Collimatrix

Lilith by John Collier.  Interestingly, Mr. Collier was married to two daughters of T.H. Huxley.

The wife and I go to quite a few flea markets/thrift stores/estate sales.  The weirdest thing I collect are 1960's/1970's era records about trucking.  I don't know why I started collecting them, it just sort of happened because I thought they were amusing.  The king of trucking records is Red Sovine.  He was famous for his technique of talking through a song rather than singing it, telling maudlin stories about truckers, kids, and dogs.  He gave us the classic song "Phantom 309."  People may have heard the Tom Waits version of it.  Phantom 309 was also the inspiration for the character of "Large Marge" in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (Tim Burton's best film).  Anyhow, feel free to wrap your brain around these bits of Americana gone by.
 
This ad is all sorts of awesome.

 
I dare you to listen to this and not giggle hysterically at just how bad it is on multiple levels.  

Walter dug up these diagrams, I know not where from:
 

 

 
Very interesting, and you can see how much space the Soviet trick of turning the engine sideways saves.

Excerpts of YA-10 and YA-9 testing.

Getting this thread vaguely back on topic, there are analogous differences in liquid propellant chemical rockets.  In some rockets a portion of the propellant is burned to spin a turbine and vented overboard; this is called a "gas generator" cycle.  In others, the cold side of the turbine gas is used in the main nozzle.  This is "staged combustion," and it's part of the reason the RD-180 has such good ISP for a LOX/kerosene rocket.

It would only be un-Christian if he were shot dead with a little square piece of lead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdBBwg0_hKg

The Celestial Giants have often tried to destroy the earth with their giant grenades, but fortunately the Earth is protected by Space Jesus.
 

 

This is Electric Six.  If you don't know Electric Six, you're wrong.
 
The best thing to come from Detroit since tailfins on cars, Electric Six is the brainchild of professionally insane alleged heterosexual Dick Valentine (real name Tyler Spencer).  Their music is an eclectic, but somehow harmonious mixture of disco, new wave, metal, punk, and whatever the hell else they feel like.
 
Their early material was very accessible and dance-oriented, but the sound has since become more avant-garde.  Somehow, despite a high potential for pretension, they've kept the music extremely fun.  Dangerously fun.  Dick Valentine's lyrics are the deepest verse of our era; a mishmash of disjoined concepts that always comes to rest on certain recurring meditations.  The young girls.  Nuclear war.  Hair care products.  The Devil.  Drugs.  Presidents of the USA.  Fast food.  William Butler Yeats' seminal poem The Second Coming.
 
What does it mean?  Who cares.  Electric Six is the Cabaret of our times, if Cabaret were actually from Weimar-era Germany and not the 1970s.  Or maybe the comparison is more apt than I know.  Electric Six may be from the future; from some unforgiving, nuke-scarred tomorrow where Detroit is actually the least bad place in the world, and they're here to tell us not to worry about it.  Just don't worry.  See that young girl in front of you?  Just push.  Push.  Nothing could go wrong.

Super Comrade's thread on telling Japs apart from Chinese got me thinking about a dramatic, obscure bit of US history; the story of the Japanese and the state of Hawaii.
 
The Hawaiian Islands are a volcanic chain that's about dead in the middle of the Pacific.  The islands have undergone significant weathering over millions of years, which means that the island of Oahu has a natural deep water port at Pearl Harbor.  The volcanic soils are also rich in minerals, and this combined with the heavy rainfall makes the islands exceptionally fertile.
 
Hawaii was first colonized by Polynesians sometime in the early to mid ADs.  The islands were unified by King Kamehameha the Great at roughly the same time they were discovered by British explorer James Cook.  Descendants of Kamehameha ruled the islands as an independent kingdom, and attempted to maintain their sovereignty over them.  For various reasons, this was not possible in the long run and the United States annexed the islands in 1898.
 
American agricultural interests then set about stealing all the land from the native Hawaiians.  This was not a difficult task; Hawaiian concepts of land ownership were quite different than American ones, and most of the Hawaiians were illiterate in any case.  The native Hawaiian population began a long decline, caused by a trifecta of imported diseases, firewater, and having everything stolen from them.  Don't trust Johnathon.
 
(as an aside, there is still a vestigial Land Court in the modern State of Hawaii.  This was originally formed in 1903 as a way to solidify title to land as it was being stolen from the Hawaiians)
 
The agricultural interests began importing labor from overseas.  The majority of the population of Hawaii today are descended from these plantation laborers; primarily Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Portugese.  Sugar cane and pineapple were the main products, but taro (a traditional Polynesian root vegetable) and cattle ranching were also significant.
 
