Has anyone looked into this, is vary interesting. This should be shared around, I don't know why we haven't looked into this area more. What are your thoughts??
The whole documentary.
If you can't watch the whole thing just watch the first 5 mins to get what it is.
I have met people who have forgot to change their oil after long periods of time. It is a scary idea to give normal people nuclear reactors. But it could be used for the grid for electric cars.
Lol yeah... Good advice.... Now to just find a couple of billion dollars.... Go through a 20 year nuclear certification process.... And go through a multiyear approval process to build a nuclear reactor, the paperwork alone costs more than probably a whole neighbourhood in a fairly well of area would make in their entire lifetimes.
And then in say 3 decades I might have a nuclear powerplant....
Everyone should have access to cheap, clean, abundant and readily available energy. FYI I imagine it is much cheaper to run the car off of Hydrogen Fuel Cells, or Batteries though than nuclear power. Although who am I too say how small nuclear reactors could be given the right regulatory (or the absence of) environment.
Thorium reactors are not obligated to follow nuclear commission so you could build it yourself in garden. It is not worth since you loose more energy to gain less. There's no such thing in this world that is giving you energy for free - except the one tesla did. If thorium really worked then companies would still use it - they just wouldn't tell you about it; and they are not.
Thorium reactors should have been the basis for civil nuclear energy production from the get go, but since breeding plutonium for nukes in thorium reactors is almost impossible and at the time nuclear power was in vogue we had cold war, everybody went with Uranium instead. Thorium still is a good choice for energy if we had it ready to go right now, but we don't, we have a few dusty blueprints from a test-facility from the 70's. Most of the engineers that have an understanding of that technology are between 60 and 80 years old.
Developing and deploying thorium reactors would take 20 years (best case scenario). Those reactors need to run for at least another 20 years to recoup the initial investment. There is a really good chance that solar gets really cheap & efficient during those 40 years. No private investor is going to accept such a high risk.
Politicians can't get budgets for anything with the word nuclear in it. Popular opinion doesn't care about how superior thorium reactor are compared to uranium ones. "Japan is a high-tech nation & even they couldn't keep the nuclear thing from going nuclear, herp derp derp deadly radiation"
China and India are investing in thorium because they have high population densities, which means they have less "solarable" surface per erngery-need than most western countries, which changes the equation regarding getting a return of investment on those reactors.
some how I feel that if thorium reactors were feasible then some good fellow would have dropped the cash to make one. maybe that fellow could even have been google. I can't help but imagine it is all a big joke, like north korea, or the moon landing.
other issue with thorium is a coolant leak (slow leak) would be much worse than with a uranium water (pressurized or boiling) reactor. But a fast leak would be less destructive.
The Three diffences in thorioum reactors vs. Fast Breeder Reactors is this...
1) You need to keep the chain reaction going, You have to work to get a Thorium reactor running, Most Nuclear reactors you have to work to keep them from melting down.
2) The U.S. ran one for 8 years, Nixon cancelled it. It provided a higher then expected yield of fissionable isotopes.
3) It supposedly shuts down through a fairly simple way, plus Thorium is a by product of "Rare Earth Extractrion."
The U.S. goverment wanted fast breeder reactors for nukes. From what I have seen, Thorium is safer, more "green" and pollutes less radiocative waste. Between the U.S. and Russia,we built atleast 60k nukes. Thorium reactors run the opposite of typical reactors. You have to keep them going.