Banging the Drum for Thorium

172 Not that any candidates are talking up nuclear, but....

Thorium reactors, anyone?

Bill Whittle's recent Afterburner
http://youtu.be/4qPKR2zoDuk

Posted by: mindful webworker - glowing at January 03, 2015 10:54 AM (ftdxp)

Nice video. Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker has been banging the drum for thorium for years.

Thorium is a naturally-occurring radioactive element that is found in trace amounts in coal. When coal is burned conventionally, that thorium goes up the smokestack and into the environment. But the coal could be processed to capture and refine the thorium for use in nuclear reactors.

A thorium reactor can be used to generate electricity, but it cannot be used to produce bomb-grade material. That may be the reason why the technology was not pursued during the Cold War. All the governments involved wanted bomb-grade material.

Without going too deeply into the details, experimental reactors have been developed that are fail-safe. They cannot melt down.

And once the thorium is extracted from the coal, the coal can be processed to make liquid fuels suitable for use in cars, planes, ships, and the like. This is proven technology that was originally developed in Nazi Germany during WWII in the 1940s when their oil supplies were disrupted.

So, between thorium reactors and the production of liquid fuels from coal, the United States could be energy-independent for centuries.