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Bill Gates Is Beginning to Dream the Thorium Dream By Brian Merchant Image: Wikimedia Mention thorium—an alternative fuel for nuclear power—to the right crowd, and faces will alight with the same look of spirited devotion you might see in, say, Twin Peaks and Chicago Cubs fans. People love thorium against the odds. And now Bill Gates has given them a new reason to keep rooting for the underdog element. TerraPower, the Gates-chaired nuclear power company, has garnered attention for pursuing traveling wave reactor tech, which runs entirely on spent uranium and would rarely need to be refueled. But the concern...

Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium July 23rd, 2013 Posted by Mark Halper Bill Gates TED Jurvetson Flickr Opening the nuclear Gates. TerraPower, Bill Gates’ nuclear company, is now open to reactor types other than its traveling wave design. The traveling wave remains the company’s focus, although Terra has morphed it into more of a “standing wave.” TerraPower, the Bill Gates-chaired nuclear company that is developing a fast reactor, is now investigating alternative reactor technologies, including thorium fuel and molten salt reactors. While the company’s “big bet” continues to be on a fast reactor that TerraPower calls...

Mark Halper delivers a thorium year-in-review at the Thorium Energy Alliance's 5th conference, in Chicago on May 30th 2013. The plot thickens....

The western world has within its capacity far more than enough rare earths (including heavy rare earths) to meet its own industrial demand. It is an unwillingness to process material containing thorium which is ultimately impeding our high tech manufacturing sector.

NEW YORK, July 1, 2013 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- U.S. Rare Earths, Inc., "UREE", UREE +8.00% , a rare earths exploration company with mining claims in Idaho, Montana, and Colorado, announced today the appointment of J. Robert Kerrey, former U.S. Senator and Governor of Nebraska, to the Company's Board of Directors. "We are delighted to add an independent Director with Bob's wide range of experience, and his familiarity with critical issues of national importance. It should now become clear that we are in the process at UREE of building an extremely accomplished team on the Board of Directors. Our intention...

This stuff could very well revolutionize nuclear power. Thorium-MOX can be formed into rods and used in current generation (Gen II) nuclear reactor with minimal retrofitting. Thor Energy is currently testing the new technology on the small scale. A prototype reactor will power a paper mill in the town of Halden, Norway for the next five years. If the fuel proves to be commercially viable during that test, we could see a sea change in nuclear power by the end of the decade.

Learn more about Thorium reactors and the potential. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY (5 minute overview) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI (36 minutes...more "techie") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8 (about 1 hour....symposium like discussion)

The only source of energy that can meet global demand while avoiding greenhouse gas emissions is nuclear power. But our perception of nuclear power is coloured by issues of safety, radiotoxic waste, and the threat of nuclear proliferation. Yet there is a safer alternative to current nuclear technology… Author Robert Cywinski Professor, Special Research Advisor at University of Huddersfield Disclosure Statement Robert Cywinski receives funding from the EPSRC and STFC The Conversation is funded by CSIRO, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, UTS, UWA, Canberra, CDU, Deakin, Flinders, Griffith, JCU, La Trobe, Massey, Murdoch, Newcastle. QUT, Swinburne, UniSA, USC, USQ, UTAS, UWS and...

  Bill Gates' Dream for a Nuclear-Powered Future Is Almost Here By Maxx Chatsko | More Articles | Save For Later March 4, 2014 | Comments (1) Is this the future of clean energy? Source: TerraPower.Things may be different today, but in its heyday, Microsoft was a game-changing company that forever altered the way the world interacted with computers. The creative genius and foresight of Bill Gates has paid off in a significant way: He's the wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of $76 billion, according to Forbes. While Gates still advises Microsoft, he has turned much of his...

Updated (Jan 19, 2014 at 01:45 am) The pattern is not completely clear, and there are pieces missing from the puzzle, but I have found enough bits of evidence to convince me that it is more likely than not that someone purposely initiated the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident. This is a difficult story to tell; it’s not easy to revise history. It’s even harder to it successfully when there is sure to be disbelief, dismissal, and efforts to discredit. I prefer being respected and strive to avoid the potential of being marginalized as a crackpot. However, I feel a...

