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Kirk Sorensen: A Detailed Exploration Of Thorium's Potential As An Energy Source
Kirk Sorensen: A Detailed Exploration Of Thorium's Potential As An Energy Source
Kirk Sorensen, NASA-trained engineer, is a man on a mission to open minds to the tremendous promise that thorium, a near-valueless element in today's marketplace, may offer in meeting future world energy demand.
Compared to Uranium-238-based nuclear reactors currently in use today, a liquid flouride thorium reactor (LTFR) would be:
- Much safer - no risk of environmental radiation contamination or plant explosion (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island)
- Much more efficient at producing energy - over 90% of the input fuel would be tapped for energy; vs <1% in today's reactors
- Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries
- Much cheaper - reactor footprints and infrastructure would be much smaller, and could be constructed in modular fashion
- More plentiful - LFTR reactors do not need to be located next to large water supplies, as current plants do
- Less controversial - the byproducts of the thorium reaction are pretty useless for weaponization
- Longer-lived - thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and treated as valueless today. There is virtually no danger of running out of it given LFTR plant efficiency
Most of the know-how and technology to build and maintain LFTR reactors exists today. If made a priority, the US could have its first fully-operational LFTR plant running at commercial scale in under a decade.
But no such LFTR plants are in development. In fact, the US shut down its work on thorium-based energy production decades ago. And has not invested materially in related research since.
Staring at the looming energy cliff ahead created by Peak Oil, it begs the question - why not?
As best Kirk can tell, we are not pursuing thorium's potential today because we are choosing not to - we are too wedded to the U-238 path we've been investing in for decades. Indeed, the grants that funded the government's thorium research in the 50s and 60s were primarily focused on weapons development; not new energy sources. Once our attention turned to nuclear energy, we simply applied the uranium-based know-how we developed from our atomic bomb program rather than asking: is there a better way?
This is an excellent and thought-provoking interview. I highly recommend you also visit Kirk's website [10] and its FAQs [11] to familiarize yourself with the thorium cycle, as I predict we will be revisiting the thorium story again in the future.
And we encourage our readers with engineering and nuclear expertise to share their insights in the Comments thread below. We are looking for ways to light the path ahead as we begin to descend down the global energy cliff. Will thorium shine brightly for us?
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Kirk Sorensen (36m:02s):
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I'm sure that I am not alone in suspecting that at least one of the thousands of nuclear warheads made by the former USSR might just have made it to Iran. It would be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than making your own weapon grade material. But who am I kidding!!?!? No Russian would EVER be bribable for that, shirley?
I sure as shit think no such thing happened.
The USSR has no reason to allow it and has very much the ability to stop it. Iran is the kind of friend Russia will shoot FOR, not hand them the gun.
I'm sure some Russian would take the bribe. then in about a day end up with a polonium 210 sandwich. Then in a few more days be quite ill. The package will be intercepted but the one taking the bribe will suffer a horrific melting death from the inside out.
Interesting page from the nuke industry about thorium ... lots of detail about many things, like the previous thorium reactors in Germany and the US - though which apparently did typically use some highly enriched uranium as a short-cut -
« 300 MWe Thorium High Temperature Reactor [HTR] in Germany, ... operated with thorium-HEU [highly enriched uranium] fuel between 1983 and 1989 ...
40 MWe Peach Bottom HTR in the USA was a demonstration thorium-fuelled reactor that ran from 1967-74 ...
330 MWe Fort St Vrain HTR in Colorado, USA, was a larger-scale commercial successor to the Peach Bottom reactor and ran from 1976-89...
A unique thorium-fuelled Light Water Breeder Reactor operated from 1977 to 1982 at Shippingport in the USA' »
Apparently some reactors in India, now use thorium-bearing fuel bundles 'for power flattening in some fuel channels'
China and India currently have some thorium research developments underway ... taking the lead
Much more in the piece linked below
Their bottom line is postive toward thorium but say there are a number of research and development steps that need to be done and there is not a big push in the West on this given the uranium habit
http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html
Where's the catch?
What i mean is- you have listed all the positives. What are the negatives? The periodic table has been around a while, why hasnt thorium been used yet?
I heard ( 6 months ago so this could be out of date) that
1. nuclear industry doesnt want it/not on their R & D - they have legacy investments to recover
2. Small scale has been demonstrated but you need a full scale reactor to iron out the issues and there are serious ones (cant remember which)
reading about some of the programmes above - Imagine India, China generating electricity at 1-5% of US/EU production cost and reducing oil dependence by 30-40%? (Transport goes electric, all heavy industry locates there, even co's like boeing and GM will be looking to make their planes in india/china...)
Revolution in the making - ..... IF india and china switch to Thorium
enough to power 10 to 1000 homes at a time is as large-scale as we need. The beauty of power generation is NOT needing to go large-scale like gigawatts. You want endurance you don't need to power a city with one. Various SEGMENTS of cities can power themselves EACH off their own. Less grid = more reliability
utilities need a bottom line-- profits--- thats the rub for now-- If the tech is viable where profits are concerned you will see these all over the place.
No Military application. (you can't kill millions of people with the leftover byproduct. clearly a negative for a bloodthirsty nation)
One of the major radionuclide by-products of the Thorium cycle is Protacinium - an actinide rather than a transactinide, which, apart from absorbing reactor neutrons has an unpleasant half life (10s of thousands of years) and is very toxic chemically.
The TC does eventually promote this to fissile species that can be 'burnt' but if a terrorist bunged some of that crap in a water supply, or set off a large conventional airburst with it as a jacket - you'd have a weapon of mass toxicity.
There is only one reason that uranium is used for nuclear reactors; to use the byproducts for weapons. The establishment has had thorium designs for many years, but suppressed the technology because it does not produce any isotopes that are useful in nuclear weapons. Period.
Yes. This was the main drive behind civilian nuclear power plants in the US. If you look at the types of reactors you will realize they are all breeders of one type or another.
Big energy would lobby against that in a heart beat.
It can't be that one-sided. How robust can it be with such a short half-life? Does 90"% thorium conversion efficiency translate to more or less energy than the <1% from uranium? I gotsta know.
Don't worry the useless paper-pushers and politico will screw this up too.
solutions to the energy shortage are popping up all over the place now. peak malthusians in 5, 4, 3...
That would be wonderful. I'd love for my kind (the worriers) to go extinct because there is, once and for all, plenty, and everyone could have access to it.
Maybe I'm missing something, but where is the Thorium in the above diagram?
My guess would be the core of the reactor.
Nope. turns out it's in the blanket salt, the light blue portion of the diagram. I was thrown by the label Blanket Salt w/UF4.
http://policyprojects.ac.nz/frasernicholas/files/2011/11/LFR-diagram.png
http://policyprojects.ac.nz/frasernicholas/why-lftr/
Actually, you would need to take a survey on whether countries are investing heavily in stockpiling easily obtainable and naturally-ocurring isotopes of Lithium to determine how Uranium fits in the nuclear fuel cycle. The atom bomb has been long-surpassed, its the thermonuclear device that everyone wants.
I think that the next development in energy will catch people by surprise.
