Thorium power, how is it going in the US?

[justusranvier]

We won't run out of it any time soon. The earth's crust is estimated to contain over a trillion tons of thorium, where each ton is capable of producing a gigawatt-year of energy when burned in a LFTR. Compare this to the number of tons of coal a 1 GW power plant needs to consume in a year.
In fact, if you collected the ashes from a 1 GW coal power plant produced in the course of a year you'd find 13 tons of thorium.

In other words the usable energy content of coal is 93% nuclear and 7% chemical and right now we're completely ignoring the nuclear energy.

[Rudd-O]

We won't run out of it any time soon. The earth's crust is estimated to contain over a trillion tons of thorium, where each ton is capable of producing a gigawatt-year of energy when burned in a LFTR. Compare this to the number of tons of coal a 1 GW power plant needs to consume in a year.
In fact, if you collected the ashes from a 1 GW coal power plant produced in the course of a year you'd find 13 tons of thorium.

In other words the usable energy content of coal is 93% nuclear and 7% chemical and right now we're completely ignoring the nuclear energy.

WAAAAAT.

[myrkul]

We won't run out of it any time soon. The earth's crust is estimated to contain over a trillion tons of thorium, where each ton is capable of producing a gigawatt-year of energy when burned in a LFTR. Compare this to the number of tons of coal a 1 GW power plant needs to consume in a year.
In fact, if you collected the ashes from a 1 GW coal power plant produced in the course of a year you'd find 13 tons of thorium.

In other words the usable energy content of coal is 93% nuclear and 7% chemical and right now we're completely ignoring the nuclear energy.

WAAAAAT.

He's not just blowing smoke:
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colside1.html

[hazek]

We won't run out of it any time soon. The earth's crust is estimated to contain over a trillion tons of thorium, where each ton is capable of producing a gigawatt-year of energy when burned in a LFTR. Compare this to the number of tons of coal a 1 GW power plant needs to consume in a year.
In fact, if you collected the ashes from a 1 GW coal power plant produced in the course of a year you'd find 13 tons of thorium.

In other words the usable energy content of coal is 93% nuclear and 7% chemical and right now we're completely ignoring the nuclear energy.

 

FU psychopath politicians and the military industrial complex!

[Richy_T]

We won't run out of it any time soon. The earth's crust is estimated to contain over a trillion tons of thorium, where each ton is capable of producing a gigawatt-year of energy when burned in a LFTR. Compare this to the number of tons of coal a 1 GW power plant needs to consume in a year.
In fact, if you collected the ashes from a 1 GW coal power plant produced in the course of a year you'd find 13 tons of thorium.

In other words the usable energy content of coal is 93% nuclear and 7% chemical and right now we're completely ignoring the nuclear energy.

WAAAAAT.

GIIIGAAA-WAAAAAT

[ElectricMucus]

It get's even better, those mines who get rare earths for the newest electronics produce alot of thorium "waste".
I dunno what's done with it...

[myrkul]

It get's even better, those mines who get rare earths for the newest electronics produce alot of thorium "waste".
I dunno what's done with it...

In the US, piled up and left. In China, barreled up and sent to storage facilities for their future fuel needs. They're building thorium reactors.

[Rudd-O]

We won't run out of it any time soon. The earth's crust is estimated to contain over a trillion tons of thorium, where each ton is capable of producing a gigawatt-year of energy when burned in a LFTR. Compare this to the number of tons of coal a 1 GW power plant needs to consume in a year.
In fact, if you collected the ashes from a 1 GW coal power plant produced in the course of a year you'd find 13 tons of thorium.

In other words the usable energy content of coal is 93% nuclear and 7% chemical and right now we're completely ignoring the nuclear energy.

WAAAAAT.

GIIIGAAA-WAAAAAT

MEGA GYGA TERA WAAT!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDVORKo8rYs

[Lethn]

Thorium is almost three times more abundant than uranium, approximately as common as lead.

