Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph): Obama Could Kill Fossil Fuels Overnight with Thorium

[Hubbs]

Interesting.

Link

There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power.

Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday - produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It’s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering. "Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said.

Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium.

After the Manhattan Project, US physicists in the late 1940s were tempted by thorium for use in civil reactors. It has a higher neutron yield per neutron absorbed. It does not require isotope separation, a big cost saving. But by then America needed the plutonium residue from uranium to build bombs.

"They were really going after the weapons," said Professor Egil Lillestol, a world authority on the thorium fuel-cycle at CERN. "It is almost impossible make nuclear weapons out of thorium because it is too difficult to handle. It wouldn’t be worth trying." It emits too many high gamma rays.

[Teller]

How is this going to work in vehicles?

[Ellis]

I've been pimping Thorium for years. I think it is worth having a discussion about it.

Here's an article I posted on a separate msg board.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971/

This is a guest post by Charles Barton. Charles is a retired counselor who writes the Energy from Thorium blog. His father Dr. Charles Barton, Senior, worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for 28 years. He was a reactor chemist, who worked on the Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) concept for about 2/3 of his ORNL career. Charles Barton, Junior gained his knowledge of the LFTR concept from his familiarity with his father's work. Neither his father nor Mr. Barton will gain financially from the advancement of this idea.

Excitement has recently been rising about the possibility of using thorium as a low-carbon way of generating vast amounts of electricity. The use of thorium as a nuclear fuel was extensively studied by Oak Ridge National Laboratory between 1950 and 1976, but was dropped, because unlike uranium-fueled Light Water Reactors (LWRs), it could not generate weapons' grade plutonium. Research on the possible use of thorium as a nuclear fuel has continued around the world since then. Famed Climate Scientist James Hanson, recently spoke of thorium's great promise in material that he submitted to President Elect Obama:

[China]

How is this going to work in vehicles?

You use the thorium in power plants to generate electricity and then run electric vehicles.

[Hubbs]

How is this going to work in vehicles?

I would assume that the idea would be to gradually replace combustion engines with hybrids, then full-electric engines as battery technology advances.

[Teller]

I would assume that the idea would be to gradually replace combustion engines with hybrid, then full-electric as battery technology advances.

So the "overnight" thing is, at best, a slight misrepresentation?

[HOF44]

How is this going to work in vehicles?

Cheap electricity!

[No_Pressure]

How is this going to work in vehicles?

I think that they're saying the potential is there for essentially free and abundant energy from power plants, which means that cars such as the Volt which you plug in at night to charge could potentially become the future of cars because we wouldn't be producing the energy to drive them at a coal or oil plant with lots of pollution.

Having zero pollution from cars and zero pollution from power plants is an exciting concept if you ask me.

[Teller]

I think that they're saying the potential is there for essentially free and abundant energy from power plants, which means that cars such as the Volt which you plug in at night to charge could potentially become the future of cars because we wouldn't be producing the energy to drive them at a coal or oil plant with lots of pollution.

Having zero pollution from cars and zero pollution from power plants is an exciting concept if you ask me.

Sure it is. And as long as you only want to go 100 miles, it's a great idea now.

But we can't eliminate fossil fules "tomorrow" as this story suggest. Unless we all decide to stay in our neighborhoods for the rest of our natural lives.

[HOF44]

Sure it is. And as long as you only want to go 100 miles, it's a great idea now.

But we can't eliminate fossil fules "tomorrow" as this story suggest. Unless we all decide to stay in our neighborhoods for the rest of our natural lives.

You know how fast electric vehicles would be adopted if the fuel was just a tick above free?? The adoption and research rate would be staggering. Even at that though it would probably take a decade to really get it going.

No is this thorium deal as good as they say???? That I don't know.

[Hubbs]

So the "overnight" thing is, at best, a slight misrepresentation?

Yes, you have correctly pointed out that we have yet to devise a brilliant plan by which we can literally stop using every form of fossil fuel overnight. :pfft:

[JMS]

How is this going to work in vehicles?

