Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are seen as the future of energy. The concept is simple, yet thoroughly investigated. When people started to do research in the field of nuclear energy in the mid-nineties, the molten salt reactors were soon invented. However, it is only a few years ago since mankind seriously took the liquid fluoride thorium reactors into account. This decision to further investigate the liquid fluoride thorium reactors could be the solution for the earth’s energy problem. Currently, (non-) renewable energy resources are being used at a staggering speed. Soon, there will be only a little non-renewable energy resources left which will be very expensive. In addition to the other renewable resources, liquid fluoride thorium reactors would be able to increase the resources and meet the huge global energy demand. Why were the liquid fluoride thorium reactors only five years ago considered to be a possible solution to the earth’s energy problem when it was invented many years before? Were there major drawbacks? How effective is a liquid fluoride thorium reactor? Has there been discoveries lately which could have made the liquid fluoride thorium reactors possible now? These and many more questions have led to the following research question: Is it possible to apply liquid fluoride thorium reactors to generate renewable energy? The research will start with some historic background information, recent investigations and the current situation concerning the liquid fluoride thorium reactors. Then, the basic scientific concept of the molten salt reactors will be explained. After that, the biggest advantages and disadvantages will be discussed in order to come up with the conclusion whether one should implement the concept of... ... middle of paper ... ...es, R. and Moir, R. 2010. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors : An old idea in nuclear power gets reexamined. American Scientists. International Panel on Fissile Materials. 2010. Reducing and Eliminating Nuclear Weapons: Country Perspectives on the Challenges to Nuclear Disarmament. Machine Design. 2010. Thinking Nuclear? Think Thorium. Miller, G.T. and Spoolman, S.E. 2012. Living in the environment. Canada: Nelson Education, Cengage Learning. The Weinberg Foundation, 2013. Report for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Thorium Energy: Thorium-Fuelled Molten Salt Reactors. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 2014. Plutonium. Office of Public Affairs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 1998. Toxicological Review of Beryllium and Compounds. Weinberg, A. M. 1994. The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer. New York: Springer.
Imagine working with radioactive materials in a secret camp, and the government not telling you that this material is harmful to your body. In the book Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown, she takes her readers on a journey to expose what happened in the first two cities that started producing plutonium. Brown is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has won a handful of prizes, such as the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the Best Book in International European History, and was also a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. Brown wrote this book by looking through hundreds of archives and interviews with people, the evidence she found brought light to how this important history of the Cold War left a nuclear imprint on the world today.
This theme describes the inter-related processes by which the partially decrepit and moribund nuclear apparatus is being dismantled, appropriated, recycled, commodified, and memorialized in contemporary culture (e.
Together with the Soviet Union we have made the crucial breakthroughs that have begun the process of limiting nuclear arms. But we must set as our goal not just limiting but reducing and finally destroying these terrible weapons so that they cannot destroy civilization and so that the threat of nuclear war will no longer hang over the world and the people.
... in American history’, there is much evidence to suggest otherwise. Nevertheless, Strickland’s study does offer a valuable guide to the development of ideas, organizations and associations the formed by atomic scientists immediately after the World War II. It, however, not does include an extensive analysis of the Manhattan Project scientists’ wartime messages, nor does it investigate the tenets behind them. Correspondingly, Robert Gilpin’s study extensively covers the scientists’ role in atomic energy policy-making in the post-war decades. Although his study in useful for evaluating how scientists can be more successfully integrated into matters of nuclear weapons policy, it fails to consider the varying forms of the atomic scientists’ wartime movement and its relevance for considering their successes and failures in influencing post-war nuclear weapons policy.
From the creation of nuclear weapons at the start of the Cold War to today, the world has experienced struggles fueled by the want of nuclear power. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran’s nuclear weapon program are some of the most important conflicts over nuclear weapons. Thanks to the use of nuclear weapons in 1945 to end World War II, the world has come extremely close to a nuclear war, and more countries have began developing nuclear power. Unmistakably, many conflicts since the start of the Cold War have been caused by nuclear weapons, and there are many more to come.
