Boulder is a Stoopid Place

Technology Background :: Flibe Energy.

The third path was explored by the nuclear pioneers but was sidelined for political and budgetary reasons and nearly forgotten, despite its extraordinary promise. It involved bombarding common natural thorium with neutrons to form a fissile material, uranium-233. Uranium-233 could produce enough neutrons in thermal-spectrum fission to sustain the conversion of new thorium to fuel. This meant that nuclear reactors could be run using a much more abundant fuel and would require far less nuclear fuel to generate a given amount of electrical power. Unlike the products of the first two methods, the uranium-233 generated from thorium was very unattractive for nuclear weapons and so during the intense demands of wartime, research into energy from thorium was a low priority. After the end of the war, key personnel from the Manhattan Project, including Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner and his protégé, Alvin Weinberg, attempted to convince the US government to research the surpassing potential of thorium.

Thorium was truly forgotten albeit for a few rebels.

Thus, Alvin Weinberg’s molten salt work was halted for political and budgetary reasons and the technology used to unlock the potential of thorium as a nuclear fuel was nearly forgotten. Textbooks did not mention it. Nuclear engineers were never taught about it in school. Even personnel at Oak Ridge, unless they happened to personally know one of the “old-timers”, did not know what had taken place in the ridged forests of eastern Tennessee in the 1960s.

The fundamentals of this promising technology were proven to work and Flibe Energy is leading the charge to continue development of this technology to power the world.

Bring it on.

Thorium – “Kryptonite” Or The Fuel Of The Future? | Kitco Commentary.

Thorium is superior nuclear fuel”, explained Sorensen. “It is very abundant and would remain very affordable even if it was the world’s only energy source.”

Sorensen began researching the benefits of thorium as part of his work to develop advanced forms of space propulsion for NASA from 2000 – 2010. His starting point was prior research done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1950s and ‘60s whose knowledge dates back even further to the Manhattan Project during World War II. A large library of documents was procured and made public from these sources.

“Oak Ridge developed what is called a Molten Salt Reactor. It was compatible with using thorium instead of uranium as a power source.” explained Sorensen.

However, by using liquid fuel, a number of issues inherent to the fuel cycle of conventional nuclear reactors are eliminated. Oak Ridge had been focused at finding a compact energy source for submarines and airplanes. In the early days of nuclear energy, uranium was preferred over thorium due to its usability for military purposes.

As part of his research, Sorensen’s company’s goal is to produce a LIFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor), an evolution of the Molten Salt Reactor, making the technology available for general use. “The energy content in the earth’s thorium by far outstrips any other energy resource, including uranium”, Sorensen said. “There is at least three times more thorium , and it is possible to extract a far greater fraction of its energy than you can get from uranium. Thorium can release almost all of its energy in thermal-spectrum reactors compared to about one percent in uranium.”

I’ve read elsewhere that Thorium reactors are “stable by design” so the meltdown issue is no longer a problem.