Thorium Power

At the outset, I must say that I am skeptical about what I have written below. It seems too ridiculous that it isn't being acted upon - especially considering the last paragraph. I am trying to get some input from a reputable nuclear physicist to see if I am off base and will add to this blog anything that seems relevant.  Mean time, listen to this presentation.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI

 
  And to this one

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nUjvpxzFbk

It would appear that there is an alternative to producing electricity using enriched Uranium. One can use un-enriched Thorium. Why Bother? The reason is that the use of Thorium has some definite advantages over the use of Uranium. For instance:



1. Thorium is more abundant in the earth's crust, easier to find and easier to process. It is therefore less expensive to obtain purified Thorium, leading to cheaper electricity.

2. Thorium is only slightly radioactive (It has a half life of over 14 billion years - hence is only slightly radioactive*) making it safer and hence less expensive to handle. Again cheaper electricity.

* The longer the half life, the slower the release of radioactivity which occurs when an atom disintegrates, to produce a new isotope.  During the transmutation to a new isotope alpha or beta radiation is given off and always gama radiation.

3. Thorium has no critical mass, above which it will explode. It therefore needs less special precautions to ensure that you never have too much of it in one place. (Thorium is fertile, not fissile) Cheaper electricity.

4. The isotope of thorium which is used for power production is the most common isotope Th232  (More than 99% of the naturally occurring Thorium is Th232).   By contrast Uranium piles use the rare U235. With Thorium generation no expensive enriching is needed. Cheaper electricity.

5. The waste from a Thorium reactor is less in quantity, less radioactive and shorter lived than waste from a conventional nuclear power plant, and hence cheaper to handle, transport and dispose of. Once again, cheaper electricity.

6. Because of it's physical and chemical characteristics, it is possible to build a Thorium reactor which is inherently stable. Far less control systems are needed to ensure that a melt down does not occur and a containment building is not even needed. A thorium plant is cheaper to construct than a uranium plant. You guessed it - cheaper electricity.

7. Thorium reactors produce no bomb making material (Plutonium) as do Uranium reactors. Once the technology is mature, there will be no excuse for anyone to use Uranium. States which persist in the use of Uranium will clearly be doing this in order to make atomic bombs. The case against such states will be exceedingly clear.

8. Mining and purifying Uranium provide many points at which Uranium can be sidelined for nefarious purposes. Stopping the production of new Uranium reduces the chance of uranium falling into the wrong hands. If Thorium falls into the wrong hands, it is of no use to them, it is not fissile. Less expensive security is needed. (electricity price??? ---  you guessed it)

9. You get far more energy from a kg of thorium than from a kg of Uranium. You guessed it.


You would think, therefore, that the switch to Thorium is a no-brainer. This conclusion would completely ignore the forces arrayed against such a move.


1. It is very likely that electricity from a Thorium powered plant will be less expensive than the electricity from a coal powered plant. The coal industry - from exploration to mining to transport to use, in Coal fired power stations, and even disposal of the ash will wither and die from simple economic considerations. Guess who will be lobbying against the use of Thorium.

2. Since the military of the world already has the power to blast the top meter of the earth into space,(only slight hyperbole) you would think that not producing more bomb making material would not be a problem. However the military, being what it is, wants to be able to blast the top two meters of the earth into space. Guess who will be lobbying against the use of Thorium.

3. The Uranium industry which explores for new Uranium deposits, refines the uranium, enriches the uranium builds it into rods and transports it and finally reprocesses the waste will wither and die. Guess who will be lobbying against Thorium.

4. Even the anti-nuclear industry will be out of work. If the literature is correct, they won't have any logical reasons to object to thorium power (that may not stop them)  I bet even they will be lobbying against Thorium. It will be interesting to hear their ingenious ingenuous arguments.

Once again there exists a simple technical solution to a problem which is stymied by vested interests. Technically, climate change, greenhouse gases, overpopulation, species extinction and so forth are no problem at all. The technical solutions are obvious. Any grade 12 student could tell you what must be done.  As usual the problems are ones of vested interests. We need to focus in on the true problem. Namely how to get around vested interests and initiate the necessary technical solutions.

News Flash
Forget Thorium. We will save it for energy in the next Milena. I just read James Hansen's book, Storms of my Grandchildren and since what he said was simply unbelievable, I checked it out as well as possible using the Web. Insofar as I can tell he is right on the mark. It turns out that there is another source of fuel which can be used in 4th generation type nuclear reactors and it is lying around all over the place. This fuel is the waste from generation 1,2 and 3 nuclear reactors and the waste from bomb making reactors. All the benefits listed for Thorium still hold plus we get rid of by far the larger part of nuclear wastes that have been hanging around since the Manhattan project. As with Thorium reactors, the waste is far less in quantity, less in radioactivity and far shorter lived. Unless all the above is simply a pipe dream - an urban legend - then some people have a lot to answer for. We could slash our use of fossil fuel, have cheaper safer electricity, get rid of huge dangerous accumulations of nuclear waste and completely eliminate the threat of rogue states making atomic bombs. Am I missing something.  If you are a nuclear physicist, please feel free to debunk what I have written.  I guarantee, I will allow your comments, however scathing.

