Thorium - The Future of Energy?

scientists say climate change is getting worse and there could be serious consequences for our planet in the next 20 years surface temperature the planet is warmer than it was a hundred years ago is this whole global warming problem going to be a lot easier to solve than anybody imagined what the world needs now is nuclear energy hi welcome to another cold fusion video in previous videos we've gone over many future energy solutions all with their pros and cons but today we'll be looking at something a little bit different a strange as it may sound nuclear energy may be the future and thorium may be the fuel that revolutionized us that future it could just be what we need to make a safe minimal waste and carbon neutral energy supply recently if there's been a lot of excitement around thorium so let's take a look at why thorium is a better fuel its downsides and how the Cold War hindered a safer nuclear future with thorium [Music] every time you turn on your laptop click on your house lights or even charge your new electric car you are using electricity mostly created from burning fossil fuels over 80% of the global energy supply is created using greenhouse gas emitted coal oil and natural gas renewables such as hydro solar and wind face some economic and practical hurdles although these sources are improving it may be a while before the full global energy supply is fueled by renewables in the mean time it's clear that we need something better than what we have today and this is where nuclear energy comes in when the word nuclear is mentioned Hiroshima Chernobyl and Fukushima often springs to mind or maybe you remember the dangerous radioactive green sludge from The Simpsons the Homer worked with nuclear energy is clean but dangerous but with the use of thorium maybe nuclear can drop the dangerous tag and just be clean let's take a look at how thorium could revolutionize the world there are many positives to thorium especially when compared with uranium let's take a look at some thorium is named after the god of thunder for its it's two doors down from uranium on the periodic table and is much like it's concentrated stable cousin uranium is commonly used for nuclear power plants but there are many advantages when thorium is used instead for one thorium is a much more highly concentrated or thin uranium meaning it takes less work to extract the same amount of energy generating potential during the mining process there is also three times more thorium in the Earth's crust than uranium in terms of energy production one tonne of thorium is approximately equal to 35 tonnes of uranium and 4 million tons of coal this is largely due to the improved efficiency and recycling properties of a thorium reactor through Neutron bombardment thorium is turned into uranium 233 which is then used for nuclear reactions unlike uranium-235 which is used in most nuclear power generation the thorium derived to uranium 233 is terrible as a nuclear weapon actually that's one of the reasons why thorium reactors were not further funded in the 1960s while the US government was in the midst of the Cold War there was ongoing search projects into both uranium and thorium as suitable nuclear fuels the u.s. decided to opt for uranium power plants partly because the byproducts can be used for nuclear weapons they fear that the Soviets were doing the same in these strange circumstances uranium came out on top and over the next few decades uranium became the industry standard and a major reason why any new power plants for uranium and not thorium reactors thorium is a weak radioactive metal while uranium in its enriched form is difficult to contain uranium mining for yellowcake is also very dangerous to workers as the or releases radon gas when mind due to the nature of thorium power generating processes being in liquid form is both the fuel and the coolant in the reactor this means that it can self regulate the temperature slowing down the process if the temperature gets too high supposedly this makes thorium reactors incapable of having a meltdown and that's pretty interesting and probably the thing that sets thorium reactors apart from their contemporary counterparts while nuclear power plants may be considered clean as they don't emit greenhouse gasses they still do produce nuclear waste currently this waste degrades over a half-life of 100,000 years for thorium this is 300 years and in addition it's much less toxic in comparison according to some estimates thorium may also produce 0.6% of the radioactive waste when compared to uranium based nuclear power so for all of these positives there still are some negatives to thorium due to the focus on uranium thorium reactor designs have been neglected currently thorium reactors are still in the research stage in many countries after a need interest but while this is good this still means that we are a while away from any projects being functional due to the lack of infrastructure the startup cost for this technology are very high figures for capital and operational expenditure at this stage is all speculative and no one really knows the associated costs that this will be in practice hence the race between uranium and thorium may already be over as the start-up costs may cancel out any of the long term benefits of what might be a better safer fuel thorium isn't perfect it's still radioactive and still produces waste this may pose another issue when it comes to handling and shielding the material perhaps the biggest threat to thorium nuclear energy is the fact that there hasn't been much experience with it in an industry where the stakes are higher both financially and in terms of safety the philosophy is quite conservative it's unlikely that people will take risks and experiment with thorium hence the progress of this technology is bound to be slow during research stages it's often easy to protect the benefits it's only during testing that the real issues and hurdles become apparent while we are certainly interested in looking continuing to look at thorium as a possibility and particularly a possibility for for the future the fact remains that we have an entire fuel cycle built up around uranium and it would be a dramatic shift and very costly shift to move on any sort of short time scale to forea [Music] thorium's got potential a lot of it thorium reactors are in a good position to take over their carbon neutral and compared to current nuclear processes results in much less waste they're also safer has a more abundant fuel source as a raw material and their potential to be used as nuclear weapons is minimal solar wind hydro and other processes could be ideal for the environment but we live in a world which demands electricity and that demand at least at the moment can't be met purely by renewables just yet it is very possible that renewables will get to that stage but in the meantime there's no harm in taking a deeper look at thorium you could feed our energy demand while decreasing the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted into our atmosphere it's an interesting and exciting technology and it just may be the technology that we need ok so that wraps up our look at thorium reactors if you did enjoy this video and want to see more videos on science and technology feel free to subscribe this has been - go go you've been watching cold fusion and I'll catch you soon again for the next video cheers guys have a good one cold fusion are you thinking [Music]

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 647,320

Rating: 4.8671126 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: U1lIfFcxVuY

Length: 8min 14sec (494 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2019

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