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To: gordonmcdowell

Actually, tickerforum has a search, but Thorium is but one very peripheral issue discussed over there. Although, it’s not taken lightly, because the use of Thorium has a very direct national security context or connotation.

I am not sure quite what you are asking. Mining Thorium is fairly trivial, other than the fact that millions of tons of earth have to be moved. but that’s the same as copper or zinc or lead or tin or iron. It is 3-4x as prevalent in the earth’s crust as Uranium, and don’t forget that of that Uranium, only .7% is fissionable and requires costly processing to turn into U-235. Thorium is usable in reactors exactly as it comes out of the ground, with no further processing. All of it. Indeed, we could get all the thorium we’d need for half a dozen or so Th reactors simply by extracting it from the coal that we are already extracting and burning, sending that Thorium up coal power plant smokestacks so we can breathe it.

I really do not know where the US sits as far as rare earth mining. AFAIK, only miniscule amounts have been discovered on US soil, and of course, the economics of developing a very low output mine compare poorly to getting this stuff from the Chicoms.


14 posted on 10/23/2011 8:34:58 PM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (Madoff screwed the rich. Bernanke screwed us all.)
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To: Attention Surplus Disorder
I really do not know where the US sits as far as rare earth mining. AFAIK, only miniscule amounts have been discovered on US soil

The environmentalists shut down the major US mine for these minerals but it is being reopened.

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

16 posted on 10/24/2011 3:32:52 PM PDT by Straight Vermonter (Posting from deep behind the Maple Curtain)
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