There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power.
Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday – produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week. Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. “It’s the Big One,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.
“Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels,” he said.
Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7% for uranium.
Actually the idea of thorium vs uranium power has been around since nuclear day one.
But the US Navy chose enriched uranium high pressure light water reactors for its subs, so here we are.
3rd largest deposit of Thorium is in Norway. Check out Thor Energy: http://www.safe.uio.no/NukEF/mote15des2009/ThorEgy.pdf
Of course, the politicians say no. They are lead by the hydropower cartel that export power during low and dry seasons and drain the reservoirs so when the high season starts, the populus has to pay double even triple tariffs due to low reservoirs.
A couple of Thorium generators and there would be steady and predictable power supply and – God forbid – prices! Can’t have that because then the mob is out of business, and the politicians pockets will be empty…
Nah. The petroleum interests already bought Congress and this will never get off the ground. Just like GM and Firestone killed public transportation.
If it can’t be restricted to a small cartel of producers who can rule the market, it ain’t gonna happen – at least not in the West. Watch China perfect this while the US continues to spend its time building and exploding bombs.
Wikipedia has an excellent page on the subject.
Interesting stuff!
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium”
I can’t wrap my head around this. When did we learn about this “miracle” dirt?
Before the hype embarrasses us all, what’s the other side of the story? What’s it going to cost, and how long is it going to take to make this a viable energy source?
Maybe this will give the Department of Energy something to do!
Can it be used as fuel for a Pebble Bed Reactor?
The simplicity passive safety of PBR’s makes them a no-brainer for future reactors in my mind. They are gas cooled, instead of high pressure water cooled like we have now.
A water cooled reactor is insane. Water contains oxygen, which is corrosive. Then we pump it though metal pipes in high pressure. It is just a matter of time before it fails, and it does, it is a disaster. The only way to prevent failure is expensive pre-emptive part replacement.
Read about them on Wikipedia. It is so simple if makes you wonder if GE and General Dynamics want to stop it because building expensive water cooled plants is so profitable.
Around 2002, a researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory saw an interesting title on the spine of a book from the 1950s or 1960s. It described Thorium use instead of uranium in reactors. A lot of new research has since followed.
I just don’t believe in the centralized power plant to grid model as the way of the future.
Let’s not forget that the waste products of high pressure uranium burning reactors were at one time very useful. But once your primary/only waste manager has enough bombs to destroy the Earth several times over, you tend to have problems getting rid of the bad stuff.
No one ever thought we’d not need more H bombs, so we end up with “spent” fuel that still has something like 80-90 percent of its energy unused.
Meanwhile, not only are you not able to get any R&D money out of Wall St, the plants you have are paid for, the DOE is in charge of the hazmats, and you have this great little baseload cash cow that isn’t going to be your problem when you retire in another 5 years or so.
What is the motivation to vbuild thorium plants again?
Allot of you are having the same problem as I am..
IN THE BEGINNING..
When the Gov. jumped on the band wagon to make Nuk plants, and all the promises..
AS WELL as..
“DUCK and cover”, but not telling anyone WHY, and if it was a Nuclear Bomb, that “Duck and cover” WASNT going to save you.
Electrical companies got control of these plants, and SOME were really CRAP. Insted of fixing/improving them, they Ran them into the ground. And charged us while doing it.
Lets ask.
IF half of what they are saying has truth in it. Who is going to regulate the COSTS for electrical power, so we DONT GET SCREW’D.
The solar system is the perfect example of a working fusion reactor power plant. It just doesn’t scale well.
Thorium is coming for the same reason we can’t get rid of gasoline- more energy per unit of weight/volume than the competing fuels, and an acceptable risk reward ratio.
Uranium or thorium, we should have been building reactors for the last 30 years. However, the “energy crisis” is multi-faceted and won’t be solved by one technology. Transportation and heating are two examples.
Makes ya wonder why the world hasn’t embraced thorium.
Perhaps the technology isn’t feasible and its just a glint in an engineer’s eye, like fusion.
#33, ‘Makes ya wonder why the world hasn’t embraced thorium’
Thorium reactors are feasible and have been run successfully since the 60′s. The major ‘downside’ appears to be they don’t produce much plutonium, so they are no good if you want a decent nuclear weapons program.
There is a reason we don’t have plenty of thorium reactors by now: they built 2 of them in germany, and both failed. thorium reactors are worse, more complicated and prone to fail than the usual uranium type. just the hype keeps coming. nothing to see here, unfortunately, let’s move along.
It has it’s pros and cons… and it’s not a magic bullet to energy production. Thorium reactors have been around since the 60′s.
However, if there were true advances in Thorium reactor design to substantially limit hazards and improve efficiency then I say go for it. I don’t see the Oil, Gas, and Coal industries going anywhere soon though..
It is truly sad to hear all the collectivist speak in this forum. “We” need to do this and why haven’t “we” done that…this we mentality has truly gotten the slaves thinking as if master cares what their opinions are.
#36–BMore==now we are back to our normal relationship: you couldn’t be more silly. Yes – “we” as in our society’s need for clean power in the future. If YOU are going to be living in your cousin’s root cellar learning to eat grubs, then of course the “we” discussion is of no interest to YOU.
But as usual, YOU are irrelevant.
Prove me wrong: make any valid statement about what an individual could do to address society’s clean energy needs?
#8-There’s car that runs on water man !
Yes, but only water from the Gulf.
Hmmm, Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo ran on thorium. That was written in 1947.
#1 “But just say “nuclear” and the environmentals jump out screaming “Chernobyl” and “3-mile Island”.”
Maybe, but just ignorant ones. Thorium reactors require particle beams to work. If something goes wrong, just turn off the particle beam and there is no chance of a melt down.
I was surprised to find that 3-mile-island is still operating a nuclear power plant.