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attesaarela
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Thorium - clean and safe nuclear energy

January 5th, 2009, 6:34 am

Thorium fueled nuclear reactors may soon be advanced enough to be used commercially. For instance the Molten Salt Reactor design apparently looks really promisinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactorThorium reactors would produce practically zero long lived nuclear waste and they also wouldn't have the risk of a nuclear meltdown leading to massive disasters. Thorium would be much cheaper in uranium, it's three times as common and a much higher fraction of the thorium that is there is suitable for nuclear fuel, whereas only 0.7% of the available uranium has a suitable isotope.China already has an active thorium reactor program and Japan, Russia and US have a shared program. India has built a test reactor which is capable of producing 300 MW according to this interview. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug08/6590/2In the past, similar programs in France and Germany were terminated because of technical problems. The older designs used liquid sodium for instance which is a very volatile substance.Now it seems that many of the technical problems in thorium reactor technology have been solved and so I think that Europe needs more thorium reactors as well.
 
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Thorium - clean and safe nuclear energy

January 5th, 2009, 12:06 pm

Some background information from Los Alamos National Lab:Periodic Table Entry - LANLThorium metal said to cost about $150/oz in 2003.Thorium Power ltd.Significant rise in the price in Uranium was noted in 2007Hedge Fund Speculation, Future Nuclear Demand Drive Uranium Price Boom - EIR April 2007