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Thorium - Uranium's Successor

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billhill

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On the uranium bull thread the issue of another radioactive mineral has arisn. Thorium.

If you research this mineral as a source of nuclear fuel it is claimed to produce less shorter half life waste. Be more difficult to use in nuclear weapons. More suitable then uranium as a fuel and more abundant in the earths crust.

So is this a legitimate contender to knock uranium off its nuclear throne. What do you think?

Billhill
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

From what I've seen it needs to be looked at.

I like the idea that we might be speaking about something that is relatively untapped as a rseource and may be worth $%^& loads when the green tree huggers realise there is an alternative to that nasty yellow stuff that causes nuclear fall out.

Time to do some more research and see who is pushing it.
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

billhill said:
On the uranium bull thread the issue of another radioactive mineral has arisn. Thorium.

If you research this mineral as a source of nuclear fuel it is claimed to produce less shorter half life waste. Be more difficult to use in nuclear weapons. More suitable then uranium as a fuel and more abundant in the earths crust.

So is this a legitimate contender to knock uranium off its nuclear throne. What do you think?

Billhill
Click to expand...

which listed ASX companies produce thorium?

thx

mS
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

Directly i've been unable to find any thorium miners listed or unlisted. But the source below would seem to indicate that it is a common byproduct of mineral sands mining. So mineral sand miners are likely in the best position to benefit from any commercialisation of thorium. However that said, any of the uranium juniors would probably be quick to jump on the bandwagon.

http://earthsci.org/mineral/mindep/depfile/minsand.htm

Billhill
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

It's not used as an energy source at present but thorium is inherently safer (and far more abundant) than uranium. It doesn't have the imminent depletion problem of oil (and soon gas) or the global warming aspect of coal. So it's certainly got some positives.

Of course there are negatives too - it DOES produce dangerous waste although this remains dangerous for far less time than the waste from conventional uranium reactors (and arguably less time than the CO2 emissions from coal / oil / gas).

As for accidents, you have to keep externally exciting a thorium reactor otherwise it stops dead. A bit like how a petrol engine needs electricity to the spark plugs - take away that small amount of electricity and the engine stops there and then regardless of how much fuel it has available. So thorium reactors are much safer - no external excitement = no reaction.

IMO we'll be using thorium as an energy source once gas supplies peak globally (probably around 2030 based on current knowledge) and it may well become a dominant energy source eventuall. But I very much doubt we'll see a power reactor operating before 2020 unless there's a real panic over either oil/gas depletion or global warming (or both) or something drastic happens (eg oil/gas exports from Russia and Middle East cut off). Even then, there's no chance of it being a major energy source within 20 years (in practice almost certainly longer) no matter what happens.

To my understanding, Australia is to thorium what the Middle East is to oil or Russia is to gas so it's potentially a winner for Australia. But then we're dominant in uranium reserves and have the world's largest brown coal deposit (13% of world reserves) and quite a bit of black coal too. :2twocents
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

Check out ARU, their MD has been going on about Thorium for 12 months or so now, they have Thorium in their U deposit, just not sure how much,
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

The thing with Thorium is that it can never explode like a bomb because it needs to be pushed conctantly to have fission. However Thorium may be pushed aside because Chinese scientists created something called the pebble bed reactor which uses physics to make it impossible for a melt down... it is meltdown proof made for uranium. These reactors are also cheaper to make then fast breeders and all the old crap.
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

The thing with Thorium is that it can never explode like a bomb because it needs to be pushed conctantly to have fission. However Thorium may be pushed aside because Chinese scientists created something called the pebble bed reactor which uses physics to make it impossible for a melt down... it is meltdown proof made for uranium. These reactors are also cheaper to make then fast breeders and all the old crap
Click to expand...

That may be so but the big factor with thorium is that its more abundant then uranium and hence a lot cheaper. The ecconomics look good for the mineral and there is already limited commercialisation in india and now poland.
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

billhill said:
That may be so but the big factor with thorium is that its more abundant then uranium and hence a lot cheaper. The ecconomics look good for the mineral and there is already limited commercialisation in india and now poland.
Click to expand...
You're right it is more abundant and cheaper... It's hard to tell where nuclear energy is going... The only reason why Uranium was used in the first place was because of USA. They wanted to make Big bombs
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

Smurf1976 said:
It's not used as an energy source at present but thorium is inherently safer (and far more abundant) than uranium. It doesn't have the imminent depletion problem of oil (and soon gas) or the global warming aspect of coal. So it's certainly got some positives.

Of course there are negatives too - it DOES produce dangerous waste although this remains dangerous for far less time than the waste from conventional uranium reactors (and arguably less time than the CO2 emissions from coal / oil / gas).

As for accidents, you have to keep externally exciting a thorium reactor otherwise it stops dead. A bit like how a petrol engine needs electricity to the spark plugs - take away that small amount of electricity and the engine stops there and then regardless of how much fuel it has available. So thorium reactors are much safer - no external excitement = no reaction.

IMO we'll be using thorium as an energy source once gas supplies peak globally (probably around 2030 based on current knowledge) and it may well become a dominant energy source eventuall. But I very much doubt we'll see a power reactor operating before 2020 unless there's a real panic over either oil/gas depletion or global warming (or both) or something drastic happens (eg oil/gas exports from Russia and Middle East cut off). Even then, there's no chance of it being a major energy source within 20 years (in practice almost certainly longer) no matter what happens.

To my understanding, Australia is to thorium what the Middle East is to oil or Russia is to gas so it's potentially a winner for Australia. But then we're dominant in uranium reserves and have the world's largest brown coal deposit (13% of world reserves) and quite a bit of black coal too. :2twocents
Click to expand...

Great post.
Agree 100%.
Uranium is the way to go for now and will be for at least the next 10 years IMO.
Does any1 know any thorium pure plays?
-Yeh, i thought so-
If the potential was that great, trust me, there would be many.
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

Well actually nizar, here's one for you.
Called Novastar resourses its in the process of changing its name to thorium Power after buying the company of the same name.

http://www.novastarresources.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=121550&p=irol-irhome

In particular it specialises in proliferation resistant technologies. In an increasing nuclear world it would be useful technology that the UN can offer to at risk countries.
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

Hi All,
I also read an article in COSMOS magazine a few months ago about Thorium. And l was also having a laugh because 60minutes was doing to whole china syndrome crap.
From what l've read, Thorium can't start the reaction because it needs plutonium to start the chain reaction. And if u put enough plutonium in to start the Thorium reaction, then there is no way for a meltdown. Probably more complicated than that, sounds better than what we have today.
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

So what's the catch?

Fascinating posts smurf, but I don't understand. If thorium is so good, the electricity market would have picked it up and we would be building thorium plants.

Is it the classic chicken and egg problem? No thorium development so no end users?

I even remember a company (was it RRS?) that thought it had uranium in SAfrica, but it turned out to be only thorium so it was caned.
 
Re: Thorium. Uranium's Successor

My understanding of this element is it has a medical use too, and is used for doing scans.
 
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