Thorium is the fuel of the future

A cheap and abundant energy source. India is currently developing several Thorium reactors and the first US naval ship powered by a reactor was a thorium reactor. American Uranium companies do not want the American public to know about the advantages of Thorium versus Uranium, this is the intelligent choice for a fuel for the future.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Thorium
• cheap
• abundant
• fuel
• future
• electricity

[Danosaur95630]

Thorium is a radio active substance, it normally uses U-233 ot U-235, or Plutonium as a "kindling" material to begin the fuel cycle. That's right, it can use bomb grade Plutonium to ignite the Thorium. We could use all those warheads to produce electricity to fuel our cities and our automobiles. Almost too good to be true, isn't it?

[Danosaur95630]

Very good point! However, we must keep a ray of hope and optimism alive, occasionally, the human race does do the right thing for the right reasons. Thanks for your thoughtful comment!

[Danosaur95630]

Thanks for your enlightenment, we were so impressed by your articulate use of the English language. Did you attend school in California?

[totoritko]

@f1r31c3r1 Thorium reactors avoid Pu239 production by starting out at a much lower atomic mass than current reactors (Th232 rather than U238), so instead of the process requiring a single neutron capture (U238->Pu239 - simplified), it takes many more (232->233->...->238->239). Since the chances of this occurring are very small, it can be said that LFTR produces next to no Pu239. That's not to say that it doesn't produce any - it does, but *much* less compared to Uranium reactors.

[totoritko]

@f1r31c3r1 I'm not sure you understood my comment - it was about wind power.

The short-term radiotoxicity of spent nuclear fuel originates from fission products,which decay away in a couple of hundred years. It's the plutonium and the higher actinides which are troublesome. Even though they emit only a fraction of the radiation of the fission products, they remain so for a long time + they are poisonous heavy metals, so its best to avoid them in your spent fuel as much as possible

[f1r31c3r1]

@totoritko lol there not mining it, its the existing nuclear waste there wanting to put back into the reactor and burn up the plutonium and uranium 238, the very insanely dangerous stuff. Evacuation zone = well that would be another planet if it went wrong.

[f1r31c3r1]

@Danosaur95630 Because it is, unleashing the dooms day bomb in corporate hands that cant even get basic uranium reactions right is beyond insane. Works great in a professors laboratory but not in corporations hands, god help us, this is beyond insane. It would be the excuse we all need to boycott taxes as me and many others i am sure wont want to be insuring this.

[f1r31c3r1]

Without being insulting but your insane. The type of hybrid reactors your talking about is so dangerous its not worth thinking about. I am sure many have heard of the dooms day bomb well what your talking about is building and operating a hybrid reactor that if it went wrong you have a doomsday bomb, no second chance period. All that in the hands of stupid corporations urm hell NO. The future is not Thorium its in the exact opposite reaction, fusion! Look up fusion reactor.

[faffaflunkie]

Natural gas is the fuel of the near future- we could stop the most massive transfer of wealth in history (to the sheiks) AND solve the air pollution problem tomorrow if the Govt. would get off it's ass and institute a sensible energy policy that encourages the use of natural gas instead of oil.

[totoritko]

@Dubious07 An exciting prospect, but with massive scalability issues. Have you actually run the numbers? Just to give you a sense of scale: wind mill turbines use neodymium magnets (otherwise the output goes way down). Ballpark numbers: ~0.3t Nd per MW capacity. Wind mill power factor: best 33%. World total power: ~4.5TW. Equiv.wind power: ~13.6TW. Nd required: ~4Mt. Current production rate: 20kt/year. So even with all Nd going to wind, it would take >200 years just to mine the stuff!

[totoritko]

@faffaflunkie Yep, and they've concluded that it's just way too expensive and inefficient when compared to U238->Pu239 transmutation, so besides a few experiments, no military force in the world uses U233-based bombs. Also, no power reactor was ever used to produce weapons-grade material, it all happened in purpose-built military ones. So, regardless of your power choices, the military will do its thing anyway. Might as well ban TNT, cause you can make bombs out of it...

[bluemoondiadochi]

1:07 ok, all clear: int community should help Iran build thorium reactors, if all they want is REALLY only electricity! and if they refuse, well, masks are off then!

ok, jokes aside: Thorium RULES!

problem is, uranium reactors were built during cold was so uranium processing industry would have somewhere to sell its products in peacetime. and as any big bussiness, it kinda breaks new progress...

i guess it could be called deadlock of corporatism.

[manw3bttcks]

@raileanulucian

I guess you're referring to his "300 times more thorium" comment. He's taking into account that although there's 3x more thorium than all isotopes of Uranium, the Uranium 235 which is of use for reactors is only 0.007 of the totally quantity of Uranium which is most commonly the 238 isotope. 0.007 is close to 0.01 -> hence he says 300X more abundant (3 / 0.01 --> 300x)