You guys ever heard of a Thorium reactor?

[Photonfanatic]

I've been looking around a lot lately, at alternative power sources. Ever since I joined this forum. I've even looked at the fringe elements, many of which seem to hold promise. If only someone would develop them. One of them is the thorium reactor. Much like the plutonium reactors that we're used to, only liquid salt instead of plutonium. As you might imagine, its far safer than plutonium. Even when the worst comes to worst, the Thorium reactor doesn't damage the environment nearly as badly as the plutonium based reactors do. You'd never have heard of Chernobyl if it were a thorium reactor gone bad. Also, thorium is practically everywhere, where as uranium is quite rare.

So have any of you ever heard of this? I find it odd that its so much better, yet so little used. In that, its not freakin' used at all.

[Mike90250]

yep, in fact, some kid actually built one in the kitchen at home. I think the reaction runs only as long as you feed it X-rays from an outside source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

DIY :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

[Sunking]

LFTR's have been around since the 60's.

The good thing about them are any Breeder reactor is they make their own fuel and/ or use any fissile material including weapon grade plutonium. passively safe, and once all the fuel is used up only has a half life of 10 years so all waste, what little their is is low radiation, and can be stored in the reactor. When the reactor reaches end of life the spent fuel can remain in the reactor buried on site, and a new reactor built right on top of it.

The plan is to use them at point of use like cell towers and is part of the Smart Grid Technology. They can be put in a basement of a house and run several city blocks. You would not even know they were there if not for the electrical lines. The fuel is so cheap is considered free and we have a few million years of supply.

There is no energy crisses, it is all political and man made to get in your pocket. Most of what you believe is plain ole ignorance and lies of a nosy minority enviro whackos.

[russ]

I've even looked at the fringe elements, many of which seem to hold promise. If only someone would develop them. One of them is the thorium reactor. Billions have been spent on the thorium reactor - anyone following energy knows of he technology

So have any of you ever heard of this? I find it odd that its so much better, yet so little used. In that, its not freakin' used at all.

There are many schemes out there - thorium reactors are one of the few that may make it.

[Photonfanatic]

There are many schemes out there - thorium reactors are one of the few that may make it.

And here's where my cynicism kicks in. I was arguing with another guy on another forum about that solar plane. They had a thread on it and he was like "This is good. Once its done doing all its touring around, the technology will be proven and they'll go into development of more practical versions."

And I was all like:

"Yeah right dude! This is one of those -oh cool, wouldja look at that- moments. Nothing is ever going to come of that plane until there is no jet fuel." He seemed to be under the impression that in 10 years we'd see small solar planes everywhere being used for everything that small planes are being used for today. I'll believe it when I see it.

[SunEagle]

And here's where my cynicism kicks in. I was arguing with another guy on another forum about that solar plane. They had a thread on it and he was like "This is good. Once its done doing all its touring around, the technology will be proven and they'll go into development of more practical versions."

And I was all like:

"Yeah right dude! This is one of those -oh cool, wouldja look at that- moments. Nothing is ever going to come of that plane until there is no jet fuel." He seemed to be under the impression that in 10 years we'd see small solar planes everywhere being used for everything that small planes are being used for today. I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm still waiting on the flying cars that everyone is supposed to have. It was all detailed and discussed at the New York Worlds Fair back in the 60's at the General Motors pavilion. A lot was supposed to happen by the year 2000 but alas some things take a lot longer than what people imagine.

[russ]

Do the science to support the plane being of any use other than a rich kids toy - there is none. The same clowns against anything nuclear will be all hot and wet over anything solar attached to the name.

And here's where my cynicism kicks in. I was arguing with another guy on another forum about that solar plane. They had a thread on it and he was like "This is good. Once its done doing all its touring around, the technology will be proven and they'll go into development of more practical versions."

And I was all like:

"Yeah right dude! This is one of those -oh cool, wouldja look at that- moments. Nothing is ever going to come of that plane until there is no jet fuel." He seemed to be under the impression that in 10 years we'd see small solar planes everywhere being used for everything that small planes are being used for today. I'll believe it when I see it.