There's virtually no market for Thorium, and its sitting in tailings ponds as waste. Those boiling water breeder and fast breeder reactors serve the purpose for creating plutonium, which can be bred indefinitely.
Always amazes me how good ideas are buried by the MSM and TPTB. I would really like to see something like this work out.
"Indeed, the grants that funded the government's thorium research in the 50s and 60s were primarily focused on weapons development;"
And there you have it. Is energy simply the byproduct of our current process?
energy, medicine, even many food programmes (e.g. preservation), chemical industry, all have made significant progress for, or during war.
lest face it, the only thing that concentrates the mind more than $ is the thought you are going to get your brains blown out.
unlike depleted weapons grade uranium which is being employed in the mid-east as we speak, thorium would be useless in eradicating the infidel. doubt we'll see this technology any time soon
What I don't understand about the diagram is that it's missing the crucial step of the ball dropping out of the bathtub & landing on the seesaw to backflip the dude into the wooden barrel...
This technology will never be taken seriously until it resolves that important step...
Luddites out in force today ;-)
Greenie on ya.
- Ned
but it is cheaper and safer!
:> Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries <:
like iodine? L0L!!!
thorium reactors were coming on huge just b4 fuk_u blew; so TPTB around thorium are just recovering
and martenson's bunch is huge on this stuff
tell ya what: when YOU stinky little children clean up the fuking messes you've already made, maybe we'll get out some thorium for ya to play wif, ok?
nukuler STILL = clean, safe, & cheap
[Paste} :> Much safer - no risk of environmental radiation contamination
just fuking ASK THEM!!! [wanna buy a dozen bridges? to nowhere?]
but remember [just like garbage, BiCheZ]: propaganda in, propaganda OUT
in fairness to thorium INVESTORS everywhere, i was actually reading arnieGundersen's site when tyler put this up, and i know arnie is pretty tight with chris martenson
but l0^0k at that schematic: see the U23? "reducer"? see the cooling needs? see that there is no "schematic" for the radiocativie shit coming in OR for the "practically harmless" shit coming out?
how safe, clean and cheap is this compared to, say, the next 2-3 generations of solar film?
another problem with this type on centralPlanningTM and generation is grid infrastrucure, and we KNOW the money guys are not gonna address that while they sell us the new hamsters to run in their white-coat-designed cages so we ignorant lo-tech fuktards can live better, electrically, and get the chemo-therapy "on demand" too, DON"T WE?
thanks, tyler, for giving us some marketing that a "BAIN capitalist" would just love! please forgive me for avoiding the set-up propwash video, BiCheZ! pulllleeeease!
in closing, let me add that, unaccustomed as i am to blogging:
like cali's new "hi speed rail" this "new generation of reactors" will be launched not on its merits as safecleanandcheeeep but b/c building them will provide "jobs"--pretty much like the last n-generations of these coffee-pot killers
therefore i would recommend that any martenson. sorensen, gundersen, or durdenson who wants to "fix" nukuler take himself & family and move a coupla miles downwind of one of these current "clean safe and cheapies" while he prepares his next missive and scheme-at-ic-us
fact: not one "story" which these "types" has told us about building this shit since 1950 has been anything other than propaganda and lies. not one!
this time is diff?
Thorium reactors do not need to be 300 MW in size, actually they can be rather small. It is true that Thorium can not ignite the reaction, but so what? Instead of burning a fire of matches (Uranium), you keep your matches to light up your wood (Thorium) you still are much better off than by making a fire of matches if you are constrained with matches quantity. As for the intermediate isotopes it is true that it is much more dangerous than the water pressured reactors, while the end product is much less polluting that being said, given that there 1 bar pressure, you can not have an explosion. So if you are not bombed Thorium reactor is safer. If someone wanted to bomb your reactor, you might have a BIG problem... Which you would have anyway on a existing technology reactor, the stuff released though would be very absolutely lethal for a Thorium reactor, but you can mitigate that by making the reactors small and decentralized? There are a few claims that those reactors could actually be made on an assembly line... yeah not there yet, but you do not need to build the huge chamber that is there to absord a depressurization of the relatively tiny reactor, because the reactor is not pressurized. There is also the problem of tubing and plumbing which people in Grenoble (France) are working on, because the plumbing requires particularly demanding materials, though issues are being solved. The other issue are the graphite pieces at the center of the reactor which would have to change every 4 years, but how do you open the damn thing to change those pieces? That is one other technical issue. Assuming that no one bombs your reactor, this technology is safer.
just STOP! , k?
after chernobyl, the economics of nukuler would NEVER pay for the environmental damage
after fuk_u... how much is japan worth?
can't understand me?
i'm not gonna take yer marketing ploy of "unless someone BOMBS your reactor"
it is too fuking styoooopid for analysis, so stick it up yer ass!
solve the nukuler waste probs the "indistry" has already generated; THEN come talk to slewie
i'll buy the coffee and roll some great shit 4U!
but marketing is marketing, so thank you for showing yer brainwashed ass on zH!
These reactors burn the vast majority of their own waste, and can be used as a means to dispose of most of the stockpile we have created as well.
Luddism is for idiots, mkay?
oh! so the possibility of any serious unintended consequences can be assumed to be zero
again?
just slow down and clean up your zombies first doesn't fit for "scientists" either?
cause that would be too luddite?
how long have you been like this, t?
the junksters swoop upon anyone who points out the OBVIOUS propaganda and lies of the nukuler industry anywhere on the wWw
we KNOW bigBux = on the line here
how about cleaning up YOURnukuler indusrty toxic wastelands FIRST?
OMG! heresy!
p.s. i'm already stoned, BiCheZ! so put the fuking rocks down ok? L0L!!!
nobody bombed fuk_u!
fuk_u is bombing ME for pete's sake! US!
but here's arnie's piece i was reading: Fukushima Daiichi: The Truth and the Future | Fairewinds Energy Education
why doesn't arnie sound like you? [Paste}:> Here is what would happen if Unit 4 were to crack and the water were to drain out of the nuclear fuel pool. The fuel is hot enough that it needs to be water-cooled. If air is all there is cooling the fuel, it will burn. It will burn the zircaloy cladding on the fuel, (and) will react with the oxygen to create a fire. And it is a fire that once it starts, cannot be put out by water. Water would make it worse. So the nuclear fuel would have to burn completely before the fire would ever go out.
In the process, all that radiation would go up into the atmosphere and blow all over Japan and all over the world. There is as much cesium in the fuel pool at Unit 4 as there was in all of the atomic bombs dropped in all of the tests in the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, and into the 1970's. All of the above ground testing has less cesium in it than is in the reactor pool at Fukushima 4 right now. So it is a grave situation. I don't believe that the Japanese Government is moving fast enough. If there is no earthquake, the plan to remove the fuel slowly is going to be adequate. But we cannot wait on Mother Nature. We have to quickly move that fuel out of that pool and onto the ground. The key here is quickly. The Japanese Government finally just this month came up with a plan to build a building around the fuel pool building and begin removing the fuel in 2013 or 2014. <: {5.12.2012]
again: STOP!
can you understand that, or not? if so, please STOP!
we have much more important REAL engineering situ's & needs; even sanOnofre is fuked big-time. can you guys help, or do you just do sales?
but of course, that don't pay so good, do it... ?
