clean, safe, thorium fuelled nuclear power plants

[link to www.resourceinvestor.com]

The clean and safe alternatives to coal burning technology, that are ready for prime time, are, of course, nuclear power plants. America built the first such “civilian” nuclear power plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, more than 50 years ago. It was fuelled not with uranium but with thorium. The nuclear power industry ultimately went with uranium, because the perceived need for nuclear weapons meant that the government pushed the nuclear power industry in that direction to insure economies of scale in the production of highly enriched uranium and of plutonium.

The time of the massive need for nuclear weapons is over. American mining companies have discovered and proved immense deposits of thorium in Idaho and surrounds. A national interest in switching from uranium to thorium is held back only by the economics of replacing all of the existing uranium fuelled nuclear power plants with thorium fuelled ones, and by the lack of interest in building new plants paradoxically due to fear that is mostly out-of-place when uranium is replaced by thorium.

Government must step in and level the playing field and initiate an age of clean, safe, thorium fuelled nuclear power plants to eventually replace first the existing civilian uranium fuelled nuclear power plants and then ultimately all of the coal fired plants as well. This would completely eliminate electric power generation as a source of carbon dioxide! A newly energized American nuclear power plant design and manufacturing industry could guarantee the American standard of living for generations and produce immense wealth for America by selling the technology globally.

Solar powered plants are also a substitute for coal fired ones, but the technology and cost structure still needs work that only a massive federally funded program can hope to achieve.

3. Alternate fuels are a stopgap, because, except for hydrogen, they are all hydrocarbon based such as ethnaol and biodiesel, so that they produce carbon dioxide when burned. The President has called for the replacement by 2017 of 35 billion gallons of gasoline by alternate fuels. If a hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure can be begun by then it will mean that ultimately hydrocarbon fuels will become only curiosities, but the hydrogen economy can only be accomplished with massive federal funding and well constructed enabling legislation.

Foreign nations with less efficient agriculture than ours will not be eager to convert feed and food corn to ethanol production, but American engineered ethanol production technology using grasses and biomass systems will sell well globally if and when developed commercially.

4. Finally, the President mentioned the development of battery technology as an alternate energy source. This can refer only to safe, reliable, high capacity, rechargeable, high cycle life batteries for use in vehicles and heavy machinery.

Today the power and cycle life for vehicle operation can only be achieved by batteries based on lithium ion technology. Japan, Korea and China already nationally sponsor lithium ion battery technology development. Companies in those countries already produce lithium ion batteries for powering portable personal entertainment devices. Even though the technology was invented in the U.S. and developed here first.

The race is thus already on to develop lithium ion batteries large enough and powerful enough to safely and reliably be used to power vehicles and give them the range and performance of contemporary vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. The United States has large reserves of lithium in Nevada, and Chile has even larger reserves. We need to resolve not to waste these assets or let competing nations acquire them.

No American company in the battery development industry is large enough to finance the development of an ideal lithium-ion battery. The major American battery manufacturers have a vested interest in existing lead-acid battery technology, and the American car companies simply don’t have the in-house expertise to evaluate a lithium-ion battery development program much less undertake one.