Why not THORIUM ? one ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 3,500,000 tons of coal.

When I first heard of Thorium over a decade ago, I was certain that we would be living in a Thorium-future, no longer consuming oil or fossil-fuels, with everyone driving electric cars.

Now - year 2014, still, monster diesel trucks roaring past me on the highways, people driving monster-sized pickup trucks and SUV's for no apparent reason. I guess they think they're cool ... like rebels.


It seems like there is a deliberate effort to keep the world using fossil fuels, with the development of new energy technologies moving at a snails pace.

I have not seen many posts on Thorium as fuel so I thought I would bring up some old news.

Hopefully other people can provide some insights or news on the subject..

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Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia of CERN, (European Organization for Nuclear Research), estimates that one ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3,500,000 tons of coal.[24] Coal, as the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, makes up 42% of U.S. electrical power generation and 65% in China.[25] - Wiki
en.wikipedia.org...

In short, I hear Thorium reactors are much safer due to the process being able to be started or stopped at will with virtually zero risk of meltdown. The reaction is much more controlled since it requires neutrons to transmute the (non-fissionable) Thorium -232 into fissionable Uranium - 233.

"When a uranium reactor overheats and the fuel rods can’t contain the chain reaction, as happened at Fukushima, the crisis continues. If something happened to a thorium reactor, technicians could simply switch off the stimulus which comes from uranium or plutonium in a small feeder plant and the thorium reaction would halt itself." - BBC News
www.bbc.com...

Also, Thorium consumption does not produce weapons grade plutonium. Forbes writes: "..thorium would also be the ideal solution for allowing countries like Iran or North Korea to have nuclear power without worrying whether their nuclear programs are a cover for developing weapons… a worry with which we are all too familiar at present."
www.forbes.com...

"I am told that thorium will be safer in reactors - and it is almost impossible to make a bomb out of thorium. These are very major factors as the world looks for future energy supplies."" - UN weapons inspector Hans Blix
www.bbc.com...

I have also read articles that believe the latter may not be true - www.pressenza.com...

Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste - wiki

Thorium comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope, which does not require enrichment, whereas natural uranium contains only 0.7% fissionable U-235 - wiki

Thorium is much more abundant than uranium. "it is three times more abundant than tin in the Earth's crust and is about as common as lead."
en.wikipedia.org...

A large portion of the Earth's Thorium resides in India; a "quarter of the world’s known thorium reserves" according to Forbes. India is planning to have Thorium provide 25% of their energy by 2050.

www.itheo.org...
www.nei.org...
www.world-nuclear.org...

China is also pursuing similar goals with Thorium.

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Also found these interesting articles on ATS - about a car tested to go 1 Million Miles on 8 Grams of Thorium

www.abovetopsecret.com...
politicalblindspot.com...
www.geek.com...

a reply to: nOraKat

Logic says you keep your Thorium until the world is desperate and then you charge more for it. If you can't see consumerism at work, you live in a different world.
Is it right? Well, ask your self if you like getting a discount, or if you sell stuff, getting full price. If so you are into consumerism and have no right to criticize anyone else about consumerism.

Why not thorium? Well, the PTB cannot make nukes from its by-products...........

a reply to: nOraKat

It seems like there is a deliberate effort to keep the world using fossil fuels, with the development of new energy technologies moving at a snails pace.

Yea I'd say so. I think you've answered your own question.

That said, there are projects and according to wikipedia, India expects to have a thorium fast breeder reactor online by 2016 that uses plutonium to generate neutrons.

the answer is easier then you think. The reason is that thorium waste does not produce weapons grade material. All nuclear facilities produce "heat/steam/electrons" as their BYPRODUCT, the main product, and sole purpose for being, is weapons. The "power" was used as a lure to unsuspecting people who had no idea what the material created was for.

Someone needed weapons and it was decided, long before most of us were born, to create a system whereby the "people" paid for the effort. Consider the weapons created and then consider the waste. The waste was expected, known, and ignored entirely as a non-issue - 10 of thousands of tons of waste NO ONE knows how to get rid of at all - officially that is. The weapons were heralded as the savoir of mankind, when in fact the "people" paid for the weapons created to kill them by the millions in exchange for power that, at the time, they did not need.