Yeah, I always had a problem with those diagrams. Too many rectangles labeled "Then a miracle occurs" and it all just works.
"... a sparge of fluorine ..." -- what could possibly go wrong with that, in a milieu consisting of essentially molten corium -- the LFR bypasses the meltdown problem by starting out with a molten core -- and no bad stuff will ever ever escape!
Perhaps you need to put it side by side with a convenional nuclear reactor diagram, including the pressure vessel and the pools for the spent fuel that can never be moved ever before making your asinine comments?
you've bought the story dude
it may even pay your rent
but please be advised, that does not make it true (or false)
you can not conceive of any possible way to "fix the unintended consequences" of nukuler, so far, so PRESS ON! (?) we'll deal w/ the consequences later, but not before the 40,000,000 years of work it'll take to clean up this mess so far! (?)
listen: i know this isBigBidness and to a "scientist" this is just like a bank to a bankster
but, like the banksters, the deciet is NECESSARY for your victimization SCAMS and eco-dumping and socialization/nationalization of the COSTS while pocketing the salaries, bonuses, and stock options involved b/c they are your private gain
great! congrats to all involved in this fabulous enterprise and don't forget to keep congratulating yourselves and belittling anyone who calls you out and to account for the OBCSCENITIES of the lies, profits and ecological wasteland messes to be paid "by the sheeple"
hey: FUK YOU!!!
again: the last time we were told the truth about the safety if a nukuler energy project and its wastes was:__________ (insert date & project here and please feel free to use more pages, as necessary)
The people that are profiting from Nuclear Power Plants the most, you know where they live? That's right, they live as far away from the plants as is physically possible. DON'T BE FOOLED AGAIN FOLKS
Is that a fact? Your source?
Excuse me if I'm wrong but I suspect that "the people that are profiting from Nuclear Power Plants the most" are likely to be Americans. Look at this map of power plants in the US... http://discussamerica.org/remer-blog/images/US-Nuke-Plants-Map.png
They must all live in the extreme north east of Montana. Now you mention it, it's obvious. I'M FOOLED AGAIN, I'm a DOOFUS. Of course, they all live on a boat somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, or Antarctica or maybe the Moon?
<--- TRUE
<--- FALSE
Q: nukuler energy is clean, safe, and cheap. T or F
here's something we haven't heard from these clowns [Paste}:>
But I think the bigger lesson from Fukushima is that this is a technology that can destroy a nation. After Fukushima I was reading Mikolai Gorbachov's memoirs and he says it was the Chernobyl accident, not Perestroika, that destroyed the Soviet Union. FukushimaArnieG
That's like saying "cars are safe, yes or no." and comparing a 1950's model with a proposed new design that has 1/10th as many moving parts and runs on water.
unbelievable!
you are certainly showing yer ass, today, t_moz!
you simply do not understand: why do we have these ginormous "eco-messes" and "waste probs"? why don't you braniacs just go clean up this stuff? huh?
no! it is NOT like saying "carsRsafe" and there you go w/ the fuking propaganda, again
why don't you write a few papra comparing a car "accident" to nuculer "accident" mrKnow-it-all? huh? maybe tyler will publish it: "why fuk_u is like a fender bender where some pedestrian gets killed and my no-fault insurance covers me" by t_moz
Propwash 101TM
After Fukushima, any person that endorses Nuclear Energy should simply be shot on site. Then their lifeless body should be thrown in a Nuclear Waste site with all their personal belongings. Except their Gold of course. That should be distributed amongst the survivors of our wonderful governments Nuclear Experiments.
well, why not just promise to let them play w/ the thorium play-doh AFTER they finish cleaning up ALL the other play-doh messes?
shutting them down; making sure the wastes are safe? uno: SAFE! like nukuler ENERGY!
but the speed is a tell: if we only had these built ALREADY (!) ... we can't get them done before _____ unless we go FASTER
fuking bullshit!
slow down and clean up NOW!
fuking slickster con-artists all over everywhere, BiCheZ! just tell them: clean up FIRST = NOT NEGOTIABLE
@ engineertheeconomy
Perhaps I agree with you a little bit bit, at last. As far as I know, no government in the world immediately shut down all their reactors except Japan." Therefore all governments with reactors should have been shot". Sounds good to me.
Germany immediately shut down 8 out of 17 and JUST managed it. The rest are scheduled to be phased out by 2022. Nobody can tell yet if they're able to meet that very ambitious target. That 4% solar power that is very expensive certainly won't replace it.
I think we've sort of established from your comments that you live off the grid, don't have a TV, don't have an electric can opener(!!!) and live in a country which can immediately shut down all it's reactors without causing huge chaos, or a country without nuclear power.
Where is this wonderful place you live?
tyler is just not a big fan of the TV
we tend to surrender our will to it, probably by offering our attention to be directed by it
as a school-child, perhaps, but without adult supervision...
So apparently you can't read or even listen to an interview.
IF you did you'd know that nuclear accidents in Fukushima ONLY could happen with solid fuel rods not liquid thorium reactors.
Ha very funny! Doesn't work, the only way you can use Thorium is if you use Muons as a catalyzer. Muon Thorium catalyzed reactors would cost so much it makes the resulting energy value so high you would rather dig or drill the deepest hole in the world to get oil or coal. This guys idea is more like a cold fusion fraud. Like all those ideas, free energy from water! The trouble is they don't talk about the 10$ worth of electricity it takes to make a 5 cent of Hydrogen ha! Why not the perpetual motion magnet machine? He hides the fact it takes more power to push and pull the magnet from the armature ha! All these ideas hide the fact energy isn't free. Oil is king for a reason, BTU's per dollar! Until it's gone even at 200$ a barrel it's cheaper. What is hurting us now, gallons of gasoline refined per barrel. When I was a kid we had crude that provided 21 gallons of gasoline per barrel, now we get 18 because the crude is so poor. Long gone are the Borneo deposits that were almost machine grade oil straight from the ground! It's all about Return Of Energy On Investment! Sure we could use the whole world to build a machine but where do we live ha! If it's to good to be true it is! PHYSICS RULES! Carlo Rubbia my hero! Look him up and see his thirty yr. old design for a muon catalyzed Thorium reactor that works at 10 billion dollars.
cold fusion fraud??? methinks you doth protest too much
How many cold fusion reactors that work can you tell us about? It seems nobody can build them because Andrea Rossi won't tell them how to. Oh, and he has a reputation for being a fraudster. Having said that I wish and still hope that cold fusion can work.
http://www.muonsinc.com/muons3/HomePage Do I need to say more! Do some homework, Carlo Rubbia designed a reactor that will work. Thorium does not have the odd Neutron needed to sustain reaction. You have to use a muon to continue the reaction. Stop the muon beam stop the reactor the perfect fail-safe reactor. The problem is the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ it takes to build. When the Saudis decide they are going to keep whats left for our children (which the king has said) then and only then does Thorium, solar, wind and all nuclear power become cheaper. For me Thorium makes my career but, I know the difference between research and industrial reactors.
As long as it can be controlled by the NWOil Corps then it is viable.
Shhhh, don't let Stevie Chew hear about this, it is right up his alley.
