Thorium Reactor Question to President Obama

Mr. President, you often say there is no silver bullet to our energy problems. However, there are bullets made of thorium and uranium. Our question to you is why is the federal government not accelerating research into fluid-fueled, molten salt reactors that run on thorium?

Nuclear reactors that run on thorium offer superior advantages in safety, proliferation, waste, and cost.

-There is enough thorium in the US to power our economy for the next 1,000 years
-Its waste lasts only 300 years compared to 10,000 years for traditional plants
-Thorium plants are 50% cheaper than traditional plants

Thorium and fluid-fueled, molten salt reactor technology seems to have the best advantages when it comes to replacing fossil fuels, and improving the environment by offering safe, clean, efficient, cheap, and reliable power. Why are we not aggressively pursuing this technology?

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• LFTR
• MSR
• thorium
• energy
• alliance
• citizentube
• obama
• nuclear
• reactor

[bogusnachos]

In ten years, we'll be buying LFTRs from China - another missed opportunity - another step in the decline of the west.

[clemrod3]

==> Great job, Bryan! Might also be useful to mention that total LFTR waste is .001 times as much as LWR.

[jimeast2]

Dude, Your question is way to sane and rational for Mr. President or the Luddite legions he represents.

[ufoengines]

Could this reactor be made small and safe enought for home use if it used to power a Stirling Cycle Engine?

[fireofenergy]

The problem with solar is that it requires fully 2% of the land to power a growing global power use (1% if GaAs fresnel arrays). Conventional panels convert the other 85% of light into much infrared. Storage such as 96% eff LiFePO4 batteries MUST be robotically mass produced (as with the arrays themselves).

Power towers and molten salt heat storage is the other option, much better than troughs.

Go to my channel for more about the parameters and land required for solar and its storage.

[Boehri5vor12]

@geonerd

I’m not talking about cow farts, I am talking about the strongest nuclear reactor in our solar system – the sun. In 8 Minutes it sends the Primary Energy to earth, that is needed by all countries in 1 year. To make it usable you need some technology – but we are working on it (Solar-Thermal Powerstations, Wind turbines, Methaneisation (for storage and transportation of erergy), …). And 20 % is already a good number, isn’t it?

[geonerd]

@Boehri5vor12 Dude, you can't run a real economy on cow farts. 

[Boehri5vor12]

@henrycate

Hi,

I only have got the numbers of the Year 2010: Hydro: 3.4 %, Wind: 6.2 %, Bio-Mass: 4.7 %, Photovoltaic: 1.9 %, bio gene waste burning: 0.8%. So in Sum it was 17 %. But in the first half of 2011 we had more than 20 % renewables. (Source: all Wikipedia). The renewables will exceed nuclear this year the first time: Renewables: 19.9 %, Nuclear: 17.7 % (2010: 22.4 %) (Source: Extrapolation in a Newspaper). Regards Boehri

[henrycate]

@Boehri5vor12 Would you care to document your claim that Germany now gets 20% of its energy from "renewables?" Would that be wind, solar, hydro, or what?

[henrycate]

Well, the man asks an important, interesting question, and I'm waiting for an answer.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

[boner2008]

@Mortallian18 In ten years China will be 60% smaller in population? How could this be?

[bogusnachos]

@Boehri5vor12 The THTR-300 was not a molten salt reactor. The MSR is a superior concept and is very well suited for thorium. It isn't the thorium itself which is safer, its the rector design. Thorium is a byproduct of rare-earth metals which are essential for renewable energy and most new technologies. We wouldn't have to mine any new thorium.