+Frank B. Subscriber² Posted August 30, 2010 Subscriber² Share Posted August 30, 2010 Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium If Barack Obama were to marshal America?s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years. We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast. Muddling on with the status quo is not a grown-up policy. The International Energy Agency says the world must invest $26 trillion (?16.7 trillion) over the next 20 years to avert an energy shock. The scramble for scarce fuel is already leading to friction between China, India, and the West. There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power. Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal ? named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor?s day or Thursday - produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week. Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It?s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering. "Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it?s essentially free. You don?t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said. Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium. After the Manhattan Project, US physicists in the late 1940s were tempted by thorium for use in civil reactors. It has a higher neutron yield per neutron absorbed. It does not require isotope separation, a big cost saving. But by then America needed the plutonium residue from uranium to build bombs. "They were really going after the weapons," said Professor Egil Lillestol, a world authority on the thorium fuel-cycle at CERN. "It is almost impossible make nuclear weapons out of thorium because it is too difficult to handle. It wouldn?t be worth trying." It emits too many high gamma rays. Source and full article: telegraph.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dysphoria Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Interesting... Haven't really heard much about thorium before... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lant Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 This would be great, after reading about thorium years ago I really hoped we would start to see some reactors. There seem to be so many benefits with the only downside being that this is new technology which will cost a lot to set up initially. This is the place where I first heard about it: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inklin Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 I think we really need to go with this, i feel it is the answer to many problems, it just needs the investment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Singh400 Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Meh, if the energy companies don't see any money to be made off thorium power plants then it won't go ahead. Simple as. *goes to read up on thorium* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulsiphon Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Meh, if the energy companies don't see any money to be made off thorium power plants then it won't go ahead. Simple as. *goes to read up on thorium* Meh, most energy companies have their lips so firmly locked onto the "pipeline" of petroleum from nations that hate us as well as an apparently timeless love affair with dirty, planet-killing coal that they would never be bothered to even ponder some other strategy; too much profit in dirty, planet-killing energy methinks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neoauld Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Why has this not been talked about before? If we have a potentially unlimited fuel source just sitting around being thrown aside it should be getting exploited to its fullest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tha Bloo Monkee Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Meh, most energy companies have their lips so firmly locked onto the "pipeline" of petroleum from nations that hate us as well as an apparently timeless love affair with dirty, planet-killing coal that they would never be bothered to even ponder some other strategy; too much profit in dirty, planet-killing energy methinks. My thoughts exactly. Unfortunately, I find that money rules this world. And nice pun with the "pipeline" btw, lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anibal P Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 The Greenies won't let Nuclear Energy happen, forget about the energy companies, they are already looking for an oil alternative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 The Greenies won't let Nuclear Energy happen, forget about the energy companies, they are already looking for an oil alternative. Most "greenies" have no idea how nuclear reactions work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theclueless Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 i'll say the biggest roadblock of scientific discovery after the roman catholic church, is the self-proclaim "greenpeace" group; just a bunch of spoiled asswipes whining on topics they failed in school Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Growled Member Posted August 30, 2010 Member Share Posted August 30, 2010 I've been reading about this and this is the next big thing in nuclear energy. It's almost too good to be true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commodore Max Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Molten Salt Reactors are very promising, but no nuclear company wants to invest in them because they recycle their own fuel, thus sharply reducing the potential profit margin. How surprising. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudslag Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 What about all the automobiles that use fossil fuels? Other then the minority of autos that use alt methods, fossil fuel is still king in this department and will remain for a very long time. Then you have to consider the vast amount of products made from fossil fuels, plastics is a big one, along with a large number of other products. To say we can free ourselves from fossil fuels is a joke. http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm http://www.3k88.com/products.htm http://www.anwr.org/features/oiluses.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guru Posted August 31, 2010 Share Posted August 31, 2010 What about all the automobiles that use fossil fuels? Other then the minority of autos that use alt methods, fossil fuel is still king in this department and will remain for a very long time. Then you have to consider the vast amount of products made from fossil fuels, plastics is a big one, along with a large number of other products. To say we can free ourselves from fossil fuels is a joke. http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm http://www.3k88.com/products.htm http://www.anwr.org/features/oiluses.htm we'll have to. sooner the better. we'll still need fertilizer,fabrics and a tonne of other chemicals derived from oil but atleast it wont be the primary energy source. Nuclear reactors some of which recycle their own fuel + alternative sustainable sources = near unlimited electricity. cars will have to use electricity one way or the other stored (batteries) or use the electricity to use hydrogen made from splitting water into its components either with fuel cells, hydrogen tanks.