Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor the answer?

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8 grams of thorium could replace gasoline in cars

Stevens has worked out you’d require a 227kg, 250MW thorium engine in order to power a typical road car. Within that system 1 gram of thorium produces the equivalent of 7,500 gallons of gasoline. So if you fit the Thorium engine with 8 grams of Thorium, it will run the vehicle for its entire lifetime without needing to be refueled while all the time not producing any emissions. The engine lasts so long in fact, that it could be taken from one vehicle and used in another as and when they wear out.

The issues to overcome are the radioactivity and the mining of thorium to make this engine possible. Stevens says the radioactivity can easily be contained with aluminium foil. As for the mining, the reserves are there, with 440,000 tons alone in the U.S., we just need the mining facilities to extract it in large enough quantities. With the potential benefits that is sure to happen.
 
250MW to power a car :eek:

That's more than 335 thousand horsepower.
Even assuming a typo and it should be kW, that's still 335 bhp for a 'typical' car.
 
Well the truth is, originally 'nuclear power stations' were in reality thinly disguised weapons plants, their prime function was to provide fissionable material for the bombs - cf PIPPA, the electricity was just for camouflage
 
1.21 gigawatts!
 

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The Russians have only been working on Thorium salt reactors for the last 40 years:doh:

The reason Thorium reactors never took off was that a by product of the current reactor fleet was plutonium which at the time was what drove the greed as it could be easily turned into weapons grade plutonium, so you had the military rubbing their hands getting a source of plutonium which produced electricity as a by product :rolleyes: and the strategists economists having a cheap source of electricity supply that as a by product filled the countries needs as well :thumb:

Thorium salt reactors will be the future of electricity production for sure, mining Thoruim is no different or very little different to mining Uranium which is now done on a large scale. India currently leads the way and has some of it's reactors fitted with Thorium to improve start up characteristics and to achieve power flattening accross the reactor core. India also has one of the largest reserves of thorium

So watch this space Thorium will feature now the arms race has died
 
I rather liked the ""looney tunes" idea of a nuclear powered aeroplane in the guy's video talk [around the 19 minute mark] I posted.
 
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The reason Thorium reactors never took off was that a by product of the current reactor fleet was plutonium which at the time was what drove the greed as it could be easily turned into weapons grade plutonium,

So that's why Japan has traditional reactors. Obviously to stockpile weapons grade materials for its nuclear weapons programme ?

India currently leads the way and has some of it's reactors fitted with Thorium to improve start up characteristics and to achieve power flattening accross the reactor core.
So that's why India has its thorium reactors. Obviously it's not to stockpile weapons grade materials for its nuclear weapons programme.

Hang on a mo ........

Something doesn't smell right with those two obvious conclusions. I wonder what it is ...... ;)
 
So that's why Japan has traditional reactors. Obviously to stockpile weapons grade materials for its nuclear weapons programme ?

So that's why India has its thorium reactors. Obviously it's not to stockpile weapons grade materials for its nuclear weapons programme.

Hang on a mo ........

Something doesn't smell right with those two obvious conclusions. I wonder what it is ...... ;)

Sorry don't understand your point :dk:
 
Nuclear powered cars....hmmm

There are a lot of people who would need to be banned from driving first!
 
Sorry don't understand your point :dk:

"The reason Thorium reactors never took off" doesn't work for me.

India is managing to run its nuclear weapons programme alongside thorium reactors. Conversely you might think that Japan would jump at the chance of using thorium if it avoided (or reduced) weapons byproducts.

In the early days you're right. Choices regarding civilian power programmes were driven by the needs of the military to acquire materials.

But for the last 40 years or so economics rather than military needs have been the priority.

However the irony with the idea that India is chasing thorium for economic reasons is that India has specific strategic problems and ambitions that mean that its nuclear programme may well be currently driven by its military needs.

But they're not going to make a big deal about that. Quite the opposite - discretion and obfuscation as to what is actually going on will be the order of the day due to national security.
 
"Due to these trade bans and lack of indigenous uranium, India has uniquely been developing a nuclear fuel cycle to exploit its reserves of thorium. "

"Nuclear power supplied 15.8 billion kWh (2.5%) of India's electricity in 2007 from 3.7 GWe (of 110 GWe total) capacity and after a dip in 2008-09 this will increase steadily as imported uranium becomes available and new plants come on line. "
 
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