I received a reply from a nuclear physicist.  I haven't got permission to put his name to the following but if he agrees, I will add it.  This is what he said.  If I get any other replies from other physicists, I will print them as well.

1. Thorium is more abundant in the earth's crust, easier to find and easier to process. It is therefore less expensive to obtain purified Thorium, leading to cheaper electricity.

Yes is it 4x more abundant.  But the less expensive comment depends upon in what its concentration is as an ore.  My memory is that it is in more concentrated ore bodies than uranium so your comment would be true but you might want to check that – I’m not a geologist!

2. Thorium is only slightly radioactive (It has a half life of over 14 billion years - hence is only slightly radioactive*) making it safer and hence less expensive to handle. Again cheaper electricity.

You are comparing the half life of Th-232 half life 14.05 billion years with U-238 half life 4.47 billion years.  Frankly both as so long it makes little difference.  But you need to think about the daughter products.  In the case of Th the crucial one is Radon gas which is breathed in and is an alpha emitter of some concern.  My memory is that U does not have this problem.  So actually Th is not better but worse.  This will make the fabrication of Th fuel slightly more expensive.

3. Thorium has no critical mass, above which it will explode. It therefore needs less special precautions to ensure that you never have too much of it in one place. (Thorium is fertile, not fissile) Cheaper electricity.

You are right it has no fissile isotope so it cannot be used as a fuel until it is in a reactor and some of the Th-232 has bred U-233.  But this definitely does not translate into cheaper electricity.

4. The isotope of thorium which is used for power production is the most common isotope Th232  (More than 99% of the naturally occurring Thorium is Th232).   By contrast Uranium piles use the rare U235. With Thorium generation no expensive enriching is needed. Cheaper electricity.

Sorry, not that simple I’m afraid.  It is swings and roundabouts.  U-235 constitutes about 0.7% of the total uranium and while some reactors can use natural uranium (CANDU and MAGNOX for example) most need the uranium isotopic ratio to be increased to about 4% U-235.  With Th fuel there is zero % fissionable content and so it is necessary to either have a central core of fissionable material to start the reaction in the Th fuel and breed U-233 or to have a mixture of U-233 or U-235 or Pu-239 with the Th-232.  Either way you cannot get away from a fission fuel or a more complex reactor core design.

5. The waste from a Thorium reactor is less in quantity, less radioactive and shorter lived and hence cheaper to handle, transport and dispose of. Once again, cheaper electricity.

While it is not less in quantity (one fission event produces two fission products what ever the fuel) it is totally true that the waste has a much smaller proportion of the long lived so-called transuranic elements within it (that is Pu, Np, Cu, Am).  So the waste poses a radioactive burden for a much shorter time.  This is one of the true advantages.  It is potentially important.

6. Because of it's physical and chemical characteristics, it is possible to build a Thorium reactor which is inherently stable. Far less control systems are needed to ensure that a melt down does not occur and a containment building is not even needed. A thorium plant is cheaper to construct than a uranium plant. You guessed it - cheaper electricity.

I cannot see why this is the case.  It will definitely and definitively need a containment building.  Sorry.

7. Thorium reactors produce no bomb making material as do Uranium reactors. Once the technology is mature, there will be no excuse for anyone to use Uranium. States which persist in the use of Uranium will clearly be doing this in order to make atomic bombs. The case against such states will be exceedingly clear.

Mostly I agree with the bomb comment.  It is all about those transuranic elements again – which includes Pu.  But remember you do use uranium in Th fuel it is just U-233 not U-235 and it is created within the Th fuel via the breeding process.

8. Mining and purifying Uranium provide many points at which Uranium can be sidelined for nefarious purposes. Stopping the production of new Uranium reduces the chance of uranium falling into the wrong hands. If Thorium falls into the wrong hands, it is of no use to them, it is not fissile. Less expensive security is needed. (electricity price??? ---  you guessed it)

Well with Th fuel you do still have to reprocess to some extent and that has potential to be used for other purposes.  Yes no enrichment of U is necessary and that is an advantage.  Again swings and roundabouts (hope you have the same saying).

10. You get far more energy from a kg of thorium than from a kg of Uranium. You guessed it.

That depends on what reactor system you are using.  Fast reactors use up both types of fuels to about the same extent.

