How come we aren't using Thorium (as an energy fuel) yet?

"Thorium, as well as uranium and plutonium, can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. A thorium fuel cycle offers several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle including much greater abundance on Earth, superior physical and nuclear properties of the fuel, enhanced proliferation resistance, and reduced nuclear waste production."

"[...]Rubbia states that a tonne of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal."

"[...]thorium expert Kirk Sorensen calls it the "next giant leap" in energy technology, noting that the "potential energy in thorium is staggering," explaining how just 8 tablespoons of thorium could provide the energy used by an American during his or her lifetime."

"thorium promises what uranium never delivered: abundant, safe and clean energy - and a way to burn up old radioactive waste."

"With a thorium nuclear reactor, Dean stresses a number of added benefits: there is no possibility of a meltdown, it generates power inexpensively, it does not produce weapons-grade by-products, and will burn up existing high-level waste as well as nuclear weapon stockpiles."

• Weapons-grade fissionable material (U-233) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor;
• Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste;
• Thorium comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope, which does not require enrichment, whereas natural uranium contains only 0.7% fissionable U-235;
• Thorium can not sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming, so fission stops by default

"[...]They add that because of thorium's abundance, it will not be exhausted in 1,000 years"

Wikipedia

So now to stop sounding like a boring teacher, seriously, why? It's way better than pretty much any other energy source, sounds way more reliable than again, pretty much any other energy source, it pretty much sounds better than any other energy source and the best part it's that it's possible to use in a big scale (suck it, solar energy).

The Wikipedia article does mention Obama wanting to use it, but god forbid if we stop using fossil fuels, we don't want to look smart, now do we?

Nuclear reactors cost a ****ton of money, so it's already difficult to convince people to buy them, and now that the ****'s hit the fan in Japan, the anti-nuclear movement is in full force, which will make it even more difficult than before to convince people to invest in nuclear energy. You can't just snap your fingers and pop out a nuclear power plant.

Their all scarred of it's power.Besides,the Illuminati don't think the time is right.

Nuclear reactors cost a ****ton of money, so it's already difficult to convince people to buy them, and now that the ****'s hit the fan in Japan, the anti-nuclear movement is in full force, which will make it even more difficult than before to convince people to invest in nuclear energy. You can't just snap your fingers and pop out a nuclear power plant.

GabuEx

Their all scarred of it's power.Besides,the Illuminati don't think the time is right.

StarKiller77000

They shouldn't be scared, it's isn't possible to use it as a weapon and it's doesn't carry many health risks, heck, it was used as goddamn lamp fuel.

Just looked into wiki,(were I found your copy pasted facts)

Looks like no one really realised its potential for energy use till around 90's, so no technology to implement it was really developed yet. (let alone a stable infrastructure)

It seems like India going full throtle Thorium though, others seem to likely follow.

Yeah, but Thorium Reactors can't meltdown and since Thorium doesn't need any prior process for it's usage as a fuel, and it's also in every sense, cheaper than building any other energy plant.

luisen123

Being completely ****ing wrong has never stopped members of the public from forming opinions in the past. :P

It's all about actually educating people.

luisen123

Pretty much.

Maybe because of the difficult recovery of Th? [quote="Chuck"] The result is that uranium forms deposits more frequently, and of higher grade, than does thorium, which is distributed much more evenly across a wide variety of rock types. Today the world has a [size=15]uranium reserve of 4 million tonnes, with a resource maybe ten times larger. This is despite not actively exploring for the substance since the cold war ended. Thorium, strictly speaking, doesn't have reserves at all; it is currently only recovered as a byproduct of rare earth element mining.[/size] But based on known occurrences of monazite (LREE)PO4, which can contain a few percent of Th), the estimated resource is about 1.5 million tons. Iron_will

[QUOTE="Iron_will"]Maybe because of the difficult recovery of Th? [quote="Chuck"] The result is that uranium forms deposits more frequently, and of higher grade, than does thorium, which is distributed much more evenly across a wide variety of rock types. Today the world has a [size=15]uranium reserve of 4 million tonnes, with a resource maybe ten times larger. This is despite not actively exploring for the substance since the cold war ended. Thorium, strictly speaking, doesn't have reserves at all; it is currently only recovered as a byproduct of rare earth element mining.[/size] But based on known occurrences of monazite (LREE)PO4, which can contain a few percent of Th), the estimated resource is about 1.5 million tons. rockerbikie

Probably because power plants don't grow on trees.

We'll probably get around to building these things when there's a real demand for them (i.e. when we're out of uranium and about all the other high-energy fuel sources). Until then they'll be rare. Human civilization isn't known for being particularly efficient, after all.

I thought this would somehow be advertisement for the movie Thor. Thorium, Gundanium...What will people think of next?

Lusien123,

Anything that is radioactive enough to be used as a source of nuclear power can be used as a weapon. Doesn't matter if it's on the scale of Tsar Bomba or some dirty bomb, it'll still be dangerous enough to kill people when properly applied. Besides, noone can figure out how to make it work on a large scale yet. Also? They have the same effects on the environment once run through the fission process. Same radiactive crap left over to deal with, new title smeared over it.

Besides, even if it does work, people won't be willing to fund their tax dollars into it, especially after the last 50 years of terror the public has been getting from the nukes and the melting reactors. Cold, hard logic is no match for advertising and mass media. Any government attempt to replicate this tool for their own advantage will only result in another "Yucca Mountain Joe" fiasco, and we ALL know how that went.

Oh, and if you payed more attention to that Wikipedia article, you'd see that A) it is being used for power purposes, B) while it is not radioactive enough in it's natural form to cause extensive radiation damage while holding it, the decay creates radon gas which causes cancer (then again, everything does), and C) it still requires a start-up of neutron radiation from another reactor, usually uranium.