[Sunking]

And here's where my cynicism kicks in. I was arguing with another guy on another forum about that solar plane. They had a thread on it and he was like "This is good. Once its done doing all its touring around, the technology will be proven and they'll go into development of more practical versions."

And I was all like:

"Yeah right dude! This is one of those -oh cool, wouldja look at that- moments. Nothing is ever going to come of that plane until there is no jet fuel." He seemed to be under the impression that in 10 years we'd see small solar planes everywhere being used for everything that small planes are being used for today. I'll believe it when I see it.

WEll both of you are right, just not on the same wave length.

Solar planes have already been tested and have potential for high altitude communication over war or disaster areas. They are not nor will be capable of moving troops or cargo, but capable of very light payloads like cameras and low power radios at very high altitudes. They have massive wing loads and fly very slow. During the day the reach very high altitudes, at night glide until the sun returns and they regain altitude. They also make big slow moving targets.

[Photonfanatic]

There are many schemes out there - thorium reactors are one of the few that may make it.

I'd be curious to know what the other ones are. The good ones, I mean. Not the ones that just aren't going to work. Every once in a while you'll hear physicists getting excited about zero point again. Something about drawing energy from a vacuum. They say its real and can be done, but they don't know exactly what's happening and they can't explain why it works. I say screw it, use it anyway. Its probably like those other particles that they think are entering and leaving the universe.

[peakbagger]

Thorium technology was figured out by the US long ago and then abandoned as the US wanted inefficient nuclear power plants to supply them the materials for bomb making. India is looking at it as they have plenty of thorium and little uranium. Most of the granite in Northern New England and Atlantic Canada has thorium. One the decay products is radon that is a contamiinant in many wells and basements in the region.

B&W has been making small nuclear reactors for the navy for years, they operate completely differently than a conventional nuclear plant. They are much smaller and could be the basis for small modular reactors.

Heck according to the experts Fusion is only 20 years out, of course I heard this 30 years ago and its still 20 years out.

Realistically, the most ready source of energy is the energy not used due to efficiency.

[bonaire]

Best way to make 1kWh is to not use 1kWh.

Conservation is more powerful than new plants. The Amish are "laughing" at us and waiting for the big decline yet to come. If a home can drop energy usage by half, we still have to create the other half. I suspect in 100 years, thorium and other types of reactors will be regionally deployed but by then, oil will be hard to come by and the Great War will have happened and we'll have other worries. I wonder how wars will happen when we run out of oil? Will our troops be ready to step out from behind their drone flying consoles and bombers and really fight in hand to hand combat?

[russ]

Comments in the text

Best way to make 1kWh is to not use 1kWh.

Conservation is more powerful than new plants. True

The Amish are "laughing" at us and waiting for the big decline yet to come.Let them laugh - I jave exactly zero interest in their life style

If a home can drop energy usage by half, we still have to create the other half. I suspect in 100 years, thorium and other types of reactors will be regionally deployed but by then, oil will be hard to come by and the Great War will have happened and we'll have other worries. You read too many comic books

I wonder how wars will happen when we run out of oil? Come on

Will our troops be ready to step out from behind their drone flying consoles and bombers and really fight in hand to hand combat? No comment on the concept - it wouldn't be polite

[KRenn]

I've been looking around a lot lately, at alternative power sources. Ever since I joined this forum. I've even looked at the fringe elements, many of which seem to hold promise. If only someone would develop them. One of them is the thorium reactor. Much like the plutonium reactors that we're used to, only liquid salt instead of plutonium. As you might imagine, its far safer than plutonium. Even when the worst comes to worst, the Thorium reactor doesn't damage the environment nearly as badly as the plutonium based reactors do. You'd never have heard of Chernobyl if it were a thorium reactor gone bad. Also, thorium is practically everywhere, where as uranium is quite rare.

