Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium

I like the sound of the recyling centre propsed by GE Hitatchi, any word on whether that has been given the nod?

It has been presented to the Blue Ribbon Commission on nuclear waste, who are supposed to decide what to do with nuclear waste. We'll see. I honestly think they'll pick a decentralized geological repository, which will most likely involve burying waste at the end of a hole a few kilometers deep. Waste of fuel if they did that though.. I think Russia will end up commercializing it, or maybe General Electric in partnership with some Japan or China. Or maybe France, or South Korea. The US is falling behind. Westinghouse nuclear has already been sold to Japan....

Here's some PDF / PPT files on the topic:
brc.gov...

brc.gov...

local.ans.org...

djysrv.blogspot.com... (make sure to read the comments)

seekerblog.com...

www.huffingtonpost.com...

Breeders need a starting charge of special fuel to start converting the non-fissile fuel into fissile fuel, but that can be done by destroying nuclear weapons, or processing existing nuclear waste.

[edit on 1/9/2010 by C0bzz]

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse
reply to post by marg6043

 

Can plastics be made from Thorium?

I could keep asking questions, but maybe you see the point.

No, but they can be made from plants.

One of the first man-made plastic materials was celluloid, main ingredient is cellulose, comes from plants.

reply to post by Perseus Apex


Not 'one' star for your post.
Wh-A-aaaa.....Wh-A-aaaa
Passing handkerchief.....

That 'warm', gl~O~wing Feeling.
Remember?
It 'heals'.....
every cell.

Ah, cheer up folks.
Good times are a coming.....after the storms of course.

Surprising none the least.
No?



[edit on 1-9-2010 by Perseus Apex]

reply to post by Mr Tranny


Mr. 'Tranny'.
Oh, that one was for 'you'.
You know.....

reply to post by butcherguy


Hemp oil, hemp plastics, hemp textiles, hemp paper, hemp food, hemp diesel, hemp medicine..should i go on?

It may surprise a few people to learn, that the first production assembly line motor vehicle, the model 'T' Ford, was built using hemp body panels.

This simple, natural and incredibly useful plant's suppression is responsible for a great deal of the pollution on our planet, due to us being forced to use fossil fuels for industrial manufacturing and fuels for the public, instead of using hemp.

Natural rubber, also comes from plants, quite a few plants produce latex. A huge variety produce oil, and are easily used to make high quality, durable and ecologically sound plastics and synthetics.

So yeah, we can all do very nicely without having to rely on fossil sources.

reply to post by Echtelion


Yes i see your point about control.

If i can mention something though. In Germany i am involved in 3 micro grid communities. They pump put 4 times more energy onto the grid than they consume. All from Renewables. This stuff is possibly because the Governments have forced the utilities to offer the feed in tariffs.

BUT, the big problem with thorium is that its nuclear and so they are not going to let the unwashed masses control it or be responsible for it.
Unless the engineers is so damn good that its as simple as running a heat pump, and i don't see that happening.

so i agree with you, but not for the same reasons so much.

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk

This would take the risk of nuclear weapons being built out of the equation, as it is nigh on impossible to use Thorium in a weapon because of its high output of Gamma rays.

Any thoughts?
[edit on 31-8-2010 by Peruvianmonk]

Gamma rays in itself does not in any way prevent thorium being weaponised. Its being done already big time. Google it

I can see one very good use for a Thorium reactor.

Since they are fail-safe use them for large cargo ships.

Use a reactor design that is a separate reactor plugged into the steam system of the ship.

Add two backups one is that the reactor is housed in a float-able housing.
If the ship sinks the reactor will eject from the ship as a sealed unit and can be recovered by a tug or other ship.

Design into the system a back up where if for some reason the reactor does not eject and float a ROV can go down and connect hoist cables to the reactor and pull it free as a sealed unit.

This design can be a bonus in when its time to refuel the reactor as you can just unplug the reactor and plug a spare one in and send the old one to a plant to have the fuel rods changed where no one outside a secure group ever handles the fuel in the reactor

Sadly the status quo is what is making the rich richer, so new energy sources, cures for diseases, etc will never see the light of day.

Originally posted by Angelic Resurrection

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk

This would take the risk of nuclear weapons being built out of the equation, as it is nigh on impossible to use Thorium in a weapon because of its high output of Gamma rays.

Any thoughts?
[edit on 31-8-2010 by Peruvianmonk]

Gamma rays in itself does not in any way prevent thorium being weaponised. Its being done already big time. Google it

Per F. Peterson, says:

There are a couple of points to make about LFTRs.

First, and importantly, with just modest design effort, terrorists will never successfully steal U-233 from a LFTR and make a bomb, even if the LFTR uses Pa-233 separation and thus makes relatively pure U-233. The primary reason is that the U-233 must be remotely handled for personnel safety reasons, and it is pretty easy to make it very hard for insiders or outsiders to steal stuff from hot cells.

