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

[SWFLSkins]

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

Overnight in energy terms could be what like 50 years.

[frommd]

There are limits to that, though. We think of oil as expensive nowadays, but in reality it's ludicrously cheap. We've based an entire global economy on making oil blow up in a controlled manner. Our entire system depends on it. But I can still buy an entire barrel of the stuff for the price of a video game, because there's so damn much of it.

Supposedly, thorium's similar.

Similar, except that it last much, much longer. Really hope they start researching the possibilities and implementing this as soon as possible.

Also, we need to be researching battery life and developing; wind, solar, hydro and everything else we can think of.

[Wrong Direction]

No I think Thorium is More difficult to work with. The reaction is less stable and harder to control. That's why we have always used uranium and plutonium.

We went nuclear because the byproduct was needed for nuclear weapons. It was a military decision, not an energy decision.

The byproduct of Thorium is supposedly so unstable that it's highly unlikely to be weaponized or stolen on the black market.

[Predicto]

We went nuclear because the byproduct was needed for nuclear weapons. It was a military decision, not an energy decision.

That is what Ambrose Evans-Prichard claims.

I do not believe him. Like all conspiracy theorists, he puts the cart before the horse, and assumes motive based on after the fact results.

I believe that we went with uranium because we understood how to generate power with uranium due to the research that had already been done - with uranium. Thorium was an unknown, and was considered dangerously unstable.

Nothing more, nothing less.

[China]

If you want more info on Thorium and its development as a nuclear fuel, here's some reading for you:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

The problems include:

• The high cost of fuel fabrication, due partly to the high radioactivity of U-233 chemically separated from the irradiated thorium fuel. Separated U-233 is always contaminated with traces of U-232 (69 year half-life but whose daughter products such as thallium-208 are strong gamma emitters with very short half-lives). Although this confers proliferation resistance to the fuel cycle by making U-233 hard to handle and easy to detect, it results in increased costs.
  
• The similar problems in recycling thorium itself due to highly radioactive Th-228 (an alpha emitter with two-year half life) present.
  
• Some concern over weapons proliferation risk of U-233 (if it could be separated on its own), although many designs such as the Radkowsky Thorium Reactor address this concern.
  
• The technical problems (not yet satisfactorily solved) in reprocessing solid fuels. However, with some designs, in particular the molten salt reactor (MSR), these problems are likely to largely disappear.
  
• Much development work is still required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available. In this respect, recent international moves to bring India into the ambit of international trade might result in the country ceasing to persist with the thorium cycle, as it now has ready access to traded uranium and conventional reactor designs.
  

Nevertheless, the thorium fuel cycle, with its potential for breeding fuel without the need for fast neutron reactors, holds considerable potential in the long-term. It is a significant factor in the long-term sustainability of nuclear energy.

[Redskins Diehard]

How is this going to work in vehicles?

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

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

Cheap electricity!

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.

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.

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.

I'm thinking there may be a way to incorporate it into the electric car movement

[mcsluggo]

So can I blame Obama if we ain't off fossil fuels by November?

of course. Why should you change your playbook midstream? or on this issue?

[Predicto]

If you want more info on Thorium and its development as a nuclear fuel, here's some reading for you:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

So, Ambrose Evans-Prichard was wrong about moving off fossil fuels overnight, and was wrong about why we didn't go to Thorium in the first place.

What a shock.

[Hubbs]

I believe that we went with uranium because we understood how to generate power with uranium due to the research that had already been done - with uranium. Thorium was an unknown, and was considered dangerously unstable.

Nothing more, nothing less.

How is it "dangerously unstable" if it can't create a meltdown? From what I can tell from the link you provided, it seems as though we went with uranium in the 50's and 60's for a number of reasons, one of them being that it seems as though it's easier to accomplish with that level of technology. We also would have had a huge "head start" with uranium because of the Manhattan Project. But danger? Doesn't the instability just make it more difficult to achieve a nuclear reaction, a difficulty that has been overcome?

So, Ambrose Evans-Prichard was wrong about moving off fossil fuels overnight, and was wrong about why we didn't go to Thorium in the first place.

What a shock.

