy.”
“And you will know the truth,” Jesus promises, “and the truth will set you free”
“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”John 8:31-32
Paul similarly states, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans. 5:1).
Did Jesus and Paul purposely fabricate claims to try and make people feel good? Did they have huge egos that required authority over others? Were they deceived? If so, by whom or what? No, they encouraged people towards “the way, the truth, and the life.” so, through Jesus Christ, they can acquire God’s love by receiving the Holy Spirit to enable them once again to be children of God bearing His image.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Romans 5:5
The Gospel is powerful and its grace will surely materialize in those who wholeheartedly call upon the Lord Jesus. It’s a sure thing. The Holy Spirit assures it.
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 