Thorium is used in Coleman mantles and TIG welding electrodes:
Posted on 03/21/2014 2:54:13 PM PDT by ckilmer
Now even second tier universities are working on MSR’s.
Story posted yesterday said Chinese scientists handed over their thorium research to the engineers and they expect to have commercial reactors in, oh twenty years or so.
Molten Salt - When it rains, it pours.
oh twenty years or so.
...........
that story was that they wanted to move up the timeline from 20 years to 10 years. fwiw.
Already done, went critical in 1965, in Oak Ridge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
The Chinese committed a budget of $350 million this year and are employing a staff of 150 on the effort as we speak. They will own all the intellectual property for this technology, which they will lease to us. So we are trading Saudi Arabia for China.
In the meantime, we a denaturing several tons of U-233, which is not naturally occurring, and is the basis for a clean fuel cycle in a LFTR. A present reactor “burns” 4% of the rock, while a LFTR “burns” 90%, thus the minimal waste. The U-233 to Thorium cycle far fewer actinides.
It took a billion $ to make our U-233, and we are trying to spend hundreds of millions to dispose of it, when no other county has it for their LFTRs.
re: lunch conversation today
Sounds good on paper but it’s no slam dunk:
“We are still in the dark about the physical and chemical nature of thorium in many ways. There are so many problems to deal with but so little time,” said Prof Li.
Thorium is used in Coleman mantles and TIG welding electrodes:
Gas mantels are are like magic to me.
I was just about to ping you when I saw the ping. LOL
It is my understanding that LFTR doesn't have the same problem with runaway reactions like the typical big commercial fission reactors; they can be set up to shut down quickly in the event of problems.
What is UVU, by the way?
The intense bright white light is because of the thorium used in making ‘em.
It took a billion $ to make our U-233, and we are trying to spend hundreds of millions to dispose of it
...............
actually that effort flopped.
I posted on that sometime in the last week. the russians welched on the deal and the cost over runs for the disposal facility became too high.
So the construction plans were halted.
This represents a huge opportunity for thorium lftr efforts.
We have a fishing shack up in Canada. Light it with gas. Bright as a 60 watt bulb.
Kind of surprising that one of the small barbeque gas tanks supplies light and cooking fuel for a long weekend.
If you are making bad puns you must be feeling better.
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