Pogi: The only isotope required in a thorium reactor is an isotope of thorium, thorium 303, which kick starts the reaction. Meaning, uranium is no longer required!

However, I understand the indians are trialling a thorium reactor that doubles as a slow breeder, where they can burn and reburn former nuclear waste, thereby reducing the half life of nuclear waste to just 300 years?

Thorium offers all the advantages of fusion without any of the inherent problems or danger! And given new desalination technology that utilises deionization and produces 95% Potable water for quarter of the cost of reverse osmosis!

Which when coupled to the world's cheapest cleanest safest energy? Able to make all the arid deserts of all the world bloom; and with just our current aid budgets, to make them into safe sanctuaries for the 65 million displaced people now languishing in refugee camps.

Then allow the dignity of "food production" work to replace unending handouts! Then redirect that former handout money into washing machines, lighting and laptops in every household, as the first step into a brave new world and a thousand year peace!

Every western style economy rest on just two support pillars, energy and capital! If we could remove greed driven hands from those and all the other cash cow essential service, we'd turn our world into a virtual shangri la!

Even more so, if we could outlaw middlemen profit takers, who add nothing but their profit demands and the usual paper shuffle. Removing them from our commercial reality, would halve the cost of living or doing business.

We shouldn't have pay some billionaire robber baron for stuff that falls from the sky as a gift and needed in all manner of production!

We must not go to war over it but ensure the world has all it needs as the only price worth paying, for peace!

And as minimum incomes traverse through $7500.00 a year, see populations plateau and stabilize. And as average incomes rise above $50,000 per, see population number contract, and the actual experience, when economic outcomes are successfully implemented!
Alan B.

Pogo. If you want to learn more about Nuclear matters go to
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/unclear-about-nuclear/content-section-4.5

Alan B. Thorium 232 is a fertile material which by definition needs another source of neutrons to ultimately transmute it into U233 which is Fissile. I am not sure what the minimum mass of material which would be required to produce a sustainable reactor, but I suspect that it would be considerably more than your 8 grams of thorium.

See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

David

Sucked in, that's all I can say.
You tried to pull a fast one on the indigenous and they sent you packing.
Saw you coming long before you came.

Seriously, you knew they'd oppose it and for good reasons but you pushed the issue anyway.
Spent the taxpayers money anyway.
Hoping that somehow you could manipulate and baffle them with bs like the corporate media does to Australians every single day and low and behold "We're shocked!, they didn't go along with it."

"We assumed these black people are stupid..."

You know in some ways it makes them a whole lot smarter then the average dumbed-down narrow-minded corporate-news-reading Aussie.
And still the pro-dumpers are going to keep pushing the issue, despite the "respect for the indigenous people" lip service insults they think will ultimately result in lining their own pockets.

The funny thing about my opinion is that I'm actually pro-nuclear, and pro-thorium.
I'd support a 50yr exploitation of nuclear power to power our nation as we move to renewables.

But I'm not going to support a nuclear waste dump if that's the only thing you can come up with to save south SA.
If that's the best you can come up with then SA deserves to die, give the whole state back to the indigenous.
At least THEY did not ever consider turning it into a nuclear waste dump.

The authors last article talked about reprocessing, but as one waded into the article it was about burying the waste in closed in tunnels.
Which is it?

I won't support a nuclear waste facility without nuclear power plants.
I won't turn this country into a nuclear waste dump if we are not even gaining the benefit of cheaper clean emission nuclear power.
I'm not paying what we pay in electricity and copping a nuclear waste dump as well, you must all be idiots.

This reprocessing business:
If the waste can be stored safely AND reprocessed at a later date - that is something I'd willingly consider.
But only if we have our own nuclear industry.

Alan B. I have done some further searching on the web and it appears that quite a bit has been done to try and produce a thorium reactor and except for the Indians, all have given it up as a futile very expensive exercise. The theory all sounds nice, just add a bit of U233 to your Th232 and away you go, the Th232 absorbs a neutron and after a couple of steps becomes U233 and the chain reaction continues. Unfortunately due to the mass of material required, this process takes quite a long time to get to equilibrium and U233 itself is a very hazardous material.
Just put "Thorium reactor" into your search engine and have a look for yourself. Don't just read the Wikipedia version, that was written by someone with stars in his eyes.
Also read http://thebulletin.org/thorium-wonder-fuel-wasnt7156.

David

Hi Noel

Thanks for another excellent nuclear waste article.

Overoptimistic Weatherill & Friend's projections of future revenue/profits from a waste dump are unhelpful because cost/revenue forecasts are totally unpredictable. Existing waste dumps have cost $Billions but earned nothing.

If there is money in nuclear Waste Dumps can anyone point to an existing waste dump overseas that is making the riches the SA Dump spruikers promise?

Russia and China generate alot of waste and like Australia have large deserts. Are Russian and Chinese desert waste dumps reaping the $Billions the South Australian dump lobby promise?

High level radioactive waste frequently needs to be cooled in pools of water that require constant electricity for water circulation - like cooling pools at the Fukushima nuclear complex and Lucas Heights. Any cessation of the electricity supply can lead to disasters like Fukushima.

The long term revenue and profits from Waste Dumps have been notoriously hard to predict and have cost $Billions with no $Billions earned. For example:

- Finland's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository#History is not yet earning anything, and

- conceived since 1987 the US Yucca Mountain waste dump project has not earned a cent yet it has more than the equivalent of AU$12 Billion in US taxpayers money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository#The_facility

Dream on boys who belittle Noel's excellent articles.

Pete