On the proliferation side, U-233 has roughly the same bare-sphere critical mass as plutonium, almost no spontaneous neutron generation, and almost no heat generation. This is excellent from the perspective of weapons use. The primary disincentive for weapons use involves OSHA issues due to personnel radiation exposure from U-232, which can be avoided by choosing weapons grade plutonium or HEU instead of U-232. If one has a dedicated production capability for weapons material, it's quite logical that it would focus on the plutonium or HEU routes, and not thorium. But that does not mean that the potential diversion of U-233 by a state would not be a major concern, when the major barrier to use of U-233 in weapons involves OSHA rules rather than actual physical limits.

Reducing demand for uranium enrichment has clear potential non-proliferation benefits, because uranium enrichment is particularly problematic from the perspective of the development of clandestine production facilities. A fission energy system based on LFTRs will also involve far smaller inventories and flows of plutonium than one based on fast-spectrum IFRs. But LFTRs will still require effective IAEA safeguards to assure that the state cannot divert material without detection, and will have similar non-proliferation issues with other fission reactors (e.g., break-out remains theoretically possible, if likely unattractive, particularly for denatured LFTRs). As is commonly said, no technologies will offer a silver bullet to eliminate proliferation risks, but these risks can certainly be managed and minimized.

www.energyfromthorium.com...

Thorium itself can not be used in nuclear weapons. It needs to be converted into Uranium-233. In the LFTR, Uranium-232 will also be produced (among other things) which makes it extremely difficult to make into a weapon. Any previous efforts that turned Thorium into pure Uranium-233 are, therefore, not relevant to the LFTR.

No nuclear waste from any civilian power reactor has ever been weaponized.

[edit on 2/9/2010 by C0bzz]

reply to post by 4nsicphd


Bad link there, and I think all your issues are 95% solved.

en.wikipedia.org...

Recently a google tech talk was held that shows that this
has been done and it ran for quite awhile with one problem,
the properties of graphite, they call it the plumbing problem.



It just has to be done as Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor to
avoid problems.

Google may go this way just to cut their power bill.

One of the other methods that looked really good was a type
of Fusion Reactor that appears to be closer to working than
any other affordable method.

It is called Dense Plasma Focus Fusion.

Google Video Link

It would make power cheaper than any other method on the planet
at this time.

The Reactor is also very cheap to build and can be made very small
even portable on the back of a semi.

As for cars the big hold up on electric cars has been the battery.

Just need some way to merge the super capacitor's fast charge
rate with a batteries dense storage without it have the weight
of a white dwarf star...

Guess what, it looks like they did it...

en.wikipedia.org...

The paper-like quality of the battery combined with the structure of the nanotubes embedded within gives them their light weight and low cost, making them attractive for portable electronics, aircraft, automobiles, and toys (such as model aircraft), while their ability to use electrolytes in blood make them potentially useful for medical devices such as pacemakers. The medical uses are particularly attractive because they do not contain any toxic materials and can be biodegradable; a major drawback of chemical cells.[2] However, Professor Sperling cautions that commercial applications may be a long way away, because nanotubes are still relatively expensive to fabricate. Currently they are making devices a few inches in size. In order to be commercially viable, they would like to be able to make them newspaper size; a size which, taken all together, would be powerful enough to power a car.[3]

[edit on 2-9-2010 by Ex_MislTech]

reply to post by Peruvianmonk


Like others have said...it would cost obama his assignment, or rather, his life. That's not the 'change' that they meant when speaking through the star's mouth. If you'll notice, obama has done the opposite of your query: obama mouthed for cap and trade and sided with father al gore with the 'cimatechange' hoaxing.

These hurried moves were done in direct polar opposition to the dreams you describe OP, of clean, unregulated power that wouldn't become weaponized.

It's pretty obvious that, in this day of technology, they have perfected above all things the obscuring of liberty and truth, truth and liberty.

I keep on thinking this thorium is simply too good to be true, where's the catch?

The catch is evil men and an abetting media. Also, think about it: thorium is the LAST thing you'd (being the nwo/climatechange group) want to place money towards in any way shape or form, especially toward building an infrastructure. It sounds like Tesla's conundrum, except with Tesla technology an infrastructure did pop up, very quietly, in the form of weaponry. Therefore there are men who simply strip him of anything because to acknowledge him is to acknowledge the weapons we aren't supposed to know about, just ask dennis kucinich. I am trying to say that since thorium is not useful for weaponry, why would the ptb allow it?

It should be interesting to see how India proceeds.