I believe the idea is to use electric vehicles or hybrid electric like GM's volt which is supposed to get around 300 mpg of gasoline.....

Then you use the reactors to create the electricity.

[Corcaigh]

Overnight is a stretch - thorium offers significantly lower cost of nuclear power - once you get the reactor design where you want it. If we totally committed to it we could greatly reduce or eliminate burning of fossil fuels .... but it's at least 10 and more likely 30+ years away.

That said, we were talking of the oil crisis in the early 1970s so we could be having the same conversation about getting rid of fossil fuels in 2040 too.

[JMS]

Sure it is. And as long as you only want to go 100 miles, it's a great idea now.

But we can't eliminate fossil fules "tomorrow" as this story suggest. Unless we all decide to stay in our neighborhoods for the rest of our natural lives.

I believe volt will go 100 miles on a charge, but hen uses the gas powered engine to turn electric generators which will produce more electricity for prolonged trips. The range of the volt automobile is comparable to a regular gasoline car 250 - 300 miles...

The tesler is another all electric vehicle which has a similar range.

The biggest issue/concern iwth the electric cars is they are very expensive, and battery technology is poor. Most electric cars can expect to swap out their entire batery storage after 3-4 years, meaning a 10,000$ investment in a moderatly old car.

[JMS]

Here is the thing... We don't have a shortage of uranium. Uranium fuel isn't overly expensive today. If Uranium fuel is easier to work with who cares if Thorium is cheaper and more plentiful.

The United States easily has the uranium reserves to power the entire country with Nuclear reactors for what thousands of years? France has no uranium reserves and they have brought their entire national energy grid up on Uranium nuclear reactors. We've had that proposition in front of us since at least the early 1970's. The US has chosen not to depend on Nuclear reactors because of other objections about nuclear power. Thorium doesn't do anything but complicate those existing concerns with nuclear reactors.

The entire point of the discussion is rather tangential.

[No_Pressure]

Sure it is. And as long as you only want to go 100 miles, it's a great idea now.

But we can't eliminate fossil fules "tomorrow" as this story suggest. Unless we all decide to stay in our neighborhoods for the rest of our natural lives.

Nope, I'm not the one who said it could be done quickly either. It certainly would take a long time. I would say that for starters at least it would still be a good option. Many Americans in places such as L.A, New York, Chicago, D.C, Philly, etc. don't do that type of long distance traveling often. At the very least you could imagine taxi cabs being replaced by electric ones.

Imagine however what car companies would focus on if a clean, abundant, cheap fuel source was introduced and in order to keep up with the market they HAD to produce electric cars and advance that technology. It has taken years and years for a major manufacturer in America to even give a crap about making a car that isn't powered by gas. It would certainly take time to transition from our current cars, but once the technology is there think of how many great uses it would have.

The first things to change over would be large markets and government vehicles. If I'm not mistaken you are or were a police officer...what if all the crown vics, chargers, intrepids, and impalas the cops are driving around in the entire U.S. suddenly stopped emitting pollution? That would be pretty damn nice. What if all the post office vehicles stopped? I already mentioned the cabs, what if all the buses ran off something like this?

I hope that something like this can come along, and is allowed to come along. The only real opposition to it will be lobbyists from companies that will lose out, and people who don't want to sacrifice any jobs that may be affected by a major change like that.

[No_Pressure]

Here is the thing... We don't have a shortage of uranium. Uranium fuel isn't overly expensive today. If Uranium fuel is easier to work with who cares if Thorium is cheaper and more plentiful.

The United States easily has the uranium reserves to power the entire country with Nuclear reactors for what thousands of years? France has no uranium reserves and they have brought their entire national energy grid up on Uranium nuclear reactors. We've had that proposition in front of us since at least the early 1970's. The US has chosen not to depend on Nuclear reactors because of other objections about nuclear power. Thorium doesn't do anything but complicate those existing concerns with nuclear reactors.

The entire point of the discussion is rather tangential.

This is something that has bothered me for a long time. Nuclear power is a great alternative to burning fossil fuels, and we could dump the radioactive waste in the cliche "mountain in Nevada". France made an amazing choice when they went 100% nuclear. I wish we had done that same.