- Ned
India is already building Thorium Power Plants.
I'm pretty sure that Russia and China are also pursuing this.
India plans 'safer' nuclear plant powered by thorium
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/01/india-thorium-nuclear-...
Yes...China is.
Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/839398...
Remember when USA use to lead in these areas. We've obviously killed the entrepreneurial spirit that made what we were. Too much bashing industry and too little leading.
If we get caught behind the curve on this because we're too focused on entitlement spending, what the owner of Chick-fil-a says or thinks, dancing with the stars, ipads or whatever, we and our children will suffer an unimaginable setback.
India was blacked out all last week... Better get their act together soon...
if by "all week" you mean Monday and Tuesday...then yes...it was "all week".
WTF cares?
Energy is a racket... There is no interest in anything other than to make you pay for it incrementally, & tax the transaction...
If anyone was ever serious about FREE or ABUNDANT energy... They'd be digging around the warehouse for the Nikola Tesla patents which are buried somewhere next to the crate which contains the Ark of the Covenant at the end of the Indiana Jones movie...
Who the fuck cares about accuracy? Obviously...not you.
Relax Francis.
Close enough for government work... & for that matter ~ I'm the one who is relaxed here in the knowledge that all these alternative energy solutions are canards when it comes to the idea of superimposing them on the world population by klepto-facist governments & corporate entities...
As such I have several simple prerogatives (which exist outside that paradigm) & which is why, in fact, I'm relaxed...
- consume less
- conserve
- experiment with home grown & off grid solutions (wood gasification, as expressed above, is an interesting one which can be utilized by a few under the right circumstances)
The rest of y'all can do what you want...
+1000 for the use of big words...
canards, superimposing, klepto-facist, prerogatives, paradigm, gasification
Can you rephrase that as "fuck you!"?
those patents are open enough you know about them.
We could use wireless transmission now with large coils. We can further design antennae using genetic programming & simulators. This stuff is all opensource now. You just need to get off your ass and do it.
Bloombox is already evolving from it - not only does it convert nat-gas to electricity without burning but it also includes wireless power broadcast using induction coils.
If that's not enough for you then maybe you're lazy.
"You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it."
Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider
Truer words have rarely ever been uttered.
there are countries pursuing Thorium based reactors. India is building a test reactor right now, with the view of converting their entire national power grid to those reactors, if they live up to the hype. some reactors, such as the CANDU reactor, can run on Thorium with little to no design changes. and there are companies, such as Lightbridge, which are making Thorium fuel rods. but it will take some successful demonstrations of Thorium reactor power generation before anyone goes to it in any big way..
"...it will take some successful demonstrations of Thorium reactor power generation before anyone goes to it in any big way.."
That's because the general populace is too stupid (poorly educated) to begin to understand how/why it works. They'll have to see a working plant and be told by Wolf Blitzer that it's okay. Oh, and add Sean Hannity to the list of proponents. That means never. If Jesus came today, Fox News would say he was a left-wing conspiracy.
(Say one foul word about Fox and the screw-loose boys get their panties all in a bunch.) -- that was after 1 junking
This is after 3: Come on you Fuxx News pukes, post a comment -- pussies.
You don't want to make me keep coming back here do you? Spineless cretins.
India is developing Thoruim because they have no choice since they have little to no uranium mines to fuel their uranium reactors. If India has sufficent Uranium resources they would not considered Thorium.
India is the last place on Earth that should be developing nuclear power: Excessively large population (over a billion), very poor infrastructure (if a major disaster crisis occurs it will be extremely difficult to address problems with their nuke plants and spent fuel pools).
Uranium is cheaper now than it was 10 years ago
http://www.wikinvest.com/commodity/Uranium
I think India is using Thorium because of the safety vis a vis Uranium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India's_three_stage_nuclear_power_programme
LFTR is not moving forward because of the interests of the status quo power structure.
When they, wait and watch for it, have finally somehow monopolized its development, jurisdictional controls, construction, and distribution, then we may see it.
Unless of course the flies get wise and join the War Of Attrition (WOA!) against the Status Quo.
Come On peons, lets rally around and popularize WOA!, manage and organize your own tactics and strategies for guerilla lifestyle choices against the Status Quo (SQ) (help me with a better acronym here, replete with evident negative connotations please).
Appears a study was conducted.. Have a look.
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/09/energy-from-thoriums-recent-lftr-cost.html
Yes we can!
Give me a break....Thorium is a joke. And the same people peddling it were peddling cold fusion 20 years ago.
if there were more people like you deciding the future progress of the world, we would still be living in caves and would not yet have invented the wheel.
Well my bet is on unobtanium from pandora.
That rover mission to mars? Its mandate is
1. make contact with the transformers and get the coordinates for the cube
2. carry out a chemical analysis of the radioactive isotopes on the planet surface.
When we get those , then US army/navy and seals will e on their way with pentagon fully funding a new energy programme
You might want to lower your hourly intake of fluoride.
http://www.iea.org/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=2207
It wasn’t the government who created the wheel. By today’s standards, central planner’s and selected interest groups are trying to create jobs by using your money.
Special Interest Group A: If the experiment goes bust, who the fuck cares, it wasn’t our money to begin with.
Special Interest Group B: We have another idea to pitch. It will require intense cultural conditioning to receive the taxpayers monies needed.
Special Interest Group A: Don’t worry, we still have unused monies that we didn’t use during the solar advertising campaign blitz. We’ll send it your way.
Special Interest Group B: Thanks a bundle. Oops, I meant thank you for your generosity.
This same logic/argument could be turned around back at you: all the people like "you" WILL return us to the stone age when all the current "solutions*" FAIL.
* Look at all the nuke-based weapons (think "entropy"), and, my favorite, the wonders of the "green revolution" (which will, if nukes don't do it, end up being the greatest human disaster in all of human history).
“The chief cause of problems is solutions.”
- Eric Sevareid
Ah, someone who understands physics! Thanks my friend! Sadly it takes little more than high school science to understand conservation of energy.
Well might best start here. The money making end of this machine (like the others) is the turbo-generator. God set it up so that ol' Nick Carnot would realize that the efficiency of the machine is exactly related to the temperature differences of the "hot gas" and "cold gas". Doesn't matter if it is condensing steam, Helium, whatever; gotta' get the cold end low and the hot end high.
If this is the percentage of processed Thorium that is burned up, ok. If it is plant efficiency, then see above, where Nick laid out the rules of the game. Even today, LWR fuel cost is nominal vs. total plant O&M costs, including decommissioning fund.
If the turbo-generator is a vertical Brayton cycle machine, then the shaft dynamics are difficult.
- Ned
DO YOU REALLY THINK THE REPTOIDS WOULD ALLOW AN UNLIMITED POWER SOURCE LIKE THORIUM? GOD WAKE UP PEOPLE. WE ARE BEING CONTROLLED BY ZIONIST REPTILES AND ANNUNAKI. THEY ARE INTENTIONALLY HEATING UP THE PLANET TO MAKE IT THERES. WAKE UP GEPETTO
Dis trolling, hmmm. Not guud trolling, noze, notz atz allz.
