Safe and abundant alternative to fossil fuels!

[Redmonton_Rebel]

Thorium(Th-90) is one one of the most abundant elements of it's type(actinides) and although it's not fissile, it is fertile. This means it can readily be converted into fissile material(U-233) in the presense of the kind of radiation found in a nuclear reactor. It can be placed as solid rods in a conventional reactor where it is converted to U-233 or mixed with radioactive materials like U-235 or transuranic actinides like those found in nuclear waste to initiate a fission reaction in a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor.

Thorium is about as abundant as lead and Thorium MSR(Molten Salt Reactors) are far safer than conventional nuclear reactors due to their design. As the liquid the fuel is contained in expands it cools slowing the process, also a frozen salt plug at the bottom of the reactor vessel will melt if the heat reaches a critical level and drain the liquid reactant into containment vessels below. There's little chance of release of radioactive material and no chance of meltdown. The waste from Thorium MSR is also less toxic and long lived than current uranium reactors.

There's enough Thorium to meet all of mankinds energy needs for 1,000 or more years and reactor design is much cheaper than current uranium nuclear reactor designs which need complex and expensive safety measures.

Nations currently developing Thorium MSR technology include China, India, France, Norway, and Brazil.

Energy from Thorium

 

[Redmonton_Rebel]

It's amazing, people here can get fired up about tearing up a quarter of northern Alberta to get at one of the most polluting sources of energy ever, but you mention a safe, abundant alternative and it's silence.

 

[darkbeaver]

Thorium does not supply plutonium so TPTB axed any notion of it,s early developement. China already has a few working I guess.

 

[Redmonton_Rebel]

It doesn't require plutonium, it's a fertile element and can be converted into highly fissable U-233 by neutron bombardment. In a LFTR you just mix it in with a bit of U-235 or any of the highly radioactive waste present in thousands of tons around the planet and you have a safe running reactor with a fuel source that is measured in the hundreds of thousands of tons in many countries. I think India has about 300,000 tons. It's more efficient than enriched Uranium so you have to use less of it to produce equal amounts of power.

One of the reasons that most nations went with Uranium for power production in the last century was because the production of Plutonium that could be processed for weapons use. Thorium is much less of a nuclear proliferation risk because it doesn't produce the end products that can be processed for nuclear weapons. Some of the fission products include Xenon and Bismuth I think that can be sold commerically.

 

[Redmonton_Rebel]

What if we could build a nuclear reactor that offered no possibility of a meltdown, generated its power inexpensively, created no weapons-grade by-products, and burnt up existing high-level waste as well as old nuclear weapon stockpiles? And what if the waste produced by such a reactor was radioactive for a mere few hundred years rather than tens of thousands? It may sound too good to be true, but such a reactor is indeed possible, and a number of teams around the world are now working to make it a reality. What makes this incredible reactor so different is its fuel source: thorium.

Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire? Possibly. - Forbes

Tell me again how there's no options to fossil fuels.

In China, the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and a clutch of Chinese outfits began an effort in mid-2009 to use thorium as fuel in nuclear reactors in Qinshan, China.

So we're already helping China develope their own thorium reactors,

And we rank 11th in the world for thorium reserves;

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

CountryTonnes% of total
Australia-489,000 19
USA-400,000 15
Turkey-344,000 13
India-319,000 12
Venezuela-300,000 12
Brazil-302,000 12
Norway-132,000 5
Egypt-100,000 4
Russia75,000 3
Greenland-54,000 2
Canada-44,000 2
South Africa-18,000 1
Other countries-33,000 1
World total 2,610,000

And we have experience converting thorium to U-233 in our CANDU reactors, instead of funding development of carbon intensive and highly polluting sources of energy we should actually enter the 21st. century.

Even before we develope Thorium MSRs we could be using it in CANDU reactors:

CANDU reactors of Atomic Energy Canada Limited are capable of using thorium as a fuel source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

With a combination of thorium and natural gas we could provide a baseload power capacity that would be augmented by renewables. Instead by the middle of this century we'll be using enough natural gas to heat all the homes in Canada in primary and secondary processing of tar sands oil.

 

[Goober]

Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire? Possibly. - Forbes

Tell me again how there's no options to fossil fuels.

Tell me why they are not used. I believe Petros had mentioned this a number of years ago.

 

[Redmonton_Rebel]

Tell me why they are not used. I believe Petros had mentioned this a number of years ago.

