Thorium, the Next Nuclear Fuel?

mrshermanoaks writes "When the choices for developing nuclear energy were being made, we went with uranium because it had the byproduct of producing plutonium that could be weaponized. But thorium is safer and easier to work with, and may cause a lot fewer headaches. 'It's abundant — the US has at least 175,000 tons of the stuff — and doesn't require costly processing. It is also extraordinarily efficient as a nuclear fuel. As it decays in a reactor core, its byproducts produce more neutrons per collision than conventional fuel. The more neutrons per collision, the more energy generated, the less total fuel consumed, and the less radioactive nastiness left behind. Even better, Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. The design is based on the lab's finding that thorium dissolves in hot liquid fluoride salts. This fission soup is poured into tubes in the core of the reactor, where the nuclear chain reaction — the billiard balls colliding — happens. The system makes the reactor self-regulating: When the soup gets too hot it expands and flows out of the tubes — slowing fission and eliminating the possibility of another Chernobyl. Any actinide can work in this method, but thorium is particularly well suited because it is so efficient at the high temperatures at which fission occurs in the soup.' So why are we not building these reactors?"

Comments

Only a bridge ore

[wembley fraggle]

These days, people only mine Thorium while they're working on getting their skill up to the Fel Iron and outlands level. One thing worth noting is that somewhere in the past few patches, they've made it so you can mine Fel Iron at 275, which is pretty nice. No more running around the Eastern Plaguelands looking for Rich Thorium Nodes for those last few points when you'd rather be in Hellfire Peninsula.

Re:Problems

[DoofusOfDeath]

Clearly one of the problems which should be obvious is that we are looking at cutting edge material technology to work at these temperatures and neutron fluxes !

Well, duh. We didn't mention it because it was so obvious! Most slashdotters have known that crap from, like, CS 201.

Re:Why not?

[plover]

This is good news especially now that the unobtainium supplies have been cut off from Pandora.

We should have just nuked that planet from orbit, then swooped down and picked up the unobtainium from their hot, smurfy ashes.

But no, they had to send in some hot-shot Colonel who had to prove how tough he was by taking them on in hand-to-hand combat, and in the process showing all the greenies just how cute and cuddly the smurfs were. Idiot. Now we can't touch their planet at all because of the outcries from the eco-nuts.

Re:Canadian CANDU reactors can use Thorium

[andy1307]

Thank god for the Canadians and their CAN-DU attitude.

Re:zero-risk?

[Mitchell314]

No. What if a giant picks the reactor up and uses it to hammer pedestrians? Didn't think of that, did they? Failproof, my foot.