Nuke plants make weapons. Not all, but most. The main reason for Fukushima's problems is that one of the reactors produced weapons grade material and the Japanese do not want the world to know.

Thorium would never get funding because its purpose would be to HELP people and not kill them. Some folks are happy that while the failed to nuke the planet and kill the people so far, the nuke waste is in fact destroying everything on the planet with quiet efficiency.

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

NO bombs? Awww… Tilt!

If its one thing the world needs more of its thermonuclear weapons, right?

All the bombs

Thorium comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope

Well, sort of. But so does U238, though thorium is far more abundant.

Thorium has been extracted chiefly from monazite through a complex multi-stage process. The monazite sand is dissolved in hot concentrated sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Thorium is extracted as an insoluble residue into an organic phase containing an amine. Next it is separated or stripped using an ion such as nitrate, chloride, hydroxide, or carbonate, returning the thorium to an aqueous phase. Finally, the thorium is precipitated and collected.

en.wikipedia.org...

Why not thorium? The main problem with thorium reactors, like all new technologies, is the initial costs. In any case, the University of Texas is supposed to be working on a test reactor and TerraPower, a commercial outfit, is also investigating thorium reactors. It's an option.

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE
a reply to: crankyoldman

Its funny how both BBC and Forbes' articles mention this:

"Some supporters of thorium believe that it was bypassed in the past because governments wanted the plutonium from certain conventional reactors to make atomic bombs.

They believe thorium was rejected because it was simply too safe." - BBC
www.bbc.com...

"So why on earth are we using uranium? As you may recall, research into the mechanization of nuclear reactions was initially driven not by the desire to make energy, but by the desire to make bombs. The $2 billion Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb sparked a worldwide surge in nuclear research, most of it funded by governments embroiled in the Cold War. And here we come to it: Thorium reactors do not produce plutonium, which is what you need to make a nuke.

How ironic. The fact that thorium reactors could not produce fuel for nuclear weapons meant the better reactor fuel got short shrift, yet today we would love to be able to clearly differentiate a country’s nuclear reactors from its weapons program." - Forbes
www.forbes.com...

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So if there really is a threat to the US from other nations developing plutonium, well then, they only have themselves to blame.

It's amazing how apparent these things are yet, those in the know (higher ups in power - which account for many), let these guys (perhaps higher up in power but much less people) keep up the shenanigans.

This is the future www.newscientist.com...
Obviously

en.m.wikipedia.org... ,the potential is more than they admit. Wake up scientists! Wake up hippies!

Another problem with thorium, are the by-products. They are not trivial by any means.

Thorium cannot in itself power a reactor; unlike natural uranium, it does not contain enough fissile material to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. As a result it must first be bombarded with neutrons to produce the highly radioactive isotope uranium-233 – 'so these are really U-233 reactors,' says Karamoskos.

This isotope is more hazardous than the U-235 used in conventional reactors, he adds, because it produces U-232 as a side effect (half life: 160,000 years), on top of familiar fission by-products such as technetium-99 (half life: up to 300,000 years) and iodine-129 (half life: 15.7 million years).Add in actinides such as protactinium-231 (half life: 33,000 years) and it soon becomes apparent that thorium's superficial cleanliness will still depend on digging some pretty deep holes to bury the highly radioactive waste.

Source: The Guardian

There was a news article about this on TV about on month ago. Where I live there are old thorium mines that were simply shut because of the anti nuke sentiments in the 1980's . Thorium used to be mined and used in mantles for had lanterns but they stopped using it because of the big Chernobyl scare.

Apparently the only thing holding back Thorium reactors is the lack of research. It was the next big thing until Chernobyl blew it's lid and therefore all work got dropped like a hot potato. They said that a lot of the scientists who were researching it have died now, so the knowledge they had is lost and we need to play catch up first.before it can be out into use but it's coming...

originally posted by: Phage

Thorium comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope

Well, sort of. But so does U238, though thorium is far more abundant.

Thorium has been extracted chiefly from monazite through a complex multi-stage process. The monazite sand is dissolved in hot concentrated sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Thorium is extracted as an insoluble residue into an organic phase containing an amine. Next it is separated or stripped using an ion such as nitrate, chloride, hydroxide, or carbonate, returning the thorium to an aqueous phase. Finally, the thorium is precipitated and collected.

en.wikipedia.org...

