Reader comments
Sens. Hatch, Reid support thorium nuclear power

Timj | 5:17 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Good that they're focusing on a fuel source other than coal, oil, or ethanol.
This is a lot smarter than "drill baby drill."

Ken | 7:41 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Thorium is not only used in Thorium Power's fuel design, which is close to commercialization, but also in Pebble bed reactors that the South Africans and Chinese are building. The major products of the Thorium fuel cycle are fission products, with few of the long lived transurnanics that poise a signficant waste storage problem. The Fission products from Thorium based fuels decay to background within 500 years, making an engineered storage solution easier to obtain than with conventional reactors. The ultimate Thorium reactor will be the Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactor, much is writen about this on the net, it is powerful, safe and clean, and needs about 20 years development, if we could have the wisdom ot pursue it. If not, we will buy it from the Japanese who are pursuing it. Thorium Power is going to be an export technology to India, at least we have that.

Jeff | 7:46 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

I think that spent nuclear fuel, including Thorium, should be stored in one or more centralized locations, instead of spread all over. The reason Yucca Mountain isn't being used now is because of irrational hysteria by the public and the chicken-little attitude of the government. The only way stored fuel could be disturbed at Yucca is by an atomic bomb planted inside. Then the results would be very underwhelming -- a small amount of radioactive dust maybe. Why waste a bomb on Yucca anyway. They say Yucca's on a fault. An earthquake wouldn't release radioactive waste. We need to get our act together on nuclear energy soon -- yesterday would be good.

Comments continue below

Justice | 8:52 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Not so fast Harry, have you asked Nancy Pelosi for permission to express your opinion on this???

Spiteful Innocent | 9:25 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

It isn't going to help--You guys voted for the bailout and We are voting you out. Maybe you can outsource yourselves to India and get elected there.

Lawrence Hyde | 9:59 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Beware Utahan's. If reid has anything to do with it, it probably has nothing to do with anything except how much reid is going to make out of it. And if Hatch is cahoots with reid he needs to watch out for himself.

What are we waiting for? | 11:25 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

What are we waiting for? The waste becomes safe thousands of times sooner than normal reactors, we need the energy and we need to do something about global warming.

PC Res | 11:35 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Wow, Orin Hatch working with Harry...must be something in it for both of them. Nuclear power is a great option and the Dems need to get on board before they get thrown from the ship.

Phred | 11:59 a.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Naturally occurring uranium ore is not concentrated enough to use as fuel without concentration. So we concentrate it.

As uranium fuels decay the concentration decreases gradually until it is no longer "hot" enough to be effective at generating steam for the turbines and is then replaced.

Currently many countries simply re-concentrate that fuel again. This can be done about 4 times before it is no longer practical. Thus the waste produced is only 20% of what is required to be stored in this country. The only reason we do not do so is because of our political fear of one byproduct - plutonium.

What I do not know is whether the use of thorium is also open to reprocessing or if it is just a one shot wonder that does not have long half-life byproducts.

Either way, letï¿½s get on with it!
And with coal liquefaction!
And methane hydrate!
And oil shale!
And drill!

Fred | 12:05 p.m. Oct. 4, 2008

I've actually been inside the Yucca Mountain facility (mine). Its pretty much solid rock in the middle of a desert where the worlds best experts are working to store waste for 10,000,000 years. Which means they have to take into account not only earth quakes in a very stable region (according to human time) but also potential volcanos which might errupt in the area all so that some farmer 10,000,000 years from now can dig a well on the top of that desert knoll and not get contaminated more than he would by normal radiation which is all around us. Do you know how much Sen. Reid is costing our nation by delaying disposal in YM? Additional hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into to prove, reprove and reprove, and reprove, etc... the same thing over and over and over. But if that were the only cost. Energy independence has been delayed, wars are being fought all while we pay more and more for energy in our economy which is now tanking. These are the costs of Sen. Reid's delays...

Spoc | 12:19 p.m. Oct. 4, 2008

I just took my family out to breakfast and it was very good but consisted of the same type of things I am capable of producing in my own kitchen but cost four times as much. Needless to say, my budget is tight and I cannot afford to do that every day. I am essentially paying someone else to cook instead of paying myself.

We have as a society been living beyond our means and racking up credit card debt to the point that we can no longer afford to pay our VISA bill with our Master Charge. Yet we have the resources to feed our energy needs but we continue to eat out and pay foreign countries to feed us.

