Nuclear Green : Thorium

[Boehri5vor12]

Thorium is just the same bullshit like Uranium. A nuclear power plant does not ask how many radiation it is allowed to release when it explodes. In Germany we had the Thorium-Powered THTR-300 and it was really bad (Accidents, Radioactive Releases, …). So we switched it off. But we have 20 % renewables now – and we will go for 100 %. Nuclear Power in contrast kills starting with Mining ending with radioactive Waste!

[Tekknorg]

Get your facts right. Thorium Reactors need to operate:

- uranium‐235 (U‐235) or plutonium‐239

Thorium Reactors produce:

- uranium‐233 – is as effective as plutonium‐239 for making nuclear bombs

- technetium‐99 (half‐life over 200,000 years)

Thorium‐232 (half‐life:14 billion years)

[OfficeThug]

@Tekknorg Thorium reactors only need a spike of fissile material for startup. That can be reactor-grade U-233, U-235, or Pu-239. After that, thorium is bred into U-233 which fissions to produce energy and enough neutrons to breed even more thorium into U-233, continuing the reaction

U-233 has only been weaponized once and never again. The reason is that U-233 is really, really dangerous. Its gamma ray emitting decay chain WILL kill anyone that's not seperated from it by a wall of lead.

[OfficeThug]

@Tekknorg Another thing, technetium is a medical isotope that we desperately need. Its long half life makes it less radioactive than the typical transuranic wastes found in spent uranium fuel. Thorium-232 is as common as lead and you will find trace amounts of it everywhere on earth. Its exceptionally long half life makes it harmless, you can hold a ball of it in your hand and barely go over backround radiation levels.

[ChrisG140907]

A comment about layout for future video: Along with the tekst type, the colour of the tekst has a low contrast with the background, which makes it hard or annoying to read. The background music is good because it does not take too much attention from the content of the video.

[FacadeOfTruth]

i make breeders in my sleep

[RyanVonFleming]

The detractors of these comments are promoted to do so by rival energy conglomerates who do not want people to accept Thorium. Because they would then be out of business :)

This stuff works

[pacotacoman300]

raw

[ENZANinjamarine]

nice song

[pacotacoman300]

hello good song

[TheOuroborosWyrm]

I'm big fan of LFTR and other Thorium reactor projects, but it's not a "radical new" technology. It is important to be accurate if one wants to be taken seriously. It is, in fact, tested, relatively successful technology that was deprecated in favor of LWRs and other reactors that were more conducive to surplus plutonium production; thus bomb making. Those of you talking about melt-down are thinking of LWRs, and need to look into MSR's intrinsic differences and safety.

[TheOuroborosWyrm]

Translation of above acronyms:

LFTR: Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (a variant of MSR)

LWR: Light Water Reactor (conventional nuclear reactor)

MSR: Molten Salt Reactor (a larger category of reactors)

[1RadicalOne]

Nuclear energy is exceedingly useful, and if utilized properly, safe.

[skralbow]

@1RadicalOne History tells that, so far, every conceivable accident has occurred.

Why should one believe that newer nuclear power-plant designs (that are being planned right now) are much safer when the industry has such a bad track record at estimating risks in the past?

[1RadicalOne]

Bad track record? The only nuclear accident to actually cause damage outside the plant was Chenobyl, and that was the result of mistreating the reactor AND disabling the safety features. Not to mention poor design.

And if you want to bring up Three Mile Island, remember that noone was injured or killed in that accident. The reactor containment facility performed EXACTLY as desired.

[skralbow]

@1RadicalOne You said: "The only nuclear accident to actually cause damage outside the plant was Chernobyl".

Haha! Stop being ignorant by reading the article "Nuclear and radiation accidents" at wikipedia.

In reality, both the civil and the military nuclear industries have abysmal track records regarding radioactive contamination: Ticking time bombs, "Hanford Site" style.

[1RadicalOne]

Your source is Wikipedia, and you actually expect me to take you seriously?

[skralbow]

@1RadicalOne That is besides the point.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear energy; in fact, I think we may depend on it to secure our energy future.

But that doesn't make its track record perfect.

[1RadicalOne]

Perfect? No. But is the track record of ANY technology - not just energy ones - perfect?

Case in point: Automobile accidents kill hundreds of thousands of people per year. Does this mean that vehicles are inherently unsafe and deserve a reputation like that which has been given to nuclear technology? No.

As with nuclear technology, and with most others, the benefits outweigh the risks.

[squiresoft]

@skralbow The LFTR cannot runaway or meltdown like a Uranium Reactor. If you stop supplying it fuel, it will die out. Also the process operates with a pressure of 1 atmosphere. so a huge pressure vessel is not needed. Terrorists cannot steal the fuel, because it is basically molten salt, and bombs cannot be made from any part of the fuel or waste.

[loveria1234]

australia and india constitutes more than 50 % of worlds thorium.india has has already setup number of thorium reactors to produce electricity.wastes produced from the reactor can be reused to generate electricity.

how ever i believe the best would be to use Heleum 3 which is available in less quantity but is beleived to be the best resource.