[edit on 3-9-2010 by davidmann]

[edit on 3-9-2010 by davidmann]

I just think we need to start going into other types of energy sources whether nuclear or plasma or bio fuels electric and even solar, hydro and wind. If an alien civilization were traveling the galaxy or universe in thought to hopefully find a race of people like themselves with similar technology on their home planet I don't think they would want to deal with us. They look at us and say "fossil fuel that's millions of years old tech" or whatever language they would use. bottom line we have brains power and resources we just need to get off the couch and do something about it

The great thing about nuclear power for the AGW-embracing environmentalists is that it produces absolutely no CO2 (none, zero!) and it's on an equal-playing field with hydrocarbons in terms of how much energy it's capable of producing. 60-70% of France's energy currently comes from nuclear power, so France have shown it can be done.

Think about this for a second. We already have the solution to AGW, which we're told, if left unchecked, not too long in the distant future will cause unprecedented environmental damage and heat the planet catastrophically. Despite having the perfect solution to this fast-approaching ecological disaster, the government and bankers aren't making the change to nuclear power.

You would think that the government would be working day and night to set up nuclear power stations to reduce CO2 emissions and the bakers would be feverishly helping them, but they aren't. Could it be that they don't really believe AGW? Instead they're promoting so-called clean energy alternatives, like wind power, which is wholly unreliable, as Denmark have demonstrated.

Denmark created loads of windmills and set up an energy capacity theoretically of 20% of their total grid but discovered they were only able to produce 5% without destabilising the grid. These sorts of clean-energy alternatives (which is a misnomer, because CO2 is the proverbial staff of life, and which are unreliable) are promoted in Agenda 21 too. It denounces hydrocarbons in favour exclusively of wind, solar and wave, which could never stabilise our population, unless the planet's population was seriously reduced.

I don't see how wind, solar, geothermal and wave can create the necessary energy sufficient for the burgeoning population. Realistically, it just can't happen.

I worked in a couple of mines that were for uranium. One of them produced Ytrium a rare earth phosphor used in television crt tubes.
The other s were refining Thorium for the medical field.
Apparently there wasn't much use for it so the operations were stopped. Now it is being re-discovered as the savior of mankind.
What a flippin coincidence!

reply to post by Peruvianmonk


You worry about our weapons programmes? I'm more worried about England's propaganda exports, like tony blair with his war mongering. Who is he in bed with, israel? That's pretty obvious. As if you English do nothing imperialistic! You've even got ats members willing to ship over here to wage war against our struggle against a rogue government.

Why don't you guys develop it?

Our weapons programmes...sheesh. At least the states only use em weapons against select individuals, not wherever homeless groups show up on your tv set police monitors stationed throughout the UK.

I expect this thread to die. Thorium sounds like a wonder metal, but don't lay it on 'americans' and their weapon programmes. We don't like what they're doing either.

Originally posted by ionsoul
I worked in a couple of mines that were for uranium. One of them produced Ytrium a rare earth phosphor used in television crt tubes.
The other s were refining Thorium for the medical field.
Apparently there wasn't much use for it so the operations were stopped. Now it is being re-discovered as the savior of mankind.
What a flippin coincidence!

With the right sensible EPA regulations for the safe storage of mill waste there are a lot of old uranium mine and mill tailing's that a company could process for thorium.

This would solve two problems one being the large number of old uranium mine and mill tailing's that are now listed as Superfund sites
and the cost to the government to clean up these Superfund sites.

Many are from uranium mined for the government. and are under the control/ownership of the DOE.

If after the old waste is reprocessed to remove the thorium its cast into blocks with concrete(easiest way to move transport and store as they can be palletized and moved with forklifts) and stacked in plastic lined storage pits and covered with plastic and dirt as is used in many types of hazardous waste storage around the US this would be a great improvement.
www.ehso.com...

[edit on 5-9-2010 by ANNED]

If anyone thinks that the future use of Thorium is gong to make energy to your home cheaper,
then your in for a big surprise. This will mean bigger profits for the fat cats while we pay
the same or even possibly more for this new 'greener' technology. Come on...how often
do you see a big company passing along any savings from a 'new found' technology to
it's costumers?

Originally posted by keithallenlaw
If anyone thinks that the future use of Thorium is gong to make energy to your home cheaper,
then your in for a big surprise. This will mean bigger profits for the fat cats while we pay
the same or even possibly more for this new 'greener' technology. Come on...how often
do you see a big company passing along any savings from a 'new found' technology to
it's costumers?

Well... how electricity and the price of electricity is determined varies depending on region. But you are incorrect, cheaper wholesale generators should decrease the price of electricity. That's why energy intensive industries like aluminium smelting generally migrate to regions where there are depreciated hydroelectric dams, or depreciated coal plants.

reply to post by Nathan-D


Couple of your figures are not entirely correct, however the overall main message is. I find that 'environmentalists' shoot themselves in the foot for being against one of the best energy sources on the planet that can provide clean, safe, low cost electricity. They are also to a certain extent to blame for the prevalence of coal, and the environmental effects that it has which include, incidentally, global warming. With that being said, there are climatologists who want Nuclear - James Hansen and Barry Brook are two that I can name off the top of my head.

Some related videos... both are presentations to the BRC on what to do with nuclear 'waste'.