Thorium

o00scorpion00o · Jul 25, 2011

L.F.T.R is a sensible option for our energy needs!

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor

10,000 years supply alone in Norway, cheap, clean, very efficient, very safe when used in L.F.T.R reactors!

No need for billions of Euros or Dollars on transmission networks form thousands of turbines!

No need for dams, storage, flooding land etc etc

I won't go into it but the benefits are great and it just baffles me why people are only catching on to it now!

It has been done before and it can be done again, the project was abandoned when the military discovered they could not make nukes form the waste fuel and the nuclear industry today is not interested because they make a lot of money making the fuel rods that are needed in current reactors so it needs government or private funding!

In India they are building Thorium reactors but are not using L.F.T.R because it needs further development that is not really a problem given modern technologies that were not around 40-50 years ago. And as a result India will not gain from the safety benefits!

Imagine making Hydrogen for cars and not needing to wait hours for batteries to charge, imagine not needing fossil fuels to heat our homes or for electricity, Imagine Nuclear power that can never melt down, and they don't need expensive containment buildings or cooling towers!

Who ever said there is an energy crisis?

The earth has several thousands of years energy and if fusion works over 7 Billion years supply in the sea alone! The sun will have used up it's hydrogen by then and have engulfed the earth!

If I only had the money I would fund a project to build the first L.F.T.R in Ireland and the only one in the world!

I would need political backing and some good charming words to win the Irish over on Nuclear power which is illegal Here! LMFAO I'm serious by the way!

Hillhater · Aug 10, 2011

bobc said:
Windmills are relatively cheap to install & the only real downside is the noise, offshore is great for everybody!

Except they are very inefficient financially, ($$'s per kWhr), high maintenance, and only work when the wind blows strongly !
They are not the solution for future energy.

Kingfish · Feb 5, 2012

EDIT: Original post copied to here.

Gordo · Feb 5, 2012

Please connect you brain to your finger before moving posts. :roll:

There is something very goofy going on here. The cost of building a 1MW tower on land is $1M. The cost of building one in the ocean is $6.5M. 70% of this cost is being subsidized by the UK government. Experience has taught us that whenever subsidies are involved, costs are inflated. All of the NIMBY's will not only pay the 70% through taxes, but they will pay 3-4X more for this :mrgreen:

power, than current prices. :lol: :lol: :lol: But they won't have to look at ugly wind towers in their backyard. If any of your local power companies go for offshore wind generation, get off the grid as fast as you can.

o00scorpion00o · Feb 5, 2012

Gordo said:
There is something very goofy going on here. The cost of building a 1MW tower on land is $1M. The cost of building one in the ocean is $6.5M. 70% of this cost is being subsidized by the UK government. Experience has taught us that whenever subsidies are involved, costs are inflated. All of the NIMBY's will not only pay the 70% through taxes, but they will pay 3-4X more for this power, than current prices. :lol: :lol: :lol: But they won't have to look at ugly wind towers in their backyard. If any of your local power companies go for offshore wind generation, get off the grid as fast as you can.

The Government, you mean the tax payer!

Same shit here, it's madness. Im in favour of green energy, but again L.F.T.R is green enough for me and could make hydrogen, great potential especially for a small Island like here!

What makes me laugh though is if I want to install solar p.v or wind turbine, I won't get anything towards the installation costs, and my co2 tax and levies on electricity bills go to big energy companies to guarantee their incomes for x amount of years!

+ we only get 9 cent per kw/hr and we pay 16 cent per kw/hr, the German's get about 35 cent!

Gordo · Feb 8, 2012

o00scorpion00o said:
Gordo said:

There is something very goofy going on here. The cost of building a 1MW tower on land is $1M. The cost of building one in the ocean is $6.5M. 70% of this cost is being subsidized by the UK government. Experience has taught us that whenever subsidies are involved, costs are inflated. All of the NIMBY's will not only pay the 70% through taxes, but they will pay 3-4X more for this power, than current prices. :lol: :lol: :lol: But they won't have to look at ugly wind towers in their backyard. If any of your local power companies go for offshore wind generation, get off the grid as fast as you can.

Click to expand...

The Government, you mean the tax payer!

