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From: Peter Fairbrother <peter@tsto.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Whoops! The Atlantic Makes Trump Look EPIC In Cover Intended as a
 Smear
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2024 02:31:34 +0100
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On 28/09/2024 01:50, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> On 9/27/2024 3:55 PM, Mike Van Pelt wrote:
>> In article <lln184F3mt6U1@mid.individual.net>,
>> Chris Buckley  <alan@sabir.com> wrote:
>>> I didn't say that unlimited nuclear energy was possible; I only said
>>> that the Uranium supply was not going to be the limiting factor to 
>>> the use
>>> of nuclear energy.  There is plenty of Uranium available at managable 
>>> cost.
>>
>> And besides uranium, there's thorium.  According to my CRC
>> handbook in the entry on thorium, it is "about as common as
>> lead", and "there is probably more available energy in the
>> Earth's crust from thorium as there is from uranium and all
>> fossil fuels put together."
>>
>> I'd love to see more work done on thorium reactors.
>>
> That _sounds_ like an obvious answer to I have to ask what the catch is.
> 


No great catch, except that thorium reactors have been massively 
over-hyped.

Proliferation free? Errr, no. Just, no.

Intrinsically safer than uranium reactors? Errr, no. Most of the 
supposed benefits here are for molten salt reactors, which run just fine 
or better on uranium. I'm also a bit sceptical about their supposed 
safety benefits, though having a passive post-SCRAM cooldown would be 
.... neat. Saves the Fukushima scenario.

Cheaper than uranium reactors? Err, not so you'd notice. Plus you have 
to pre-irradiate the thorium 232 t0 Th233, which ain't cheap.

Less radioactive waste? Long-term waste is pretty much the same. Claims 
for less short-term waste are ... disputable.


That's some of the over-hyped bits. Overall, thorium isn't any worse 
than uranium, or much different to uranium. There is more of it, but we 
have plenty of uranium.

A titbit, India is building lots of thorium reactors to get rid of 
excess thorium (co-mined with rare earth elements) which has to be 
stored as radioactive material.


Peter Fairbrother