Why not thorium? The main problem with thorium reactors, like all new technologies, is the initial costs. In any case, the University of Texas is supposed to be working on a test reactor and TerraPower, a commercial outfit, is also investigating thorium reactors. It's an option.

U238 does not come out of the ground as a pure isotope. It contains a plethora of other of other mineral thats why it must be extracted and turned into uranium oxide (yellow cake). Plus U238 is not fissile material. Nor can it be transmutated into a fissile material like Th232. Uranium has to be isotopically separated either by gaseous diffusion or centrifugal separation. But thorium does not comes out of the ground pure either it also has to be extracted from thorium baring ore. But apparently the US has a huge stockpile. And I don't see why start up cost should be an issue sense current uranium based reactor based loans are backed and insured by the tax payers. The big problem with breeder Thorium reactors is the same problem with uranium breeder reactors. Reprocessing any kind of nuclear fuel is extremely complicated no matter how easy Mr. Sorenson makes it sound. Your dealing with extremely radioactive materials and extremely caustic acids an accident at a reprocessing plant can be just as dangerous as an accident at a power plant.

By the way OP Love your avatar Ive been thinking about getting a mandelbrot tattoo I've just been hesitant because all of that detail is going to be extremely hard to put on skin. Sorry off topic.

The anti nuke people will fight to stop any type of reactors.

It does not mater what type or how safe.

This all goes back to early anti nuke groups in the US that were being payed by Russia to destabilize the US.

Its the same now with DU ammo an the hoax stories that many US weapons and bombs use DU.
and the hoax stories about DU effects.
Russia and China both have very large stockpiles of DU weapons and don't want to fight a enemy with the same.

Peace is war fought by other means.

a reply to: symptomoftheuniverse

Another promising source of energy is off-shore wind.

energy.gov...

At least we seem to be looking into that one ..

"The U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Program funds research nationwide to develop and deploy offshore wind technologies that can capture wind resources off the coasts of the United States and convert that wind into electricity.

... Data on the technical resource potential suggest more than 4,000,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity could be accessed in state and federal waters along the coasts of the United States and the Great Lakes. While not all of this resource potential will realistically be developed, the magnitude (approximately four times the combined generating capacity of all U.S. electric power plants) represents a substantial opportunity to generate electricity near coastal populations."

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From BBC Thorium article:

"Questions are being raised, though, about the advisability of pinning the world’s energy ambitions on another nuclear dream. Environmentalists often allege that if renewable power had commanded a fraction as much research funding as nuclear, it would already be much cheaper and more common.

Dr Nils Bohmer, a nuclear physicist working for a Norwegian environmental NGO, Bellona, said developing thorium was a costly distraction from the need to cut emissions immediately to stave off the prospect of dangerous climate change.

"The advantages of thorium are purely theoretical," he told BBC News.

"The technology development is decades in the future. Instead I think we should focus on developing renewable technology - for example offshore wind technology - which I think has a huge potential to develop.”

www.bbc.com...

that will not do...! couse coal prices are connected to the oil prices...

Why not Zero-point energy? Its weightless, inexhaustible, and totally clean. And it exists all around us 24/7. Its just in a state that is too diffuse. Etheric energy condensation using a vacuum, and release using a spark catalyst. And yet this technology was suppressed. Wonder why? The amount of fluctuating Zero-point energy in the area of a light bulb, could boil all of Earth's water.

a reply to: Oannes

Know of any working?

a reply to: Oannes

The amount of fluctuating Zero-point energy in the area of a light bulb, could boil all of Earth's water.

According to whom?
How does one extract it?

originally posted by: Maximus2014
a reply to: nOraKat

Logic says you keep your Thorium until the world is desperate and then you charge more for it. If you can't see consumerism at work, you live in a different world.
Is it right? Well, ask your self if you like getting a discount, or if you sell stuff, getting full price. If so you are into consumerism and have no right to criticize anyone else about consumerism.

Logic says if adopting Thorium frees us from carbon based fuels without the risks associated with conventional Uranium powered reactors then why not?

In addition if the world adopted Thorium, Uranium enrichment and Plutonium production could be banned by international treaty to put an end to nuclear weapons development.

That's why...