[HiTekVagabond]

India has run out of uranium and has leaned on exploiting thorium since. India has built a small number of research reactors. So have the United States and many other countries. So far, most have abandoned the thorium cycle for one reason after another, including the US. Perhaps there is a reason that no country is sticking with the thorium cycle.

Fusion (Helium 3) is many, many years from being mature.

[samann95014]

i would love to live for another 50 yrs to see the world starting to harness the power of safe & green power from thorium fission & hydrogen fusion. i hope to be one of the key players to positively contribute to energy, environment & economy.

[NuclearGreen]

Conradmillermd is a nuclear moron. There is no evidence, whatsoever, to support the claim that 300,000 people died from Chernobyl. nuclear power plant.

There has not been a single injury or fatality resulting from the reactors in the hundreds in the hundreds of nuclear power plants that are now operating worldwide.

[HiTekVagabond]

At least 500,000 people—perhaps more—have already died out of the 2 million people who were officially classed as victims of Chernobyl in Ukraine, said Nikolai Omelyanets, deputy head of the National Commission for Radiation Protection in Ukraine (Guardian, 3/25/06). Dr. Alexey Yablokov, president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, calculates a death toll of 300,000.

There have been quite a few deaths. Which nuclear installations are you excluding from your claim?

[HiTekVagabond]

Again with your name calling.

I beg to differ with you. See the May issue of Energy Policy. They looked at major energy accidents from 1907 to 2007. The study identified 279 incidents totaling $41 billion in damages and 182,156 fatalities, with the number of accidents peaking in the decade between 1978 and 1987, which had more than 90 accidents.

All I can say is that your statement is very carefully crafted. For example Chernobyl had fatalities, but the reactor is no longer running.

[HiTekVagabond]

Benjamin K. Sovacool, The Costs of Failure: A Preliminary Assessment of Major Energy Accidents, 1907 to 2007, Energy Policy 36(5) (May, 2008), pp. 1802-1820.

[HiTekVagabond]

Con't ...

About 171,000 of those fatalities were due to one dam breaking and flooding a whole valley.

But using extremely conservative estimates, nuclear power accidents have killed 4,100 people. The nuclear power accidents have involved meltdowns, explosions, fires, and loss of coolant, and have occurred during both normal operation and extreme, emergency conditions such as droughts and earthquakes.

[samann95014]

clearly, the future is thorium ads & then hydrogen fusion ... either tokamak or fusor

[ShahMashya]

Shall there be some nuclear car soon? Driven by thorium instead of plutonium unlike the case with that Ford Nucleon prototype.

Sounds very promising indeed!

[livecoral]

What happens with car accidents? I do not want to live in a radioactive world. How about reducing consuption?

The earth is not Flat or Infinite.

Humans are breeding out of control and consuming everything. Nuclear will just buy more time, at horrendous risk. And then what?

Have to control of human numbers, either responsibly, or by self-destruction.

[NuclearGreen]

There are risks to all sources of power, but nuclear power is, by far, the safest. There has not been one injury or fatality related to nuclear energy in more than 50 years. That includes the more than 30,000 sailors and marines who actually live much of their lives inside of a nuclear power plant. I'm referring, of course to the many nuclear powered ships and submarines operated by the U.S. and Russia.

[livecoral]

"...no injury or fatality related to nuclear energy in more than 50 years." Are you kidding? Heard of Chernobyl?

[conradmillermd]

What world are you living in? Have you ever heard of Chernobyl? April 1986. Over 300,000 people have died prematurely so far, as stated by Dr. A. Yablokov in his 2007 book. Radioactivity causes cancer and other sorts of destruction of the human body. There are leaks and contamination even from reactors without severe accidents. Plutonium causes cancer with just 1 microgram deposited in your lung. That means 20 lbs can call kill all humans on earth with dispersal. More cancer round nukes

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[NuclearGreenThorium]

conradmillermd Thorium don't explode, I put those link for people to read and learn. Please do your own reseach.

[HiTekVagabond]

ECRR Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident European Committee on Radiation Risk Documents of the ECRR 2006 No1

Edited by C.C.Busby and A.V. Yablokov.

tinyurl . com / 5hftnz

[NuclearGreen]

You are not only completely wrong about your "facts" but you are also dangerous. People like you, and there unfortunately a lot of them, are endangering our environment, and are depriving millions of starving people the one solution they need to live decent lives.

You should read my book.....

And for the record, Dr. Yablokov is a genuine idiot.

[HiTekVagabond]

You seriously don't know what you are talking about.

[HiTekVagabond]

I know I am right about my facts. I get them from reliable sources and not a low-brow paranormal magazine like Cosmos, Omni or Popular Mechanics. Furthermore, I try to have reasonably civil conversations with people rather than name calling. If you disagree with Dr. Yablokov, you explain why rather than calling him an idiot. He is a respected scientist. I see aggression as the inability to reason and social ineptitude. In short, it's not good for your credibility.

