…ing huge qualities of energy from nuclear fusion. America should revaluate Thorium PACER and Thorium LFTR and use these technologies to help lift the American economy and solve climate problems while reducing the likelihood of future wars over resources that will otherwise have to be fought to secure access to diminishing sources of fossil fuels. There is no justification for the widespread, but quite incorrect belief that fusion is always and wil…
…//minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/2011/mcs2011.pdf The current cost of Thorium as Thorium Nitrate ($5.46/kilogram) is significantly below the cost of 3.6% enriched uranium as reported by the Wise Uranium Fuel Cost Calculator – http://www.wise-uranium.org/nfcc.html While Thorium metal is relatively hard to obtain because there is currently only minor industrial use, there is more of a market for Thorium Nitrate, as it is used in making welding…
…ificant technology developments after making a strategic turn in 2010 from thorium based fuels to low enriched uranium metal alloy fuels. As funding dried up from the government agencies supporting their thorium work, the company chose to use its assembled nuclear engineering expertise to pivot to a more commercially attractive product line. On March 15, Lightbridge and Areva announced a joint development agreement (JDA) that will lead to a joint…
…the background. Joel Riddle Andy, The numbers that I keep seeing in online thorium presentations is something like 1 ton of fissile start-up material and then 1 ton/year of pure thorium needed to power a 1 GW LFTR (with the best-case reprocessing and breeding). The difference between 1 ton and 10 tons is a whole order of magnitude and would become significant for any significant build-out of breeder reactors. The train of thinking I was heading do…
…Greenidge Queens NY AtomikRabbit James – you need to separate fusion from thorium. The thorium process involves fission of U233 generated from neutron absorption of Th232. It’s utility has been proven repeatedly over six decades. As for your comments on the ineffectuality of nuclear PR, I have been trying to push that creaky bandwagon since 1980. DV82XL I beg to disagree. Thorium fuel cycles are indeed closer to fruition than any fission technolo…
…eculation. It might be interesting to know that several of the more active thorium advocates have been specifically motivated by a desire to make thorium a useful product so that they can mine REE in the US without being saddled with the burden of getting rid of the thorium as waste material. Rod Adams @Wayne SW Most passive solar design is simply reapplying the good, common sense designs that were common in tropical and sub-tropical regions in th…
…e Produced: 19466 metric tons of CO2/day 7,109,956 metric tons of CO2/year Thorium/U-233 Fission in a 1GWe LFTR Thorium Fission Fuel Energy Density: 8.2 x 10^13 J/kg Fuel Consumed by 1000-MWe Plant: 2.7 kg/day or about 1 metric ton of Th-232 per year Waste: 2.7 kg/day (fission products) 980 kg (fission products) and about 20 kg (Minor Actinide)/ year (Thorium Ignited) D-T Fusion in a 1GWe Fusion Reactor D-T Fusion Fuel Energy Density: 3.4 x 10^14…
…thank Rod for covering this “Thorium” topic on his influential Blog. Many Thorium advocates would dearly love to save America’s U-233 which is a very rare synthetic material (significantly more rare than any financial precious metal). U-233 is the most natural and arguably the best material to serve as a startup charge for a LFTR Thorium reactor (a LFTR could be started on a wide variety of fissile materials at the expense of greater complexity a…
…is now called Lightbridge. That should help you understand that the reason thorium was not more aggressively pursued has nothing to do with the false theory that thorium‘s suppression was led by the uranium lobby because we wanted to make weapons from the byproducts of commercial reactors. It should even help you understand that Milton Shaw, a Rickover acolyte, was probably not making choices against thorium when he decided to concentrate resource…
…hnocrat genius, this rare and valuable material (U-233) ideal for starting Thorium reactors in pure Thorium fuel cycle is scheduled for immanent destruction under orders to reduce inventory of strategic materials to reduce the possibility of loss through potential terrorism on DOE Labs. The calculation showing that MSRs can produce energy cheaper than coal or conventional nuclear is an honest one. The length of the calculation is less relevant tha…
During the Senate Republican Conference Hearing on building 100 new nuclear plants over the next 20 years, Senator Robert Bennett asked the witnesses if there were any additional options that should be considered for an American economy that has always been blessed with access to abundant, cheap energy source that enabled our economic growth and productivity. Ted’s response is pithy and correct – there is nothing in the same class as nuclear. Its…
…opinion. If the battle is lost for current technology, then it is lost for thorium. She is not facing reality if she believes that accelerator excited thorium will fare any better than current nuclear techology in the public’s eye, if it ever becomes commercially viable. The opposition hates any technology which might be implemented **now**. They do not oppose thorium, and all the other little alternatives, because none of them presents a present…
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