Recent content by tt23

Actually it is proved data. U concentration in oceans is well known and so is the extraction technology. The processed amount of sea water is irrelevant- the process is passive sorbtion and the water is pumped around by solar powered sea currents. The general point is that if you can fission...

Here is a calculation of how long uranium resources would last, if we fission down all of the abundant even isotope U238: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html Thorium is about 4x more abundant than uranium..

Here is another answer to "why hasn't it been done before" from Kirk Sorensen's chat at Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/sep/07/live-web-chat-nuclear-kirk-sorensen You asked, "most of the information on the web regarding LFTR/Thorium power is overwhelmingly positive...

No. You take the kindling from the old reactor. Besides there is plenty of TRUs around.

> Because in one place I`ve read that Thorium is converted to U233 during cycle but not in sufficiet quantity to sustain complete self reproduction. This is incorrect - it applies to U/Pu cycle in thermal spectrum, not to Th/U cycle, which is the main point. Specifically U233 fission in...

No they do not - molten salt reactors/LFTRs that is. It is possible to use thorium as a solid fuel in light water reactors (see Lightbridge corp., Radowski design, etc.), where it only saves 5-10% of the mined uranium, but that is a completely different beast from the LFTR/MSR approach we discus...

The basic issue is regulatory. This technology is completely different from everything that the NRC and nuclear engineers know. No water, no steam, no solid fuel, no high pressures,.. This argument can be used against literately any progress of any kind. There is a long list of reason which I...

Stanley, the gamma radioactivity from U232 decay chain is only an issue if someone wants to isolate the uranium bred in the reactor and run away with it - then there is additional protection in the Th/U cycle which is not necessarily present in U235 or U238/Pu239 based fuels. As long as the...

Actually the nice thing about thorium cycle is that one does not need to use fast spectrum neutrons - Th/U cycle works well in thermal spectrum too, unlike the U/Pu cycle. This is explained in the OP Google lecture. This means low fissile loads, slow reactor periods, and low neutron damage to...