Same shit here, it's madness. Im in favour of green energy, but again L.F.T.R is green enough for me and could make hydrogen, great potential especially for a small Island like here!

What makes me laugh though is if I want to install solar p.v or wind turbine, I won't get anything towards the installation costs, and my co2 tax and levies on electricity bills go to big energy companies to guarantee their incomes for x amount of years!

+ we only get 9 cent per kw/hr and we pay 16 cent per kw/hr, the German's get about 35 cent!

Yes, I mean the tax payer, that is why I wrote "All of the NIMBY's will not only pay the 70% through taxes"

And L.F.T.R is pure bullshit. The Gov of INDIA built a large scale Thorium Reactor right beside an operating conventional reactor to minimize costs as much as possible. Does not compute. Does not scale down to a 40' foot container as the stock market pimps claim. Does not compute at any scale. I know thorium reactors inside out and upside down.

Kingfish · Feb 8, 2012

Indian builds Thorium Reactors because Thorium is abundant in their area, and it is difficult to adapt for weapons production. The cost pencils different if the country is looking to produce power without adding to the carbon footprint. There's more to the story and I don't understand it all, except that this is the path they (India) have chosen for nuclear power. For that matter, we could use Thorium reactors here and elsewhere in the world with less cost that fission reactors of the past.

Not that it matters for me. My time in the Nuclear Field came and went with 3-Mile Island. The industry died. I had to go find other things to do. Finally, after 30 years, someone came up with an interesting alternative. And it's not the only fissionable option on the table. But this thread is about offshore Wind Power. If we want to talk nucs, let's start another thread

My 1/2 duty-neutron, KF

Gordo · Mar 10, 2012

Kingfish said:
Indian builds Thorium Reactors because Thorium is abundant in their area, and it is difficult to adapt for weapons production. The cost pencils different if the country is looking to produce power without adding to the carbon footprint. There's more to the story and I don't understand it all, except that this is the path they (India) have chosen for nuclear power. For that matter, we could use Thorium reactors here and elsewhere in the world with less cost that fission reactors of the past.

Not that it matters for me. My time in the Nuclear Field came and went with 3-Mile Island. The industry died. I had to go find other things to do. Finally, after 30 years, someone came up with an interesting alternative. And it's not the only fissionable option on the table. But this thread is about offshore Wind Power. If we want to talk nucs, let's start another thread

My 1/2 duty-neutron, KF

India does not build thorium reactors. They built one test reactor. They used "spent" conventional uranium cores with 6 tubes of thorium wrapped around the outside. You need the radiation from the uranium to get the thorium to produce any additional heat. The cost of handling the uranium, building the new fuel cells, then disposing of the spent thorium and the uranium, outweighs any gain from the reactor, so they scrapped the reactor and the entire program. There are guys I know who have spent high 6 figures over the past 20 years on thorium reactor design. That is how I know it does not work.
If you have any positive data, by all means start another thread.

bigmoose · Mar 10, 2012

Gordo any open links on the Thorium failure to develop? It would make interesting reading.

Ypedal · Mar 11, 2012

Gordo said:
bigmoose said:

Gordo any open links on the Thorium failure to develop? It would make interesting reading.

Click to expand...

I'm taking one of the good Drs. out clam digging on Tuesday. I will ask for the references again.

Some of the people talking about using Thorium are the pimps who have always be touting investments in their scams;
http://resourceinvestingnews.com/32393-india-conference-confirms-commitment-to-nuclear-future.html

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

If you read to the bottom, you will see the same story we have been reading for 30 years. Thorium, Tomorrow. Useable thorium costs more to produce than any other nuclear fuel. I do see the Germans built a thorium reactor and our own Candu reactor has run on thorium, as a test. Thorium needs a neutron source to stimulate it. In other words another nuclear fuel to make energy. Thorium is sort of like comparing water to steam. Unless you have a source of heat to turn the water to steam, you have water, not steam. Thorium unless bundled with uranium or plutonium is just water.

Arlo1 · Oct 18, 2013

SO there is a lot of hype on the web about this link
Which has a few versions. But all I can find is Gordo here on the forums Talking about India and how they had to use uranium to make the Thorium work.
But 8g of thorium to travel for ever is pretty cool

Anyone else have any input?
I was thinking batteries were going to be the way and H2 would never really make sense but Nuclear hmmmmm.

