A Revolutionary Nuclear Savior ?

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

A Revolutionary Nuclear Savior ?

Published on Dec 14, 2013

RT News-"Breaking the Set" with Abby Martin
David Martin, chief executive at the Weinberg Foundation, talks about the many potential energy benefits of thorium, a largely unexplored element that poses far less risks than uranium and plutonium.

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

The Thorium reactor energy option
http://commonsensecanadian.ca/thorium...

Thorium backed as a 'future fuel'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-env...

LFTRs in 5 minutes - Thorium Reactors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T...

FORMER CUMBRIAN OPEN CAST MINE CANNOT STORE RADIOACTIVE WASTE, SAYS GOVERNMENT
http://www.timesandstar.co.uk/former-...

Sellafield
Sellafield is a nuclear reprocessing site, close to the village of Seascale on the coast of the Irish Sea inCumbria, England. The site is served by Sellafield railway station. Sellafield incorporates the originalnuclear reactor site at Windscale, which is currently undergoing decommissioning and dismantling, andCalder Hall, another neighbour of Windscale, which is also undergoing decommissioning and dismantling of its four nuclear power generating reactors.
The total cost of decommissioning, which will be born by UK taxpayers, is now considered to be in excess of £70 bn.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Sellafield snafu: UK nuclear site shutdown totals $160bln amid cost overruns
http://rt.com/news/sellafield-nuclear...

Study on IAEA website: Core meltdown risk now around 1,000% higher because of Fukushima — Engineer: Nuclear disaster "a certainty" over next 30 years in Europe
http://enenews.com/study-iaea-website...

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry
http://nuclear-news.net/

FukushimaDiary
http://fukushima-diary.com/category/d...

http://fukushimafacts.com/.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MsMilkyth...

http://www.youtube.com/user/HatrickPenry

http://www.youtube.com/user/ichicax4

http://enenews.com/

.....

Thorium Reactors: Nuclear Redemption or Nuclear Hazard?

Posted by: Herman Trabish

Could thorium be the faltering nuclear industry’s salvation -- or is it a mirage? Is the U.S. missing an immense energy opportunity?
“We should be trying our best to develop the use of thorium,” former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix recently told BBC News. “I am told that thorium will be safer in reactors - and it is almost impossible to make a bomb out of thorium.”
Thorium is up to 200 times more energy dense than uranium and as common as lead. It could be a safer, cheaper nuclear fuel, GTM reported shortly after the 2011 Fukushima disaster: “China, India, Japan, France, Russia and the U.S. are all currently developing thorium-based reactors.”
Yet thorium-based nuclear power is still a hypothesis. Maybe because, Blix noted, besides the technical obstacles, there is a multi-billion dollar uranium-based nuclear industry “backed by vested interests.”
“Uranium, which is much better for making bombs, took over the stage” during World War II, explained SuperFuel author and thorium advocate Richard Martin on NPR’s Science Friday last year. Thorium was “pushed aside.”
It could be coming back. India, with the world’s biggest thorium resource, is committed to a program using “thorium compounds as breeder fuel to produce more uranium.” It plans to get “30 percent of its electricity from thorium reactors by 2050,” according to the November Economist.
China is developing “a next-generation reactor which its supporters say will enable thorium to be used much more safely than uranium,” BBC News said. And Norway’s Thor Energy is developing thorium technology through an “evolutionary approach” that will use thorium “in existing reactors together with uranium or plutonium.”

TerraPower, backed by Microsoft billionaires Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold, is a uranium-based small modular reactor (SMR) technology that reuses stockpiled nuclear waste. The NY Times recently called it “a very long term bet.”
Thorium technologies fit the nuclear industry’s move toward SMRs. Flibe Energy’s modular liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) and “known thorium reserves” could supply “advanced society for many thousands of years,” according to a Flibe fact sheet.
LFTR’s external nuclear chain reaction also reuses stockpiled nuclear waste and safely eliminates the need for containment vessels because it shuts down automatically if there is a disruption. Thorium is cheaper and more efficient than uranium and LFTR modular reactors would be mass produced cost effectively, use less water, and provide waste heat and marketable byproducts.
Nobel laureate and former CERN Director Carlo Rubbia leads advocacy for an alternative accelerator-driven system (ADS) thorium technology that would give thorium "absolute pre-eminence" over other fuels, Rubbia said recently. Norwegian nuclear industry player Aker Solutions purchased Rubbia’s patents earlier this year and is investing $1.8 billion in their development.

Read More Here

.....