Kirk had some thoughts when touring the Delta IV factory in Alabama.
Archive for the ‘Thorium’ Category
Factory Built Powerplants
Posted in Climate, Energy, Motivation, Thorium, tagged Alabama, Decatur, Delta, nuclear, Thorium, ULA on Monday 2009.11.02 | Leave a Comment »
Thorium Energy Alliance
Posted in Climate, Energy, Global, Motivation, Thorium, industry, tagged lftr, Thorium, Thorium Energy Alliance on Friday 2009.08.21 | 1 Comment »
A quick way to get up to speed on Thorium and LFTR, aimed at lay people.
I seriously doubt their cost and schedule stuff. One needs to do material science tests with this, so it’s going to take longer.
But otherwise. It is the industrial solution for the world. It is perhaps not [...]
Save the U-233!
Posted in Climate, Demotivation, Energy, Global, Thorium, idiocracy, industry on Sunday 2009.08.09 | Leave a Comment »
Posting about it again. The Energy From Thorium forum has more on what’s going on. Some bogus weapons reasons are presented to the press for why it will be downblended. It could be the startup fuel of new LFTRs instead.
Quoting DV82XL:
This is the equivalent to the move to have streetcar tracks ripped up in so [...]
Kirk Sorensen’s LFTR Talk at Google
Posted in Climate, Energy, Global, Motivation, Science, Thorium, industry, tagged Energy, google, lftr, nuclear, sorensen, Thorium on Saturday 2009.08.01 | Leave a Comment »
Here.
Neat Nation’s Realtime Electricity Monitor
Posted in Energy, Thorium, industry, tagged electricity, Finland, nuclear on Monday 2009.03.30 | Leave a Comment »
At Fingrid. EDIT: same in English.
Usage, Imports and Exports of Electricity in Finland at one moment in time
Rough Solutions for Significantly Reducing Carbon Emissions in the Next Few Decades
Posted in Climate, Thorium, industry, tagged cap and trade, carbon dioxide, co2, CO2 tax, emissions trading, global warming on Friday 2009.03.27 | Leave a Comment »
Take for example nuclear power. If there are CO2 taxes, that makes nuclear power more profitable than coal and it will automatically replace it. Also, somewhat similar for solar power. It is most of the time not wise to mandate very inefficient feelgood solar plants in cloudy areas. That is just theater. (On the other hand, it is sometimes worth supporting industry that is in its infancy and not immediately useful, but has potential in the further future. But this could be the wrong way.) But if they are built on profit and cost/benefit mechanisms alone, then they are probably built in more sensible places.
Important and Urgent: Don’t Throw Away U-233
Posted in Climate, Energy, Science, Thorium on Tuesday 2008.12.16 | 2 Comments »
USA has some Uranium-233 stored, but they’re going to destroy it by blending it with U-238. U-233 is valuable, it takes a lot of effort and energy to produce it (have Thorium-232 absorb a neutron) and it is the fissile material for LFTR reactors (of which I’ve blogged about before). It is especially important for [...]
Some Chinese Problems
Posted in Climate, Energy, Thorium, industry, tagged china, coal, glowing mountains, inner mongolia on Monday 2008.12.08 | Leave a Comment »
If you want to give people a higher material standard of living, you need energy. If you need to do this via industrialization, you need even more of it. China has done it with coal. There is this lengthy article by Greg Peel describing the situation much closer. The energy intensity of GDP has not [...]
Thorium MSR Design Possibilities
Posted in Architecture, Climate, Colonization, ISRU, Models, Motivation, Science, Thorium, tagged Bismuth, Blanket, Core, lftr, Moderation, msr, Protactinium, real and revolutionary, Single Fluid, Thorium, Two Fluid, Uranium on Monday 2008.09.01 | 2 Comments »
There are a huge array of design possibilities for a Thorium molten salt reactor / liquid fluoride thorium reactor, but this post takes a very simplified approach to map a small part of the fascinating and diverse landscape with a little rough drafting. We concentrate on thermal spectrum designs. I’m strictly an amateur in these [...]
Bringer of the Second Nuclear Age
Posted in Architecture, Climate, ISRU, Science, Thorium, tagged breeder, lftr, msr, online reprocessing, sorensen, thermal spectrum, Thorium on Monday 2008.08.18 | 7 Comments »
Thorium Molten Salt Reactors – A Really Short Intro
Thorium is about thrice as abundant compared to Uranium. And countless times more abundant than the U-235 Uranium isotope that is used mostly by modern nuclear reactors.
You can use Thorium, Th-232, as the sole fuel in a special nuclear reactor, which first turns the Thorium into Uranium, [...]