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkey13 Posted August 31, 2010 Share Posted August 31, 2010 The problem is that despite what they say almost everyone in the energy industry is against cheap clean renewable energy. There's no money to me made from a stable oversupplied market. This is the kind of think the EU should look at. Since France are very pro-nuke and most of Europe is looking to Russia for energy it is a possibility. However all this free market competition crap gets in the way. As far as I'm concerned all power (as it is a vital part of a nations infrastructure) should be nationalised. Probably have the same problems in the US where the big energy firms won't want the government killing the cash cow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rigby Posted August 31, 2010 Share Posted August 31, 2010 Silithus is probably the best place for thorium, you can find rich veins down in the hives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athernar Posted August 31, 2010 Share Posted August 31, 2010 LFTR is a fantastic technology, get a runaway nuclear reaction and the reactor's safety plug melts by design; Dumping out the reactants safely and stopping the reaction. No exclusion zones, proliferation, much safer and etc. It's just a shame adoption is kept back by clueless hippies and greedy energy cartels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mirumir Subscriber¹ Posted August 31, 2010 Subscriber¹ Share Posted August 31, 2010 What about all the automobiles that use fossil fuels? Other then the minority of autos that use alt methods, fossil fuel is still king in this department and will remain for a very long time. Then you have to consider the vast amount of products made from fossil fuels, plastics is a big one, along with a large number of other products. To say we can free ourselves from fossil fuels is a joke. http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm http://www.3k88.com/products.htm http://www.anwr.org/features/oiluses.htm The cars in the future will be electric. As for the oil by-products, plastic can be replaced with hemp which is much better for the environment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agnes Leroy Posted September 3, 2010 Share Posted September 3, 2010 If Barack Obama were to marshal America?s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years. We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast. Muddling on with the status quo is not a grown-up policy. The International Energy Agency says the world must invest $26 trillion (?16.7 trillion) over the next 20 years to avert an energy shock. The scramble for scarce fuel is already leading to friction between China, India, and the West. There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power. Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal ? named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor?s day or Thursday - produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week. Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It?s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering. "Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it?s essentially free. You don?t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said. Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium. (...) You might have thought that thorium reactors were the answer to every dream but when CERN went to the European Commission for development funds in 1999-2000, they were rebuffed. Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French because the French dominate the EU?s nuclear industry. "They didn?t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology," he said. Another decade was lost. It was a sad triumph of vested interests over scientific progress. (...) So Aker is looking for tie-ups with the US, Russia, or China. The Indians have their own projects - none yet built - dating from days when they switched to thorium because their weapons programme prompted a uranium ban. America should have fewer inhibitions than Europe in creating a leapfrog technology. The US allowed its nuclear industry to stagnate after Three Mile Island in 1979. (...) Nuclear power could become routine and unthreatening. But first there is the barrier of establishment prejudice. When Hungarian scientists led by Leo Szilard tried to alert Washington in late 1939 that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, they were brushed off with disbelief. Albert Einstein interceded through the Belgian queen mother, eventually getting a personal envoy into the Oval Office. Roosevelt initially fobbed him off. He listened more closely at a second meeting over breakfast the next day, then made up his mind within minutes. "This needs action," he told his military aide. It was the birth of the Manhattan Project. As a result, the US had an atomic weapon early enough to deter Stalin from going too far in Europe. The global energy crunch needs equal "action". If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke: if not, it is a boost for US science and surely a more fruitful way to pull the US out of perma-slump than scattershot stimulus. Even better, team up with China and do it together, for all our sakes Read full @ Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium / Telegraph, UK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agnes Leroy Posted September 4, 2010 Share Posted September 4, 2010 Why has this not been talked about before? If we have a potentially unlimited fuel source just sitting around being thrown aside it should be getting exploited to its fullest. People are working on this stuff for some time. i'll say the biggest roadblock of scientific discovery after the roman catholic church, is the self-proclaim "greenpeace" group; just a bunch of spoiled asswipes whining on topics they failed in school Amen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PGHammer Posted September 4, 2010 Share Posted September 4, 2010 The problem is that despite what they say almost everyone in the energy industry is against cheap clean renewable energy. There's no money to me made from a stable oversupplied market. This is the kind of think the EU should look at. Since France are very pro-nuke and most of Europe is looking to Russia for energy it is a possibility. However all this free market competition crap gets in the way. As far as I'm concerned all power (as it is a vital part of a nations infrastructure) should be nationalised. Probably have the same problems in the US where the big energy firms won't want the government killing the cash cow. The United States tried to *unleash* peaceful nuclear energy originally under Truman and Eisenhower (the original "Atoms for Peace" program, and the founding of the peacetime Atomic Energy Commission, was under these two presidents, and then-Defense Secretaries James Forrestal and Robert McNamara; this is why the DOE Headquarters Building is named after Forrestal). However, the anti-nuclear left-wing (egged on by Greenpeace) largely stonewalled peaceful uses of atomic energy outside of the military (two different plans for non-military nuclear-powered ships were scrapped due to Democratic opposition; in both cases, this was *after* the launch of the pioneering USS Long Beach, the Navy's first nuclear-powered ship that was *not* an aircraft carrier or submarine). How much of Greenpeace's funding comes from energy companies, or even OPEC, whether directly or indirectly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joseph B Posted September 16, 2010 Share Posted September 16, 2010 Silithus is probably the best place for thorium, you can find rich veins down in the hives. LOL... totally off topic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reacon Posted September 16, 2010 Share Posted September 16, 2010 What happened to hydrogen cars? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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