Posted on 06/03/2019 9:02:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
There seems to be a similarity between international trade disputes and Texas Hold’em. There is always a certain amount of bluff that is part of the negotiations. The question is, how much is a bluff and how much is not. The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has just revealed that they are going to use their stake in rare earth minerals production as their show card. Make no mistake -- the communist government is not bluffing. However, one good card does not make a winning hand.
To understand the problem, we first must understand where rare earth mineral deposits are found and why, we in the United States, no longer mine deposits that we have domestically.
Rare earth minerals are found in a number of areas around the world, including North America. Rare earths are comprised of the 15 Lanthanide Elements in the periodic table and two outliers; Scandium and Yttrium. As with many mineral deposits, there are also other less desirable minerals collocated in these veins of rare earth minerals. These include uranium and thorium, which are radioactive.
When exploiting a deposit of rare earth minerals, the processing of the minerals leaves behind “mining tailings” of radioactive thorium and uranium. Although uranium has a market value, thorium currently is classified as radioactive waste which, according the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must be handled in a very specific and costly way to protect the ground water and the environment in general from becoming dangerously radioactive. These requirements make exploiting the domestic deposits of rare earth minerals prohibitively expensive.
By contrast, China does not care about the environmental impacts of industry, which explains the toxic air quality of cities like Shanghai and Beijing. The mining operations of the Chinese rare earth mineral deposits leaves behind huge toxic and radioactive waste dumps.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I have to disagree with you on this, SpaceBar.
While it is true that the article highlights the overarching issue of how US industry is hamstrung by regulations in a way that industry in Communist China is not (Communist countries are parties to some of the worst ecological disasters and defacements in history) it DOES cut right to the heart of the specific rare earth issues.
It is a fact that China controls the market on these due largely ONLY to two things: One, they can mine the elements in any way they deem necessary with no thought whatsoever to environmental concerns, AND...there is no market for Thorium, which in that context, is a HUGE millstone around the neck of anyone (NOT living in a totalitarian country) wishing to mine where there is Thorium (where other rare earths may be found)
The Thorium tailings are an overall net cost, and hugely expensive too, due to their radioactive nature. Just the way they have to be handled by EPA regulations in the USA, contrasted with the Chinese (who likely can back them up to a river and dump them in if they so desired) makes anything with Thorium unprofitable for us, where it doesn’t for them.
You and I both likely agree on this point.
However, if there WERE a market for Thorium...I guarantee, we would be swimming in rare earth mining. If Thorium could be sold at a profit, the rare earths found cohabiting the environments in which we find Thorium deposits would be icing on the cake, and delicious icing too, as it would both make money, AND remove a monopoly enjoyed by China. (The USA has the second most know Thorium deposits in the world, far behind India.
Where we disagree is the characterization that Thorium has no place in this discussion...I think it does.
” If they ... truly ... had integrity....”
Of course, none of the Libs have an IQ above 80, and only the elites among them. Thinking and logic are most definitely optional, and facts only apply when convenient.
I’m convinced that if you could eliminate liberals from all of history, by now we’d have a galactic empire - they’ve held us back THAT much.
Nope. You're confusing two topics. the "pebble bed" is a form of gas-cooled fast breeder reactor...still uses urani um 235 and 238 and makes plutonium. Stringent testing proved that the pyrolytic graphite "pebbles" didn't contain the fission products well enough, and shed a HIGHLY radioactive dust.
See Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor
Thorium also still uses U-235 (at least at the start), but does get rid of the U-238/plutonium problem. It is a type of molten-salt reactor.
see wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
There may exist a version of thorium that does use pebbles of some sort, but I've never seen any info for such a beast.
Karl Denninger wrote an article about Thorium as an energy source a couple of years ago - and that really opened my eyes. It is at: http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2491667
The simple fact is that we’ve known that thorium works in reactors very well since the 1960s, with “very well” meaning without the possibility of a melt-down or use of it for nukes by anyone (and that latter point is, as you mentioned, why it was ditched in favor of uranium-fueled power plants.
Oak Ridge built a reactor core which ran on U235 and U233, the U233 having been generated from prior Thorium breeding experiments conducted with other reactor designs. One proposal was to place a Thorium salt jacket around a MSR core to breed it’s own U233 fuel. Weinberg’s molten salt reactor never actually crossed path with Thorium during it’s operation.
Chemical processing of the molten salt fuel for removal of waste products, and the Protactinium generated from breeding Thorium is not fully developed.
For some reason, I just found myself taking a deep breath.
Catchy tune...
The U.S. is helping China build a novel, superior nuclear reactor
3/23/2015, 10:02:23 AM · by ckilmer · 27 replies
fortune.com ^ | February 2, 2015, 2:48 PM EDT | Mark Halper
The U.S. is helping China build a novel, superior nuclear reactor by Mark Halper February 2, 2015, 2:48 PM EDT Share icons The Department of Energy is dusting off one of the old betamaxes of nuclear technology: The molten salt reactor. But with political will lacking at home, it will rise in China.In 1973, the Nixon administration made a momentous decision that altered the course of civilian nuclear power: It fired the director of the renowned Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scuppering development of a reactor widely regarded as safer and superior to the complicated, inferior behemoths that define the global...
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