[NuclearGreen]

You're both idiots. Please don't bother me with your dangerous diatribe. Find someone else to annoy.

[HiTekVagabond]

Go eat some technetium

[NuclearGreen]

You are pathetic, but you have my sympathy. You need to see a shrink.

Please don't waste my time with another of your diatribes.

[ajpmathwiz]

Thorium doesn't produce plutonium, either.

[hiraku0n]

Poor arguments. Yes, many have died and are suffering. So what about Chernobyl? 'Western' reactors are not RBMK design, if that is what youre implying. Radiation released by nuclear power plants to the environment is blow background levels. Seriously, how would one disperse 20lb of Pu? Will one divide the quantity for every person? Lack of common sense? or Couldnt solve the diffusion equation?

[gosmokesome]

@conradmillermd I call bullshit, don't you think we would have noticed if over 300000 people died from a single disaster? Go take your doomsday shit somewhere else buddy. Your worse than some 'the end is nigh' hobo-nutcase.

[conradmillermd]

@gosmokesome WHOOPS! latest: Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov: over 980,000 people have died prematurely as a result of the Chernobyl accident. Just because you haven't heard about it doesn't mean it didn't happen or that more premature deaths won't occur over next decades. NY Academy of Sciences published it.

[dthac1]

@conradmillermd

the only reason it happened was because soviet enginers made a crappy design for the reactor and turned off all 7 fail safe systems

[skralbow]

@dthac1 Yes, the Chernobyl disaster need not have happened, even with USSR-type designs. But what about accidents in the US and the rest of the world?

Have a look at the wikipedia article on "Nuclear and radiation accidents".

If you think that nuclear is safe, consider "Hanford Site," which is where the US WW2 atomic bombs were built. Quoting: "Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup."

[skralbow]

@gosmokesome Yes, we would have noticed, but ONLY IF these people died all at once at one place in one big catastrophe.

Generally, fatalities caused by radiation are not properly represented in the statistics:

Why? First, radiation contributes to a plethora of causes of death, not just one. Second, some consequences, like genetic abnormalities, don't show up immediately, but over multiple decades. (This applies to radiation in general.)

[conradmillermd]

@NuclearGreen Sorry to say you are misled. The current estimate for deaths from Chernobyl as one example are now 980,000 as per the Chernobyl review published by biologist (et al)  Alexey Yabllokov in English most recently. Then there are the numbers of cancers and cancer deaths that are occurring especially around nuclear power plants, that will take 30-40 years of operation, plus contamination to reveal themselves.

[dthac1]

@NuclearGreen

people are still dieing of cancer by atom bombs in japan plus chernobly

[squiresoft]

@dthac1 thats like saying we shouldnt use gasoline because people get hurt by molotov cocktails, and people would get hurt by an accident that blows up a gas station/refinery. 

[dthac1]

@squiresoft

no its not even close your comparing things that are completely differnt things comparing the explosive force of gasoline to nuclear energy is extremely idiotic my point is the technolgy is unstable and needs more looking into i understand what are trying to say but try and use a better comparison next time

[MrTeaB]

@dthac1 is that why the standard force measurement for nuclear energy is in tonnes of TNT? I think you can easily equate TNT to gasoline- in fact a quick scan of TFSE says gasoline has around 9 times the stored energy to an equivalent weight of TNT.

Extremely idiotic is someone trying to look clever but falling flat on their face.

Anyway, all of this is moot- look for a youtube vid by UniAdel talking about the future of power generation. The stark fact is that we don't have enough molybedenum

[dthac1]

@MrTeaB

its how you look at it if you took 10 pounds of TNT and took 10 pounds of gasoline and compared the two explosions gasoline would look bigger but TNT has more raw destructive power and your right im no expert in nuclear technology but is anyone on these comments

[Libertarianist]

Uranium power doesn't generate weapons grade material, it can also consume plutonium from nuclear weapons triggers. Also, no process can use nuclear waste as fuel, nor can you have a reactor that doesn't produce radioactive waste. The waste produced in reactors sits at the top of the entropy hill, only time can deal with it.

[bob1qaz]

Fusion won't produce radioactive waste of course that is still highly theoretical.

[conradmillermd]

Watch out for tritium, bob

radioactive water not filterable by demineralizers as are used in nuclear reactors. fusion may produce massive amounts. Just another nuclear pipedream.

fusion or confusion?

[bob1qaz]

What a moron... let me guess your one of those psycopaths that thinks we need to power the world with wind mills.

[Darkwizzrobe]

Yes and no, there is some waste produce in thorium but a lot of the waste can be consume in these reactors also the waste left behind is only going to last around 300 years instead of the thousands that LWR make although in your video you did point out this is not really a problem anyway ;)

[Libertarianist]

Thorium doesn't produce as much transuranic waste, but transuranic waste can usually be used in reactors anyway, so thorium isn't much greener.