THORIUM: A Tipping Point in History?
The nuclear debate continues to put forward large scale alternatives to ‘fossil-fueled’ Society, but has never included a much better option, when it comes to managing the waste and risks. This tragedy is essentially the result of politics, not science, since there likely isn’t a more misunderstood and overlooked element on the Periodic Table than Thorium.
Despite its enormous potential to safely power both the developing world and our modern societies through the self-regulating energy production of the little known “Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor” (LFTR).
This long-mothballed reactor design is gaining great new attention in other parts of the world because it produces only small amounts radioactive waste (which fully decay in a few hundred years, rather than many thousands), offers no realistic potential for easy weaponization, and in fact enables the destruction of weapons grade materials.
Thorium astoundingly still remains an elemental mystery to most people to this very day however. Mainly because it’s early and successful development in the U.S. was nixxed in favor of the Uranium-based weapons programs in the 50’s and 60’s.
Where does History stop, and the Future begin?
While we continue to poison our world with fossil-fuel derived energy while awaiting the development of truly sustainable (and enormous) baseload power requirements via renewable options, this ecological paradox begs us to question why! Apparently, this tragic situation still exists primarily because since the “Atomic Age” the Public has been collectively coerced by the historical circumstances around nuclear power, our fears of unknown “nuke” threats, and our general ignorance that surrounds the deep complexities and risks of nuclear energy production.
These powerful factors in forming public opinion have certainly also been advantaged to serve the agendas of special interest groups, and possibly even the powerfully subtle PR machines of fossil fuel interests – in order to blindly associate ANY atomic power with the risks of weaponization, and toxic nuclear waste.
Yet Thorium has been typecast in the same rigid roles that are filled by the prevalent Uranium-based designs. Like most of the other great advances in in science and technology, Thorium’s fate also rested in the hands of those who directed funding for military, political, and national defense objectives. So it was all-too susceptible to the the various tipping points in history where nuclear deterence was far more critical to survival than nuclear energy.
As we begin to re-examine lost opportunities from the Past, and re-ignite them as options for a brighter Future, perhaps you’re wondering Why…
Why take a risk on a nuclear renaissance?
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Are you curious about how the entire course of human history has been altered by pursuing Uranium-based nuclear energy?
How Thorium could still in fact serve to change the Future course of that history?
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In 1964, Eugene Weinberg and his team built a working version of the molten-salt reactor (MSR) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) which operated until 1975, and which suspended the byproducts of thorium in a molten salt bath that allowed the reaction to be self-regulating (ie. the hotter it got the slower it reacted), and which didn’t require costly and dangerous pressurization chambers to contain coolants and gases.
Weinberg spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to instill thorium at the heart of the nation’s atomic energy programs. Obviously and unfortunately he failed in the face of prevailing interests. Uranium reactors had already been well established according to the work of Enrico Fermi and others, and Hyman Rickover, the head of the US nuclear program, needed the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make atomic bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out entirely in 1973.
1973 proved to be “the most pivotal year in energy history,” according to the US Energy Information Administration. It was that year when the Arab states cut off oil supplies to the West, setting in motion the first national ‘Energy Crisis’ and subsequently all the petroleum-fueled conflicts that still threaten the world to this very day. That same year, the US nuclear industry signed contracts to build a record 41 nuclear plants, which would all use uranium.
Weinberg was fired by the Nixon Administration from ORNL in 1973 after 18 years as the lab’s director because he continued to advocate increased nuclear safety and Molten Salt Reactors (MSR’s) against the Republican Party’s selected Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR). Thus, 1973 was effectively the year that thorium R&D faded away to relative obscurity.
“Before it was born, thorium was killed by the sins of uranium.”
– Ben Buchwalter
Weinberg’s firing effectively halted development of the MSR, as its technology was virtually unknown by other nuclear labs and specialists, and to this day most nuclear physicists receive very little if any exposure to MSR concepts and principals while being trained. The Oak Ridges Lab (ORNL) had also done the majority of research on thorium as a nuclear fuel, therefore its potential use as a nuclear fuel was also greatly diminished.
In fact if it weren’t for strong backing by ORNL’s ORSORT (Oak Ridge School Of Reactor Technology) sponsor, Admiral Rickover, along with his nuclear core designer Dr. Alvin Radkowsky who successfully operated the USA’s first Thorium fueled commercial power plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania using a Light Water Breeder Reactor (LWBR), thorium as a reactor fuel might have vanished entirely.
In this case military interests have actually served to preserve at least the roots of Thorium based energy via their use of LWBR technology to destroy plutonium in proliferation resistant reactors in Russia with the U.S. Department of Energy’s program funding for Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, and through technical assistance from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Thorium Power, Inc.
So in an ironic twist of fate, the need to destroy weapons grade plutonium, has created an opportunity for Thorium based reactors to still exist today, albeit as a little-known nuclear non-proliferation program.
As such Thorium has survived its military and political death, and continued to exist on the fringes of Nuclear Science long enough to meet the challenges of a post-Cold War world that is now facing the dangers of Ecological disaster.
Relying on its core strengths as a clean, proliferation resistant nuclear fuel, Thorium is offering a way to burn off our existing stockpiles of nuclear energy and weapons waste, while promising a magical silver-bullet to solve the social ills and ecological nightmares that have resulted from an entire species becoming addicted to cheap and abundant fossil fuels.
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Squidly
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Puleeez .. quit being so melodramatic .. so-called “fossil-fuels” have lifted the entire world out of abject poverty and despair. It is not the “fossil-fuels” that have “poisoned our world” .. it is the very human beings that proliferate the production of so-called “green” and “sustainable” energies that are polluting our world.
