Serpo
6th August 2012, 04:10 AM
Submitted by Tyler Durden (http://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden) on 08/04/2012 - 12:24 Uranium (http://www.zerohedge.com/category/tags/uranium) Kirk Sorensen, NASA-trained engineer, is a man on a mission to open minds to the tremendous promise that thorium, a near-valueless element in today's marketplace, may offer in meeting future world energy demand. Compared to Uranium-238-based nuclear reactors currently in use today, a liquid flouride thorium reactor (LTFR) would be:
Much safer - no risk of environmental radiation contamination or plant explosion (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island)
Much more efficient at producing energy - over 90% of the input fuel would be tapped for energy; vs <1% in today's reactors
Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries
Much cheaper - reactor footprints and infrastructure would be much smaller, and could be constructed in modular fashion
More plentiful - LFTR reactors do not need to be located next to large water supplies, as current plants do
Less controversial - the byproducts of the thorium reaction are pretty useless for weaponization
Longer-lived - thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and treated as valueless today. There is virtually no danger of running out of it given LFTR plant efficiency
Most of the know-how and technology to build and maintain LFTR reactors exists today. If made a priority, the US could have its first fully-operational LFTR plant running at commercial scale in under a decade.
http://www.zerohedge.com/
Much safer - no risk of environmental radiation contamination or plant explosion (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island)
Much more efficient at producing energy - over 90% of the input fuel would be tapped for energy; vs <1% in today's reactors
Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries
Much cheaper - reactor footprints and infrastructure would be much smaller, and could be constructed in modular fashion
More plentiful - LFTR reactors do not need to be located next to large water supplies, as current plants do
Less controversial - the byproducts of the thorium reaction are pretty useless for weaponization
Longer-lived - thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and treated as valueless today. There is virtually no danger of running out of it given LFTR plant efficiency
Most of the know-how and technology to build and maintain LFTR reactors exists today. If made a priority, the US could have its first fully-operational LFTR plant running at commercial scale in under a decade.
http://www.zerohedge.com/