Soldato
Morte difficult to extract power from, but its certainly being worked on. When it does come about, the UK should (hopefully) be world leaders, and we sure have enough coast to use it ourselves too.
Thorium Power
- Thread starter Dr House
- Start date
Morte difficult to extract power from, but its certainly being worked on. When it does come about, the UK should (hopefully) be world leaders, and we sure have enough coast to use it ourselves too.
Associate
Solar, at the current efficiency you'd need to cover about 3% of the surface area of the earth at the equator to get anywhere near enough the total world use in solar. Thorium power seems like the way to go until fusion power is viable. IIRC India is pushing for more Thorium based reactors.
The great thing about thorium reactors is that they can be used to consume a lot of the existing radioactive waste, they will still produce waste themselves but they could be used to reduce the thousands of tons of waste produced each year and could make the storage of the waste less of a problem. They also have the ability to fail safe by draining the liquid fuel into smaller storage tanks where there isn't enough volume to reach critical mass using gravity alone.
Soldato
Nuclear power is the best way to go. This makes it even more appealing.
Don
When I was mining Thorium in Un'Goro Crater, there was always tons of Rich Thorium Veins when my skill wasn't high enough to mine them. Then once I'd got to the required level they would all have gone.
Elite dinosaurs always got me there too.
Oh, we're talking about real thorium? Sorry.
Elite dinosaurs always got me there too.
Oh, we're talking about real thorium? Sorry.
I wonder if you get more power from enchanted thorium?
One of the best features about Thorium (and one of the main reasons it hasn't been taken seriously thus far) is that it requires an external source of Neutrons provided by a particle accelerator, as there is no chain reaction involved. This means iirc that c. 20% of the energy generated is used by the reactor itself, reducing it's output, but it also means that a Thorium reactor can never 'meltdown'.
Associate
If thorium power can overcome the public perception of nuclear, it's got a good future ahead.
Associate
I am quoting that for truth, I'm surprised I didn't see the comment further up the page really.
Thorium will deliver nuclear power at a far safer level than Uranium - however the technology required to deliver a stable, steady supply of neutrons to sustain the reaction has not yet been developed to a good standard. It does mean that if you cut the supply of neutrons to the reaction it, as mentioned above, won't meltdown and will simply stop.
If only more investment was made in this area we could be almost truly energy independent.
Caporegime
The problem with renewables is that it's often really expensive to install and maintain it relative to the kW generated. If it wasn't, we'd give up on coal immediately and invest the same amount in wind instead.
^ Is that true? I'm just guessing tbh.
^ Is that true? I'm just guessing tbh.
Soldato
- Joined
- 13 May 2003
- Posts
- 8,850
You can't store electricity so renewables suffer because they don't match supply with demand. Fossil stations at least can store fuel.
Thorium is attractive because used in liquid salt reactors it can be designed passively safe against meltdown. You have a liquid reaction mass and a meltable plug, if the salt gets too hot the plug melts and the salt runs out of the reactor and you split it into separate sub-critical masses. Thorium as suggested doesn't produce as many nasty long term wastes. Also by incluinng liquid salts of some of your existing long term nasty in the thorium reactor you can use the neutons to break them down, basically eat up existing waste slowly over time.
Thorium is attractive because used in liquid salt reactors it can be designed passively safe against meltdown. You have a liquid reaction mass and a meltable plug, if the salt gets too hot the plug melts and the salt runs out of the reactor and you split it into separate sub-critical masses. Thorium as suggested doesn't produce as many nasty long term wastes. Also by incluinng liquid salts of some of your existing long term nasty in the thorium reactor you can use the neutons to break them down, basically eat up existing waste slowly over time.
Soldato
Duracell disagrees with you
Permabanned
Well one day when the UN decides to limit stockpiles of nukes to a really low number (e.g 10) (Wonder if they would ever do that) we will have lots of spare to build nuke power
That would be stupid, you can say having massive stock-pile of nukes is acting as a prevention of ww3...
10 Nuclear warheads is something like 3 rockets.... its pretty easy to shoot them out of sky and you no longer possess mutual destruction.
Associate
It would be great to achieve this, would protect us against market and international issues facing energy.
Because they would end up with energy bills as high as ours and they aren't stupid enough to put up with it.