Energy From Thorium: A Nuclear Waste Burning Liquid Salt Thorium Reactor

Kirk Sorensen's Tech Talk, delivered at Google on July 20, 2009.

Successfully developing a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) would essentially solve our planets energy problems for thousands of years, because it would allow us to fully utilize the energy in natural thorium, which makes up 0.0012% of the Earths crust. Most of the research and development work for this technology was done by Oak Ridge National Labs back in the 50s and 60s. They were working to a different set of overall objectives, nevertheless, there are many lessons to be gleaned from their work that can help us to avoid pitfalls and develop LFTR into a high-performance, high-reliability power supply.

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[OfficeThug]

Working in the nuclear industry is one of the healthiest professions on earth. You get checked very frequently for diseases and the early development of cancers, so much so that natural ailments are also detected and can be treated before it's too late.

Nuclear kills statistically less than wind and solar per TWh (including Chernobyl deaths). You need to mine more, build more, and maintain more things with wind and solar to make the same amount of electricity, which means more accidents.

[MrDanP1]

Solar still requires backup fossil fuel generation...especially if we switch from internal combustion engine driven cars to electric vehicles. Worldwide, the nuclear power industry has a much better safety record than the various fossil fuel industries (See 1998 Paul Scherrer Institute Report comparing accidents and fatalities across the energy sector from 1969 to 1996. Hydroelectric actually has the worst safety record). Solar will NEVER have the capacity to replace fossil fuels, the least

[EmGooser]

Just look at mykmlr's comments, they are just trolling. Regardless of what you say he will spout out something in retort regardless if it is true or not. For example saying lead being so corrosive it is cost prohibitive (even though it is used today as radiation shielding) to just tasteless insults. Review his comment history of yourself.

The best way to handle a troll is to ignore them.

[itscrazytrevor]

I don't want to even get out of bed unless my alarm clock is Thorium powered!

[Colin Dempsey]

Anyway, getting governments to pay for the research and development is the real stop.

[mykmlr]

Tell that to the NRC which declares 8 ppb as the lifetime maximum surviveable level.

Looks like you lie again!

[Evito Cruor]

0.1% Pu waste will put out so little amount of radiation that your cellular walls will prevent all alpha radiation, almost all of beta and gamma radiation at those levels will not cause significant amounts of mutations or cell destruction. .001% of mercury in current fish near europe is a vast underestimation. You dont even fucking google your idiocy. Its rather hard to accumulate enough plutonium to get more effects than living near a hill does. Mercury will harm you a lot easier and quicker.

[mykmlr]

I'm off to bed evito you fucking shill for Exxon. Solar or die. Do the economics of 90000 years of storage AND GUARDING from the 'terraists' then get back to us.

[mykmlr]

Yucca Flats is what happens when 90000 year storage meets NIMBY. The whole project was doomed by the idiots who said nuclear power could be safely stored at the reactor site...a la fukushima.

Face it, you fucked up, Fukushima Dai Ichi was just the lid going on the garbage can, but it is on, and tightly.

As for being a solution, you might as Nuclear France why they had to shut down 1/3 of capacity in the hot summer last year due to water temp.

Ooopps. Worthless tech. SOlar or die.

[Evito Cruor]

Yucca flats is stupidity compounded by corrupt interest. The whole project was doomed by all the competent scientists it was showed to before construction ever began. Zero proof that you cannot manage the materials when you cite an example that was known to be stupid before it was ever started.

[mykmlr]

Coal mines don't keep making more toxins as time goes by, nor is the .001% mercury even a fraction as deadly as the .1% Pu left in high-level waste.

Sounds like you have LOTS more lies to tell.

Solar or die as a technological civilization, solar or die.

[Evito Cruor]

Because theyre doing it assbackwards at Hanford, they didnt want to acknowledge the stupidity of liquids near storage then. They dont want to do it now either. Proper drystorage with stable element containment with 5% maximum amount of Pu at given mass of material is an infinitely secure storage that cannot under ANY circumstance go critical let alone supercritical.