Inertia.

It's not possible to use thorium as a source of material for atomic weapons development and that was one of the driving forces in the early days of nuclear technology.

Now it's just become entrenched that uranium is the "conventional" element to use in producing nuclear power because it's been used for so long. The mining infrastructure is built around providing uranium and the commercial interests have all grown up around uranium use.

It's kind of like how VHS beat out Beta or how because Bill Gates was such a control freak Windows is now on most PCs in the world. It's not always about the best choice, it often comes down to fate.

We're ideally positioned to take advantage of this opportunity, it's just the lack of any real foresight or accountability in this nation that's behind us not doing so. And you can't completely blame the Conservative government for that, they're just the ones who are going to be taking the responsibility. If it turns out that we could have been spending our money much more wisely in investing in real sustainable energy, but the Conservatives blocked it for political reasons then the anger Canadians had for Mulroney and company is going to be nothing in comparison.

So not only will thorium reactors be a safe, affordable and abundant source of power, they will also be a way to get rid of thousands of tons of waste produced by the uranium based nuclear power industry.​

 

[gerryh]

ok... that takes care of ONE use for the oil coming out of the ground. What about the rest?

 

[Goober]

ok... that takes care of ONE use for the oil coming out of the ground. What about the rest?

Oil and gas have many materials that are stripped for other uses do they not. Hard to replace those.

 

[Cabbagesandking]

There is nothing that is obtained from oil that cannot be produced from other materials.

Here is a site where there is a great deal of discussion and information about nuclear and, Thorium based power. It is mostly pro nuclear but I recall some balancing articles.

BraveNewClimate

 

[taxslave]

It's amazing, people here can get fired up about tearing up a quarter of northern Alberta to get at one of the most polluting sources of energy ever, but you mention a safe, abundant alternative and it's silence.

Freekin hilarious. The clown that is so afraid of burning a little carbon based fuel is a shill for the NUclear industry. Trying to up your share price before another reactor over reacts?

 

[Redmonton_Rebel]

ok... that takes care of ONE use for the oil coming out of the ground. What about the rest?

Thermal depolymerization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thermal depolymerization

(TDP) is a depolymerization process using hydrous pyrolysis for the reduction of complex organic materials (usually waste products of various sorts, often biomass and plastic) into light crude oil. It mimics the natural geological processes thought to be involved in the production of fossil fuels. Under pressure and heat, long chain polymers of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon decompose into short-chain petroleum hydrocarbons with a maximum length of around 18 carbons.

And that's just one alternative, with modern technology we don't need to be taking anything out of the ground it's just sheer inertia in the system that keeps us drilling and mining for more fossil fuels.

 

[taxslave]

Freekin hilarious. The clown that is so afraid of burning a little carbon based fuel is a shill for the NUclear industry. Trying to up your share price before another reactor over reacts?

Red does not like the truth exposed.

 

[darkbeaver]

Yea it,s clean abundant and efficient and that,s the best part of why it was not pursued. Any question about why something good for mankind and the planet has not been developed leads us always to the money junkies. There is no fix for anything without a fix for them first. Remove them from power and watch mankind flourish peacefully.

 

[Redmonton_Rebel]

so while we're rapidly destroying any chance of a future by burning billions of tons of some of the foulest substance to be found on the planet, we're completely ignoring a new source of virtually unlimited power that could easily replace fossil fuel.

1 ton of thorium can supply the same amount of power as over 200 tons of uranium.

Molten salt reactors constantly circulate the fissile product of irradiated thorium- U-233 - in solution in a reactor where it undergoes almost complete "burn up". Thorium reactors can also burn the waste produced by PWR urnaium powered reactor, so goodbye transuranic waste issues. They actually use nuclear waste to start the reaction.

Thorium reactors can't melt down, they're already in liquid form and as anyone remotely familiar with science knows as a liquid or gas expands it cools, also as the distance between reactant elements increases the reaction slows. You can't have a runaway reaction with a MSR.

There are over 40,000 tons of thorium in Canada alone hundreds of thousands worldwide, 1 ton gives 1 Gigawatt/year of electricity. The mining footprint is also much lower with thorium as compared to uranium, hugely smaller than that insane project destroying the Athabasca and MacKenzie watersheds right now.

MSRs run at near normal pressure and require a fraction of the containment of tradtional reactors, making them simpler and cheaper to built and operate.