Hi Ms. I think we've passed "Peak Trollz". - Ned
Canada, Germany, India, Netherlands, the UK and the US have worked w/ thorium as a nuclear fuel. India has pursued this line since 1950's. Here is an IAEA paper from 2005.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TE_1450_web.pdf
I myself have perfected the self-licking ice cream cone.
Yes, you do seem well versed...at self-licking. You probably practice a lot when you are alone...which I suspect is frequently.
If the Physicist has perfected self-licking then I think he/she is quite flexible.
its so worth it
liquid florine is heinous stuff, it's corrosive, poisonous and forms hydro-flouric acid.
Get real
wtf is florine? :rolleyes:
UF6 is the shit that escapes when Stuxnet stops by for a visit. - Ned
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Florine
Just another ticker symbol competing with Crude & Natural Gas to create expediential growth bubbles.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw283.html
Just watch how the media spin doctors play out corn crops vs. required Ethanol under EPA regulations.
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/07/13/poor-corn-crop-will-have-major-impact-on-ethanol-market/
Think taxation by creating false supply shortages under laws devised to create growth.
Florine is my girlfriend.
You messin' with my woman?
In the interview, he dismisses those problems because Hastelloy is the magic unobtanium. I'm not sure of Hastellooy's pressure withstand at the temperatures that would make unit efficiency attractive. ASME would need new code cases.
Two loops before the machine would kill efficiency too.
- Ned
Thorium bitchez !
The smarter approach to Thorium power is to utilize a Neutron generator to bombard the Thorium. This is a cleaner, smaller energy source without all the ugly Fluorines, and decay product problems. It has been estimated that power plants as small as a few megawatts could be constructed this way. If you have to start with U235 fission as the neutron source you basically have an old-fashoned dirty reactor with all the inherent dangers.
Don't let technical details get in the way of zealotry..
Thorium reactors will be perfected about the same time as fusion reactors, right after cold fusion home power plants go on sale at Home Depot.
I hear PhD's are on sale, so long as you toe the line.
I personally prefer a house, a well, a private sewage-system, a garden with enough spare around to have all the vegetables and fruits necessary for me and my family, a solarthermic installation and a wind-power system that makes me as much independant of any government as possible. So, I don't need that thorium.
I'm sure that some of the 50% + of worldwide city dwelling populations would agree with you. Can you sell some of your land and give away some of your capital?
mo people, mo problems.
Its an over population thang. If huans stopped breeding like cockroaches and demanding more, more more there could be an easier more satisfying way of life. But nooooooo.
The ole three-generations-til-mutated-sterility courtesy of GMO crops ought to take care of Earth's little cancer bugs.
It's total CONSUMPTION that's the ISSUE. Seems to me that the paradigm of the predominate culture of today is that of GROWTH, which IS CONSUMPTION.
You can reduce populations but that's only treating the "disease."
ultimately, you are the energy required..
Valuation Perception
Middle Class Dream: spend in excess of capacity and get more credit, until you don’t, and be replaced by the next robot, running from something for nothing, to something for nothing, ahead of the collapsing demographic ponzi, with a fractional reserve bank transforming and transmitting the energy.
The republicans represent capital, the democrats represent middle class, and labor requires only nature to do its job. Accounting Law converts capital loss into middle class gain at the expense of labor, until labor can no longer be liquidated, at which point the middle class is liquidated itself, with great efficiency, by the tools developed in the so automated process, squealing louder and louder for lack of grease, as the participants throw each other under the bus, and then themselves.
Out of their own mouths comes the prison, in a positive feedback loop, from generation to generation, to oblivion, waging war on the belief systems of others, accelerating the cancer to death, zoo critters in a rat race to the bottom, exchanging virtual FIRE as a means to control production, which it and its derivatives are not. That’s all make-work.
A service economy by itself has no product, so it must be subsidized, and at some point, some where, some how, a product must come out of the pipeline, which serves both the human and natural economies, in a negative feedback loop to symbiotic equilibrium.
At this point, why would anyone be surprised that governments the world over are buying cross-dressed autos and auctioning them off as defective, to ensure supply-side efficiency, unless they are paid accordingly. Global pension behavior only makes sense in a world of demographic ponzi operators, in which people are paid to be stupid.
You get what you pay for, in effective labor, so don’t be surprised when the power goes out and there is no water, as the herd reaches its destination in the desert. Building a bullet train only serves to accelerate the process.
Don’t rent from a bank, through government taxation, expecting the property mythology along the track to be fulfilled. Only liars require a derivative contract. Pigs are pigs no matter how you dress them, but they serve a purpose.
Corporate has begun a new round of increasing product price and reducing labor cost, the last in this loop, as if people were not both the means and the end, pushing the paper profit into the equity market and real losses onto government, net to pensions, with waste flowing to the top. What’s new? Watch the Safeway union, traffic by entitlement disbursement day, and hours by wage.
Whether capital is the voltage or the resistance depends upon your perspective, how you measure. The manufactured majority always assumes capital is all powerful, because the former breeds and trains the latter accordingly. If value is demand relative to supply over time, in a feedback loop, how f-ing stupid is a rote robot education system that rewards compliance? Is its result capital? Is its knowledge capital?
Labor’s next move is not going to be returning to the Stone Age, regardless of majority vote. The robots only care about how many pebbles they have relative to their neighbors on empire TV, and who is not using pebbles a medium of exchange. For the issuing authority, it is always a game of cloak and daggers, beyond the easily regulated, peer pressure, divide and conquer horizon, and the dc computer is only the explicit side of the operation. Accept risk accordingly.
Gold transmission is an extremely slow moving vehicle relative to increasingly diverse markets, the moneychangers have much more experience manipulating gold than digital script, and, like all empire mediums, a derivative market always develops to “account” for failures, in a positive bias feedback loop, which may only result in leverage acceleration, until collapse. It’s first gear.
How much gold does the planet store, how fast is it being revealed, and what are the holdings in each event horizon? Currency is always a game of blind man’s bluff, caveat emptor has a lineage, and the sheep get moved from pasture to pasture, clipped, and finally slaughtered. Getting in is easy; calculating the stack exit before entrance is a little more difficult. Measure flow momentum against gate valve operation.
Gravitational reduction, copying the behavior of others, does not create wealth. Only intelligent labor seeking the unknown can do that. You are not an accident of birth. Value your self as you would have others appreciate you, and aggregate. We do not all value a McMansion with a BMW in the driveway, despite what many have been led to believe, in the now imploding circle jerk among inconsiderable robots.
Interest is not work to be balanced against employment; it’s a meal ticket. Money will never replace labor, no matter how many times the moneychangers try. Who do you suppose provides the impetus, like the dc circuit, at the beginning of each and every iteration? The passive aggressive applies extortion when it believes it has a weapon that it can control from the other side of the planet, with recognition delay, and every weapon has at least two edges. Speculate accordingly.
The global economy is bankrupt, and all its operators are immobile relative to nature, which is collecting them, to complete your circuit. Building the future will never be less expensive. Empathy is one thing; stupidity is another. GDP stands for government directed production. Capital and middle class come from labor, and both are being left behind, with toys and a TV, for lack of adaptive fortitude, preaching nirvana and Armageddon as the digital rails to their prison.
