opinion@dailylobo.com
It’s widely agreed that cheap access to electricity is a good thing for the average person. However, what’s not so easy is providing that cheap electricity in a manner that won’t cause environmental devastation. However, there is a solution: nuclear power.
I know what you’re thinking: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Nuclear power plants are giant death buildings that are ready to hemorrhage radioactive contamination if one little crack appears in a concrete containment housing.
Or worse, they might just explode spectacularly.
Yes, uranium is used both in nuclear reactors and in nuclear bombs, the latter of which are designed specifically to explode spectacularly. However, the truth is the real danger of nuclear power comes not from possible meltdowns and mushroom clouds, but from radioactive waste, the byproduct of both electricity generation and uranium mining.
But what if we had a nuclear fuel that was ridiculously common, easy to mine and refine and was not radioactive enough to produce dangerous waste or to be used in a nuclear weapon?
And what if that alternative nuclear fuel was incredibly energy dense and small, efficient generators using it could power fossil fuel-guzzling vehicles such as ships and planes?
Let me introduce you to thorium nuclear power: a much safer, more efficient and overall better way to generate clean and cheap electricity than traditional nuclear power.
Thorium nuclear power differs from uranium nuclear power in several key ways, the first of which begins at the mining stage.
For starters, thorium is much less radioactive than uranium. It only gives off alpha radiation, which can be blocked by clothes and skin. By comparison, uranium throws off high amounts of gamma radiation, which can cause acute radiation sickness in short order, with death following.
As such, thorium extraction would be much cheaper since workers don’t need to be heavily suited up and don’t need to go through decontamination. Thorium refining would also be much cheaper since it’s less complex, requiring only high temperatures, a sodium hydroxide solution and very little machinery.
Regarding thorium nuclear reactors themselves, costs in construction and the amount of usable land lost to the plant are greatly reduced. Thorium reactors are not the sprawling, water-filled pools that are uranium reactors.
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Rather, the thorium fuel is mixed right into the moderator, the material that controls and sustains the nuclear reaction. Thorium reactors use molten minerals as a moderator, as opposed to water. This saves a lot of space in terms of containment and other safety measures, which means that power plants are much smaller and could cost less.
Also, thorium is far safer as a nuclear fuel from a security standpoint than uranium. For one, thorium does not contain enough fissile mass to be used in nuclear weapons, or to even produce enough radiation for a dirty bomb. It is farther down on the nuclear decay chain than uranium and has far fewer sub-atomic particles to throw off as radioactivity.
If terrorists were somehow able to get a hold of a kilo of thorium from a reactor, which would be next to impossible since the thorium would be mixed in with molten-hot minerals at temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius, there’s no way they could create a nuclear weapon.
So basically, thorium is cheaper and safer to extract than uranium, and its properties allow the design of nuclear power plants that are safer and more compact than ever before.
But that’s not all.
The best part is, thorium power could be applied in a wide variety of situations as an alternative to fossil fuels due to the compactness of the reactors.
Of course, there’s the obvious application of using thorium nuclear reactors to in traditional roles generate electricity for industrial complexes, residential areas and whole towns and cities.
You could see thorium-powered merchant marine freighters and cruise ships. Strangely enough, this one actually has a precedent: the N.S. Savannah, which traveled the seas as part of an Eisenhower administration Cold War publicity stunt called “Atoms for Peace”.
There’s also the possibility of thorium-powered aircraft. And yes, you guessed it, this idea goes all the way back to the Cold War as well, though in this case from an pre-ICBM Air Force program looking to keep strategic nuclear bombers aloft for weeks at a time.
All three of these applications combined could cut down fossil fuel use drastically, and keep oil relegated to sectors such as gasoline and diesel and petrochemicals. The U.S. would produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions and could stretch its domestic oil supplies further since they would be used in far fewer sectors, and could reduce, if not eliminate, oil imports.
The key takeaway point here is that not all nuclear is created equal. Thorium costs less to extract and refine due to its low radioactivity. That same trait keeps it, and its byproducts, from being fissile enough for nuclear weapons. And it can be applied across a wide range of energy sectors due to the compact reactor designs that it’s paired with.
There’s a good chance that thorium power may just be the next must-have clean energy solution in the U.S.; it’s already being used in India and China. And it may also just be the one that sticks around permanently.