send an email to me if you’re interested in a free copy of “Collapsing Water and Energy Costs: How Bill Gates [Or You!] Can Create the Inventions That Spark the Next Industrial and Agricultural Revolution”
http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B0089Z7V6Y
Well someday we will probably be buying molten salt reactors froms china and paying the licensing fees to Microsoft...
Powered by Microsoft may appear on your fusebox...
Bluescreens will be BRUTAL!!!
ping
Given the “quality” of Microsoft products, I do not want to be within a continent of any nuclear reactors even remotely associated with Bill Gates.
He was a good crook...er...businessman...but he’s not even remotely close to being a technology janitor.
India has a big chunk of the world's supply of thorium, so this would be a good thing for them.
I still believe that small concrete enclosed, lead lined, and sealed thorium sources used to generate steam and rated for individual households or subdivisions are the way to go. Once the source is worn out you do just like a carrier refuel and take out the whole module with a crane and replace it with a new one.
Heck for that matter Radon has an activity only ~4 times less than uranimum (~5.5 times less than thorium) but is major more prevalent in the soil and could potentially provide the necessary heat source given a larger pile.
One thing that you have to remember is that the excess heat and energy from the Thorium Reactors can be used for Desalinization and for Making Hydrogen.
For one thing, the radioactive "waste" from an LFTR is very useful in nuclear medicine and one byproduct--plutonium-238--can be fashioned into an ultra long-life electric power source for spacecraft. That could mean manned spacecraft to Mars and back won't need heavy, volume-wasting solar panels to provide power.
Besides, consider the other advantages of LFTR's:
1. It uses commonly-found thorium-232 dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salts as fuel, vastly cheaper than uranium-235 processed into fuel rods.
2. it does not need a pressurized reactor vessel.
3. It can even use reprocessed spent uranium-235 fuel rods or even plutonium-239 from dismantled nuclear weapons dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salts as reactor fuel.
4. During an emergency (SCRAM) shutdown, all you need to do is dump the liquid fuel mix out of the reactor vessel. It can be done completely mechanically, very important in earthquake-prone areas like Japan or the US West Coast.
5. By using closed-loop Brayton turbines to generate electricity, we eliminate the need for expensive cooling towers or having to locate the reactor site near a large body of cooling water.
6. The amount of nuclear waste generated is very small, and the waste only has a half-life of under 300 years. That means waste disposal can be done at disused salt mines or salt domes--if the nuclear medicine industry doesn't grab it first!