Going Nuclear Over Thorium
SEARCH BLOG: NUCLEAR ENERGY
From time to time I receive comments or emails that are interesting enough to serve as the basis for a post. The following was received from Ben Robbins:
Bruce,
Love what I have read so far in your blog. In regards to US energy policy, I ran across a type of nuclear energy that uses an entirely different reactor design. It is called a liquid flouride thorium reactor (LFTR). LFTRs are a development of the molten salt reactor (MSR) experiment of the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The MSR was designed by Dr. Alvin Weinberg, who was the developer of the light water reactor commonly in use today. He foresaw that their would be a need for a safer reactor that generated very little waste, which is how the MSR was born. The MSR was fueled using plutonium and uranium. The LFTR takes it a step further and uses thorium, which is a very common element in the Earth's crust. It is also almost always found with rare earth elements (REE), which are used in everything from wind turbine generators to pretty much every electronic device. Here's a brief summary of LFTR's benefits:
-Inherently/passively safe
-Reactor is much less complex as a result of its passive safety, so it is also much cheaper
-Scalable (can be increased in size, or decreased to fit, say, an isolated town or military base)
-Burns up nearly all of its fuel, unlike current reactors which barely burn up any at all
-Can be used to burn up existing high level waste
-Produces useful medical elements
-Produces plutonium 238, which is used by NASA for long-distance space exploration missions
-Thorium is a common element, and therefore inexpensive as a fuel
-Doesn't require a water supply to operate, so can be located anywhere
I won't take up anymore of your time, but I would suggest you watch about ten minutes of the following Youtube video featuring Kirk Sorensen, who is leading the effort to develop and deploy this technology.
My earliest posts mentioning Thorium reactors were:
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2006
Supporting Global Warming
MONDAY, APRIL 09, 2007
The French Were Correct... And Still Are
Thorium continues to be "just beyond the horizon" in terms of acceptance, but perhaps that horizon is getting closer. The biggest issue is not so much the technology, but the social and political attitudes toward nuclear power which are grounded in decades old technology. Those who consider themselves ecologically "green" are unwilling to admit that "renewables" are notoriously unreliable and costly and that the only "climate-friendly" reliable energy source is nuclear. Of course, you have to have religious conviction that CO2 is "climate-unfriendly" to even worry about such things.
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Capitalizing On The Energy Scarcity Myth [MAY BE SLOW LOADING, BUT A VERY GOOD ARTICLE]
No Nukes - Energy Or Enervation
2012 IS HERE
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