Monday, December 29, 2008

Clean Nukes?

Strange (or is it?) that the Corporate-Run Media isn't picking up on the story of Thorium, a safer nuclear fuel.

The short story of Thorium is that it was explored along side Uranium as a fuel for nuclear bombs, but wasn't as efficient for making weapons-grade Plutonium. But proponents of Thorium back in the Cold War days were focused more on energy, but the rest of the world was focused on bombs. So Thorium got deep-sixed. But there are tons of this stuff in cold storage, and some smart scientists are making the case to bring this stuff back out and use it for safe nuclear energy.
Enter Thorium. Half a century ago, a different kind of nuclear reactor was invented, one that burns Thorium - an inexhaustible supply of fuel, and much cheaper than the enriched-uranium fuel used by current reactors. It can even use the nuclear waste from other reactors as fuel! The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, or LFTR for short, operates at low pressures, so it could never explode like the reactor at Chernobyl, and its liquid-fuel design makes it physical impossible to overheat, like the reactor at Three Mile Island.

If you have an hour to spare, watch this video from Google Tech Talks.

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