And now the politicians want to pay off our excesses in housing by taking out a loan from the Chinese? Does that solve the problem? No it just perpetuates it! They cry about us not being able to pay off our loans. Their solution is to take out another loan so we can get back to the business of buying things we can't afford again?!!

They didn't succeed in buying my vote!!!!!!

Anonymous | 4:56 p.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Thorium wasn't chosen in the early days of nuclear reactors because it doesn't produce plutonium (which we wanted for our lovely nuclear bombs). It's ABOUT TIME we got around to exploiting this practically limitless resource. The liquid flouride thorium reactor will be able to not only use thorium as a fuel source but some of our current nuclear wastes can be "burned" along with it to use/destroy them. We should've been doing this for decades.

Not my backyard | 6:56 p.m. Oct. 4, 2008

It's always interesting to read about how everyone everywhere else wants to get rid of nuclear waste in one of those useless desert wastelands way out west, like Utah or Nevada. What's wrong with shipping it to Phoenix, Juneau, Springfield,or Dover? Surely there's some wasteland around there somewhere!

Brent | 8:02 p.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Spent nuclear fuel is only waste if we are stupid enough not to burn it in a thorium reactor. We have enough thorium stock plied in Nevada to electrify the world for 3 years. when you use a liquid fuel it cannot melt. You do not use an enriched fuel you use it as it comes from the mine. You just dissolve it in solution. No complicated enrichment plant. no complicated fuel rod assemblies ( which the utilities pay million for) only a solution of fluoride salt.

I think we could build one of these within a year if we would just do it.
If you could build a small modular version. then the licensing would be set for the next 1000 or so. you could build them in a factory like cars.

Its perfect anti "big nuke"

Norse of Thorium | 9:15 p.m. Oct. 4, 2008

With over 15 years of research, and just a stone's throw away from powering a city of approximately one million people, Thorium Power will prevail.
The days of stockpiling dangerous waste are over. It doesn't matter, democrat or republican, it's about time our government is realizing that we have been left behind in the dark ages, when so many countries, using France as a top model, are powering the majority of their needs through nuclear. Let us band together and move forward with clean, safe nuclear power .. thorium .. that does not produce weapons grade waste. Bravo Senators Reid and Hatch! Get - er - done!!

Jerome | 11:13 p.m. Oct. 4, 2008

Looking at the Thorium Cycle on the web it appears to be a reprocessing based technology. Senator Hatch's comment about political reality seems to be the critical point of the bill. The bill starts moving the United States from the from the current US policy, instituted by President Carter in 1977, of run the fuel through the reactor one time then bury it permanently in Nevada to a policy of reprocessing the fuel to produce more fuel.

This is more like the reprocessing that France and Japan favor or the heavy water reactors that can use unenriched fuel or spent fuel from other reactors that Canada uses.

Ken | 12:00 p.m. Oct. 5, 2008

Jerome,

Fuel reprocessing will be difficult with solid fuel based thorium reactors, such as those developed by Thorium Power, these are once through as well, but they are breeder reactors, they burn the fuel in situ, not post processing. Thorium oxide very difficult to handle in any known reprocessing processes, the Indian's have been banging on it for years. What this design allows for is the utilization of reactor waste plutonium obtained from conventional LEU reactors to be used to drive the processes forward and in the process dispose of the plutonium. The Thorium blanket is like a Yule log that sits in the reactor for over a decade, trans-mutating and burning the Thorium and producing GWs of electricity. 2/3rds of the input plutonium is burned down in the process, with three changes of the plutonium seed driver elements in this time period. Any PWR can accept this fuel with minimal modification.

If you read Hatch's press release, a third if it is quoted from Thorium Power's CEO. They also authored the UAE's governmental white paper on the adoption of nuclear power.

Friend | 4:50 a.m. Dec. 12, 2008

Nuclear power is a must the chances of a melt down are very slim so slim it is almost impossible. we need to run 80% of the worlds power with it and 20% with renewable energy.

thorium reactors burn Nuclear waist so put 16 of them around each power plant and no nuclear waist goes underground this sounds like a lot of money but the thorium reactors power them self and more.

so when they build a Nuclear power plant they should leave room for 16 thorium reactors to be set around them.

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