The Week Touches on Thorium

I am quoted in the current featured article in the online edition of The Week, about thorium nuclear power:

Why are fans so excited about it? Thorium-fueled reactors are supposed to be much safer than uranium-powered ones, use far less material (1 metric ton of thorium gets as much bang as 200 metric tons of uranium, or 3.5 million metric tons of coal), produce waste that is toxic for a shorter period of time (300 years vs. uranium’s tens of thousands of years), and is hard to weaponize. In fact, thorium can even feed off of toxic plutonium waste to produce energy. And because the biggest cost in nuclear power is safety, and thorium reactors can’t melt down, argues Michael Anissimov in Accelerating Future, they will eventually be much cheaper, too.

Thorium addresses the biggest safety concerns: proliferation and meltdown, which would make the plants much less attractive as terrorist targets as well.

Here’s a quote from a NASA paper, “High Efficiency Nuclear Power Plants Using Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor Technology”:

As a result …

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Philip Moriarty Discusses Mechanosynthesis with Sander Olson

From Next Big Future:

University of Nottingham physicist Philip Moriarty is one of the few scientists who has been able to do extensive research into molecular mechanosynthesis. In 2004 Moriarty engaged in a debate with Chris Phoenix over the feasibility of molecular manufacturing. In 2008 Moriarty received a grant from the British Government to examine the viability of mechanosynthesis. In this Next Big Future interview with Sander Olson, Moriarty discusses the progress that has been made during the past decade, the challenges of working with diamond, and the prospects for building components out of silicon and diamond.

Question: You began the project for experimental work on molecular mechanosynthesis about five years ago. How is the project going?

Answer: The mechanosynthesis project has actually only been running for about 2.5 years http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/G007837/1 now and the initial goal was to explore the possibility of atom-by-atom assembly on diamond surfaces , i.e. to test the viability of Drexler’s original vision of making components out of diamond. But as Drexler himself recently pointed out diamond is a very difficult material …

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Transhumanists of the 2010s — “a Hardier Bunch”

R.U. Sirius writes:

Today, I think there are many more self-defined transhumanists. There is more willingness, particularly perhaps with post-Gen X young people, to define themselves… to stand up and say, without reflexive irony, “I’m a transhumanist!” or “I’m an atheist!” or “T’m a socialist” or “I’m a libertarian!” whereas it would have seemed almost gauche in the 90s.

Yes! More socially aware and technologically connected than people of the “Me Decade” and the decade right after it, the leaders of the 10s recognize the importance of groups and movements beyond the individual. This is the age of Facebook and Causes. People realize that intellectual movements, like atheism and transhumanism, need their support and identification to exist. Someone who is too self-centered to join any club that will have them is someone who will sit on the sidelines of history.

When I say “I’m an atheist”, it makes it slightly more acceptable to be an atheist, because I’m another person “putting my name on the line”. The point is that it shouldn’t be questioned or considered at all …

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Nanorobotics — Superior Materials

I’m still slowly going through Rob Freitas’ book chapter in the Future of Aging volume, there’s an interesting part where he lists the immense benefits of nanomedical (bloodborne) robots. Since I am especially interested in materials science I thought this part on materials was interesting:

Superior Materials. Typical biological materials have tensile failure strengths in the 106–107 N/m2 range, with the strongest biological materials such as wet compact bone having a failure strength of ~108 N/m2, all of which compare poorly to ~109 N/m2 for good steel, ~1010 N/m2 for sapphire, and ~1011 N/m2 for diamond and carbon fullerenes (Freitas 1999aa), again showing a 103–105 fold strength advantage for mechanical systems that use nonbiological, and especially diamondoid, materials. Nonbiological materials can be much stiffer, permitting the application of higher forces with greater precision of movement, and they also tend to remain more stable over a larger range of relevant conditions including temperature, pressure, salinity and pH. Proteins are heat sensitive in part because much of the functionality of their structure derives from the noncovalent bonds involved …

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John Baez Interviews Eliezer Yudkowsky

From Azimuth, blog of mathematical physicist John Baez (author of the Crackpot Index):

This week I’ll start an interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky, who works at an institute he helped found: the Singularity Institute of Artificial Intelligence.

While many believe that global warming or peak oil are the biggest dangers facing humanity, Yudkowsky is more concerned about risks inherent in the accelerating development of technology. There are different scenarios one can imagine, but a bunch tend to get lumped under the general heading of a technological singularity. Instead of trying to explain this idea in all its variations, let me rapidly sketch its history and point you to some reading material. Then, on with the interview!

Continue.

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Ben Best: Deficiencies in the SENS Approach to Rejuvenation

A new article from Ben Best in Cryonics magazine:

I am an ardent supporter of Dr. Aubrey de Grey and his work to advance rejuvenation science. The man is priceless and unique in his concepts, brilliance, dedication, organizational abilities, and networking skill. His impact on anti-aging science has been powerful. I have attended all four of the conferences he has organized at Cambridge University in England. For the February 2006 issue of LIFE EXTENSION magazine I interviewed Dr. de Grey, and for the December 2007 issue of LIFE EXTENSION I wrote a review of ENDING AGING, the book he co-authored with Michael Rae.

Dr. de Grey asserts that aging is the result of seven kinds of damage – and that technologies that repair all seven types of damage will result in rejuvenation. His seven-fold program for damage repair is called SENS: “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence”. Dr. de Grey asserts that repairing aging damage is a more effective approach than attempting to slow or prevent aging, and I agree with him. Being an ardent supporter of SENS has …

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The Navy Wants a Swarm of Semi-Autonomous Breeding Robots With Built-In 3-D Printers

Popular Science and Wired reporting. Here is the proposal solicitation.

This is a fun headline, but we’re still far from useful functionality in this direction. 3D printers can barely even print circuit boards except for a few exotic prototypes of trivial complexity at hilariously low resolution. More impressive than the progress so far in the DIY community is Xerox’s silver printed circuits. Various conductive inks have been developed before and nothing came of them in terms of commercialization. Development by Xerox started in late 2009, it’s been over a year now and no news yet.

In terms of strength, the products of 3D printers are weak and can easily be pulled apart with your bare hands. If you want a strong product you still have to go to the machine shop or foundry.

Interesting proposal solicitation, however it is worth remembering that military commanders have been making breathless requests for futuristic technologies since time immemorial. There will be no “semi-autonomous breeding robots with built-in 3D printers” of practical battlefield …

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