Posted on 08/09/2011 9:52:57 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
While Matthew Nesbit opines on peak oil being a uniting cause, this short essay on thorium power is instructive and relevant. – Anthony
Guest post by David Archibald
Early in June, I gave a lecture entitled “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” at the Institute for World Politics (a graduate school for the CIA and State Department) in Washington. From that lecture, following are a couple of slides pertaining to the advantage of thorium relative to uranium for nuclear power:
To run a 1,000 MW reactor for a year requires one tonne of nuclear material to be fissioned. In the case of thorium, only one tonne of waste material is produced with 30 to 100 grams of transuranics (Neptunium and plutonium). Alternatively, the Neptunium could be separated from the uranium and burnt separately in a reactor for that purpose, at the ratio of 49 thorium reactors per one neptunium reactor.
The very low level of transuranics from the thorium route compares to the large waste volumes and transuranic content of that waste from the uranium route, shown in the above slide. The one tonne of thorium from the first slide is shown in scale to the 250 tonnes of uranium needed to produce one 1,000 MWyear in the light water reactor route. That 250 tonnes of uranium produces 35 tonnes of enriched uranium, which becomes the spent fuel volume. Of that 35 tonnes, 300 kg is plutonium. The transuranic content of the uranium light water reactor route is some 10,000 times greater than that of the thorium route.
Once the thorium reactor is adopted as the nuclear process of choice, we will be wondering why we bothered with anything else.
fyi
Because we needed the byproducts from uranium reactors to make nuclear weapons.
what do we need this crap for?? Zero says we can have wind and solar! that will take care of everything!
Why do you hate the earth?
Thorium sounds like a great way to go.
But I’ve heard about it for decades and we never seem to get closer to utilizing it.
Is there a technological hurdle necessary to overcome, a question of engineering, or is it just the usual politics and regulation?
The organized opposition to all things radioactive is not going to embrace thorium and rest on their hands. The people I've spoken to that are opposed cite all sorts of safety issues but often admit even if all such problems were extremely remote they are still opposed to any use of nuclear power.
They're like the person opposed to capital punishment: changing the method doesn't change the result.
Barney Frank made wind on camera yesterday, no problem.
The fluid used in this process is highly corrosive. The plumbing has to be replaced about every 4 years, that is not an efficient return on investment money. Or, if it was such a great process to generate power then why aren’t these plants up and running yet?
Mark
[But I’ve heard about it for decades and we never seem to get closer to utilizing it.]
“We” are no longer a cutting edge nation. India and China are moving to thorium.
The DOE built and operated a thorium reactor for over 20K hrs in the Sixties ! We could “tool up” and build these right now inside a decade with the same sort of crash program used for Project Apollo.
Best parts is these would have a small footprint and be “failcold” enabling siting them in multiple installations close to loads reducing “grid” vulnerability and offering opportunity for supercooled transmission. Thorium reactors, needing some higher energy “seed” could be used to reduce our stockpiles of “spent fuel”. >PS
“Government that solves too many problems goes out of business”...the government...and, and bigger government just creates bigger problems. We are in the ULTIMATE GOVERNMENT PROBLEM BUBBLE of all time, the bubble of all bubbles in actuality.
The Tucker car was famously buried 60 years ago, just as thorium has been buried all along as an efficient energy producing technology.
Thorium will make a comeback only when everything else regarding energy fails due to political mismanagement, political dismanagement, if not actual inherent failure. The time appears to be now. Actual competent management of current energy and technological improvements in current energy use with the addition of thorium would be beneficial. I do not think political parties and government really want to bring the issue up. So far they have not. Thank God for the Sun and its complete non-dependence on Washington, DC.
As
Dropping a link here:
There are no technological problems to overcome.
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Popular Science Magazine publishes an article detailing the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor. Pick a copy of the July 2011 issue or see the article here.
One pound of thorium produces as much power as 300 pounds of uranium—or 3.5 million pounds of coal.
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