So anyone hear about thorium reactors?

1 ton of thorium produces more energy than 3.5 million tons of coal or 200 tons of uranium.

It's an abundant metal, and would be easy to mine and 'burn'.

cool brah

Agreed.

yup,

its amazing stuff but it didnt get recognized when they were testing with it back in the 50,60,70, because it cant be used to produce nuclear bombs, so government didnt wana mess with it, it has a major possibility to help solve the engery problem but it cant be weaponzied so it probably wont replace other nuclear fuel

This post was edited by five33 on Sep 1 2010 10:21am

Erm, the output of such an reactor would be U233, the component for nuclear weaponry.

I'm sure when Thorium-232 is used as a fission fuel it becomes uranium-233. When thorium-232 comes into contact with an electron it becomes Thorium-233 which has a half-life of around 20 minutes. The thorium then decays into Protactinium-233 via beta decay and Protactinium-233 has a half-life of 27 days and beta decays into uranium-233. Reactors have been designed to stop the Protactinium from further neutron capture thus creating a 'Uranium-233 farm' out of a thorium reactor.

When thorium-232 comes into contact with a slow neutron, it becomes U-233. Via, I'm guessing, the same method as you listed.

Does it really provide 200x more energy than uranium? Do you have a source for this I'd be interested to see it. I thought the main benefit of thorium was abundance, less radioactive waste and that it can't be weaponized easily.

How can thorium (90) turn into uranium (92) when it's lower on the periodic table? I thought that radiation will get rid of protons and neutrons, not add them. Additonally how can thorium 232 magically become thorium 233 when it gains an electron? When it changes into the next up isotope it's supposed to gain a neutron, not an electron.

One type of radiation gets rid of protons/neutrons. Beta radiation is another type which is responsible for this decay. It just changes a neutron into a proton.

I assume he meant to say neutron... because thats how Th232 changes to Th233 by gaining a neutron.