Do you really think the middle class can vote its way out of this black hole, and appreciate your children? Keep your distance and let nature do its job. Robots are incapable of consideration; that’s why money exists. If you can’t trust their word, why would you trust a derivative contract?
Which is better, a dictator or a limousine liberal, wearing each other’s dresses? Romney didn’t stir up a Polish electrician by chance. Many of you didn’t realize you were labor when this process began. Welcome, but labor reserves the right to discriminate, at will. That’s always its prerogative, the difference between talking and doing.
Capital opens Pandora’s Box; labor keeps a lid on it, until it doesn’t. Let nature take its course, knit the dress implicitly, and print your own script, in the process. How’s your elevator working now?
(what do you do when Statey says “hey partner; put your leash back on. I’m in charge here.”? My advice is to leave him to his own death spiral and get on with your work. You have much bigger fish to fry. If he is stupid enough to follow you, so is his entire chain of command. Don’t waste your time on middle men. Be patient; your time will come. A reptile is a reptile is a reptile. It peers through the glass and sees only itself, through others, until it’s too late.)
Did you cut and paste or come up with all this off topic stuff all on your own? If we could harness your energy then who would need reactors of any kind?
"If we could harness your energy then who would need reactors of any kind?"
methinks that's his point. "your" being a collective pronoun, not an individual one.
too cheap to meter
i've always felt that there was some hideous secret within thorium reactors that caused everyone to abandon them 30 years ago.
I have "free/cheap*" water, yet I METER it. Do you know why? So I can gauge how much I'm using!
* NOTHING is FREE. I have costs for electricity (pumps and UV) and filters.
I once lived in a municipality that had areas that had no water meters. A neighbor would turn on his outside faucet and let the water run down the street. SOMEONE has to pay.
Those who wish to avoid measuring things usually are looking to hide something.
I really like your thinking but I suspect that you're a rare individual in the US.
(I'm guessing the US on "faucet" and "neighbor")
It was 50 years ago, and the hideous non-secret is: Much more difficult to make weapons.
Our energy source is pretty much unlimited (the SUN, until it burns out that is). All other constructs require efforts to restructure, and the restructuring (always the costs [energy or $$s] are externalized- "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!").
Food, Shelter and Water... I don't see "energy" here.
Energy is what is used to transform matter. If you don't have the matter to transform (refer to declining physical resources/environment) then one might as well be happy as a pig in shit sitting on the Sun.
We've already had CHEAP, ABUNDANT energy - fossil fuels, and look at what we've done with them (used them to help us create a TOTALLY unsustainable world). "This time it'll be different!" Yeah, sure it will...
"Much safer - no risk of environmental radiation contamination or plant explosion (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island)"
BS: Thorium is extremely toxic. Thorium mining was ended in the US because virtually all of the workers got sick from it. Thorium reactors suffer the same issues as Uranium fueled reactors. Fission results in high-radioactive daughters tha produce excess amounts of heat. That is the physics behind Fission, and it can't be can't to support an agenda. Thorium reactors can melt down or explode, releasing radiation and toxic compounds into the enviroment. A lot of the informaton your used is BS created by the people that have interest (making a lot of money) by promoting it.
•Much more efficient at producing energy - over 90% of the input fuel would be tapped for energy; vs <1% in today's reactors
BS. If spend fuel rods where recycled the would at least as efficent. Heavy water reactors also have better energy recovery and do not require enrichment. Heavy Water reactors have nearly 1.00 breading factor.
•Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries.
More BS. Part of the Thorium Fuel cycle is the creation of U-232 which is one of the nasties radioactive isotope in the world. U-232 is the primary reason why Thorium was not persued as a fuel source in the 1960's. Originally, Indian Point (NYC Nuke Power Plant) was to be fueled with Thorium, The idea was canned because of issues handing U-232. Thorium fissile products will remain radioactive for a lot longer than a few weeks.
Unfortunatelly all fission plants are inherently dangerous. The Top priority for the US nuclear energy program is what to do with the thousands and thousands of tons of spent fuel rods sitting at all of the active (and decommissioned) plants. These are perhaps the greatest risk to the US population since contains more radiactive material than all of the worlds nuclear bombs hundereds of times. Should a major crisis that results in a national or even a regional grid down form more than a week will unleash a death toll in 10s to 100 million nationwide. This is because existing nuke plants must provide coolling for the spend fuel pool 7/24/365 to prevent the spent fuel pools from boiling away and catching fire. Should a grid down event occur, Nuke Power plants only have 3 days of diesel onsite for the backup power. In a grid down diesel cant be transported since all pumping stations need power to operate. In three days virtually every truck in the US will be empty. A grid down event can be caused by terriorism, natural disaster (major earthquake, etc), or by a severe solar flare. Before going on promoting and spending money on far fetched ideas, how about spending the money needed to solving the existing problems.
The US doesn't have the money to properely retire and decommission ageing nuke plants and you think they have money to build new (untested) Thorium reactors? What fanasty world do you live on?
AGuy said it better than me, fully agree.
"The US doesn't have the money to properely retire and decommission ageing nuke plants and you think they have money to build new (untested) Thorium reactors?"
Exactly!
People don't want to identify what the REAL issue is: that we've become so "efficient" that we cannot afford to change. Attempts to change will expose the fragility of everything, it'll expose the flaws in the growth paradigm (thereby upending the mechanics of the rulers' tricks).
actually, each unit is self-funding its own decommissioning program, with a lot more oversight than is used on e.g. company so called "pension funds".
- ned
Thanks for stating the needed rebuttal.
France, et al,reprocess their spent fuel rods to take out and reuse the fissile by products (plutonium). Not sure what the savings is, but would appear cleaner than just warehousing the old rods.
The reports differ on that issue, but it seems to be dirty but to save costs. There are 2 places in Europe do reuse used rods, La Hague (France) and Sellafield (UK). You still need to warehouse old rots not usable for reuse, and the extracted plutonium. And there is not a single place up today on earth to store the trash as long as necessary. Some people still have the hope to use that trash in a fission, once its realised (by 2200+ possibly).
what's the price of a oil refinery or 10 vs a LFTR?
I'm not certain what you are on about. Fission already exists, that's what the rods were for.
Fusion doesn't use heavy elements, you can't fuse anything from iron onward in the table of elements, hence all the controversy over cold fusion using "heavy elements" like palladium.
Thorium has already been mined and is sitting in the desert in storage, leftovers from the cold war weapons programs.
Isn't it funny how we can bail out the too big to fail banks to the tune of 27 trillion dollars, but we can't bankroll less than a billion dollars to develop liquid fluorine thorium reactors?
Is wall street made to create funding for private enterprise to develop ideas like these or is it a parasite that trades paper and destroys economies?
How can liquid fuel melt?
How can an atmospheric pressure reactor explode?
Methinks the lady doesn't know shit.
Rosie O'Donnell holds all of your answers.
- Ned
Wow. They're talking about molten salt reactors and you're gibbering on for a couple of hours on the fuel rod aspect. Incredible.
Thorium is extremely toxic. Thorium mining was ended in the US because virtually all of the workers got sick from it.