Statehood was not a popular prospect at this time because the majority of the population was not White.  Despite this, Whites kept a near monopoly on higher education (Punahou, the island's most prestigious private primary school and also where President Obama went to school, had racial quotas until the 1950s) and white-collar professions.  It should be noted that despite this, some Asian households managed to become respectably middle class, generally through the practice of several families pooling money together for investments.
 
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would, indirectly, change everything.  The Japanese population of Hawaii was interned; rounded up and shipped to prison camps in Wyoming.  This is a undoubtedly a violation of human rights, and to add insult to injury they were also in prison camps.
 
For young Japanese men there was a chance to get out of the camps; the 442nd Infantry Regiment.  This formation of Japanese, most of them from Hawaii, was to create a solid reputation for itself and suffer hideous casualties in the European Theater of Operations, including the brutal meatgrinders at Anzio and Monte Cassino.  For the men of the 442nd, service was a chance to prove their loyalty.  "Go for broke" became the unit's well-known motto; less known was another; "no bring shame."  They weren't just fighting to see the war over; they were fighting for their families who were behind barbed wire back in the US.
 
I want to emphasize this part; the 442nd was absolutely heroic in war, because what happened next was... less inspiring.  The men of the 442nd were proud of what they'd done, but they knew better than to expect the praise and recognition to flow freely.  They knew that while their families would be free to go (for the time being), they would still be second-class citizens.  Their position in society would not be secure until they dismantled the power system in Hawaii.
 
So that's what they did.  The men of the 442nd put themselves through college on the GI bill and became doctors, lawyers and most importantly, politicians.  Daniel Inouye is the best known of the bunch, but there were others, as well as a number of Japanese who had been in the Army but not in the 442nd like George Ariyoshi.  The wiki entry on George Ariyoshi is particularly interesting, as it alludes to the methods and associations that the Japanese politicians would use to take power in Hawaii.  Larry Mehau is an interesting guy, worthy of his own discussion, but that is not a discussion I am willing to have in a place where persistent, publicly-searchable records are maintained.
 
In short, a generation of Japanese politicians, many of them veterans, aligned themselves with the Democratic party and sought allies in labor unions, civil rights organizations, and well, people like Larry Mehau.  After a few strikes, a few well-placed publicity campaigns, and some under-the-table strings pulling, the Democrats were firmly in power in Hawaii, Hawaii was a state, and the old system of racial quotas in Hawaiian education was deader than disco (only it was still the early '60s, so the atrocity of disco was yet to come).  The state transitioned from a primarily agricultural exporter to a tourist destination.  
 
The Democrats' conduct in Hawaii since their takeover has been... good by the standards of Democratic management, I suppose.  Unlike, say, Detroit, Honolulu is not a smoldering crater, which given the relative volcanic characteristics of Hawaii and Michigan I suppose must lend the Hawaiian Democrats some credit.  I think it fair to characterize Hawaiian politics since the Democratic revolution as venal, corrupt and incompetent, but not disastrously so.
 
And so it goes.
 

This is Electric Six.  If you don't know Electric Six, you're wrong.
 
The best thing to come from Detroit since tailfins on cars, Electric Six is the brainchild of professionally insane alleged heterosexual Dick Valentine (real name Tyler Spencer).  Their music is an eclectic, but somehow harmonious mixture of disco, new wave, metal, punk, and whatever the hell else they feel like.
 
Their early material was very accessible and dance-oriented, but the sound has since become more avant-garde.  Somehow, despite a high potential for pretension, they've kept the music extremely fun.  Dangerously fun.  Dick Valentine's lyrics are the deepest verse of our era; a mishmash of disjoined concepts that always comes to rest on certain recurring meditations.  The young girls.  Nuclear war.  Hair care products.  The Devil.  Drugs.  Presidents of the USA.  Fast food.  William Butler Yeats' seminal poem The Second Coming.
 
What does it mean?  Who cares.  Electric Six is the Cabaret of our times, if Cabaret were actually from Weimar-era Germany and not the 1970s.  Or maybe the comparison is more apt than I know.  Electric Six may be from the future; from some unforgiving, nuke-scarred tomorrow where Detroit is actually the least bad place in the world, and they're here to tell us not to worry about it.  Just don't worry.  See that young girl in front of you?  Just push.  Push.  Nothing could go wrong.

