[decimon]

No Pu ping.

[Frantzie]

Sounds like the way to go. Get Thorium nuke plants, Ford Fusion plug-in hybrids and we can fire Obama’s bosses and our overlords the Saudis.

[Captain Beyond]

bflr

[epithermal]

“as much energy as 200 tons of uranium”

Does anyone know how they come up with this comparison. I don’t doubt it, I am just curious what the physics are.

[aruanan]

and the radioactive lifespan of much nuclear waste, which can extend far beyond 10,000 years.

As opposed to the toxic waste from coal fired plants that has no half-life. Well, there is also radioactive waste in coal generated waste since uranium and some other radioactive elements appear in 3.8 parts per million (low end figure). A thousand megawatt coal facility burns about 4 million tons per year. This, then, results in over 15 tons of radioactive elements being returned to the environment per 1000 megawatt plant per year. None of it goes into any kind of containment for radioactive materials. We're far, far better off having nuclear plants and reprocessing the wastes for other uses.

[NonValueAdded]

But beware of cobalt-thorium-G

[GBA]

Wow! Why are we letting the Japanese beat us to this:

"Thorium is a great fuel in light water reactors, but it really excels in molten salt reactors," says David LeBlanc, a nuclear physicist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. The fuel rods used in light water reactors tend to succumb to radiation damage within a few years.

In proposed molten salt reactors, by contrast, thorium is dissolved in a mixture of damage-resistant liquid salts, allowing for more plant uptime.

Radioactive fission products generated in a thorium-fueled molten salt reactor can also be re-added to the reactor for many successive rounds of power generation, enabling utilities to extract more power from small amounts of fuel.

Japanese company IThEMS, which is working on a thorium-fueled molten salt reactor, estimates power generated by such a reactor would cost at least 30 percent less than power from today's light water reactors.

In addition, molten salt reactors could potentially burn through hazardous waste stockpiles produced by previous generations of nuclear reactors.

[3niner]

Fast neutron reactor technology can use many different fuels, consume high level "waste", and produce power more cheaply and safely, than our current slow neutron technology.

This has been well understood for many decades, but our government and "environmentalists" have blocked the technology since the 1960s.

[Bean Counter]

http://energyfromthorium.com/

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

EnergyFromThorium
http://energyfromthorium.com/

Thorium fuel cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

[wendy1946]

The combination of thorium and super capacitors sounds like the best shot we have at getting out from under the power of oil companies and the slammite world.

[EternalVigilance]

Bump.

[Bean Counter]

Interesting that they are developing thorium-uranium fuel rods that will be backfitted into existing light water reactors. I wasn’t aware that the research had progressed to that point, and it’s great news that we’re on top of this technology.

This potentially solves the problems at Yucca Mountain if we can in fact find a way to reprocess and burn through some of the hottest nuclear waste.

[Captain Beyond]

bflr