When It Comes To The Energy Needed For The Modern World, Thor Will Save Us! No, not the Norse god or Hollywood superhero.

American Thinker ^ | 08/16/2023 | Jerold Levoritz

[SeekAndFind]

Thor Will Save Us! No, not the Norse god or Hollywood superhero. What might save us all is thorium, which literally runs the earth at its core, keeping the world protected from being stripped of its gases by maintaining the electromagnetic field around us. Thorium is a radioactive element found in the periodic tablet. It can also be found spread widely across the earth close to the surface.

Thorium is considered a hazardous waste product when mined along with rare earths, and must be isolated and stored. Therefore, we have considerable thorium available should we ever decide to use it in nuclear reactors.

As an alternative to uranium, there are sufficient quantities to last either 1000 years, 20,000 years, or essentially indefinitely; I have seen all three numbers. That is plenty of time to develop nuclear fusion to power the world, if we are still here.

In the 1960s, it was a tossup between using uranium or thorium for peaceful atomic energy purposes. Uranium won the battle because it could be used more easily in breeder reactors to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Only now can a few clear thinkers see what a terrible error ignoring thorium was. Thorium is safer than uranium by a light-year. If we consider using only the Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), it does not need a source of water nearby for cooling because, if something goes wrong, the liquid fluoride will expand, slowing and stopping the chain reaction, causing the fluoride salt to solidify.

The fissile material that thorium reactors produce is the uranium isotope U-233, which is the source of neutrons for maintaining the chain reaction.

[SeekAndFind]

The heat produced is so great (up to 800 degrees C) that it can boil sea water, distilling it for drinking and agriculture. As well, the heat is high enough to help manufacture fuels that can then be used in cars and trucks. Another useful function for LFTR reactors is that they eat waste from uranium-based reactors, waste that otherwise needs to be stored for hundreds of thousands of years.

[rlmorel]

I am all in on anything Thorium. Why isn’t our country?

We should be the world leaders in this, but we aren’t, and it is due to one thing, and one thing only:

Leftism.

[rlmorel]

I find the lack of interest in this thread revealing.

The The Left, the government, and the Media have done a good job on at least one thing:

So many Americans have no idea this is a safe alternative to conventional nuclear reactors.

[ckilmer]

The USA is way behind a couple of different countries in thorium nuclear power R&D.

However, the USA is way ahead in fusion power production.

First fusion power plant is already contracted to provide power for Microsoft in 2028.

The way for the USA to get ahead in thorium power production is to develop a way to convert nuclear electron skatter directly into electricity. (its currently used to produce heat for a boiler.)

The way to convert nuclear electron skatter directly into electricity is to adapt tokamak or other electromagnetic configurations for fusion power for fission power production to herd/corral the electrons that result from fission reactions.

[rlmorel]

This is a link from the article that I like:

Five minutes, and people can educate themselves at least a little bit:

LINK: Kirk Sorenson-LFTRs in 5 minutes - Thorium Reactors

[sjmjax]

You raise a good point. And, I am one who has long been interested in Thorium reactors.
What I’ve never got a good handle on is “why not”?
Other than not having the ability to create materials for nuclear weapons ( I imagine we already have plenty of both material and production capacity), why isn’t it embraced for power generation? Is there something pro Thorium articles aren’t mentioning?

[x]

All this attention for Thorium.

Thulium and Thalium are jealous.

[rlmorel]

Why not is the environmental (Communist) movement, IMO.

They have managed to turn Nuclear Power into a boogeyman, and they deliberately lump Thorium reactors into that mix.

If they were really environmentalists (they aren’t-they are Leftist ideologues, watermelons some call them...green on the outside, and red on the inside) they would be clamoring for this.

Marxists some time ago realized they would never have a Marxist revolution in this country (or other parts of the world) because Marxism revolution doesn’t fly with a large and prosperous middle class.

So they have two concurrent Marxism-based endeavors underway:

One is to replace Marxist “Class” with race. And that is achieving some success.

The other is to replace Marxist “Class” with environmentalism. I think they are having more success.

The point is, the decision to NOT promote, explore, and develop energy technology based on Thorium is in no way based on the environmental impact, danger to society, cost, or even technology limitations.

It is based on the sheep who stand on their legs bleating, as Orwell’s sheep in “Animal Farm” had done, “Solar and Wind Good, Nuclear Bad!” over and over again.

Just as Old Major, Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer wanted them to do in “Animal Farm” for their own purposes, not what was best for the animals or the farm.

[Georgia Girl 2]

The earth itself is a large energy machine. Eventually and likely fairly soon all of our energy will be simply harnessed from the earth.

[dfwgator]

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,

Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
There’s strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.

There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.

And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

There’s sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered.

-Tom Lehrer

[Campion]

Well, the other problem is that uranium is still fairly cheap, so there’s not much economic incentive to go explore relatively uncharted technological waters.

[rlmorel]

Not sure that is it, because Thorium is FAR cheaper and easier to mine.

[rlmorel]

Love it...I was a chemistry major, and that brought back some memories!

[Bookshelf]

You can go back twenty years and Saudi Arabia was going to construct scores of thorium reactors produced by an American corporation and thus wean itself from petroleum. Ho-hum.

[rlmorel]

I see what you are saying, but the point is, the cost of overall energy generation is only one benefit.

Things to consider:

Safety: FAR safer
Cost of running: Far less labor intensive
Cost of obtaining Thorium: FAR cheaper and more available for Thorium (which would bring the cost of generation down even further)

I honestly believe there are entities that simply do not want cheap energy. If energy is cheap, manufacturing is going to be cheaper, and more consumer activity will take place.

The Greenies hate industry.

[rlmorel]

Yes...this entire subject is puzzling and also full of lots of statements like that. People saying this is going to happen, but nothing does.

Something is holding back development.

There is nothing that I see that would prevent some interested party from developing a test bed reactor. Even if it failed, someone should have done it. It is possible that the Enviroweenies have created a paperwork bureaucratic fortress that makes it nerly imnpossible to comply with. If not that...

Something is keeping this down, IMO.

[sjmjax]

Thanks for your thoughts on the matter.
As I suspected, it’s more about politics and ideology than technology or practical reasons.

[Owen]

In the world of physics and engineering, it has been my lifetime’s experience that when an offered solution to a problem begins with “Can’t you just” . . . the answer is no.

Read about gamma particle generation in the 69 year half life of uranium 232. These are not neutrons. It’s very dangerous.

I am aware there are proposed ways to avoid it, but those all have obstacles.

Can’t you just. . . . . . . no.

[NorthMountain]

the periodic tablet

Another entry in the "Where TF are the editors?" file ...

[NorthMountain]

a safe alternative to conventional nuclear reactors.

Most Americans think "conventional nuclear reactors" are Very Dangerous Bad No-good Rotten things.

Stupidity and ignorance abound.

Because Jane Fonda. Or something.