If you want me to take your writings seriously, then stop with the hyperbolic propaganda .. “fossil-fuels bad” routine !! .. there is nothing inherently “bad” about “fossil-fuels” .. get over it!
I do agree we should be investigating the use of LFTR .. we have one of the world’s most successful LFTR’s here in Tennessee (Oakridge), which was mothballed in 1969, for no good reason.
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Al Shelton
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Thanks Squidly….
Your response is much better than what I had for the same statement. ie poison our world
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Pierre D. Bernier
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Could not have said it better. thx.
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John Doran
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2013 book by PhD nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin:
Merchants Of Despair…..
Nuclear power, way safer & cleaner than coal, for example, has been demonised by the 1%s fake news MSM, buried under bureaucracy & over-regulation & starved of funding.
While progress is blocked the regressive policies of population control, based on the false science of Malthus & the racist followers of Darwin, are keenly followed by the US Empire, which is, effectively, the anti-humanist successor of the Brit Empire.
John Doran.
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Tom O
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Whatever you’re snorting, you should leave it alone.
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rod
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“Thorium is offering a way to burn off our existing stockpiles of nuclear energy and weapons waste…”
Can it be used to ‘consume’ Fukushima’s still remaining nuclear waste?
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cedarhill
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And don’t forget that the folks at Los Alamos have produced papers showing how nuclear power plants can be used to produce super clear hydrocarbons using the energy from the power plant to drive synfuel processing. Thus, if one builds slightly larger thorium based power plants, you can run them at full capacity, 24/7 using off peak loads to produce clean diesel, clean gasoline from clean CH4. After all, we still need to not only feed the plants CO2 but will still need hydrocarbons for all the things it’s used for today outside of fuel.
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Michael
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I have no formal education regarding nuclear physics, energy or the rest, but I have an avid enthusiasm for some of that stuff. And astronomy. And cosmology. And high altitude mtn biking. And single, double or even triple I.P.A.’s so maayybeee I have a very modest well rounded sense of these interesting topics. Well okay, I can certainly brag a little about mtn biking and IPA’s but that’s it!! Definitely nice to see lots more Thorium awareness. There’s an important correction needed in the article. It was Alvin Weinberg (not Eugene) who headed the MSR Experiment team. However, many years prior to the MSRE it was the brilliant nuclear physicist Eugene Wigner who was the early pioneering proponent of pursuing the Thorium (‘thermal reactor’) path vs the Plutonium (‘fast reactor’) path for the then very young field of designing nuclear fission reactors for energy production (instead of just weapons materials). But it fell on deaf ears, mainly because Thorium was essentially a new unexplored direction, unlike the by then quite familiar Plutonium technology. But thankfully Alvin Weinberg saw the light of Eugene’s Thorium nuclear physics, and realized that exploring development of Thorium technology held great promise. There’s a great video (one of many) by an ardent videographer that’s a vast wealth of knowledge about all this. Quite fascinating. So crack open an IPA (or 3) while you watch, and let it all start to permeate your grey matter. It’ll nourish you. Absurdly rich with info (and hops), so it’s entirely appropriate to pause, read, rewind, quaff IPA, proceed, quaff more IPA, repeat. Thorium molten salt reactors, and a few variants of these, just might be a damn good thing to get going on a large scale ASAP!! Cheers! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
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Whokoo
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Hi Michael,
I tried your IPA, international phonetic alphabet, wrote sections down on pieces of paper, put it in a glass and tried quaffing it, but I nearly choked and had to have a beer to wash it down.
I found the video quite informative though, thank you. A lot of potential solutions.
Have a nice day
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Michael
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Whokoo,
A thousand pardons! I should have been much more specific. In a suitable glass mix said pieces of IntPhoAlph paper with (3-) IndolePropionicAcid until thoroughly dissolved. To ensure optimum-ness then add IsoPropylAlcohol. With adherence to International Polka Assoc standards, sprinkle with sufficient essence of International Permafrost Association. This may or may not be approved by the Independent Pilots Association, though quite likely falls under the auspices of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. All joking aside, I’m fortunate enough to enjoy such 2xIPA nectars as Telluride Brewing’s Fishwater (my local regional mtnbiking favorite), Russian River’s classic Pliny the Elder and elusive Pliny the Younger, Ninkasi Tricerahops, Pipeworks Ninja vs Unicorn (great artwork on the 16oz can)
Glad you liked the video. It’s a good one. Hopefully the practicality and excellent multi-faceted solutions MSR’s can provide humanity will gain increasing traction soon!. There are quite a few other gems by GordonMcdowell at his yt channel. He tirelessly records & edits these. Search his “Roadmap To Nowhere” and “ThorCon” they are both also quite interesting. So ya, can these just get implemented for goodness sake?, and especially given the current… uhm… ‘fervor’ ? Hmmm perhaps another Double IntelligencePhilosophizerAccelerant will help tip the scales haha! Cheers!
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Whokoo
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Michael
I had googled IPA and that is what google came up with.
So many variants on your top shelf.
I wondered if you had any knowledge on the status of Fusion research?
To encourage some of the carbon dioxide taxes to be directed into solutional research rather than 1,000 apologist studies on armadillo’s migrating North because of climate change would reduce the alarm levels.
May I, with humility, suggest you look up the word paragraph and then give it a try.
In writing, it is like pausing for breath between thoughts.
If you look to distance around sunset you will see a dust storm with balls of fir flying. That is Zoe and friends rationalizing that cutting an apple into many sized pieces does not result in an apple and a half. Set them onto a perpetual motion wheel.
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aido
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Super Fuel, the 2012 book by Richard Martin is a must-read for anyone interested in Thorium. Its available in hardback for £2.74 from Amazon.
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