Dang! Dilithioum crystals have just been Herbied!

I am positive that there is a yet to be discovered element that will meet all the criteria needed for a small nuclear power source. Since I am predicting it, it should be called Herbinium.

I wonder why this wasn't brought up.

One problem is that a thorium reactor is essentially a dirty bomb in waiting. And aren't portable if you want to keep its operators alive. You need a lot of radiation shielding around the reactor to keep the radiation from escaping into the enviroment as gamma radiation. There was a design for a car that could run for a century on 8 grams of thorium. Unfortunately, as designed, everyone who approached the car would keel over dead because it would not have enough shielding to make it mobile and safe to drive. Oh and you want to keep them away from moisture as the coolant you would use in the reactor to not need to pressurized the reaction bottle, doesn't react well with water (hence the dirty bomb in waiting).

Peanut Brain also said that people who opposed the Obamanation's policies did so due to racism.
Made my blood boil.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/200...
Me dino voted for some black people on a local level before that "I want to spread the wealth around" socialist came along.
I was thinking of voting for Herman Cane before some conniving Dems did him with the dirty the repeated bimbo eruption defamation trick that did not not work on Trump.

Good article. Thanks.

Jimmy Carter was concerned that a "plutonium economy" would be vulnerable to diversion (by terrorists or "bad guy" regimes) as plutonium is also used in weapons. There are technical reasons why "reactor grade" plutonium is not suitable for weapons (having to do with the Pu-240 content). Plutonium is produced in commercial power reactors because U-238 is exposed to neutrons. But, reactors operate for long periods of time before refueling, and as long as the fuel remains in the core, continued exposure to neutron flux results in Pu-239 absorbing more neutrons to become Pu-240, and Pu-240 absorbs neutrons to become Pu-241, etc. (up to Pu-242). "Reactor grade" plutonium will typically have 18-20% Pu-240 in total Pu. The problem with using this blend for weapons is something called "predetonation." Pu-240 spontaneously fissions (meaning its unstable and does not require an incident neutron to cause fission). When it fissions, it emits neutrons. In a weapon, plutonium is compressed mechanically (called implosion) by chemical high explosives (causing inward propagating shock waves). Once the shock gets to the center, they disrupt a device called an initiator, which releases a burst of neutrons to start the chain reaction. The plutonium does not stay compressed (and therefore in a supercritical state) for very long, and you need the initiator to start the neutron burst when you need it (precise timescales here are classified) - but not too early (or the chain reaction fizzles out because the plutonium is not yet fully imploded) or too late (or the plutonium is rebounding back from its compressed state). Too much Pu-240 (because of its spontaneous fission rate) will initiate the chain reaction too early, and a reduced yield is the result (what a weaponeer, or weapons engineer, would call a fizzle). So, "weapons grade" Pu has a much shorter residence time in the production reactor, so that the Pu-240 content is much lower (like 6%). So, any plutonium implosion weapon can predetonate, but the military has determined that the percentage of fizzles from 6% Pu-240 is an acceptable failure rate (and that failure rate is also a classified number). So, could you make a weapon from reactor-grade Pu? Yes, but the probability of predetonation would be very high. Even if it did go off, the yield would be very low. Los Alamos did a study some time ago warning that a terrorist bomb made with diverted reactor-grade Pu could still have a large enough yield to be of concern (big compared to conventional terrorist bombs), but still small compared to a Nagasaki bomb. My opinion is that the diversion argument against plutonium cycle breeder reactors misses the point that if a "rogue regime" did start a weapons program, its not as though we couldn't do anything to stop it. Someone like a Jimmy Carter would do nothing (to say nothing of a Obama regime), but our Iraq war proves that if we suspect that one of the "bad guys" is developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that we can go in and put a stop to it. It all depends on who is in the White House...

Please understand that I have all respect for Mr. Carter as a humanitarian and a fellow Southern Gentleman. I think we all should honor him for the tremendous work he's done for Habitat for Humanity. But the Allied General debacle and his donation of our hard-earned and militarily strategic Canal Zone to Panama earns him the title of Second Worst President in American History. (He, of course, had the title Worst until about nine years ago).

You forget Switzerland. +1 anyhoo.

rhfnle, you've given me a new reason to loathe "Peanut Brain," as I used to call that inept twit.

So what was the problem with "breeder reactors"?; too simple?, too efficient? or is it that the Uranium lobby/ miners had a louder voice,(political connections).

Thorium (Th-232) is called a "fertile" material. When exposed to neutrons, it transmutes to Th-233, which decays by beta-emission (2 successive beta emissions) to U-233, which is also fissile, like U-235. "Fissile" means it can sustain a neutron-induced nuclear fission chain reaction; so it can be used as reactor fuel. The other, more commonly known fertile material, U-238, also transmutes under exposure to neutrons to U-239, which then decays to Pu-239, which again is fissile. These reactions have been known for well over half a century. The thorium breeder was considered (along with many other reactor concepts) back in the 1950s (and many different prototypes and test reactors were built and run at the Idaho test site). Eventually, the "powers that be" wanted to concentrate on fewer reactor designs (and Carter the peanut farmer visionary thought that no breeder reactors should be built by us).

Here is a good history of reprocessing nuclear waste and its near end in the US.

https://www.masterresource.org/energy...

Here it comes "Except water vapor is a greenhouse gas! This will cause massive AGW, and destroy the world, not to mention it is based on science and engineering vs animal husbandry and druid spells."

I foresee a new organization: Thorium Atoms Matter (TAM) to start non-violent (right) protests and outreach to the other druid solution providers.

Exactly! Leave him out of it - I already can't afford the Tesla's I pay for from him.

Musk is not a capitalist: he is a looter that sucks the lifeblood out of the country's taxpayers. He doesn't "make" money, he steals it.

I am of the opinion that the powers to be world wide have no interest in peaceful existence, so thorium is probably a dead issue outside of India.

It's a moot point. Before use, Thorium has to be irradiated in a Uranium reactor, adding neutrons in a process similar to what goes on in a Plutonium breeder reactor .Then the high-grade Thorium is separated out from the other reactor fuel and detritus. This process is called Nuclear Reprocessing. In 1977, Jimmy Carter, with a stroke of the pen and massive shortsightedness, shut down the US's first and only commercial nuclear fuel reprocessor, the Barnwell Nuclear Fuel Plant, costing Allied General a billion dollars (which the government didn't repay) and ensuring that no American company in their right mind would ever try to build another. We would have had fuel for centuries (converted Uranium and its near-equivalents Plutonium and Thorium) but we will end up scrounging from other countries as our supplies dwindle.

Oh, yeah? You get a +1 anyway.

That was my point. You mentioned that another conversation had spurred your interest!

It was another Gulcher who put me on to this.
Love how the community of The Gulch teaches me all kinds of neat stuff!

That's one great side effect!

That means there will be more thorium to go around for those who want clean energy far more than war.
May our enemy war mongers have nuclear accidents that will poopoo their electric power plants.

"Thorium is not rare." That is quite an understatement. Thorium is extremely abundant. It's all over the place. It's especially abundant found with so-called "rare-earth" elements (the Lanthanides), a group of 14 very abundant metals (and 1 radioactive rarity). Because the Thorium is present, America buys its rare-earths from other countries, mainly China. Thank you Federal Government and EPA for keeping essential resources scarce and preventing us from using the "bad radioactive" part as inexhaustible fuel.
By the way, although Thorium reactors do not need to be near gigantic cooling water sources, a side effect when built near oceans is desalinated water, something in great demand in places like thirsty California.

doesn't sound like I warring material, so the war mongers will poopoo it.