[paulchen]

The fact that we are discussing thorium here and in many other places suddenly, proves the successful mission accomplished by Andrew Yang. Federal bureaucrats and their aides are forced to do their homework to seriously consider the option and answer intelligently.

[hgoel]

I don't think that's necessarily true, most of us on HN were probably aware of it as an option for a while considering that the main audience of the site is fairly "tech crazed". I wouldn't necessarily take that to mean he's succeeded in bringing this sort of thing to the attention of the masses.

Particularly since any of the other people who pretend to care about the climate haven't revised their weird "no nuclear" policy despite it all.

[acidburnNSA]

For sure. I'm really glad this is bringing nuclear discussions to the left.

At least the US DOE is already highly knowledgeable about thorium and molten salt reactors. Advanced reactor people at the national labs and elsewhere have been studying this stuff for decades. There are still plenty of us who know the details.

[chillacy]

Actually I'm sort of excited about the reverse: there are many interesting topics I've heard about on HN that are going "mainstream" through Yang: Universal Basic Income, ranked choice voting, next-gen nuclear, a lot of musings on incentive structures and their problems, data ownership, etc.