Of course some of you may be aware that the first Thorium based reactor was built right here in the U.S.A. back in the 50’s at Oak Ridge, but that was scuttled mainly due to the desire by our military for weapons grade nuclear material for bombs, which was produced as a by product from the uranium based reactor technology also being considered; that technological approach won out and the Thorium project at Oak Ridge had the plug pulled.
"Image courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory".
We know the rest of the story now. After decades of operation, holding ponds all over the nation and the world are filled with smoking radioactive material that must be kept cool and eventually disposed of, lots of atomic bombs all over, and a still smoking and melted down reactor in Japan- all important problems with no easy solution at hand.
Yet our civilization requires energy and the fossil fuels that it has relied upon for over a century are running out, and replacing that energy source is now a priority for governments worldwide before the easily accessible supply dries up and in turn drives the prices for the remainder sky high. This need for a different energy source has in turn spawned a new industry devoted to renewable energy, mainly in the guise of solar panels and wind turbines.
The dirty little secret though regarding the latter is that it will destroy the planet in order to save it, at least as it is implemented in this country. It has been the policy under the current and previous administrations to site these giant solar and wind farms upon cheap federal land, and usually in pristine desert wilderness, in the case of solar. This has led to opposition from those who favor keeping wilderness wild and led to splits within the environmental movement.
There may be an alternative power source available however; a return to the previously mentioned old but tried technology spiffed up with new approaches to making it work, I am talking about Thorium nuclear power. Nuclear power in this country is a four letter word better left unsaid in genteel society but I will breach the subject anyway. Might as well, because China and India are going full speed ahead to make Thorium nuclear plants a reality, whether we here in America approve of the concept or not.
India has been working with Thorium technology for years, but it seems to me that the country to watch is China. That country has a manufacturing base to maintain and is farther along in the development of a new consumer society so a supply of cheap electricity must be found to replace the coal based electricity that they depend upon now. To that end,
China has embarked upon a renewables approach involving wind(which could mean more Neodymium and Dysprosium sales by somebody) primarily, as well as plans to develop at least 100 new “old style” fission Uranium based nuclear reactors- and is in the beginning (as in running off with the prize) stages of a major push to bring Thorium fueled reactors online. This effort will be the subject of this post today.
Chinese officials say that they have enough Thorium to provide electricity for 20,000 years.
You talk about the Holy Grail of cheap power production! So with the help of highly connected(as in the son of the former leader of the country) people working with the Shanghai Institute of Nuclear and Applied Physics and The National(Chinese) Academy of
Sciences, along with 140 PHD’s initially and a budget of a third of a billion dollars; the plan is to have a working small Thorium reactor by the end of this decade, and large ones by the 2020’s- I, for one, would not bet against them.
Thorium is an element that is more abundant than Uranium in nature and is often found along with REE finds. It also can be used to “burn up existing hot nuclear wastes and plutonium.” You recall the controversial Yucca Mountain storage project in Nevada, such a plan would never have come up if we had Thorium reactors in place to dispose of that waste.
Actually we wouldn’t have hardly any waste to dispose of, period, if we had gone the Thorium route at the beginning- as it is used up more in the energy process and what is left behind is less radioactive vs today’s waste and stays hot for hundreds instead of many thousands of years. In other words, a win-win at least to the Chinese energy establishment and government officials involved.
Another bright spot with using liquid Thorium fuel is that the process occurs at atmospheric pressures, no obscenely expensive and huge concrete containment dome required! This is achieved by using molten salt as the liquid heated up to drive the turbines that produce the electricity. No worries about a Fukushima type meltdown as if it overheats, a salt plug melts at the bottom of the tank and the solution drains out and Thorium stops reacting almost instantly when the neutron source used to “ignite it is shut off.” I am oversimplifying here because unfortunately I do not have PHD attached to my name, unless it is meant in the sense of piling it high and deep
You can read all the technical details to your heart’s content at this link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
I may have unintentionally mislead readers earlier by mentioning only the Chinese “Manhattan Style” Thorium project. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that per the
Wikipedia article link directly above, India will have a 300 Megawatt reactor fueled solely by Thorium fuel online by the end of this year. In fact, they believe that Thorium will meet 30% of the subcontinent’s electricity needs by 2050. In addition, Germany has a Thorium reactor already up and another in the U.S. should be up within a couple of years as well.
So the future is bright for Thorium based nuclear reactors. Now I know that statement will dismay some of my readers, so allow me to expand the topic by bringing the current fad, the Green Energy movement, back into the conversation.
For many in this movement, progress will be measured by how many giant solar farms and wind farms will be built across hill and dale and even out to sea. Unfortunately it is a fact that a whole lot of fossil fuels will be expended to build out all the infrastructure to be put in place and from things I have read, renewable energy is not enough to power all the blast furnace needs among other uses to build this, no matter where it ends up being sited. So there won’t be enough solar panels and turbines available to kickstart it, we will just have to burn the fuels anyway or fire up the nukes to get the job done of building the millions of panels and turbines required.
And do we really want to live in a world where virtually every scenic view is marred by the sight of 40 story tall giant windmills or square mile after square mile of mind numbing black solar panels extending out to the far horizon? I don’t, and I don’t buy into the notion that we must destroy the wilderness in order to save the planet.
So what can we do about it? I think we should see what happens with the Thorium projects going on right now in the rest of the world. We don’t need any more dirty reactors or Plutonium for bombs, but we do need energy for our civilization as it exists right now. What will it matter in the grand scheme of things if we slow down the rush to pave over our last wilderness, when we can give this Thorium technology a chance to grow up out of the infant stage.
I just don’t buy into this argument that the end of the world from climate change is tomorrow, no matter what the talking heads say. This earth has been here for billions of years and things move in geologic time. Our time as humans on this planet is just a blink of a geologic eye, and we should not be so full of ourselves as to believe that only we, right at this very moment, have the answer and that answer is to finish the rape of the planet by destroying what beauty is left by planting wind turbines and other things in almost every square mile that is left.
This Thorium revolution has the potential due to its’ scaleable sizing capabilities and the safety of the process to achieve true local distributed power generation for small to large communities; the Chinese are even talking about using a power station sized to provide all the electrical needs for a steel mill as an example- a process that requires dirty coal generated power at present pumping who knows how many millions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere.
I wholeheartedly believe that America is missing the boat here by not considering Thorium as
a way to help build up our national energy infrastructure and letting India, China and others lead the way to the future.
Here are other links to articles read for this post:
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/why-safe-nuclear-will-rely-on-rare-earth-minerals/11328?tag=search-river
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
http://agmetalminer.com/2013/01/08/is-thorium-the-fuel-of-the-future/
http://agmetalminer.com/2013/01/08/china-needs-thorium-reactors-to-quench-its-thirst-for-energy/
http://agmetalminer.com/2013/01/08/cons-of-thorium-reactors-shouldnt-stop-future-development/
Please note that this blogger may or may not acquire a position in any stock, and all opinions expressed are just that, his opinions, worth as much or as less as any Wall Street talking head’s. This blogger is not a registered financial analyst or broker, and has no intention of becoming one in the future, nor is he a mining expert or claim to have any expertise in the area.
William McDonald
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