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But in the longer, Indian and Chinese scientists are seriously looking at whether Alvin Weinberg's work on molten-salt nuclear reactors can be scaled up to commercial scale. If it works, suddenly thorium-232--an actinide series radioactive element as common in the soil as lead!--becomes the nuclear fuel of choice, and in one fell swoop permanently end the energy crisis. We know that not only on Earth, but on the Moon and possibly Mars, the amount of thorium-232 in the ground is enough to power Earth's energy needs for effectively tens of thousands of years at current power usage rates.

Outstanding Ray...

I have been researching this arena with all the Iran talk. They don't need a Fusion program, they need to join a Thorium program. I found a ton of YouTube videos many over an hr in length of an organization interviewing the remaining liquid Florine cooled Reactor engineers and how they were cut off ( funding ) by Nixon who wanted Breeders ( in CA to garner jobs their ) and how they never made the next step to Thorium.

They want Electric Cars? Good, build a ton of Thorium Reactors to have a Thorium based economy,it works for me...

For starters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI

In fact, once the molten-salt reactor (MSR) is perfected, we could get the following:

1. Very high levels of safety. MSR's don't need dangerous pressurized reactor vessels, and since the fuel is already in liquid form, there is no such thing as meltdown. Shutting down the reactor quickly is just emptying the liquid fuel from the reactor vessel.

2. By using closed-loop Brayton turbines, we eliminate the need for expensive cooling towers or locating the reactor near a large source of cooling water (rivers, lakes or the ocean). That makes it possible to locate the reactor in more arid regions in the world.

3. The amount of radioactive waste generated is very small, and only have a half-life of under 300 years. That means the waste can be stored cheaply in disused salt mines--if the nuclear medicine industry doesn't grab it first!

4. MSR's can be scaled up and down easily in size and generating capacity. That means instead of a large central reactor, we can build a large number of smaller reactors to power a whole city. They're small enough that a whole factory or computer server farm could be powered by a 50 to 100 MW MSR--and unlike solar and wind power, the power generation can go on 24 hours a day.

5. With enough MSR's, we could do amazing things like getting rid of all coal-fired power plants, electrifying all our long-distance railroads, and even do large-scale seawater desalinization to turn large swaths of arid desert into productive farmland.

6. MSR's will make it possible to produce "synthetic" natural gas, gasoline and diesel fuel that are far cleaner-burning than today's petroleum-derived fuels.

Given that thorium-232 is as common as lead in the soil, the possibility that thorium-232 could be found in large quantities on the Moon, and Mars may have large quantities of this element, there is enough thorium-232 to effectively generate power at current power production levels for tens of thousands of years. In short, the whole idea of energy crisis will be eliminated for thousands of years starting now.