Comments on: Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors.

By: Yann

Yann — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 15:16:38 +0000

They power aircraft carriers and submarines with conventional nuclear reactors. Since thorium reactors are smaller, they could conceivably power the larger pieces of mining machinery. Smaller devices could harness the power of FUTURE BATTERIES.
Besides, thorium gives off so much energy per gram that the amount of mining you need to perform would be really small compared to fossil fuel mining, even if humans became gluttonous and doubled or tripled their energy demands.

By: depth386

depth386 — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 08:28:32 +0000

Mining uranium or thorium still requires powered mining equipment. To build and operate this mining equipment you’re gonna have some fossil fuel pollution, some chemical pollution. It’s much better than coal but to say “emit no greenhouse gases” is going too far.

By: Fast Breeder Reactors. » The Scientific Gamer The Scientific Gamer

Fast Breeder Reactors. » The Scientific Gamer The Scientific Gamer — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:02:05 +0000

[...] This means that you have to rely on an exotic coolant like liquid sodium/molten salt, described in my post on LFTR reactors. Liquid sodium actually has some advantages over using water as a coolant, but it also makes [...]

By: Bussard? Bustard? Buzzard? « The Scientific Gamer

Bussard? Bustard? Buzzard? « The Scientific Gamer — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 11:01:06 +0000

[...] or more to boot, but they require several quantum leaps on the technology side of things (like the LFTR reactors I was talking about the other day) before they’re viable as a propulsion [...]

By: Eric Robinson

Eric Robinson — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 01:52:41 +0000

What freed the slaves was not the Civil War. It was the internal combustion engine which made human labor obsolete. Thorium has 1 million times the energy density of fossil fuels. Energy from coal is $0.05/kw, thorium would be $0.03/kw in a Molten Salt Reactor. A MSR ran successfully for 5 years in the 60s. A Thorium version was designed but never built thanks to Pres Nixon and a fast breeder program that was to produce weapons grade material. Energy from Thorium gives China and India a path to development without suffocating the planet. Thorium in a MSR gives us an inexpensive backbone for intermittent energy like wind, solar, and waves. It gives us time to figure out non trivial problems with fusion.

By: Eric Robinson

Eric Robinson — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 01:36:33 +0000

Here is the Thorium Dream on Youtube

By: Peter Alesiani

Peter Alesiani — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 22:43:16 +0000

Your Singularityweblog is currenly not very freindly and should do be open if you like your PC.

By: hentzau

hentzau — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 07:31:32 +0000

“Thorium is energy emancipation for the next 1000 years.”

Perhaps, but so is fusion, and tidal, and about a zillion other energy sources which all have their advocates. Thorium’s certainly promising; however, I’m not going to start calling it the saviour of the global energy market when we don’t even have a working example of an LFTR reactor.

By: Eric Robinson

Eric Robinson — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:13:36 +0000

Oak Ridge National Lab who developed this tech for the US in the 1960s is now giving it to China. This PARTNERSHIP? with China suggests that the U.S. acknowledges a possible role for thorium in its energy future. What’s not clear is what, exactly, the U.S. will get from the collaboration. Looks like Westinghouse(owned by Toshiba) is jumping in.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/westinghouse-enters-us-china-nuclear-collaboration/17252

Everyone needs to educate themselves: Thorium is energy emancipation for the next 1000 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw TED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8 Google
http://www.singularityweblog.com/the-thorium-dream-full-documentary-film/ Dream

To generate electricity for a city of 1 million people for 1 year:

1) Mine 3,200,000 tonnes of coal – emit 8,500,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and particulates – landfill 900,000 cubic metres of toxic/radioactive fly-ash.

2) Mine 50,000 tonnes of uranium ore – emit no greenhouse gases – produce 24 tonnes of radiotoxic ‘waste’.

3) Mine 50 tonnes of equivalent thorium ore – emit no greenhouse gases – produce 0.8 tonnes of short lived radiotoxic ‘waste’.

By: hentzau

hentzau — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:12:17 +0000

As a general rule I’m suspicious of stuff like this which seems too good to be true, but I can’t really see any holes in the theory. I can only assume that, kind of like fusion reactors, there’s a significant engineering barrier to be overcome before it’ll be viable. But the thing with engineering barriers is that they are generally surmountable with enough money. Hence me saying that with enough investment this could pay off in a few decades. Just, you know, probably not now.