In conclusion, I am very keen to see Th fuel exploited but mostly because of the long-lived waste issue.  I do not think it will be cheaper, in fact it will be a bit more expensive but the extra cost may well be worth while.

Have a look at the Indian programme on nuclear to see what they are doing.

Aging population and pensions

Much has been made about the aging population; of the fact that when we get birth rate under control and stabilize or even reduce the number of people in our country and with ever increasing effective medical technology, the population-age distribution will be skewed strongly toward older people. The problem often stated which is associated with this trend is that there are fewer and fewer young people to pay the taxes which pay the pensions of those above 65. This whole argument ignores a trend which has been happening since the Luddites rebellion and which continues today. Using England and the Luddites as an example:

In early rural England all goods were produced by artisans, usually working from home. In the case of the Luddites, it was stockings and cloth woven on hand looms. Along came mechanization, the mechanical loom and produced the same goods for much less. This put the artisans out of business. This is a good representative example of what has been happening ever since. Instead of money been earned by lots of individuals who then have money to buy the work of other artisans, money is earned by capital. Whoever owned the mechanical looms hired a small fraction of the number of people who would have previously produced the cloth and he earned most of the money. Flash forward to the present when plastic goods are produced in the thousands by a machine with one or two operators and even our cars are to a large extent constructed by robots. So what have the displaced people done.

They had to find some way else to earn enough money to keep themselves alive. By and large, other niches were already filled so they had to find new niches. They had to create new jobs for which people were willing to pay money and for the most part these were service industries. Remember, production of goods was increasingly being done by capital with less and less people involved. One of the service industries of immediate return with no need for learning new skills was prostitution which has often been resorted to over the years by displaced people but there are many others. There is big government with all the people making sure people pay taxes and others working on the disbursement of these taxes. There are soldiers who in theory defend a country but all too often, since they have to have a war to keep themselves busy, go to war on other countries. There are the businesses who make war equipment and materials. On a smaller scale, there are all the folk who support the tourist industry whether motel operators, guides, taxi drives, air plane pilots and so forth. The theory was that with mechanization, we would all have more leisure time and to an extent, comparing us with the start of the industrial revolution, this has happened. Have you noticed though that in many modern 'western' countries, both the husband and the wife have to work now to keep the family in the style to which they aspire. In my parents day, just after the second world war and for a few decades after that, only the fathers worked. The explanation is clear. Service industries don't pay very well so more members of the family have to work more to keep up the life style.

Anyway, back to pensions. The solution to the problem of fewer workers and more pensioners is obvious. Over their life time, workers have to put aside some of their money which goes towards owning the means of production. In other words, they have to contribute towards a pension and the pension money must be used to buy the factories which produce the goods. Over his working life the worker becomes a capitalist. Remember, capital is making the big bucks. In one move you solve the problem of paying pensions, you make it no longer a problem that there are more pensioners than working age adults since the young are not paying the pensions. The pensions come from production which is owned by the old people and you therefore get around this mad need for our economy to be a pyramid scheme where each generation has to be larger than the one before. You also create some added benefits.

Throughout the life time of the working adult, he is putting aside some money so less cash is chasing goods. This lowers inflation with a whole raft of beneficial effects.

The old people are consumers. They will tend to use all the money they receive as a pension since they want to enjoy their last years. By keeping money circulating they support the economy. You get around this problem that as capital earns the money, there are less and less people with money to buy the goods that capital produces.

You also remove the need for higher taxes on the working population to pay pensions. Reducing taxes enervates an economy as this money either goes into consumption or investment.

Even better, with the need removed for larger and larger generations, one can allow one's population to decrease without the worry about supporting older people. This in time will allow more and more areas to be returned to Gia, allowing her once more to produce clean air and water. She might even be able to once again give us food, fuel, building materials, medicines and so forth, making it less expensive for all of us to live well (for instance, if you don't have to process your water, and if water is available in abundance, that water is less expensive). Of course, carbon emissions will decrease, doubly-so as people switch to electric cars, and may save us from an ecological melt down. Win win all around.

This is hardly rocket science. This is what happens now with all private pensions. Take the Canadian Teachers Pension. Its portfolio reads like a who's who of Canadian and overseas businesses and they pay their retired teachers a pension from the earnings of these funds. Moreover, the pension is not fixed but varies with the health of the portfolio (you can choose a fixed option but the repayment is lower).

Of course there are problems with this approach. I have a tiny pension from one year I taught in Canada. Looking at the reports I have received over the years, I see that this pension fund has crashed at least 5 times in 40 years as the stock market had its ups and downs. Because it is a very diversified fund, it came up again. Some work could be done to stop the banks crashing our economy and this would give us some increased stability but the basic premise is sound.

It would seem that we have an opportunity here rather than a problem.