Scientists in Shanghai are attempting a breakthrough in nuclear energy: reactors powered by thorium, an alternative to uranium.

Thorium China Is Using US Research to Take the Lead on Thorium Reactor Development   By Derek MeadA CAD render of an old Oak Ridge molten salt reactor design, via Flibe Energy In the fracking-dominated and carbon-obsessed United States, we often forget that carbon-neutral energy doesn't have to simply be solar and wind. There's also nuclear power, of which alternative, safe power cycles exist, ones that were first developed by American researchers. But after years of sitting around, that research is finally being put to use–by China.We've long discussed the thorium dream in depth here at Motherboard, largely because it's oh...

Nuclear scientists are being urged by the former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix to develop thorium as a new fuel. Mr Blix says that the radioactive element may prove much safer in reactors than uranium. His enthusiasm is shared by some in the British nuclear establishment. Scientists at the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) have been encouraged by the government to help research on an Indian thorium-based reactor, and on a test programme in Norway. China is going for a revolutionary approach, devising a next-generation reactor which its supporters say will enable thorium to be used much more safely than...

An economic analysis of what is in spent nuclear fuel. As a nuclear reactor fissions heavy metal U235 and Pu239, the atoms are split into two randomly sized pieces. Many of these fission products are unstable and rapidly decay into other products. After nuclear reactor fuel has cooled in a pool of water for a few years, and then sat in dry cask storage for another 10--30 years, what is it made of? Is it dangerous waste that needs to be isolated from humanity for 100,000 years or is it precious material waiting to be partitioned and sold? The answer...

My last article about thorium as an alternative nuclear reactor fuel drew way more readers than I expected. I intentionally glossed over the complexities of specific reactor designs for the sake of simplicity, but in this article I want to go deeper. This article explains some of the differences between traditional uranium reactors and molten salt thorium reactors (MSRs).

Eighteen-year-old Taylor Wilson has designed a compact nuclear reactor that could one day burn waste from old atomic weapons to power anything from homes and factories to space colonies. The American teen, who gained fame four years ago after designing a fusion reactor he planned to build in the garage of his family's home, shared his latest endeavor at a TED Conference in southern California on Thursday. "It's about bringing something old, fission, into the 21st Century," Wilson said. "I think this has huge potential to change the world." He has designed a small reactor capable of generating 50-100 megawatts...

A Los Alamos Story Worthy of Stephen King Ever heard of The Demon Core? It was named by Los Alamos scientists — who are generally not a superstitious lot — after it claimed multiple lives, in a series of strange and horrible accidents. Discover a legend of science... that's worthy of a horror movie. When I was reading Stephen King stories, I was constantly amazed at the things he made scary. It was like reading the legend of the monkey's paw over and over again, with increasingly weird objects. His most famous evil objects are the hotel in The Shining...

Twenty-eight years after the prophet's death, a secret complex code-named Y-12 was built in Bear Creek, and a secret city sprang up — seemingly almost overnight — in the next valley over in the shadow of Black Oak Ridge. Not shown on any maps at the time, Oak Ridge — first called Clinton Engineering Works after the nearby town of Clinton — was born in 1942 during World War II. It was the key facility in the huge effort called the Manhattan Project to build the world's first atomic bomb.

Here is a five minute long special report on a power source for the 21st Century; one that the “greens”, climate change alarmists and global warming skeptics might all agree on (video link below). And here is my blog about that power source. JOHN COLEMAN’S BLOG May 21, 2012 THORIUM will power the world. That is the bumper sticker of the future. The ugly debate about energy has gone on and on. It is costing us billions of dollars. It is beginning to cripple our nation. I have been looking for a source of abundant, cheap electric power that short...

Resource depletion, climate change and rising oil prices have led to large investments in renewable energy and new fossil fuel extraction techniques. However despite the positive headlines on solar, wind, and shale, all of these sectors are beset with problems that add to our uncertain energy future. We appear to be decades away from finding a renewable source that will help us avoid the impending energy crisis. Yet amongst this bleak outlook a relatively unknown Italian inventor could be about to spark an energy revolution? Andrea Rossi appears to have produced the first working “cold” fusion device, or low energy...