nuclear-news

What is wrong with thorium nuclear reactors? Well, a lot, really

Thorium: Why We Don’t Want It   http://nowarnow.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/thorium-why-we-dont-want-it/ By No War Now / 3 August, 2012  
“….. Thorium is just another nuclear industry way of persevering their jobs in an energy production method that does not make sense for our planet. Thorium requires mining rare earth elements. Thorium requires the changing of laws to process monazite, currently categorized as “‘prescribed substance’ and the sole domain of the government” per the Atomic Energy Act (Canada and China work in thorium, http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/08/canada-and-china-work-on-thorium-candu.html).

Thorium continues the predatory practice of extracting public money to support its development and operations. Of course, you won’t learn this from the schills and trolls who want to convince you that thorium is the answer to our energy needs and ought be part of our “clean energy” package. Mining is not, and has never been, a clean energy production practice. Especially when it involves uranium.

To whit: “According to an official in the Mines Ministry, the DAE proposed to make amendments to the Atomic Energy Act so that beach sand miners could hand over the monazite tailings to IREL for further processing into thorium and possibly uranium, if economically feasible.” Canada and China work in thorium.

In 2008, India reported on their thorium venture, Q&A: Thorium Reactor Designer Ratan Kumar Sinhahttp://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/qa-thorium-reactor-designer-ratan-kumar-sinha/0 and, as of June 27, 2012, India [is] planning [a] thorium reactor, says Atomic Energy Commission chiefhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-27/bhubaneswar/32440256_1_thorium-nuclear-power-plant-kudankulam. Thorium has a long history in India, but has yet to prove its worth. Nuclear Power in Indiahttp://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf53.html. With commitment to thorium made in 2002, the nuclear industry in India has yet to produce one kilo watt of energy for public consumption. Be sure to read Nuclear Power in India with an eye on R&D and operational costs to date.

30 years of R&D [actually, more than 40] have gone into thorium around the world without one single kw produced for consumption by end users whose taxes fund entities via subsidies to conduct that research (Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the USA) Thorium Fuel Research & Developmenthttp://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_research_and_development/thorium_research_and_development.php. When I asked the two schills for data and a resource on cost, risk, benefit analysis, they told me to do the research. One claimed there were private investors willing to fund the project. Where are these investors? Why don’t schills back up their opinions with data? So many questions. So few answers.

For more on why we don’t want thorium, see Nuclear Free Planet’s page 1 in this report:http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/categories/thorium.html In addition, a friend of mine pointed me to a couple of critical articles on thorium, and had this to say:

The basic problem with sodium cooled reactors like the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor is the safety problem inherent in the use of sodium as a coolant. Sodium reacts chemically with both air and water, and will burn strongly with either. Hence sodium leaks become a significant issue with sodium cooled reactors. The history of sodium cooled reactors give scant comfort to those who argue that they are safe.

Sodium as coolant seems a little bit counter intuitive in my mind just as basic chemistry . There are two enemies to everything near the ocean , sodium and chlorine . We don’t need more molten salt cooled reactors any more than we need salt water cooled reactors like the three at Fukushima.

Molten salt Reactors Disadvantages, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Disadvantages
Liquid Sodium Reactors, http://energyfromthorium.com/2008/03/27/liquid-sodium-reactors/

Be sure to read Rasmussen’s information and Weinberg’s comments in Liquid Sodium Reactors.

Thorium is the nuclear industry’s attempt at preserving their rapidly sinking industry in a quickly changing world. We have no need for uranium or thorium based energy production. We are smarter than that, we are beyond that. We do not want thorium.

For details on failed breeder reactors, read about  Fermi I Fuel Meltdown Incident.PDF – you may find more Fermi information here as well http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/nucacc.html

If that doesn’t convince we don’t need fast breeders, then read about Three Mile Island and Santa Susana

Wiki Three Mile Island Accident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
Wiki Santa Susana Field Laboratory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory and A Nuclear Incident “Worse Than Three Mile Island” http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=06-P13-00003&segmentID=1 and Calif. nuke meltdown site finally set for cleanup: Cold War-era workers tested 30,000 rockets, experimented with reactors http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39003284/ns/us_news-environment/t/calif-nuke-meltdown-site-finally-set-cleanup/

Bonus points: Wiki List of nuclear power accidents  by Countryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country…..

August 24, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, spinbuster, technology, Uranium