But that would be too smart.
And the enviros would go ape stuffing crazy over it.
Get the thorium from coal tailings, then use some of the energy generated (there's about 12 times the energy in the thorium in coal, vs. burning the coal itself) to power the Fischer–Tropsch process that can, essentially, liquify coal into a usable fuel for vehicles (note that the Germans did this at the tail end of WW2, when they had lost access to oil fields). We have hundreds of years worth of coal, and can virtually cease importing liquid energy if we liquify the coal. Then, in combination with fracking, etc., we can become the world's largest exporter of energy. This will employ millions and generate such incredible income that we will be able to pay off the national debt in a few decades.
Which is exactly why the Leftists and the Watermelons (as if there's much of a difference) are against it.
“Get the thorium from coal tailings”
Send the enviros DOUBLY crazy, I love it!
Sunfire, which had to spend “seven figures” to design and build the rig, says the process is able to achieve an efficiency rate of 70 percent by using excess heat to create more steam, CNET reported.
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about 8 years ago there was an interesting story about John Kanzius who got salt water to burn. Kanzius’ concept is simple: expose salt water to 13.56 MHz radio waves and light a match. Hydrogen separates from the water mixture and burns for as long as it’s exposed to the frequency. (I think the significance of 13.56 is that it is the nuclear magnetic resonance nmr of oxygen.that plus the heat absorbed by the sodium —which in salt water — is a heat sink when bombarded by radio waves — caused the H2O molecules to break up and released the hydrogen for burning.)
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/4271398
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhqldxU_cvA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNvLwDX2WW0
http://nick2.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/kanzius-and-penn-state-chemist-rostum-roy/
I don’t know if this is more efficient than electrolysis. maybe not but it does eliminate the problem of electrodes that wear out.
Kanzius has proposed that the flame is produced by radio waves “forcing together” the “normally separated” hydrogen and oxygen in the water, a process he calls “reunification.”[13] In water (H2O), hydrogen is covalently bonded to oxygen, and thus the process must “reunite” pairs of hydrogen atoms and pairs of oxygen atoms, releasing dihydrogen (H2) and dioxygen (O2).
Here’s an interesting physorg article that may provide some back up for kanzius’ contention.
http://www.physorg.com/news129471213.html
Researchers Observe Hydrogen-Bond Exchange
According to the article:
image of the H20 and D20 dimers. The H20 dimer appears to fluctuate in the image because they exchange hydrogen bonds 60 times faster than the D20 dimers. The rate difference implies that the interchange proceeds via quantum tunneling.