| Has the home nation of wind power taken a first step towards complementing renewables with nuclear after years of banning anything nuclear energy related? |
| Even though the atomic model where a nucleus has electrons orbiting around it was invented in Denmark by the famous scientist Niels Bohr, Denmark hasn’t exactly been a pioneer in nuclear energy. This is largely due to the fact that in 1985, Denmark decided to take nuclear energy out of its energy plan. This kind of ‘black listing’ resulted in an abandonment of all nuclear energy research and development. Today, after pressure from our Danish thorium colleagues, the country's government has opened up for nuclear energy activities based on thorium. Troels from Seaborg Technology (a Danish company developing a thorium reactor) says to Danish Television that ‘this is very important for their process to finance future activities’. Further on Niels Bohr: he made foundational contributions to the understanding of atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. He called for international cooperation on nuclear energy and was involved with the establishment of CERN (where ThEC13 was held) and the Research Establishment Risø of the Danish Atomic Energy Commission. This step from the Danish government has to be applauded, especially since Denmark established as the world leader in wind energy (produced the equivalent of 42.1% of Denmark's total electricity consumption in 2015) many years ago and never seemed to realize or be open for the right type of complementary energy source: Thorium Energy. |