Thor, the Marvel Comics superhero, hammered his way into movie theaters over the weekend, saving the world, winning Natalie Portman and grossing about $66 million. Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor” is based on Stan Lee’s Thor, which is based on the Thor of Norse mythology — god of thunder and protector of mankind.
Some pioneering scientists of the early 19th century were so taken with Thor’s immortal powers that they named a radioactive element after him. Nearly two centuries later, some modern scientists, including a Nobel Prize laureate, believe thorium could play a major role in saving mankind from global warming.
The silvery metal could be — by some estimates, it already is — the next big leap in reactors, the fuel that could give the stalled nuclear renaissance a post-Fukushima boost. It is said to be far safer, far more abundant and less expensive than uranium, leaving less waste and, in some estimations, reducing the risk of explosions and meltdowns at power plants to zero.
Patrick Cox, a technology watcher and self-described “transformational profit seeker” for the Baltimore-based economic prognosticator Agora Financial, remains bullish on a nuclear renaissance despite Fukushima, and his reason is about the size of a golf ball.
“Imagine,” he says, “a piece of rock the size of a golf ball giving a person a lifetime supply of electricity. A piece the size of an SUV could give a lifetime supply of energy to a town of about 50,000 people.”
Nobel physicist Carlo Rubbia’s widely quoted estimate is that a ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3.5 million tons of coal.
If there is ever going to be a nuclear expansion sufficient to significantly reduce coal-fired (and greenhouse gas-producing) electrical generation, thorium may be the answer, say its supporters. It can solve a lot of the problems associated with the present generation of nuclear reactors and instill public confidence in atomic energy as the long-term alternative to fossil fuels.
China considers thorium technology environmentally safe, cost effective and politically palatable; it is pushing ahead with its development. So are India and Russia. The pro-nuclear French are not in the game yet because they have invested heavily in the present generation of reactors. The U.S. used thorium to breed nuclear fuel nearly 50 years ago but moved heavily into uranium in order to have the weapons-grade plutonium needed in the Cold War. Thorium provides no such byproduct.
Is it two hundred times as hard to obtain, too?
All speculation, no details on how someone might actually build a reactor using this stuff...
So, you can count this along with Steorn’s Orbo for the time being.