Posted on 06/03/2019 9:02:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The author proposes that we look at the use of THORIUM.
Thorium can be used in special type of nuclear reactor which has been shown to be proliferation resistant and safer than the High Pressure Water Reactors (HPWR) which are based upon uranium.
Back in the early 1960s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) built a Liquid Fluoride-Thorium salt reactor (LFTR). The reactor was designed by Dr. Alvin Weinberg, who was the director of ORNL. The reactor operated without incident for a number of years before it was shut down by Congress in favor of fast breeder reactors and HPWR because each of these types of reactors produce weapons grade fissile plutonium and uranium which was in great demand because of the Cold War arms race.
The demonstration of the LFTR reactor was a magnificent success. It proved that LFTR types of reactors were safer than uranium-based HPWR in a number of ways.
Read more at above link...
Wasn't it Paul Krugman who said we could learn a lot about economics from the Chinese?
Thank You for posting.
This is what always gets me about ultra-liberal environmental laws in the United States (which, by and large, are a good thing). Liberals are very happy to drive EVs and build millions of windmills, both of which use vast quantities of REMs. But they don't want the toxic effluent in the U.S., so they happily outsource REM mining and production to China and other third world countries with no or minimal environmental safeguards.
Whatever happed to their silly mantra "Think Globally, Act Locally"? If they were truly "Thinking Globally" and had integrity, they would refuse to buy ANY products that use REMs including Teslas and all "green energy" from windmills.
We should have been pursuing Thorium exploitation decades ago.
We still can, and we should.
Rare earths are found in thorium deposits and the thorium is radioactive waste from rare earth mining. Funny how plans come together, no?
P4L
Thorium is just thrown into the article as a shiny object.
Just a few years ago, “pebble bed” reactors using thorium pellets was touted as the coming thing for generating electricity. Supposedly they would have allowed development of smaller scale reactors, allowing decentralization of power production, thus less losses to long distance transmission, much safer/simpler waste disposal, etc. Any idea why this idea has seemed to fade away?
In what way? Is it not feasible? Are LFTR reactors not feasible?
If China withdraws from the market others will step forward to offer supply. Yes, your iPhone might cost a couple of bucks more, at least for a while until fully robotic mining operations are put in place. So what. This threat will have zero real leverage against the US.
WELL
SAID!
Thorium main isotope, Th-232, accounts for 99.98% of all the Thorium in existence. That isotope has a half-life of 14 billion years.
(For comparison, Uranium has two chief isotopes: U-238, which accounts for 99.27% of all Uranium in existence, and with a half-life of 4.47 billion years; and U-235, with a natural occurence of roughly 0.7% and a half-life of 704 million years.)
Remember, the longer the half-life, the less radioactive and/or dangerous the isotope (generally speaking).
So Thorium is orders of magnitude safer than Uranium.
Of course, tailings from the mining of Rare Earths could contain who knows what - but as far as the Thorium is concerned, I would be far less worried about it than about the Uranium.
Regards,
P.S. Thorium is not fissile - i.e., cannot ordinarily be used to make nuclear bombs.
True.
Regards,
We could learn from the Chinese in the way we learn from anyone else’s mistakes.
hehahaha...I have a degree in Chemistry, that made me laugh when I saw your post!
I have never worked in the field since I graduated, but little things still tweak me...I just the other night finished watching “Breaking Bad”, and I found myself unconsiously watching the opening credits for each episode which features various elements highlighted in actor’s names...:)
Never quite leaves you completely!
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