NeutralAxis

What nuclear fuel can be carried safely in your pocket, has a nearly inexhaustible supply in nature, leaves minuscule waste, and can run a reactor that could fit within a medium sized suburban house?  Need a hint?  Its named after a Norse god and was pretty much forgotten about by the nuclear power industry because it was too safe.

If you guessed Thorium, you’re better versed in nuclear physics than most.  Here’s another key benefit.  Unlike reactor waste from a uranium based plant, 83% of the waste from a thorium based plant is stable within 10 years and then has a market value.  Only 17% of the remainder remains dangerous for a period of 300 years.  All the waste from a uranium plant remains dangerous for more than 10,000 years.

Uranium is the current choice of the nuclear power industry primarily due to the cold war.  The powers that be at the time chose uranium for nuclear power generation because the process has byproducts that can be used to make nuclear bombs. Research on thorium fuel was going on alongside uranium at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from the 1950s to 1970s but was abandoned essentially because you can’t make a bomb out of it.  Now, scientists are taking a second look at the nearly forgotten technology as a significantly safer, green energy source.

Some comparisons with conventional uranium fuel:

Here are a some other fun facts.

• 6kg of thorium, about the size of a grapefruit, has the same energy production potential as 230 train cars of bituminous coal, 440 million cubic feet of natural gas, or 300kg of enriched uranium.
• 1 cubic meter of earth has about 12 grams of thorium in it which is enough to provide all the power you, as an individual, would use for a period of 10-15 years.
• The US currently has in storage, 3200 metric tons left over from the Manhattan Project.

wired.com (there is some disagreement between some of the figures in the article, and the video below.  I figure the video is more trustworthy.
energy from thorium blog

Here’s a 16 minute video remix of several Google Tech Talks on thorium.  There’s alot of information presented really quickly.