Dude, we get it. You don't like Ambrose. Congratulations on being the second person in the thread to point out that "overnight" was hyperbole, as if anyone would assume otherwise.

[Predicto]

How is it "dangerously unstable" if it can't create a meltdown? From what I can tell from the link you provided, it seems as though we went with uranium in the 50's and 60's for a number of reasons, one of them being that it seems as though it's easier to accomplish with that level of technology. We also would have had a huge "head start" with uranium because of the Manhattan Project. But danger? Doesn't the instability just make it more difficult to achieve a nuclear reaction, a difficulty that has been overcome?

Those difficulty may (or may not) have been overcome NOW. In 2010. In the 1950s, that difficulty was enormous.

I was mocking the idea (pushed by Evans-Prichard and accepted by some in this thread) that we didn't go with Thorium for nuclear power in the 1950s and 1960s solely because we needed the byproducts from Uranium 238 to make lots of nice nuclear bombs.

If we can use Thorium now, and it is better and safer, then great. I have nothing against Thorium. His neighbors say he is a great guy, just a little misunderstood. Go for it.

Dude, we get it. You don't like Ambrose. Congratulations on being the second person in the thread to point out that "overnight" was hyperbole, as if anyone would assume otherwise.

You are correct. I don't like Ambrose. He is a proven liar, many times over.

But I do like the idea of energy independence, so carry on with the discussion.

[Hubbs]

Those difficulty may (or may not) have been overcome NOW. In 2010. In the 1950s, that difficulty was enormous.

I was mocking the idea (pushed by Evans-Prichard and accepted by some in this thread) that we didn't go with Thorium for nuclear power in the 1950s and 1960s solely because we needed the byproducts from Uranium 238 to make lots of nice nuclear bombs.

I don't see where anyone said "solely." I do see where Ambrose said that we were "in the aftermath of the Manhattan Project" and needed bombs. Thousands and thousands of bombs. If the energy production would have been about the same, what's the motivation to not push for uranium reactors?

You are correct. I don't like Ambrose. He is a proven liar, many times over.

But I do like the idea of energy independence, so carry on with the discussion.

He certainly had an ax to grind with the Clintons, but he's also provided some excellent business analysis over the past few years, and I'm not sure what the motivation would be to lie about a subject as banal as thorium.

[Predicto]

I don't see where anyone said "solely." I do see where Ambrose said that we were "in the aftermath of the Manhattan Project" and needed bombs. Thousands and thousands of bombs. If the energy production would have been about the same, what's the motivation to not push for uranium reactors?

.

What Ambrose said was: "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."

He did not mention any of the other problems with using Thorium, the ones that are listed in China's post. He presumes a causality without setting forth obvious evidence that might counter his point. It bugs me when people do that.

The thing is, he may be absolutely correct that we chose uranium precisely because we wanted to make lots more nukes. But I suspect that there were much larger reasons and more basic practical reasons for that choice, especially in the 1940s. Maybe by the 1970s, that was a factor in not SWITCHING to thorium (expense of the switch being another), but the initial choice was made because of the limits of technological prowess in the 1940s and 50s.

IMO.

[Predicto]

I should add that some claim it to be very easy, not difficult, to extract bomb material from a Thorium reactor. You can design your reactor not to allow this, and I'm sure we would do that in the USA, but a guy like Saddam Hussein can easily change one part of that design and extract fissile material on a regular basis. It may not make things MORE risky than they are now, but it does not appear to be the answer to nuclear proliferation either.

There is a detailed back and forth argument about it here, in the comments to this Wired Magazine article. I, of course, lack the training to determine who is correct and who is not.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/2/

[Baculus]

O.K. So, after reading all the responses (well, most of them, anyway), and reading some articles, I still don't know want to make of thorium as a potential nuclear fuel for power generation. Is it really a godsend and does it have as much potential as stated by the original Telegraph article? Can someone produce a line-by-line pro/con argument?

EDIT: After typing out the above paragraph, I found the following page which I thought was useful for this thread. (The article does not seem complete, but has a few useful details.):

Debate: Thorium based nuclear energy

What are the Pros and Cons of Thorium based nuclear energy?:

http://debatepedia.idebate.org/en/index.php/Debate:_Thorium_based_nuclear_energy