Super Comrade's thread on telling Japs apart from Chinese got me thinking about a dramatic, obscure bit of US history; the story of the Japanese and the state of Hawaii.
 
The Hawaiian Islands are a volcanic chain that's about dead in the middle of the Pacific.  The islands have undergone significant weathering over millions of years, which means that the island of Oahu has a natural deep water port at Pearl Harbor.  The volcanic soils are also rich in minerals, and this combined with the heavy rainfall makes the islands exceptionally fertile.
 
Hawaii was first colonized by Polynesians sometime in the early to mid ADs.  The islands were unified by King Kamehameha the Great at roughly the same time they were discovered by British explorer James Cook.  Descendants of Kamehameha ruled the islands as an independent kingdom, and attempted to maintain their sovereignty over them.  For various reasons, this was not possible in the long run and the United States annexed the islands in 1898.
 
American agricultural interests then set about stealing all the land from the native Hawaiians.  This was not a difficult task; Hawaiian concepts of land ownership were quite different than American ones, and most of the Hawaiians were illiterate in any case.  The native Hawaiian population began a long decline, caused by a trifecta of imported diseases, firewater, and having everything stolen from them.  Don't trust Johnathon.
 
(as an aside, there is still a vestigial Land Court in the modern State of Hawaii.  This was originally formed in 1903 as a way to solidify title to land as it was being stolen from the Hawaiians)
 
The agricultural interests began importing labor from overseas.  The majority of the population of Hawaii today are descended from these plantation laborers; primarily Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Portugese.  Sugar cane and pineapple were the main products, but taro (a traditional Polynesian root vegetable) and cattle ranching were also significant.
 
Statehood was not a popular prospect at this time because the majority of the population was not White.  Despite this, Whites kept a near monopoly on higher education (Punahou, the island's most prestigious private primary school and also where President Obama went to school, had racial quotas until the 1950s) and white-collar professions.  It should be noted that despite this, some Asian households managed to become respectably middle class, generally through the practice of several families pooling money together for investments.
 
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would, indirectly, change everything.  The Japanese population of Hawaii was interned; rounded up and shipped to prison camps in Wyoming.  This is a undoubtedly a violation of human rights, and to add insult to injury they were also in prison camps.
 
For young Japanese men there was a chance to get out of the camps; the 442nd Infantry Regiment.  This formation of Japanese, most of them from Hawaii, was to create a solid reputation for itself and suffer hideous casualties in the European Theater of Operations, including the brutal meatgrinders at Anzio and Monte Cassino.  For the men of the 442nd, service was a chance to prove their loyalty.  "Go for broke" became the unit's well-known motto; less known was another; "no bring shame."  They weren't just fighting to see the war over; they were fighting for their families who were behind barbed wire back in the US.
 
I want to emphasize this part; the 442nd was absolutely heroic in war, because what happened next was... less inspiring.  The men of the 442nd were proud of what they'd done, but they knew better than to expect the praise and recognition to flow freely.  They knew that while their families would be free to go (for the time being), they would still be second-class citizens.  Their position in society would not be secure until they dismantled the power system in Hawaii.
 
So that's what they did.  The men of the 442nd put themselves through college on the GI bill and became doctors, lawyers and most importantly, politicians.  Daniel Inouye is the best known of the bunch, but there were others, as well as a number of Japanese who had been in the Army but not in the 442nd like George Ariyoshi.  The wiki entry on George Ariyoshi is particularly interesting, as it alludes to the methods and associations that the Japanese politicians would use to take power in Hawaii.  Larry Mehau is an interesting guy, worthy of his own discussion, but that is not a discussion I am willing to have in a place where persistent, publicly-searchable records are maintained.
 
In short, a generation of Japanese politicians, many of them veterans, aligned themselves with the Democratic party and sought allies in labor unions, civil rights organizations, and well, people like Larry Mehau.  After a few strikes, a few well-placed publicity campaigns, and some under-the-table strings pulling, the Democrats were firmly in power in Hawaii, Hawaii was a state, and the old system of racial quotas in Hawaiian education was deader than disco (only it was still the early '60s, so the atrocity of disco was yet to come).  The state transitioned from a primarily agricultural exporter to a tourist destination.  
 