The waste is much less long lived than the current was produced by uranium reactors, on the order of 300 years and there is much less of it.

Much of the fuel put into the cycle is removed as fission products like Xenon-135 a nuclear poison that solid fuel rods is rapidly contaminated by. It's simply removed as part of the normal operating cycle of a MSR. It's products can be sold commercially to buyer like NASA that use it for propellant in advanced ion rockets.

Nuclear medicine will receive ample supplies of rare isotopes like Iodine-131 and Bismuth-213 making cancer treatment much more effective.

Instead we're bent on destroying ourselves by filling our atmosphere with enough heat trapping gases to make catastrophic global warming a dead certainty.

For those of you who seem to think all radiation is dangerous.

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/pr/2011/Low Background Radiation Experiment News Release.pdf

Results so far, as reported in the Health Physics article, indicate that the cell growth of the
bacteria in the WIPP underground, exposed to less background radiation than the control group,
is hampered.
“Initial results from June 2010 show … the growth of ‘radiation starved’ cells are (sic) inhibited
compared to cells grown in the presence of background radiation levels,” the researchers
reported.
“The noise in the data is still fairly high,” Smith clarified. “It’s preliminary, and we still need more
data to show it as statistically different.”

Current research is showing that lack of enough background radiation is harmful to cell functioning, which would make sense as all life has evolved in the constant presence of it.

 

[L Gilbert]

we're rapidly destroying any chance of a future

Nah. We're just changing it.

 

[Redmonton_Rebel]

In human terms changing the Earth at a rate and magnitude that destroys the conditions that allowed us to exist in the first place is destroying the world. Billions of people live on the edge of survival as it is.

Only a complete sociopath would endevour to push them off.

 

[TenPenny]

Thorium MSR(Molten Salt Reactors) are far safer than conventional nuclear reactors due to their design.

Out of curiousity, how does the capital cost compare to a Candu reactor? What about operating cost? In the end, what is the cost per kWh for a thorium reactor?

 

[L Gilbert]

In human terms changing the Earth at a rate and magnitude that destroys the conditions that allowed us to exist in the first place is destroying the world. Billions of people live on the edge of survival as it is.

You underestimate the human ability to adapt.

 

[taxslave]

so while we're rapidly destroying any chance of a future by burning billions of tons of some of the foulest substance to be found on the planet, we're completely ignoring a new source of virtually unlimited power that could easily replace fossil fuel.

1 ton of thorium can supply the same amount of power as over 200 tons of uranium.

Molten salt reactors constantly circulate the fissile product of irradiated thorium- U-233 - in solution in a reactor where it undergoes almost complete "burn up". Thorium reactors can also burn the waste produced by PWR urnaium powered reactor, so goodbye transuranic waste issues. They actually use nuclear waste to start the reaction.

Thorium reactors can't melt down, they're already in liquid form and as anyone remotely familiar with science knows as a liquid or gas expands it cools, also as the distance between reactant elements increases the reaction slows. You can't have a runaway reaction with a MSR.

There are over 40,000 tons of thorium in Canada alone hundreds of thousands worldwide, 1 ton gives 1 Gigawatt/year of electricity. The mining footprint is also much lower with thorium as compared to uranium, hugely smaller than that insane project destroying the Athabasca and MacKenzie watersheds right now.

MSRs run at near normal pressure and require a fraction of the containment of tradtional reactors, making them simpler and cheaper to built and operate.

The waste is much less long lived than the current was produced by uranium reactors, on the order of 300 years and there is much less of it.

Much of the fuel put into the cycle is removed as fission products like Xenon-135 a nuclear poison that solid fuel rods is rapidly contaminated by. It's simply removed as part of the normal operating cycle of a MSR. It's products can be sold commercially to buyer like NASA that use it for propellant in advanced ion rockets.

Nuclear medicine will receive ample supplies of rare isotopes like Iodine-131 and Bismuth-213 making cancer treatment much more effective.

Instead we're bent on destroying ourselves by filling our atmosphere with enough heat trapping gases to make catastrophic global warming a dead certainty.

For those of you who seem to think all radiation is dangerous.

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/pr/2011/Low Background Radiation Experiment News Release.pdf



Current research is showing that lack of enough background radiation is harmful to cell functioning, which would make sense as all life has evolved in the constant presence of it.

SO you would rather blow up the world than burn safe clean coal and oil?