

Thorium (not Uranium) the Future of Nuclear Power ‎ - bakbak
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/960564--thorium-touted-as-the-answer-to-our-energy-needs

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pilom
Every time I hear about Thorium I get a "Too good to be true" feeling but I
don't know enough about the technology (and there aren't enough good sources
about it) for me to make up my mind. This article cites that there are
significant development costs for the first reactors and that few nuclear
engineers are educated about them, but both of those are easily solvable
problems for a smart team. What other negatives do Thorium reactors have?

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asharp
Long story short, Th isn't actually fissable. It is fertile. You have to use
something else (like U235/Pu/etc.) to create a stream of neutrons to turn Th
into Pa which decays into U233 (iirc). which is then fissable. (and strangely
enough, can be used to convert more Th...)

The problem is if the Pa absorbs another neutron, it no longer produces U233
and so it drops the yeild (and leads to other nasties, etc.).

This is, iirc. why the molten salt reactors are so appealing. You can run the
reactor, continuously remove the Pa and let it decay into U233 which you then
reintroduce into the reactor.

[http://hal.archives-
ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/documen...](http://hal.archives-
ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/document_IAEA.pdf) is an interesting link
discussing the feasibility of various reactor designs.

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headhuntermdk
Doesn't your mining level have to be at least 230 before you can mine that?

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samatman
lol minecraft and that, but a big part of the appeal of Thorium is that we
have ridiculous amounts of it laying around already. It's a byproduct of other
actinide mining, useless at present, and toxic enough that the safest thing to
do is stockpile it.

Which the US has done, leaving us with enough to run reactors for decades /
centuries at projected power loads.

