Thorium is readily available & can be turned into energy without generating transuranic wastes. Thorium’s capacity as nuclear fuel was discovered during WWII, but ignored because it was unsuitable for making bombs. A liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is the optimal approach for harvesting energy from Thorium, and has the potential to solve today’s energy/climate crisis. LFTR is a type of Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (Th-MSR). This video summarizes over 6 hours worth of thorium talks given by Kirk Sorensen and other thorium technologists.
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I wouldn’t be so quick to say we will never run out. Just because it is common does not mean that it is renewable. If it exists as a solid in the ground, eventually it will be no better than coal or uranium. I think at best, thorium can be used during a transition phase to the point in which we develop efficient technology to harvest renewable energy sources sustainably, and as possibly as a backup. I believe that in order to get to the technological level that is required to be able to harvest energy from renewable sources WITHOUT being “environmentally invasive” (because it is arguable that at the moment they are, due to the lack of research and development, which can only improve), we will need to have efficient energy to get us to that point. Oil and uranium, as the video stated, really is not going to cut it, especially considering the fact that we’ve most likely hit peak world oil, and the fact that we’re going into tar sands just shows how desperate we are.
However, we all could be running our cars on gasoline vapor instead of liquid, but that idea was squashed long before it go on the market, thanks to the oil industries. Because think about what that would do to Mobil or BP or Shell if we could all be getting 100 miles to the gallon. (Look up Tom Ogle)
Well, now that is a very silly statement. Under that limited definition, NOTHING is renewable. Unless you divine some method of generating a fuel source, at lower cost that what is produced when burning said fuel source, all fuels currently proposed are ‘non-renewable.’ In such a case, one is discussing what amounts to infinite energy machines.
Thorium, if what is purported within this, and other, documentaries proves to be true, would supply enough energy, for enough time, that from any traditional human vantage point it would be considered ‘renewable.’ As said, the burning of Thorium is one of the methods by which the core of the Earth remains molten. Thorium fission is literally the method by which ‘geothermal’ energies are produced. Meaning we would ‘run out’ of Thorium at about the same time that the very core of the Earth would begin to dim.
No, it is not an infinite source of energy. But, then again, nothing is. However, this proposed technology seems to answer a great many problems we face, and at least resets the clock on the ‘energy crisis’ to so far into the future, as to be a meaningless for generations to come. ‘Eventually,’ in this case, is a non-issue; far less so, in fact, than the loss of farmland and real-estate to overpopulation, and large tracts of land being taken to service wind farms and massive solar arrays.