Dauntless · Oct 18, 2013

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/search.php?keywords=thorium

Re: any one heard of thorium?
by ohzee » Fri Apr 06, 2012 2:33 pm
was a interesting thread on this yesterday here

Ypedal said:
Ypedal Pls take Thorium discussion to this thread :
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=37625&p=547774#p547774

So I suggested the electric car class at this college I was going to should actually build an electric car that should look like that caddie. The response was something like---

Dauntless · Oct 19, 2013

Dang, NOBODY interested?

I just have one question:

The huge downside of uranium is its instability, radioactivity and potential for use in weaponry, making it an element you wouldn't really want to see in abundance in your neighborhood.

Thorium is much safer. It only emits alpha radiation, which is weak enough that it can't penetrate human skin - and even less so in the tiny quantities that would be required in cars. The thorium car's 3-inch thick stainless steel container would be more than sufficient to prevent radioactive emissions.

It's also incredibly difficult to turn it into weapons-grade material, so having it freely accessible in cars doesn't present a terrorist risk.

It has other benefits too. It's as common as lead and far more abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the U.S. has reserves of 440,900 tons of thorium, Australia over 300,000 tons and India between 319,000 and 716,000 tons - and with every car needing only 8 grams to power it for life, that's a huge potential fuel source.

If this stuff is so perfect, why has no one made use of it before?

xenodius · Oct 19, 2013

Because don't you need to fit a reactor in that tiny car? And turn it off and on with use? It's not like you can just burn it. Molten salt is efficient and safe.

arkmundi · Oct 20, 2013

Well all the long-range vehicles we send into space are powered by a small nuclear battery. And then there's the whole rage about uranium hydride batteries. So we know how to turn fissile material into batteries and we also know how to make them small and we know how to make them safe. So, yeah, I'm all for it happening. My only question is why it hasn't happened yet? :?:

I'm sure where there's a will there must be a way. Interesting thing about uranium hydride batteries, the fissile material for those can be made from the the spent fuel rods we have scattered everywhere at every nuclear power plant, in cooling ponds, just like the ones in Fukushima that may now be the doom of civilization. So we could also solve that question of what to do with nuclear waste from the old generation plants. :lol:

TheBeastie · Oct 20, 2013

Yeah interesting, I guess the main holdback is fear.
I believe the WHO released a in depth report that said that something like only 8 people died from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, official Soviet casualty count of 31 deaths, UNSCEAR have said total is 64 as of 2008.
But anything nuclear makes people hysterical. In the same time in 1986 46,087 people died on roads in the USA, almost as many as all the US soldiers who died in the entire Vietnam war.

It's the media that decides what and by how much we fear things.

Dauntless · Oct 20, 2013

xenodius said:
Because don't you need to fit a reactor in that tiny car? And turn it off and on with use? It's not like you can just burn it. Molten salt is efficient and safe.

Because molten salt is bug and heavy. I used to be into that, but the people developing that insist we shouldn't be thinking about it for cars.

arkmundi said:
Interesting thing about uranium hydride batteries, the fissile material for those can be made from the the spent fuel rods we have scattered everywhere at every nuclear power plant, in cooling ponds, just like the ones in Fukushima that may now be the doom of civilization. So we could also solve that question of what to do with nuclear waste from the old generation plants.

Is that doable in the same way that the Sterling engine can be used for all these things so terribly efficiency yet it doesn't work out in real life? I can already see where that would be a disaster in a car, people wrecking and cracking them open or doing something stupid in their driveway, the idea of the Thorium is that the radiation isn't strong enough. Think of all the special facilities for automotive repair, junkyards, etc. Would the spent rods lack the efficiency for the big investment to make local plants using them?