So have any of you ever heard of this? I find it odd that its so much better, yet so little used. In that, its not freakin' used at all.

Yep, there was a reactor at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, but it wasn't pursued because thorium nuclear can't make things go boom. It also can't meltdown, but that's a minor issue, after all, if we can't use the nuclear power to blow up and level whole cities, who cares, right?


The Chinese and the Indians are both heavily investing in thorium right now, yet the U.S. has one of the highest natural reserves of thorium in the world, but why worry ourselves about a potential source of cheap electricity that doesn't pollute, right?


The biggest slap in the face to me is that Chinese sent a group to Oak Ridge to basically learn all about thorium, got copies of all the old plans and research that the U.S. government funded and now they are pushing a smart, cost-efficient technology that here in the U.S. we refuse to do. How bass ackwards is that?

The Chinese aim to beat them to it. Technology for the molten salt process already exists. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee built such a reactor in the 1960s. It was shelved by the Nixon Administration. The Pentagon needed plutonium residue from uranium to build nuclear bombs. The imperatives of the Cold War prevailed.

The thorium blueprints gathered dust in the archives until retrieved and published by former Nasa engineer Kirk Sorensen. The US largely ignored him: China did not.

Mr Jiang visited the Oak Ridge labs and obtained the designs after reading an article in the American Scientist two years ago extolling thorium. His team concluded that a molten salt reactor -- if done the right way -- may answer China's prayers.

Mr Jiang says China's energy shortage is becoming "scary" and will soon pose a threat to national security. It is no secret what he means. Escalating disputes with with India, Vietnam, the Philippines, and above all Japan, are quickly becoming the biggest threat to world peace. It is a resource race compounded by a geo-strategic struggle, with echoes of the 1930s.

His mission is to do something about China's Achilles Heel very fast. The Shanghai team plans to build a tiny 2 MW plant using liquid flouride fuel by the end of the decade, before scaling up to commercially viable size over the 2020s. It is also working on a pebble-back reactor.

He estimates that China has enough thorium to power its electricity needs for "20,000 years". So does the world. The radioactive mineral is scattered across Britain. The Americans have buried tonnes of it, a hazardous by-product of rare earth metal mining.

China is already building 26 conventional reactors by 2015, with a further 51 planned, and 120 in the pipeline, but these have all the known drawbacks, and rely on imported uranium.

The beauty of thorium is that you cannot have a Fukushima disaster. Professor Robert Cywinksi from Huddersfield University, who anchor's the UK's thorium research network ThorEA, said the metal must be bombarded with neutrons to drive the process. "There is no chain reaction. Fission dies the moment you switch off the photon beam," he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9784044/China-blazes-trail-for-clean-nuclear-power-from-thorium.html

When people talk about solar and renewables, I think it is FAR more imperative that the U.S. have a "Manhattan Project" style research push into utilizing thorium nuclear technology. Studies have shown that widespread use of thorium would result in electricity costs of $0.04 a kilowatt hour with basically no emissions, easily replacing current coal use with something that is far more favorable environmentally speaking, and because of the thorium reserves in the U.S., far more readily available and able to power this nation for tens of thousands of years.

[Sunking]

When people talk about solar and renewables, I think it is FAR more imperative that the U.S. have a "Manhattan Project" style research push into utilizing thorium nuclear technology. Studies have shown that widespread use of thorium would result in electricity costs of $0.04 a kilowatt hour with basically no emissions, easily replacing current coal use with something that is far more favorable environmentally speaking, and because of the thorium reserves in the U.S., far more readily available and able to power this nation for tens of thousands of years.

Well perhaps there is hope for the USA afterall. Very few people in the USA are even aware of passively safe reactors with millions of years of cheap fuel. The more people who know the facts can bring about change and vote in public servants to bring about that change, and throw out the obstructionist currently occupying the White House trying to start riots and tear apart the country.

[Photonfanatic]

Are there any countries that actually have a working thorium reactor yet? Someone said china and india are working on it, but do they actually have one? If not, how close are they?