The Democrats' conduct in Hawaii since their takeover has been... good by the standards of Democratic management, I suppose.  Unlike, say, Detroit, Honolulu is not a smoldering crater, which given the relative volcanic characteristics of Hawaii and Michigan I suppose must lend the Hawaiian Democrats some credit.  I think it fair to characterize Hawaiian politics since the Democratic revolution as venal, corrupt and incompetent, but not disastrously so.
 
And so it goes.
 

Super Comrade's thread on telling Japs apart from Chinese got me thinking about a dramatic, obscure bit of US history; the story of the Japanese and the state of Hawaii.
 
The Hawaiian Islands are a volcanic chain that's about dead in the middle of the Pacific.  The islands have undergone significant weathering over millions of years, which means that the island of Oahu has a natural deep water port at Pearl Harbor.  The volcanic soils are also rich in minerals, and this combined with the heavy rainfall makes the islands exceptionally fertile.
 
Hawaii was first colonized by Polynesians sometime in the early to mid ADs.  The islands were unified by King Kamehameha the Great at roughly the same time they were discovered by British explorer James Cook.  Descendants of Kamehameha ruled the islands as an independent kingdom, and attempted to maintain their sovereignty over them.  For various reasons, this was not possible in the long run and the United States annexed the islands in 1898.
 
American agricultural interests then set about stealing all the land from the native Hawaiians.  This was not a difficult task; Hawaiian concepts of land ownership were quite different than American ones, and most of the Hawaiians were illiterate in any case.  The native Hawaiian population began a long decline, caused by a trifecta of imported diseases, firewater, and having everything stolen from them.  Don't trust Johnathon.
 
(as an aside, there is still a vestigial Land Court in the modern State of Hawaii.  This was originally formed in 1903 as a way to solidify title to land as it was being stolen from the Hawaiians)
 
The agricultural interests began importing labor from overseas.  The majority of the population of Hawaii today are descended from these plantation laborers; primarily Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Portugese.  Sugar cane and pineapple were the main products, but taro (a traditional Polynesian root vegetable) and cattle ranching were also significant.
 
Statehood was not a popular prospect at this time because the majority of the population was not White.  Despite this, Whites kept a near monopoly on higher education (Punahou, the island's most prestigious private primary school and also where President Obama went to school, had racial quotas until the 1950s) and white-collar professions.  It should be noted that despite this, some Asian households managed to become respectably middle class, generally through the practice of several families pooling money together for investments.
 
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would, indirectly, change everything.  The Japanese population of Hawaii was interned; rounded up and shipped to prison camps in Wyoming.  This is a undoubtedly a violation of human rights, and to add insult to injury they were also in prison camps.
 
For young Japanese men there was a chance to get out of the camps; the 442nd Infantry Regiment.  This formation of Japanese, most of them from Hawaii, was to create a solid reputation for itself and suffer hideous casualties in the European Theater of Operations, including the brutal meatgrinders at Anzio and Monte Cassino.  For the men of the 442nd, service was a chance to prove their loyalty.  "Go for broke" became the unit's well-known motto; less known was another; "no bring shame."  They weren't just fighting to see the war over; they were fighting for their families who were behind barbed wire back in the US.
 
I want to emphasize this part; the 442nd was absolutely heroic in war, because what happened next was... less inspiring.  The men of the 442nd were proud of what they'd done, but they knew better than to expect the praise and recognition to flow freely.  They knew that while their families would be free to go (for the time being), they would still be second-class citizens.  Their position in society would not be secure until they dismantled the power system in Hawaii.
 
So that's what they did.  The men of the 442nd put themselves through college on the GI bill and became doctors, lawyers and most importantly, politicians.  Daniel Inouye is the best known of the bunch, but there were others, as well as a number of Japanese who had been in the Army but not in the 442nd like George Ariyoshi.  The wiki entry on George Ariyoshi is particularly interesting, as it alludes to the methods and associations that the Japanese politicians would use to take power in Hawaii.  Larry Mehau is an interesting guy, worthy of his own discussion, but that is not a discussion I am willing to have in a place where persistent, publicly-searchable records are maintained.
 
In short, a generation of Japanese politicians, many of them veterans, aligned themselves with the Democratic party and sought allies in labor unions, civil rights organizations, and well, people like Larry Mehau.  After a few strikes, a few well-placed publicity campaigns, and some under-the-table strings pulling, the Democrats were firmly in power in Hawaii, Hawaii was a state, and the old system of racial quotas in Hawaiian education was deader than disco (only it was still the early '60s, so the atrocity of disco was yet to come).  The state transitioned from a primarily agricultural exporter to a tourist destination.  
 