Funny thing about an auto accident. Mostly. the death and injury ends when the cars stop. Occasionally there might be a third car in accident, even when the tow truck is trying to pick a car up, but the FALSE legends of James Dean's spyder killing more people associated with it over the years aside, there just isn't the potential for the one wreck to collect dozens, hundreds, thousands more victims over the years. Most of whom would never know what caused their lung cancer.

arkmundi · Oct 20, 2013

You probably know that I just don't know and nobody else does either. We have scientific/technical progress mostly because of a few genius types that spark a Kuknsian revolution. Its all a big mystery. But one thing is for sure and that's the human will & imagination & tenacity, so there may be hope. An energy revolution is well underway. Its the all the above approach, the many silver bb's rather than the silver bullet. There will be many surprises and, hopefully, some genius advances. The application of the MIT nanotech lab to batteries that gave rise to A123 and their nanophosphate LiFEPO4 battery that now powers my ebike, I believe is one such. But we have not as yet seen the full evolutionary potential of that. I don't anticipate. I want to be surprised and want to see the unfolding of a great energy transformation that moves us forward to a post-carbon world. Maybe instead of one flavor, its a vast spectrum as advances are made on multiple fronts. Being a lover of great science-fiction as well as science-fact, we can only now imagine and so we do.

Drunkskunk · Oct 20, 2013

Dauntless said:
I just have one question:

The huge downside of uranium is its instability, radioactivity and potential for use in weaponry, making it an element you wouldn't really want to see in abundance in your neighborhood.

Thorium is much safer. It only emits alpha radiation, which is weak enough that it can't penetrate human skin - and even less so in the tiny quantities that would be required in cars. The thorium car's 3-inch thick stainless steel container would be more than sufficient to prevent radioactive emissions.

It's also incredibly difficult to turn it into weapons-grade material, so having it freely accessible in cars doesn't present a terrorist risk.

It has other benefits too. It's as common as lead and far more abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the U.S. has reserves of 440,900 tons of thorium, Australia over 300,000 tons and India between 319,000 and 716,000 tons - and with every car needing only 8 grams to power it for life, that's a huge potential fuel source.

Click to expand...

If this stuff is so perfect, why has no one made use of it before?

Because the grass is always greener...
That article is only partly true. Thorium emits mostly Alpha when in a natural state. But this is also true of Uranium. Alpha radiation doesn't penetrate the skin, but it does penetrate the cornia of your eye, the lining of your mouth, And any other mucus membranes. And it produces radon gas, which you can inhale. Alpha radiation inside your body is about as bad as Beta and Gamma.

Inside of a reactor, they both are producing the same kinds of High energy Gamma radiation, and when they're used up as fuel, they both produce high levels of Gamma from their waste products.

Calling it incredibly hard to produce weapons grade material is also misleading. The Thorium fuel cycle also produces small amounts of Uranium-235, which is a weapons grade material. There's nothing difficult about the process, it just takes a lot more Thorium to achieve a bomb than it would with u-238. what makes it "incredibly difficult " is that Thorium reactors aren't a developed technology right now. The concept is easy, and the technology has been around for half a century, but no one has put the time or effort into developing a thorium specific reactor or developing the supply and processing chain, so right now, it would take a lot of work to get a Thorium based weaons program up and running.

Thorium is 4 times more abundant than uradium, and about as common as lead. But it's in a state that makes it difficult to extract in most cases, and it's expensive to process.

The idea of using a" nuclear battery" is interesting, but those "batteries" like NASA uses, better known as radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) Are extreamly radioactive and only produce a few dozen to a hundred watts at a time. The other style of "Nuclear battery" is actualy a miniturized reactor. But by miniturized, I mean no longer the size of a medium sized apartment building, but only the size of storage shed. Hyperion makes the smallest one I know of at the moment. It only weighs a couple of tons and can be transported by truck. They produce just 25mega watts.

All that being said, Thorium has great potential to power our world, but it's not the Miricle people make it out to be. Its just another fissionable material, and just about as dangerous.

xenodius · Oct 22, 2013

Dauntless said:
xenodius said:

Because don't you need to fit a reactor in that tiny car? And turn it off and on with use? It's not like you can just burn it. Molten salt is efficient and safe.

Click to expand...

Because molten salt is bug and heavy. I used to be into that, but the people developing that insist we shouldn't be thinking about it for cars.

My point was that I don't know of a way to get the energy out of it fast enough other than molten salt... which is, right now, wildly impractical for cars.

Boyntonstu · Oct 13, 2015

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

[youtube]P9M__yYbsZ4[/youtube]

[moderator edit to fix link]

davec · Dec 22, 2015

not a fan of nuclear
there are certainly better ways than thorium
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium

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