permaculture

[venaurafarm <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

"Clean, safe energy in incredible abundance. The fuel burns nearly 
completely, so there's next to no radioactive waste. In fact it can 
consume the spent fuel we have just sitting around already. And it 
recycles at incredible efficiency, so it's closer to a perpetual motion 
machine than anything we've developed so far.

It runs on thorium fluoride, a liquid fuel encased in molten salt. It 
was considered and explored back when nuclear energy was first being 
developed. But the military types who were in charge wanted to go in the 
direction of a fuel that could be weaponized: fast breeder reactors and 
plutonium. So they put the plans (for a liquid fluoride thorium reactor, 
or LFTR) on the shelf and have never taken them down.

There's an interesting article in Wikipedia on this and related 
technologies, called Generation IV reactors, or Gen IV reactors. But 
here's a presentation that's so good it's really worth 120 minutes of 
your time:"

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/thorium-energy-solution/

<>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgKfS74hVvQ

"Makes one wonder why everyone on earth is worrying about global 
warming, and thinking we're running out of energy, when we have a 
technology requiring relatively common fuels (enough so that we can say 
there's an infinite supply for the next few centuries), and one 
ingenious enough that it can be used to scrub atmospheric CO2 (making 
complex hydrocarbons from it), desalinate seawater, dissociate water to 
make nitrate fertilizers from its components plus nitrogen, and perform 
hundreds of other large-scale miracles that heretofore have been 
unthinkable, due to scale and cost.

There's been a huge lack of imagination going on here. Instead, we're 
told that this is just more nuclear, and that nuclear has no future. For 
reasons that don't apply to liquid salt reactors.

China's starting to develop it. So I expect we'll probably do so as 
well, just to be able to catch up with them. But we had a pilot project 
up and running for four years, way back in the 1960s. The stuff works 
just fine."

Here's an article on Huffington Post:

"Currently the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is having a 
resurgence of interest worldwide. Let me list the advantages of an 
electrical power plant based on LFTR compared to conventional nuclear 
and fossil-fuel plants:
• Thorium is plentiful and inexpensive. One ton costing $300,000 can 
power a 1,000-megawatt plant for a year. One pound of thorium yields as 
much power as 300 pounds of uranium or 3.5 million tons of coal.
• Unlike conventional high-pressure water reactors, LTFR operates at 
atmospheric pressure, obviating the need for a large, expensive 
containment dome and having little danger of explosion.
• LFTRs cannot melt down since the normal operating state is already molten.
• LFTRs are stable to rising temperatures since salt expands slowing the 
reaction. A salt plug kept solid by cooling coils will automatically 
melt if external power is lost and the fluid drain out to a safe dump tank.
• Salts used are solid below 300 F or higher, so any spilled fuel 
solidifies instead of escaping into the environment.
• Liquid fuels use almost all the available energy is used, unlike solid 
fuels that must be removed before they have generated 1-3 percent of the 
available energy because of damage.
• The radiative waste is much less than from conventional plants and far 
more manageable.
• Air-cooling possible where water is scarce.
• Should be cheaper than coal, especially if CO2 is sequestered.
• Proliferation resistant. Can't use to build bombs.
• Smaller size and lower cost.
• Could provide the world's energy needs carbon-free for a thousand years.
The gamma rays from U-232 are not a problem for reactors since unlike 
nuclear weapons they are already sufficiently shielded.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/lftr-a-longterm-energy-so_b_1192584.html";