Nuclear scientists know of safer and cheaper elements that could be used for nuclear power...

[no limit]

...But we use uranium because it creates weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct.

http://theweek.com/article/index/213611/could-thorium-make-nuclear-power-safe

The world can have cheap nuclear power without Japan-level risks by swapping thorium for uranium, some scientists claim. Is that too good to be true?

...

Thorium-fueled reactors are supposed to be much safer than uranium-powered ones, use far less material (1 metric ton of thorium gets as much bang as 200 metric tons of uranium, or 3.5 million metric tons of coal), produce waste that is toxic for a shorter period of time (300 years vs. uranium's tens of thousands of years), and is hard to weaponize. In fact, thorium can even feed off of toxic plutonium waste to produce energy. And because the biggest cost in nuclear power is safety, and thorium reactors can't melt down, argues Michael Anissimov in Accelerating Future, they will eventually be much cheaper, too.

...

The U.S. has an estimated 440,000 metric tons, Australia and India have about 300,000 metric tons, and Canada has 100,000 metric tons. Until recently, U.S. and Australian mining companies threw it away as a useless byproduct. There is enough thorium to power the earth for about 1,000 years, boosters say, versus an estimated 80 years' worth of uranium.

...

If thorium's so great, why do we use uranium?

To make a "long story very short and simple," says The Star's Antonia Zerbisias, weapons and nuclear subs. U.S. researchers were developing both uranium-based and thorium-based reactors in the Cold War 1950s, but thorium doesn't create weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct. Plus, nuclear submarines could be designed more easily and quickly around uranium-based light-water reactors.

[benld74]

1. So the answer is B-O-O-M !!!!!!?

[orwell]

2. And C-A-S-H...n/t

[kristopher]

3. Thorium is bullshit.

Thorium is far from being ready to go. There are a large number of obstacles that have prevented it being deployed that have nothing to do with the bullshit ratioanlizing that it has been rejected because it isn't good for bombmaking.

Nuclear industry propaganda at its finest - or worst; depending on your point of view.

Russia, France, S. Korea, Japan, Canada, and indirectly the US are in a race to SELL NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY to anyone around the world stupid enough to buy it. If thorium was a good approach that could compete with renewable energy sources, don't you think these for profit quasi-governmental entities would all have thorium projects in the pipeline?

Do they?

Nope.

Nuclear pushers rush from one discredited technology to another when trying to mislead a gullible public. Amory Lovins discusses what this circular race from one design to the next fails when they each are confronted with by reality of putting all the necessary components of cheap, safe, waste-free nuclear without proliferation risk into one design.

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library%2F2009-07_NuclearSameOldStory

PDF: http://www.rmi.org/cms/Download.aspx?id=2583&file=NewNuclearReactors.doc&title=%22New%22+Nuclear+Reactors%2c+Same+Old+Story

See also:

RENEWABLE ENERGY WORKS NOW

The nuclear industry would have you believe that we NEED nuclear power as a response to climate change. That is false. We have less expensive alternatives that can be built faster for FAR less money. This is a good overview of their claims:
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-01_NuclearIllusion

In a comparative analysis by another well respected researcher nuclear, coal with carbon capture and ethanol are not recommended as solutions to climate change. The researcher has looked at the qualities of the various options in great detail and the results disprove virtually all claims that the nuclear industry promote in order to gain public support for nuclear industry.

Nuclear supporters invariably claim that research like this is produced because the researchers are "biased against nuclear power". That is false. They have a preference,however that preference is not irrational; indeed it is a product of careful analysis of the needs of society and the costs of the various technologies for meeting those needs. In other words the researchers are "biased" against nuclear power because reality is biased against nuclear power. We hear this same kind of claim to being a victim of "liberal bias" from conservatives everyday and it is no different when the nuclear proponents employ it - it is designed to let them avoid cognitive dissonance associated with holding positions that are proven to be false.

