Interesting chatter
NOTEWORTHY COMMENT regarding “NUCLEARIZATION OF ENERGY SOURCES: Thorium-based nuclear energy promising what uranium never delivered?”
conservationreport.com
Posted in Uncategorized by buckdenton on August 11th, 2008
Ken writes:
There are several ways to utilize Thorium, which also has potential economic advantages on the front end (more abundant than uranium and no expensive enrichment required). It has already been used in pebble bed reactors both here and in Germany for commercial power production. There is a company, Thorium Power Ltd which is close to marketing a fuel design that not only converts current light water reactors into Thorium burners, but also enables these same reactors to dispose of long term nuclear waste products from other reactors. Another option actively under development in Japan is the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, which they call Fuji II. This one promises to be the most efficient reactor ever built since it can almost completely burn down the input thorium fuel. It can also be used as a nuclear waste ‘garbage disposal’ for all the long lived transuranic waste from current reactors. Bye bye Yuka Mtn!
Tell McCain and Obama to support research into the utilization of Thorium and write you congress people too. Don’t make this a narrow partisan issue, it is far too important, I’m as blue as they get and I fully support nuclear power. Coal is killing the planet, it’s not the CO2 (which is bad), it is the heavy metals. A single coal plant will dump 30,000 pounds of highly toxic mercury into the sky to fall back into the oceans. Just picture that much mercury in five gallon pails. Probably several hundred of the heavy stuff. Then pick up the pails one at a time and dump them into the nearest river upstream of your water source. Get the picture? Repeat for each of the hundreds of coal fired plants across the country. Repeat for Arsenic, Chromium, Uranium and Thorium. Mercury stays around in the environment for hundreds of years so repeat year after year. Ever wonder where all the mercury in tuna comes from? Oh, did I mention acid rain?
Despite my stance on traditional uranium-based nuclear power, I do believe in using and promoting new technology to solve our energy problems – sans major impacts to the environment. If the claims and feasibility of thorium-based nuclear energy are true then thorium-based nuclear energy should be part of the debate.
Here is a reason why we need to move away from dirty energy sources such as coal: Mercury pollution from an unknown source or sources is currently a huge problem in the Great Salt Lake and for waterfowl that feed on the brine shrimp inhabiting the lake.
Ken said, on August 12th, 2008 at 8:43 am
follow this link, it’s a bit technical, aimed as a general interest seminar for NASA researchers, but it gives an overview of the LFTR. I could imagine fuel reprocessing plants with a few of these running to dump transurantics like Np, and Cm into and then cycle the Pu over to current pressurized water reactors to drive Thorium power’s design. This kind of scheme could create commercial demand for the waste products of current reactors for the production of more energy and commercial demand of this kind has the potential of destroying the waste we already have sitting around, rather than burying it.
energyfromthorium.com
Ken said, on August 12th, 2008 at 8:56 am
I don’t mean to monopolize the conversation, but if you are worried about mining Thorium, two points:
Thorium is produced as a normal bi-product of rare earth metal purification. Since it is radioactive it can’t be simply dumped. There is little commercial use for it so a lot is sitting around as rad waste in yellow 50 gallon drums.
The US government stock piled Thorium for years as a potential energy source. 3,200 tons of Thorium nitrate are buried in shipping containers in Nevada waiting to be used. This is not a new idea, as Kirk’s presentation shows. |