The Democrats' conduct in Hawaii since their takeover has been... good by the standards of Democratic management, I suppose.  Unlike, say, Detroit, Honolulu is not a smoldering crater, which given the relative volcanic characteristics of Hawaii and Michigan I suppose must lend the Hawaiian Democrats some credit.  I think it fair to characterize Hawaiian politics since the Democratic revolution as venal, corrupt and incompetent, but not disastrously so.
 
And so it goes.
 

Yes.  People who masturbate speculate about alternate history scenarios where the Germans develop this or that superweapon forget that the Allies had several superweapons, and actually fielded several of them.

Posted on the WOT forums, our very own Zinegata weighs in on the issue:
 
 
 
I wish that the US presidency were a sham institution, concealing a king.  Tell me when elections are suspended and whoever the hell is in the big seat starts having big posters of themselves put up in urban centers and having Congress machine-gunned down.  Twentieth Century history has plenty of examples of what happens when a country slides into despotism, and it doesn't look like this.
 
The US presidency was probably best summed up by that great sage of our times, Hunter S. Thompson:
 
 
The US president is basically a celebrity, with all the prestige and mind-altering amounts of attention that go with it.  He has slightly more say in the legislative process than a typical celebrity, which is itself highly ceremonial legacy institution, but this is barely worth mentioning.  Rather, the president is constantly surrounded by people who act like he is an important individual, and the sort of person who tends to succeed in politics tends not to be the sort of person who's savvy enough to figure out the essentially theatrical nature of the whole thing. 
 
You can tell it's a scam pretty easily.  Nixon campaigned on the grounds that he would "clean up the mess in Washington," only to oversee an enormous expansion of the same.  Nixon had been a hard-line anti-communist as a senator, and would go on to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China.  I seem to recall a certain governor of Texas campaigning for a "humbler" US foreign policy, and I think we all know how that ended.
 
 Clinton may have been an exception, as Clinton was an unusually high-functioning president, but generally speaking the poor dumb bastards don't figure out the scam until it's too late and twenty years have been sucked out of their lives.
 
Twentieth Century history also has plenty of examples of what a country looks like when it slides into militarism, and it's not like this either.  For one thing we'd use all those beautiful nuclear weapons that are just collecting dust. 
 
The US military doesn't decide to go on ill-advised adventures to bring freedom to remote corners of the world that frankly don't want it.  That would be the State Department's job, although within living memory the CIA did this sort of thing also.  The US military isn't a quasi-jail for undesirables who can't hack it elsewhere.  There have been armies that have operated on this model; the Prussians come to mind, and they've all had revolting and horrifying standards of discipline.  See the French and Spanish Foreign Legions for other instructive examples.  Further, the idea that recent combat experience is creating an entire class of dangerously unhinged, traumatized vets is beloved of the media, but not particularly well-supported by evidence.
 
The US military exists primarily to waste money.  This is so it has a larger budget to waste the next year.  Occasionally they do spend money on useful things, but since inflating the budget by wasting money is easier than inflating the budget by buying useful things, a much greater percentage of the money goes towards waste.  In this way it is similar, perhaps indistinguishable, from any other US government agency.
 
The military does have an unusual relationship with the so-called "private sector."  There are basically entire sectors of the American economy that act as the retirement plans for officers.  Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, GDLS and their ilk are the most obvious ones, but speak to any officer in the US military and you'll hear of companies that largely employ officers and make all of their money by selling things to the US military.  They need US military officers to help them navigate the byzantine regulations regarding tendering to the US military, of course.  You may have heard the phrase "self-licking ice cream cone."  This is it.
 
Now, this essentially incestuous relationship is by no means unique among US government organizations; it's just very well developed in the US military (the SEC probably runs a close second).
 
A rather small portion of the military does fighting.  Part of this is reflective of the realities of modern combat; the logistical shaft of the spear is much larger than the spearhead.  Part of this is a result of years of bureaucratic decay; it's easier to waste money arbitrarily than it is to waste money equipping people to go fight.

As far as truth goes, I can say that owning Chickens has reinforced my previously held conviction that life is not sacred. 

I hate peasant journalism so much.
 
In the entire article they make literally three correct claims:
 
1)  That thorium MOX has a higher melting point than UO2
2)  That thorium MOX has a higher thermal conductivity than UO2
3)  That there is a company in Norway called Thor Energy that is using thorium MOX in reactors.
 