The nuclear power supporters will tell you this study has been "debunked any number of times" but they will not be able to produce a detailed rebuttal that withstands even casual scrutiny for that claim too is false. The study is peer reviewed and well respected in the scientific community; it breaks no new ground and the references underpinning the work are not subject to any criticism that has material effect on the outcome of the comparison.

They will tell you that the sun doesn't always shine and that the wind doesn't always blow. Actually they do. The sun is always shining somewhere and the wind is always blowing somewhere. However researcher have shown that a complete grid based on renewable energy sources is UNQUESTIONABLY SOMETHING WE CAN DO. Here is what happens when you start linking various sites together:

Original paper here at National Academy of Sciences website: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107.abstract

When the local conditions warrant the other parts of a renewable grid kick in - geothermal power, biomass, biofuels, and wave/current/tidal sources are all resources that fill in the gaps - just like now when 5 large scale power plants go down unexpectedly. We do not need nuclear not least because spending money on nuclear is counterproductive to the goal of getting off of fossil fuels as we get less electricity for each dollar spend on infrastructure and it takes a lot longer to bring nuclear online.

In the study below Mark Jacobson of Stanford has used the quantity of energy that it would take to power an electric vehicle fleet as a benchmark by which to judge the technologies....

Much, much more at link.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x626150

[hayu_lol]

5. There are many designs for thorium reactors...

but with the current state of nuclear resistance(most of our operating reactors are at the far edge of their useful life and we are not building replacements)most designers have gone on to light experimentation(not much funding available right now). Had we been building all along, we would have incorporated many new safety features and design proposals as we replaced aging plants.

Thorium is a very good candidate for future reactors.

[kristopher]

7. It is time you justify the need for nuclear fission as a power source.

We have existing BETTER alternatives. Why should we continue to throw money at a dinosaur technology - nuclear fission. It is a fundamentally flawed approach to supplying power on a global scale.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. 15 years to develop

it is possible but the technology is not there yet.

One Guardian article also says that the supply lines for thorium is not the same as uranium
that will upset the economic cart for the major players.

article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-thorium-the-answer-to-our-energy-crisis-428279.html

It still has problems with the molten lead use.

[backscatter712]

6. The DOE has already built thorium reactors in the past.

I think there are some engineering challenges, but they're addressable ones, given enough money for some proper R&D. But yes, I'm with the OP - a reactor design like a Liquid Thorium Fluoride Reactor has the promise for numerous advantages.

For one thing, they burn their fuel almost completely, so the radioactive waste problem is lessened by orders of magnitude. Thorium reactors won't leave spent fuel rods that remain lethally radioactive for a half-million years. Also, thorium reactors can be used to "burn" the waste from conventional reactors, thus solving the existing waste problem. Thorium is as plentiful as lead in nature, so getting fuel is far easier and less environmentally destructive than mining uranium. You also don't have to enrich thorium. Overall, the EROTI can be insanely good. Thorium reactors are weapons-proliferation resistant. Thorium itself is useless for bombs. Some of its reaction byproducts, such as Uranium-233, can in theory be used, but only with great difficulty. LFTR reactors don't operate under high pressures, so there's no danger of steam explosions. They don't generate hydrogen, so there's another potential hazard eliminated. If the reactor fuel gets too hot, the nuclear reaction won't work as well, so overheating is self-limited. And if the reactor does overheat, it melts a plug made out of salt, and the liquid fuel just pours into a pan where the nuclear reaction is stopped, the decay heat dissipates, and everything's brought back under control.

[kristopher]

8. Justify the use of fission over renewables. You can not.

Renewable energy is far superior. Why should we pursue yet another fission dead end when we KNOW in advance it is a dead end?

The money is much better spent on getting deploying wind and solar. Unless of course, your objective is maintaining a useless industry instead of actually solving the energy problems we face.

[RC]

9. That is your opinion and only your opinion.

[kristopher]

10. Not "opinion"; but belief justified by the body of knowledge on characteristics of energy systems

Therefore I can make the statement I did and fully support it.

You cannot.

!
V