Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium

[ALS]

A tonne of the silvery metal produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Ambrose Evans-pritchard - TELEGRAPH - August 30, 2010

We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast.

Muddling on with the status quo is not a grown-up policy. The International Energy Agency says the world must invest $26 trillion (£16.7 trillion) over the next 20 years to avert an energy shock. The scramble for scarce fuel is already leading to friction between China, India, and the West.

There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power.

Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday - produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It’s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.

"Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said.

Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium. ... [Read More]

[Right Lane Cruiser]

Interesting. I've known about the peculiar properties of this element for some time but haven't seen workable power harvesting schemes before.

[dr61]

Right, OVERNIGHT we can solve the energy problem with this single, untried, complex, expensive technology? Why put all your energy eggs in one basket when wind, solar PV, solar thermal, geothermal, etc. are proven and steadily coming down in price? No single technology is going to dominate in the immediate future.

[bnther]

Originally Posted by dr61

Right, OVERNIGHT we can solve the energy problem with this single, untried, complex, expensive technology? Why put all your energy eggs in one basket when wind, solar PV, solar thermal, geothermal, etc. are proven and steadily coming down in price? No single technology is going to dominate in the immediate future.

That may seem like common sense, but I wouldn't count Uncle Sam not trying. Just think, if there was only one power source, how attractive would it be for the government to control/tax it?!

I'm still voting for energy efficient appliances and tax incentives for solar/wind products that are built in America.

[ALS]

The trick is multiple energy sources not just one.

1% here 3% there and 5% over there and pretty soon you have 1/2 your countries non oil/coal energy sources in side the borders. Then all of a sudden that expensive imported energy source doesn't look so threatening if it gets shut off.

Also keeps our dollars at home instead of sending them to Mexico, Venezuela, or the Mid East.

We use 19.5 million barrels of oil a day.
The U.S. produces 5.8 million barrels a day.
Leaving a hole of 13.7 million barrels of oil we need to import.

Well if by diversifying into multiple energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, synthetic or bio fuels, nuclear, wave generated, as well as increasing of conservation of energy we could easily cut our imports in half in ten years.

If we don't need the oil, then there is no need to protect the oil sources. If these tin pot dictators and hostel governments sitting on this oil don't have a market then they don't have any extra money to cause problems around the world. Wouldn't it be nice to watch the Iranians, Saudis and Chavez crying in their beer with $20 a barrel oil sitting under their feet that costs $30-$40 a barrel to pump out.

It's like the old Fram oil filter commercial. You can pay me now or you can pay me later.

Either way your going to pay for these new energy sources, either sooner or later.

Later is going to be a whole lot more expensive being under the gun as they say than now when you have the time to spread out the cost of the research and development.

[Chuck]

It's worth investing in, but we can't put all our bets on one energy source.

[worthywads]

I don't see where it was claimed that 1 energy source was the goal in this article? 20 years was mentioned, the headline as usual is very misleading.

[xcel]

Hi WW:

I guess you should have write the article then... If you want to post news more to your liking, go ahead!

Al, nice write-up on the despots controlling our economic health. OPEC was formed by Saudi (19 of the 26 terrorists were Saudi), Iran (do we need to say more), Iraq (yeah right ), and Venezuela were just a few of the early signers... I guess most like consuming fuel that is not ours at an unsustainable pace and having our citizens killed in either falling towers or in some hell hole in a far off land…

Wayne