From scientific breakthroughs that revolutionized our understanding of the world to practical inventions that changed the way we live, scientific and technological developments in the 20th century have profoundly altered nearly every aspect of our lives. We usually think of these changes as wholly positive, but when you look at the destruction caused after the first two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, this view tends to be distorted. As we can see by this horrific event, technology can be used to improve lives, but also destroy them.
The use of nuclear power in the mid-1980s was not a popular idea on account of all the fears that it had presented. The public seemed to have rejected it because of the fear of radiation. The Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union in April of 1986 reinforced the fears, and gave them an international dimension (Cohen 1). Nevertheless, the public has to come to terms that one of the major requirements for sustaining human progress is an adequate source of energy. The current largest sources of energy are the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. Fear of radiation may push nuclear power under the carpet but another fear of the unknown is how costly is this going to be? If we as the public have to overcome the fear of radiation and costly project, we first have to understand the details of nuclear energy. The known is a lot less scary then the unknown. If we could put away all the presumptions we have about this new energy source, then maybe we can understand that this would be a good decision for use in the near future.
Because light water reactors manage dangerously high pressures, large containment buildings have to be built. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors have no high pressure and are safer, so less money is spent on construction and safety systems. The fuel cost is lower as well because thorium is four times more common than uranium. Developing liquid fluoride thorium reactors and factories to meet our energy needs would cost around $5 billion. The total to build a 100-megawatt liquid fluoride thorium reactor on an assembly line would total about $200 million, and the fuel costs about $10,000 per year. In comparison, it costs $10-12 billion to make one new light water reactor and $50-60 million for fuel every
There are two main types of nuclear reactors used in the world, Pressurized Water Reactors, known as PWR’s, and Boiling Water Reactors, known as BWR’s. The former is more complicated and thusly more safe and more commonly used, while the latter presents several unnecessary hazards and is quickly being phased out of usage (Duke, n.d.). In both systems, reactions take place inside of a reaction chamber located within a co...
One of the biggest and most prevalent problems is the need for clean, renewable, sustainable energy. On the forefront of these problems comes the following solutions: nuclear energy, hydro-electric energy, and photovoltaic energy. With the need for energy in today’s current world, exploring different ways of producing power is necessary. The differences and similarities between nuclear energy and alternative energy are important to look over and examine in depth, so that it is plain to see the positive and negative effects of energy production. To begin, nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission, which is the splitting of an atom to start a chain reaction (“11 Facts”).
Nuclear power, the use of exothermic nuclear processes to produce an enormous amount of electricity and heat for domestic, medical, military and industrial purposes i.e. “By the end of 2012 2346.3 kilowatt hours (KWh) of electricity was generated by nuclear reactors around the world” (International atomic energy agency Vienna, 2013, p.13). However, with that been said it is evident that the process of generating electricity from a nuclear reactor has numerous health and environmental safety issues.
Power from nuclear fusion reactors would be a welcome achievement for the 21st century, and at the current rate of progress it seems likely that before the end of the new century energy will be available from nuclear fusion. It is estimated that it will take over a decade from the time a sustainable fusion reaction is achieved before fusion power will be available for use. But the attention being devoted to research is strong, the experiments are coming closer to fruition, and we are coming closer to having an almost limitless supply of energy.
He divided their environments into different levels. Firstly, he described the microsystem as the system that is closest and one that will have the most influence on them. School and home fall within this system. For example, parent’s and teacher’s views on sustainability will influence how a child reacts to it. Also children’s interactions with parents, teachers and peers will affect how they are treated in return (Bronfenbrenner, 1994). Clearly this is why ecologising education is important and by doing so education creates critical thinkers. The potential benefits for young people that are eco-literate are that they can begin to negotiate and act on their own purposes, values and feelings, rather than those that they have uncritically acquired from others (Mezirow, 2000). Through learner driven participation children show that they should be treated as solutionaries, and vital stakeholders in the fight for their sustainable futures. Secondly, there are the exosystem which includes schools and the community, and the macrosystem which includes broader society, such as national customs and political philosophy. The decisions made within these systems effects them, though they have no say in the decision making process (Bronfenbrenner, 1994). This shows unmistakable signs of why ecological approaches to environmental sustainability are being hindered. The decisions about
The greatest disadvantages of nuclear energy are the risks posed to mankind and the environment by radioactive materials. ‘On average a nuclear plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel cla...