Posted on 06/15/2007 11:33:29 AM PDT by BlackJack
And we have more trilithium crystals than any planet in the universe.
Great thanks for the info....will check it out.
Coal burning is a big health problem....in parts
of Michigan it says right on the fishing license
don’t eat the fish. The great lakes region burns
a lot of coal and there is a big problem with
Mercury in the environment
A lot too depends on the type of decay - alpha, beta, gamma or neutron - each successively more dangerous and difficult to shield.
What you get a lot less of in the Th-232 / U-233 fuel cycle power production systems is the up breeding of Transuranics such as Americium / Plutonium / Californium for example. Generally nasty products to work with (ask the Hannaford staff)
U235/238/Pu239 is self-breeding - if the politico’s had the guts to get rid of Carter’s refusal to let us be MidEast-oil reduced.
But they remain slaved to the enviro restrictions put in place in the mid-70’s. New plant designs remove the problems (cooling automatic with new designs and the plant’s don’t need expensive forced circulation pumps and expensive systems any more.
Whether Th would help in those plants is not as obvious as the writers claim. After all, there are lot's of advertisers out there.
Few engineers with a cost-benefit balance analysis.
Hay Judge! I’m a Californium-Americium Wasp!! How nasty is that? I likes ta sting China-Syndrome Hanoi Jane Fonda every danged chance I git!!!
So we swap bein held hostage by those living in the sands of Arabia, to those living in the sands of India, right?
Twice!!!
Cf-252 decays by spontaneous fission!. I do not think even an American Wasp would survive in the near field of a people sized Californium source where one microgram spontaneously emits 170 million neutrons per minute.
Cf-251 is famous for having a very small critical mass, high lethality, and short period of toxic environmental irradiation relative to radioactive elements commonly used for radiation explosive weaponry, creating speculation about possible use in pocket nukes
: >)
Thorium is recovered commercially from the mineral monazite sand (a mixture of calcium, cerium, thorium, and other rare earth metal phosphates). It is found in thorite and thorianite (thorium oxide, ThO2) in New England (USA) and elsewhere. Much of the earth's internal heat has been attributed to thorium and uranium. There may be more energy available for use from thorium in the minerals of the earth's crust than from all combined uranium and fossil fuel sources.
I say we strip mine the NE states...Starting with Mass.
Just don’t strip or mine that Java the Hutt tub of lard Turdy Kennedy!!!
Yeah. I admit it. I'm intregued by this stuff WAY more that all the new age born again "alternative energy" mythology that never pays it's own way or pans out... EVER!!!
Well... I do not think you have much to worry about.
The total worldwide production of Californium.
primarily Cf-252, I believe, is < 10 grams.
It is made “in bulk” in only two locations,
the HIFR in Oak Ridge, and in Russia.
Cf-249 5.90 kilograms
Cf-251 1.94 kilograms
Cf-252 2.73 kilograms
By using a thick beryllium reflector the critical masses can be reduced to 40% or so of their bare value so that the most fissile of these isotopes, Cf-251, would have a reflected critical mass of 780 grams. This is arguably “in the gram range” since it is less than one kilogram, but it is obviously much, much closer to one kilogram than to one gram. Implosive compression can reduce this further. Just as a powerful and heavy implosion systems can produce low yield nuclear explosions from as little as 1 kg of Pu-239 (yield up to 100 tons, with the implosion system weighing on the order of 1000 kg), a relatively large implosion system could produce a low yield explosion from as little as 200 grams of Cf-251. The yield would be proportionately smaller of course, around 20 tons, and the total mass on the order of 200 kg. The U.S. has tested devices with 20 ton yields using the vastly cheaper plutonium (though much more of it) which only weighed 13 kg.
Experience with small nuclear devices indicates that it is impossible to make a nuclear device with a total mass less than the bare sphere critical mass of the fissile material used. Beryllium reflectors and high explosives can reduce the fissile mass required as indicated, but at the expense of adding more weight than is saved. Thus a nuclear device smaller than 2 kilograms or so using Cf-251 is almost certainly impossible.
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