Somehow, I doubt this. Thorium is everywhere, especially in rare earth mines. Whatever precautions necessary to extract and process rare earth minerals is all that's needed to extract the Thorium. Safety measures at open-pit mines were laking in the 60's? Color me surprised. The half-life or Thorium 232 is about 14 billion years, meaning it is barely radioactive.
Thorium reactors can melt down or explode, releasing radiation and toxic compounds into the enviroment.
A molten salt reactor utilizing thorium is already "melted down". And it operates at atmospheric pressure, so no chance of an explosion.
•Much more efficient at producing energy - over 90% of the input fuel would be tapped for energy; vs <1% in today's reactors. BS. If spend fuel rods where recycled the would at least as efficent. Heavy water reactors also have better energy recovery and do not require enrichment. Heavy Water reactors have nearly 1.00 breading factor.
Double BS - Heavy water reactors cannot operate at the high temperatures of a thorium molten salt reactor, so can never be as efficient. And recycling spent fuel rods is a great idea, until it's tried. The nuclear industry would rather sell us new rods, if you please. That's the main reason for not pursuing thorium as a fuel - the current uranium-plutonium model makes money off fuel sales, and thorium would not make anyone rich.
Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries.
Yes, there won't be waste consisting of fuel rods containing 97% of their original energy, plus the nasty trans-uranics, sititng in pools atop the reactor - like at Fukashima.
The Top priority for the US nuclear energy program is what to do with the thousands and thousands of tons of spent fuel rods sitting at all of the active (and decommissioned) plants. These are perhaps the greatest risk to the US population since contains more radiactive material than all of the worlds nuclear bombs hundereds of times. Should a major crisis that results in a national or even a regional grid down form more than a week will unleash a death toll in 10s to 100 million nationwide.
So then, molten salt thorium reactors at least get us past this problem. You really want to wait until current nuclear technology is perfected before moving on to thorium? How about simply replacing every heavy water reactor using uranium oxide rods with molten salt thorium reactors and call it a better deal?
Nuke Power plants only have 3 days of diesel onsite for the backup power. In a grid down diesel cant be transported since all pumping stations need power to operate. In three days virtually every truck in the US will be empty. A grid down event can be caused by terriorism, natural disaster (major earthquake, etc), or by a severe solar flare. Before going on promoting and spending money on far fetched ideas, how about spending the money needed to solving the existing problems.
No. With molten salt reactors, by simply draining the molten salts you end the reaction. Period. It really is that simple. Oak Ridge had one operating in the 60's for several years. All they did to turn off the reactor when they left for the weekend was to drain it and let it cool to a solid lump of glass.
Yours is a perfect post to illustrate how listening to fear mongers will get us exactly nowhere. Besides, everybody since the Greeks knows the world is flat.
Thank you for dismantling this post bit by bit. The stupidest posts on scientific matters get up votes on ZH because the majority know bugger all about science and preferentially believe in any ridiculous conspiracy that any uneducated idiot posts on wacko websites.
Bullshit.
If fuel rods could be recycled they wouldn't be RODS in solid form.
Thorium has been developed for decades, many countries are/were aiming for it, including India, Russia and France.
But, despite France running out of domestic uranium decades ago, this type of reactor is not operating comercially anywhere.
Lots of nasty isotopes are also created by the Thorium reactor. Maybe it is safe from a meltdown point of view, but it is not safe from a leaks / waste standpoint.
Some kind of acid leaching is also required (iirc), leaving behind radioctive waste solvent.
Current nuclear technology is simply too expensive, and not competitive with other sources. Even GE admitted this recently. The future is localized energy production and this should be the aim.
These types of technologies are inherently socialist given the security requirements. Fission is a dead end.
What you want are things that play well with natural gas infrastructure and natural gas combined cycle power plants--the most efficient thermal system ever devised. Why? Because it leverages defense and aerospace R&D into turbines. TRILLIONS of dollars since the 1940s. Most thermal systems are just tea kettles boiling water and tossing two thirds of the energy out the back as waste heat. Combined cycle roughly doubles that.
Gas from farms, gas from landfills, gas from coal mines, synthetic gas. It can all be fed into EXISTING infrastructure and used with EXISTING facilities. Some of it is carbon-neutral. Some of it isn't. But it's all insanely cheap and clean compared to these nuclear options. I like biomass IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle), you can look that up. But that's just me. Should be just a bit more costly than wind.
Oh, and then wind and solar and energy efficiency. Yawn, only about 50% can be met that way. How boring.
Add on district heating and cooling and you can up the thermal efficiencies to mid 90%. They run it in Finland, Denmark and so on.
While energy is cheap though, why would anyone bother? It's all about cheapness. Energy per dollar. You'll find that the most efficient countries are those without their own energy resources.
I would like to know how you measure "the most efficient countries"?
Japan for example is known for not having any energy resources of its own, sort of why the US was attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese because they were not too happy about having their oil supplies cut off (a simplification). Japan now generates most of its power by fossil fuels, oil mainly.
Finland has four nuclear reactors, They are among the world's most productive.
Is Japan therefore one of the most efficient countries?
I'll give you a clue. No.
edit: I think I have been confused with your post. Apologies.
I still have the taste of Fukushima in my mouth. None of the nuke ideas are good except ending them all!
Unused Thorium feedstock stockpiles at bargain prices.
Simple reactor design .... with NO emergency cooling needed...hmmmm...
(Quick! tell the Japanese -- all their problems are solved!)
I bet they'll LOVE it
./sarc
If this realy works the oil corporations will probably have this guy killed
Nuclear power generation under the current uranium model was instituted for the reason that is used the uranium cycle. As we see with Iran and as has been the case every single nuclear weapons nation has used its power generation reactors as part of the complex system to create the isotopes used for weapons.
I am agnostic on thorium use for power generation. I don't know a thing about it and my eyes glaze over when I try' to learn. At any rate it isn't going to happen because governments want uranium isotopes and other fission elements so they subsidize the current system. The nuclear industry has always been about subsidy.
There is a great irony in pro nuke power advvocates pretending it is and always has been a 'free market' exercise, or would be moreso if only the damn government would stop regulating it. This has it exactly wrong. It was subsidy from the moment of birth and the latest generation will be the same.
"As we see with Iran"
Keep saying it like it's a fact... Propaganda is pretty hard to kill, especially when it's controlled by the most powerful empire ever to exist on this planet...
Anyway, this is about OIL, OIL is KING. OIL is what gives CENTRAL POWER its POWER: shipping. Yes, the "problem" will still be that of how to fill the coming liquid fuels hole... Everything else is but a distraction: helps get the techno-heads to support TPTB's controlling paradigm.
Nuclear power generation under the current uranium model was instituted for the reason that is used the uranium cycle. As we see with Iran and as has been the case every single nuclear weapons nation has used its power generation reactors as part of the complex system to create the isotopes used for weapons.
I am agnostic on thorium use for power generation. I don't know a thing about it and my eyes glaze over when I try' to learn. At any rate it isn't going to happen because governments want uranium isotopes and other fission elements so they subsidize the current system. The nuclear industry has always been about subsidy.
There is a great irony in pro nuke power advvocates pretending it is and always has been a 'free market' exercise, or would be moreso if only the damn government would stop regulating it. This has it exactly wrong. It was subsidy from the moment of birth and the latest generation will be the same.