So no, I don't see this happening anytime soon. Nice dream though.

Cause there's no need to use it. Solar, wind, and tidal electricity sources are the way to go IMO

For the same reason hydrogen fuel hasn't replaced oil and coal... The entire world economy is based on oil.

It isn't like a battery... We can't just take oil out and put hydrogen, or thorium in...

No alternative fuel source will be viable until we find a way to transition into its use on a wide scale without causing a world economic collapse.

Lusien123,

Anything that is radioactive enough to be used as a source of nuclear power can be used as a weapon. Doesn't matter if it's on the scale of Tsar Bomba or some dirty bomb, it'll still be dangerous enough to kill people when properly applied.Besides, noone can figure out how to make it work on a large scale yet. Also? They have the same effects on the environment once run through the fission process. Same radiactive crap left over to deal with, new title smeared over it.

Besides, even if it does work, people wwon't be willing t ofund their tax dollars into it, especially after the last 50 years of terror the public has been getting from the nukes and the melting reactors. Cold, hard logic is no match for advertising and mass media. Any government attempt to replicate this tool for their own advantage will only result in another "Yucca Mountain Joe" fiasco, and we ALL know how that went.

Oh, and if you payed more attention to that Wikipedia article, you'd see that A) it is being used for power purposes, B) while it is not radioactive enough in it's natural form to cause extensive radiation damage while holding it, the decay creates radon gas which causes cancer (then again, everything does), and C) it still requires a start-up of neutron radiation from another reactor, usually uranium.

So no, I don't see this happening anytime soon. Nice dream though.

VelociBlade

Those are ****ty reasons for not adopting it. Thorium reactors produce only a small fraction of waste compared to uranium ones, and most of it decays in less than 20 years. The actual reasons we haven't adopted them before are quite obvious - one, it does not produce material that can be used in nukes, two, it doesn't require fuel fabrication which would remove the largest source of income for the current nuclear power industry.

As you yourself pointed out, thorium is already used for power in India (and they plan to multiply their number of reactors over the next decade). China just started a huge project to develop their own thorium reactors, and the Japanese are trying to do the same with the FUJI project.

We're being left behind, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Sure some people will complain out of uninformed fear, but if leaders always listened to those people we'd never have mastered the use of fire either.

What about the actual process to convert Thorium into fuel? Maybe the scientists and engineers haven't developed a way to do this without costing a lot of money. More importantly, it being cheaper than the current nuclear plants. Would they have to build new plants? What about how the power is distributed? Would the electric infrastructure need to be changed to cope with the new energy source? BranKetra

Thorium itself does not need to be converted into fuel, it's another point it has got over uranium. It is harder to extract though, but not close to hard enough to outweight its benefits.

Scientists created a working prototype thorium reactor in the 60s. Electric infrastructure would obviously not have to be changed any more than if we built new power plants in general.

But yes, building the new plants would be a problem. Again not enough of a problem to make it an unattractive option though - I'd say a clean, safe and plentiful source of energy is worth a lot in today's world.

I'm just annoyed that we haven't invented dylithium crystals yet.

Cause there's no need to use it. Solar, wind, and tidal electricity sources are the way to go IMO

daqua_99

Its too rare, I try to mine it in WoW all the time and freaking farmers always grab it from under my nose.

Cause there's no need to use it. Solar, wind, and tidal electricity sources are the way to go IMO

daqua_99

It would be literally impossible for solar, wind, and tidal electricity to meet global energy needs, not to mention that the first two are unreliable.

[QUOTE="daqua_99"]

Cause there's no need to use it. Solar, wind, and tidal electricity sources are the way to go IMO

GabuEx

It would be literally impossible for solar, wind, and tidal electricity to meet global energy needs, not to mention that the first two are unreliable.

[QUOTE="GabuEx"]

[QUOTE="daqua_99"]

Cause there's no need to use it. Solar, wind, and tidal electricity sources are the way to go IMO

xaos

It would be literally impossible for solar, wind, and tidal electricity to meet global energy needs, not to mention that the first two are unreliable.

I really should have saved the steps behind this one calculation I did a little while back in which I showed that for wind power to meet America's current energy needs, 17% of all dry land in America would need to be covered with wind farms.

It would be literally impossible for solar, wind, and tidal electricity to meet global energy needs, not to mention that the first two are unreliable.

GabuEx

[QUOTE="GabuEx"]

It would be literally impossible for solar, wind, and tidal electricity to meet global energy needs, not to mention that the first two are unreliable.

horgen123

Building a gigantic installation on sand does not seem like a terribly good idea.

[QUOTE="horgen123"][QUOTE="GabuEx"]

It would be literally impossible for solar, wind, and tidal electricity to meet global energy needs, not to mention that the first two are unreliable.

GabuEx

Building a gigantic installation on sand does not seem like a terribly good idea.

[QUOTE="horgen123"][QUOTE="GabuEx"]

It would be literally impossible for solar, wind, and tidal electricity to meet global energy needs, not to mention that the first two are unreliable.

GabuEx

Building a gigantic installation on sand does not seem like a terribly good idea.

Building a gigantic installation on sand does not seem like a terribly good idea.

GabuEx

As great as fission energy is, I think it is an ultimate dead end in terms of power design. The costs of building and decommissioning reactors is going up to astronomical proportions (I read earlier today that it costs hundreds of millions of dollars just to shut a plant down after its lifespan has ended). Unfortunately, the anti-nuclear movement got all the ammo they need to kill fission once and for all with Fukushima. But I am optimistic that fusion power will eventually turn up in the next 25 years, and be to modern humanity what fire was to early humanity. It will be that big of a leap.