Kirk Sorenson has calculated that in a new molten salt thorium reactor, the thorium burned would be worth 5x its weight in gold, based on 10 cents per kWh.
I am a huge advocate of thorium as a fuel. Unfortunately, using thorium in any reactor today only gives marginal benefits. The CANDU reactors in Canada can and do already take thorium in their fuel cycle.
In the long run, you only have to store the waste for 100 years before it is safe. This is because you can re-use the waste, creating further efficiency and less storage time.
China has stockpiled thorium since 1999, and started a MSR program in the past few years. That shows how far behind we are in this tech, even when we pioneered it (I am referring to molten salt technology). The head of the program got a phd in electrical engineering from Drexel. Oh, and is the son of some finance? minister as well, so it definitely has the political clout to be accomplished. China desperately needs clean energy - they are making water plants, for coal plants, for manufacturing plants. And each of these stresses out the environment in so many ways, it's very risky to the long term health of the region. Visit circleofblue.org to learn more about the water-energy nexus.
And sorry, but not really a step closer. Everyone in the nuke world has known thorium can be used. Like I said before, it will only provide marginal benefits. Did you know, thorium is 3-4x more present in the earth's crust than uranium?
If instead of those loans to all those solar companies, and put $50 billion to a Thorium program, and made a space race effort, I can confidently say we would be energy independent in 10 years. Five years to develop, Five years to build. With all these new advances in materials and alloys (which was the main issue), there would be very little problem. Instead, we are making private companies do this, by specifically targeting military applications.
How sad would it be if Thorium molten salt technology was developed in the US, and we sold it overseas first?
I am a huge advocate of thorium as a fuel. Unfortunately, using thorium in any reactor today only gives marginal benefits. The CANDU reactors in Canada can and do already take thorium in their fuel cycle.
In the long run, you only have to store the waste for 100 years before it is safe. This is because you can re-use the waste, creating further efficiency and less storage time.
China has stockpiled thorium since 1999, and started a MSR program in the past few years. That shows how far behind we are in this tech, even when we pioneered it (I am referring to molten salt technology). The head of the program got a phd in electrical engineering from Drexel. Oh, and is the son of some finance? minister as well, so it definitely has the political clout to be accomplished. China desperately needs clean energy - they are making water plants, for coal plants, for manufacturing plants. And each of these stresses out the environment in so many ways, it's very risky to the long term health of the region. Visit circleofblue.org to learn more about the water-energy nexus.
And sorry, but not really a step closer. Everyone in the nuke world has known thorium can be used. Like I said before, it will only provide marginal benefits. Did you know, thorium is 3-4x more present in the earth's crust than uranium?
If instead of those loans to all those solar companies, and put $50 billion to a Thorium program, and made a space race effort, I can confidently say we would be energy independent in 10 years. Five years to develop, Five years to build. With all these new advances in materials and alloys (which was the main issue), there would be very little problem. Instead, we are making private companies do this, by specifically targeting military applications.
How sad would it be if Thorium molten salt technology was developed in the US, and we sold it overseas first?