[Larry]

How is this going to work in vehicles?

1) Electric vehicles.

2) Hydrogen.

3) If we reduce the demand for fossil fuels in one area, then it frees up fuel to be used in other areas.

[Destino]

"You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said."

There is the answer as to why we haven't made the switch. Some people appear to be new to capitalism and how corporations interact with government. Can anyone name a major international corporation with deep pockets in favor of switching to a widely available clean nuclear fuel? lol that'll be the day.

[dchogs]

Here is the thing... We don't have a shortage of uranium. Uranium fuel isn't overly expensive today. If Uranium fuel is easier to work with who cares if Thorium is cheaper and more plentiful.

The United States easily has the uranium reserves to power the entire country with Nuclear reactors for what thousands of years? France has no uranium reserves and they have brought their entire national energy grid up on Uranium nuclear reactors. We've had that proposition in front of us since at least the early 1970's. The US has chosen not to depend on Nuclear reactors because of other objections about nuclear power. Thorium doesn't do anything but complicate those existing concerns with nuclear reactors.

The entire point of the discussion is rather tangential.

i'm pretty sure the difference is that thorium doesn't have radioactive/damaging waste products. while we could do ultra deep burying like france, there is still *some* threat of impact.

sure this will not be literally overnight, especially with cars. but if *just* reactors are converted from uranium/fossil fuel to thorium, you're saving a lot of pollution right there. as the cars that utilize electricity more efficiently come online, you'll see fairly quick conversion.

than again, thorium is cheap now, but when everyone and their brother wants it, will it still be cheap? (honest question)

[Burgold]

There is the answer as to why we haven't made the switch. Some people appear to be new to capitalism and how corporations interact with government. Can anyone name a major international corporation with deep pockets in favor of switching to a widely available clean nuclear fuel? lol that'll be the day.

The cynic in me agrees. There's a group of people who would really hate the idea of cheap, affordable, abundant energy... and those people wield a lot of power.

Pun intended.

[Wrong Direction]

Here is the thing... We don't have a shortage of uranium. Uranium fuel isn't overly expensive today. If Uranium fuel is easier to work with who cares if Thorium is cheaper and more plentiful.

The United States easily has the uranium reserves to power the entire country with Nuclear reactors for what thousands of years? France has no uranium reserves and they have brought their entire national energy grid up on Uranium nuclear reactors. We've had that proposition in front of us since at least the early 1970's. The US has chosen not to depend on Nuclear reactors because of other objections about nuclear power. Thorium doesn't do anything but complicate those existing concerns with nuclear reactors.

The entire point of the discussion is rather tangential.

1. Thorium is more plentiful than Uranium.

2. Thorium reactors should be MUCH safer than Uranium. In a nutshell, the meltdown risk goes away.

3. As I understand it, since Thorium reactors don't use water to cool, there are much fewer geographic limitations to it's placement.

4. Because of it's radioactivity, Thorium byproducts would be EXTREMELY difficult to steal, meaning the black market for its byproducts would be very small. For what it's worth, I understand this is sort of the case with uranium as well.

[Hubbs]

Yeah, JMS, I think the whole lack of a meltdown thing is pretty appealing, along with the fact that the waste's half-life is much, much shorter.

[Wrong Direction]

"You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said."

There is the answer as to why we haven't made the switch. Some people appear to be new to capitalism and how corporations interact with government. Can anyone name a major international corporation with deep pockets in favor of switching to a widely available clean nuclear fuel? lol that'll be the day.

India apparently has a 50-year goal to move to all Thorium based power, since it's so plentiful in their country. They have very little uranium.

The paper that's getting noticed...

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/forum/download/file.php?id=791

[Zguy28]

1) Electric vehicles.

2) Hydrogen.

3) If we reduce the demand for fossil fuels in one area, then it frees up fuel to be used in other areas.

Of course if Toyota wanted to help they could sell the Prius for 15k instead of a whopping 40k.

That might encourage conservation also.