That's actually a lot of thorium.

Fuck this, when I get money I'm getting a Thorium power company set up >_<

[MoonShadow]

Thorium is almost three times more abundant than uranium, approximately as common as lead.

That's actually a lot of thorium.

Fuck this, when I get money I'm getting a Thorium power company set up >_<

Beyond that; only Uranium 235 is usable as fuel without first transmutating it into plutonium.  U235 is only about 2% of all uranium by weight, or less.  Which is why uranium must be 'refined' in a complex and hazardous process.  Conversely, none of natural thorium is fissile, but 99.9% of it is readily transmutable into uranium 233, which is fissile.  So while natural uranium must be refined in order to extract that 2% of U235, pretty much every ounce of thorium can be treated and used in the same manner, without worrying about it's isotope concentrations.

[MoonShadow]

It get's even better, those mines who get rare earths for the newest electronics produce alot of thorium "waste".
I dunno what's done with it...

In the US, piled up and left. In China, barreled up and sent to storage facilities for their future fuel needs. They're building thorium reactors.

Correct.  In the US, it mostly just sits in piles of yellow ore near where the mining has occured, and never moves unless the EPA makes them.  Thorium has a near zero market value, due to the fact that it's 1) a heavy metal so it's chemically toxic to humans in the same way lead is and 2) it's mildly radioactive, and thus is banned from being used as an input for any manufacturing that doesn't specificly require it.

[myrkul]

The thorium is secretly burned in small 'research' reactors to produce unregistered uranium for the doomsday machine.

Except you can't make a bomb from U233.

[justusranvier]

The thorium is secretly burned in small 'research' reactors to produce unregistered uranium for the doomsday machine.

Except you can't make a bomb from U233.

This isn't true. You can make a bomb from U233 (the US detonated one once) but it's far more difficult, expensive and unreliable than making it from U-235 or plutonium.

The problem is U232 contamination, which causes it to be highly radioactive. You can machine plutonium in relative safety as long as you're careful to collect the dust so nobody inhales it. You need several inches of lead between you and a mass of U233. The hard gamma radiation a critical mass of U233 emits also isn't very good for sensitive electronics, especially the kinds that you need in aircraft or missiles. It's this difficulty in handling that makes U233 impractical for weapons.

In a LFTR the radiation isn't a problem. Nobody ever has to handle the U233 - it just gets pumped from between several stationary tanks which are easily shielded.

[myrkul]

OK, so you can make a bomb from it, just not a practical one.

[justusranvier]

However, a doomsday device needn't be airborne or safe to handle, it just needs to be BIG so it pollutes the atmosphere a lot, and maybe even cracks the Earth's crust. Btw I'm just kidding, guys. I know nothing!

All joking aside, at a minimum it needs to be safe enough that the people building it don't die of radiation poisoning prior to completing it.

OK, so you can make a bomb from it, just not a practical one.

Yes. Anyone who has the ability to overcome the technical challenges involved in making a U233 weapon would never do it - if they are that advanced there's no reason for them to bother with U233 when far easier materials exist.

[MoonShadow]

The thorium is secretly burned in small 'research' reactors to produce unregistered uranium for the doomsday machine.

Except you can't make a bomb from U233.

You can, it's just much more difficult than doing the same thing with plutonium, for several technical reasons.  Not the least of which is that U233 has a quantum "delay" from the time it absorbs an energetic free neutron to the time it actually splits, and that delay can vary within a known time period.  It's very short, but it adds a variable that 'traditional' nuclear fuels do not.  This delay is not an issue in a reactor, because the goal is to not produce a cascading reaction that expands at a logarithimic rate, power reactors just need to keep the reaction between the navigational beacons.  The difficulty in making a weapon, combined with it's relative ease of making it into fuel components, plus it's relative abundance all make it an ideal nuclear fuel for peaceful power.  Add to that, the gamma signature of U233 can be detected & triangulated from orbit, and a U233 weapon is extremely impractical.