"Kirk Sorensen: A Detailed Exploration Of Thorium's Potential As An Energy Source"
Not detailed enough. These are:
Thorium Remix 2011 (DVD Version - 2 hrs 23 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1YjDdI_c8
The Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor: Why Didn't This Happen (and why is now the right time?) (Google Tech Talk - 36 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
Best -SHORT- intro to the subject:
TEDxYYC - Kirk Sorensen - Thorium (10 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw
Unfortunately, there is no silver energy bullet. Thorium is not a viable energy source unless you embrace a full-on security state from cradle to grave. It's far too nasty and frankly, the ZH community is being taken for a ride and used. Thorium is a stalking horse for the breeder reactor community, which is really all about plutonium, enrichment, and avoiding admitting the failure of nuclear waste management as a concept world-wide.
If ZHers really want expensive government-guarded nuclear plants, that have nice 'Thorium' and smiley face signs in front, well have at it. But you're being taken for fools.
I was waiting for you to weigh in Jim. Thx.
Howdy MsC. Happy third ZH anniversary (noticed you mentioned that the other day). Mine is next month I think. JFC, we're hosed now worse than we were then.
Yes, I have studied and there is no energy silver bullet to replace oil. If there was we would be using it. It's that simple. Coal / Nat Gas are good they are both the smae price now but are not renewable and one is extremely dirty. Even now they are saying making 1/3 renewable energy mandates are extermely difficult, but we have to do it. We cannot use oil just because it is cheap. It's like doing the easy work first and saving the hard work for later. It's called procrastinating. Every efficient person knows you take the hard stuff down first than go on to the easy stuff - it makes your life much easier. This world works in reverse thanks to DC.
I'm not going to discount a NASA engineer though until I have analyzed what he says, every energy aleternative needs to be explored as viable. Even then we wil not have a replacement for oil, just something to help us get around and light up the house, but its a step in the right direction.
I have a short comment re: solutions up the post a little, so won't repeat here but just will mention using the natural gas systems with many more feedstocks (biomass, synthetic etc.) is a critical piece of the puzzle to me.
Biomass gasification R&D (hot gas cleanup in particular) is probably the single least funded/highest payback area. The best tech is being kept for Chinese coal gasification projects by guess who--Siemens, with GE and Shell holding back as well...
Jim, do you have evidence that the biggies (Zeemens, GE) are holding back? Or is it that the technology sucks? After all, (especially GE) is deep into stupid projects funded by the big.gov.
Just wonderin' your facts vs. opinion.
- Ned
{espeecially since I fully understand their rapacity, so if there were a skosh' promise, they'd get .gov funding for bringing good things to life}
I wouldn't call it evidence. I asked a Siemens engineer who was discussing the ability of their gasification tech to use North Dakota lignite whether they'd tested it with biomass and he said yes, it works fine. The Germans call the fuel 'wood flour'. This was after Siemens bought the old East German outfit Lurgi that was doing it since the 1970s, mainly at the Schwarzepump facility. High temp, high pressure (2000 degrees) so no tar etc. in the gas stream, high btu content comparable to straight natural gas. He said, "we never found a commercial partner." I approached Siemens at a later point and the sales rep folks explained the strategy was to sidestep biomass and go with coal projects in China.
Evidence...blog posts...the truth is where you find it I guess. The sticking point is that this kind of R&D is very pricey. You can set up and spin a goofy new wind turbine for say around a million bucks, but a half-scale biomass IGCC facility is like a hundred million.
Another interesting example: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's compact gasifier. Same principle--high temp/high pressure, clean high btu syngas. Tested all the way through at the Gas Research Institute in Indiana. First commercial contract? Yah: Chinese coal.
2008 announcement: "coal or biomass" http://www.pw.utc.com/media_center/press_releases/2008/10_oct/10-3-2008_9112974.asp
2012 announcement: "Chinese coal" http://www.pw.utc.com/media_center/press_releases/2012/02_feb/02-02-2012_00001.asp
We are losing the tech race while simultaneously blowing another decade in R&D.
Another factor: the greenies have 'enough' of a hog trough with wind, solar and efficiency. They'd like solar to be the second in line after wind, even though it's ten times more expensive. Biomass is only a little bit more expensive and fully dispatchable (non-intermittant, AKA reliable) to boot. But, the big chicks in the nest strangle the others.
So a number of high-tech options are left to swing in the wind. Lack of focus, lack of analysis, or a different brand of corruption. You tell me.....LOL...I kind of gave up.
ya, as a skosh' piglet I worked on IGCC {earlier DOE, when they were fucked up, before they became really fucked up}
and +1 on ya to understand "dispatchable". I touch base with any number of old dogs who say "I'm building dispatch for these units" vs. controlling things.
and, in all seriousness, what is this "R 'n D" of which you speak? Does this contribute to the next quarter's "accelerating" earnings?
- Ned
{although I never ask the sign of the acceleration ;-) }
{{and yes, I push rather hard on "evidence" v. water-cooler pig-shit}}
jim, have you any experience with home-scale gasifiers? rocket mass heaters and such?
For all the crackheads out there who speak about economics of oil / alternative energy saying we can't develop alternative energy because the economics don't make sense and to use a non renewable like nat gas or nukes. The average price per barrell of Oil in the USA since 1870 was 24 dollars. We are way above that now - 4 times as high - and in 2008 we went past the price of 150 - the price that makes every other form of energy cost competitive with cheap middle east oil. But the problem is if you don't develop it, you don't have it. You can't win the lottery without a ticket. It took 15 years from 1870 to 1885 to get it down from 70 dollars to 25 dollars per barrel - it wasn't a problem then. Granted we weren't using 20 million barrels per day but seriously, we are way past the point of saying oil is cheap. That day past us a decade ago, and if we let another decade go at this current rate we're finished. The USA is too big we use 1/3 of the world energy, we can't keep going on fooling ouselves thinking this day will not come.
Swede,
Storage.
And of course the US can go on using 1/3rd of the world's energy. Oil shale. Shale gas. And when that runs out methane hydrates. 100s of years worth. By then fusion or something else will have been invented. And developed.
Fear is the government's biggest tool. Stop being a tool.
You just applied a linear average to an exponentially increasing price while also disregarding the non-linear drop-off of available supply.
O, RLY?
Try not to #Fail so much, thank you.
Energy is not the problem, energy storage has always been the problem. Oil is nothing but an energy dense storage medium that can be burned in the presence of an oxygen rich atmosphere. No nukes is good nukes. Solar and wind are the answer.
You just said that the problem is not energy, but energy storage. Then said solar and wind are the answer.
Care to expand on the energy storage properties of solar and wind power?
I think he must mean real big batteries ... or lots of Duracells
Not pretending to speak for Buzz, but... one can use solar and wind to pump water up to higher ground for your energy store*. Yes, it's NOT "efficient," but then again when analyzing how nature does things you'll see that "energy" conversion is generally quite low (because it's quite the trick to manage large-scale conversions- when nature does it you get shit like volcano eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes etc.).
* Basically how electricity is produced in some regions of the world (dams), only with nature doing the up-hill pumping (natural water cycle).