Literally everything else they say is wrong.
 
Thorium 231 is not fissile.  While it's true that fissile isotopes are usually odd-numbered, not all odd-numbered actinide isotopes are fissile.
 
Obviously, thorium MOX does not "do away with uranium" BECAUSE THORIUM HAS TO BE BRED INTO URANIUM 233 IN ORDER TO PRODUCE FISSION AND I WILL KEEP SAYING THIS OVER AND OVER UNTIL THE FILTHY, MUD-LOVING FILTHY PEASANT SCUM IN THE POP SCIENCE JOURNALISM INDUSTRY UNDERSTAND THIS INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS AND SIMPLE FACT OH GOD I HATE PEASANTS SO MUCH I HATE THEM AND I HATE THE MUD THAT THEY WALLOW IN WHY CAN'T WE HAVE CLEAN MUD ALL THESE GODDAMN PEASANTS ARE POLLUTING THE MUD!
 
Yeah, read the whole thing, or don't.  It's horrible.  I hate peasants.  I hate hippies.  I hate them all.

I made an attempt at a Tu-22, came out alright, I guess.
 

Well, the TU-22 is proving to be a royal bitch, so instead here is a B-58 Hustler
 

 
A baby hustler, because the full size is kind of a bitch to fly with that drop tank.
 

So I'm the kid who was in high school in and around the Seattle area who didn't really care about grunge. I mean yeah, some of the songs are OK and Nirvana came from Aberdeen and whatnot. But what was annoying was all of the out-of-state grunge fans who moved to Seattle and started messing with the way things were. Worse they stayed. Worse yet, they made Seattle "cool" which attracted the rich Californians looking for cheap real estate after they had swindled their investors in some dot.com. Worse they stayed. Worse yet they started hiring hipsters and white collar douches to work at these companies, driving up real estate even more, clogging the highways, paving over and destroying all the good old places and making Seattle totally lame.
If I could go back in time, I would show Kurt Cobain the destruction that he helped bring upon Seattle. Or perhaps, someone already did travel back in time but got there five years too late.
*A shotgun blast is heard*
*Roll credits*

Fuck your rockets and space travel nonsense, the BUFF lives again!!!!!!
 
Ready for take off.
 

 
Cruising
 

 
Dropping ordinance
 

 
Fly-by of KSC
 

 
Climbing
 

 
Banking
 

 
Landing
 

 
Success
 

GIB BUK ME

Today I learned that the NSWR probably wouldn't work. Showed Zubrin's paper to my nuclear propulsion professor, who had the following comments (quoted verbatim):
Geometry will not go critical at 20% enrichment Neutron flux = 3.5*10^17 neutrons/(cm2*sec),  turn steel to jelly in minutes - rad damage Power density = 232 MW/cm3 - yeah right Heat flux = 700 MW/cm2 - heat flux will melt wall no matter what Made many terrible assumptions on boundary conditions Back to fantasizing about gas core NTRs and Orion drives instead.

I hate peasant journalism so much.
 
In the entire article they make literally three correct claims:
 
1)  That thorium MOX has a higher melting point than UO2
2)  That thorium MOX has a higher thermal conductivity than UO2
3)  That there is a company in Norway called Thor Energy that is using thorium MOX in reactors.
 
Literally everything else they say is wrong.
 
Thorium 231 is not fissile.  While it's true that fissile isotopes are usually odd-numbered, not all odd-numbered actinide isotopes are fissile.
 
Obviously, thorium MOX does not "do away with uranium" BECAUSE THORIUM HAS TO BE BRED INTO URANIUM 233 IN ORDER TO PRODUCE FISSION AND I WILL KEEP SAYING THIS OVER AND OVER UNTIL THE FILTHY, MUD-LOVING FILTHY PEASANT SCUM IN THE POP SCIENCE JOURNALISM INDUSTRY UNDERSTAND THIS INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS AND SIMPLE FACT OH GOD I HATE PEASANTS SO MUCH I HATE THEM AND I HATE THE MUD THAT THEY WALLOW IN WHY CAN'T WE HAVE CLEAN MUD ALL THESE GODDAMN PEASANTS ARE POLLUTING THE MUD!
 
Yeah, read the whole thing, or don't.  It's horrible.  I hate peasants.  I hate hippies.  I hate them all.