Posted on 07/04/2013 12:17:13 PM PDT by Innovative
This stuff could very well revolutionize nuclear power. Thorium-MOX can be formed into rods and used in current generation (Gen II) nuclear reactor with minimal retrofitting.
Thor Energy is currently testing the new technology on the small scale. A prototype reactor will power a paper mill in the town of Halden, Norway for the next five years. If the fuel proves to be commercially viable during that test, we could see a sea change in nuclear power by the end of the decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
Thorium Energy Cheaper than coal with links to related information and scientific references. Quite interesting.
It just sounds too fantastic to be true. Hope so though.
Interesting.
(Also got a chuckle out of the annotation on the pic at the link.)
Why didn’t you tell the world, eh ?
Very clever. This would be a very interesting proposition.
There are quite a few articles posted on FR about this remarkable energy generation source:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/thorium/index
Interesting...
Thorium ping
What’s the catch? Why aren’t these things being build by the hundreds around the world?
UPDATE: Former NE Senator Bob Kerrey Joins US Rare Earths.
Can Bob Kerrey’s gravitas in DC help solve the “Thorium Problem” which is holding back US rare earth mineral production?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyqYP6f66Mw
This is a good video....it also ties into Molten Salt Thorium Reactors (which is what China is working on....we worked on this technology in the 1960’s).
Since thorium is so commonly available, we could build hundreds of 500 to 1,000 MW LFTR reactor installations and render the use of burning coal to generate power essentially obsolete. And we could generate so much electric power that all of our long-distance railroads could be electrified. The result is a dramatic drop in air pollution, since we won't have the pollution from coal-burning power plants or many thousands of diesel-electric locomotives.
We can also use the power for:
1. Desalination of sea water
2. Crack Hydrogen from water
3. Combine Hydrogen with atmospheric CO2 to make diesel, gas, and ammonia fertilizer
4. Eat up solid nuclear waste and convert it to secondary products and spare energy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyqYP6f66Mw
It can also power coal “gasification” plants.
If we had a lot of Thorium reactors, we couls also electrify the highways and major traffic city roads, and drive electric cars with small batteries that never need recharging, because they would get their charge from the road.
One big advantage of molten-salt reactors is that spent uranium-235 fuel rods and plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons could be reprocessed and then dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salts to be used as reactor fuel. That right there eliminates a huge nuclear waste problem.
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