"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:"
"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"