History of thorium
Thorium is naturally a radioactive chemical element, which was discovered in 1828 from the Norwegian mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark, and named Thor from Jons Jakob Bezelius, which means the “Norse God of Thunder.” Thorium is the most abundant metal found in earth crust and had been scattered million years ago in the galaxy, with the explosion of meteors known as supernova. Thorium generates radioactive gas products, as radon-20 decay. Other decay by-products of thorium are radium and actinium. But, thorium is found in nature as thorium-232, which has a half-life and endures under alpha decay. Thorium decay produces a significant amount of internal heat energy. Thorium is found in the same amount as lead, and four times greater than uranium. Thorium is a cheap metal and plentiful. The pure thorium found in nature is a white metal, where in contact with heated air it ignites brightly with a white light. Thorium source is found in the rare phosphate mineral of monazite, which contains 12% thorium, and monazite resources are predicted to be 12million tones, mostly in India.
What are the byproducts (waste) versus conventional uranium reactors? Half-lives of the products are important!
The natural isotope thorium-232 is a fertile element which has an ability to be used as a nuclear fuel. Thorium-232 is not fissile, it is fertile and it captures neutrons in order to produce, two beta decays, Uranium-233, which is fissile. It is important that thorium fuel don’t need to proceed the isotope division, versus uranium which requires separation of isotopes. The thorium cycle forms uranium-233, which if it divides from the fuel reactor can be used for making nuclear weapons. Thorium as a fertile element transmu...
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...aments in light bulbs.
Works Cited
--."Thorium." Thorium. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2013. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Thorium/ --."Thorium and the Liquid-Fluoride Reactor: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." The Energy From Thorium Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/ --."Thorium Fuel Test Begins at Research Reactor in Norway." POWER Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
--."WHAT•IS•NUCLEAR?" What Is Nuclear? / Thorium As Nuclear Fuel: The Good and the Bad. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
--."The Uranium Explosive Myth." Nuclear Chain Reaction. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2013. http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/the-uranium-explosive-myth.html --."Thorium Element Facts." Chemicool. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.
http://www.chemicool.com/elements/thorium.html
The development of atomic bomb boosted the level of understanding in terms of physics and chemistry of that particular time period. Physicists started to realize that stable nuclei can be converted to unstable nuclei. Through such process, they discovered that heavy nuclei can undergo nuclear fission. While testing, they added a neutron to an isotope of Uranium 235. This resulted Uranium 235 to become unstable and break down into Barium and Krypton, releasing two to three more neutrons. The breakdown of Uranium 235 is called “fission”. When the released neutrons attach to other isotopes of Uranium 235, this can result in a chain reaction of fission. For every generation of fission, the amount of fission is doubled, and this resulted in an extreme outburst of energy. The amount of energy released by this process is related to Einstein’s famous equation “E=mc^2” (Wolf).
Strontium was discovered by Adair Crawford, an Irish chemist, in 1790 while studying the mineral witherite (BaCO3). When he mixed witherite with hydrochloric acid (HCl), he did not get the results he expected. He assumed that his sample of witherite was contaminated with an unknown mineral, a mineral he named strontianite (SrCO3). Strontium was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy, an English chemist, in 1808 through the electrolysis of a mixture of strontium chloride (SrCl2) and mercuric oxide (HgO). Strontium reacts vigorously with water and quickly tarnishes in air, so it must be stored out of contact with air and water. Due to its extreme reactivity to air, this element always naturally occurs combined with other elements and compounds. Strontium is very
3. Dannen, Gene. "Atomic Bomb: Decision." http://www.dannen.com. N.p., 9 Aug. 2003. Web. 1 Jan. 2011
This element when becoming an isotope can become radioactive due to its high activity as a metal. In its natural state it is a soft metal and it has a shiny “ wax “ like silver/white color to it, it is so soft that a knife could cut through it without a problem.
Cost and availability of fuel is a considerable factor when dealing with nuclear power. Fission requires an element that can be easily split in a particle accelerator, such as uranium or plutonium. Fusion, on the other hand, uses isotopes of hydrogen atoms, specifically deuterium and tritium, that can be obtained from ordinary water. Uranium ores occur naturally in many parts of the world but must go through a costly purification process before used as fuel. The unprocessed ore contains approximately 99.3% uranium-238, a non-fissionable isotope of uranium, and only about 0.7% of U-235 required for fission. One hydrogen atom out of 6700 appears as deuterium, a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen with an extra neutron, and can easily be separated from the rest. Uranium-235 is a non-renewable resource that will eventually run out, much like the fossil fuels. The abundance of deuterium and lithium provide a virtually unlimited supply of fuel for nuclear fusion. Therefore, nuclear fusion seems to be the better choice.
When the first bomb was made a site in Alamogordo, New Mexico was chosen as the testing ground. In order for the bomb to explode, all the nuclei of the several grams of Uranium would have to be split. A sphere of Uranium the size of a baseball would cause an explosion that equaled the strength of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. When the bomb had exploded there was a tower and the explosion had turned the asphalt around the tower into green sand, the sky was extremely bright and seconds after the explosion came a huge blast that sent unbelievable heat across the desert. Also, there was a huge mushroom cloud that reached the sub-stratosphere that was at an elevation of 41,000 feet. 10,000 feet away a soldier was of right off his feet by the force of the shock wave and another soldier stationed five miles away was temporarily blinded. The explosion was able to be herd 50 miles away.
at worst, we would get about 2 million years of power from it. Thorium is
Volti, Rudi. “Atomic Bomb.” The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society. Vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, 1999. Modern World History Online. Web. 4 Apr. 2012. .
Radon gas was found in the 1870s, when some scientists were mining for ore in Ore Mountains in Schneeberg, Saxony. The area has a high content of radon in the tunnels because the area has been mined since the 1470s. The scientists later discovered that 75% of the miners died from lung cancer but it did not shut down the tunnels until 1950.
Physicists from 1939 onward conducted much research to find answers to such questions as how many neutrons were emitted in each fission, which elements would not capture the neutrons but would moderate or reduce their velocity , and whether only the lighter and scarcer isotope of uranium (U-235) fissioned or the common isotope (U-238) could be used. They learned that each fission releases a few neutrons.
The use of nuclear energy has increased in the United States since 1973. Nuclear energy's share of U.S. electricity generation has grown from 4 percent in 1973 to 19 percent in 1998. This is excellent news for the environment. Nuclear energy and hydropower are the cleanest large-scale means of electricity production. Since nuclear power plants do not burn fuel, they emit no combustion byproducts—like carbon dioxide—into the atmosphere (www.nei.org). Nuclear power can come from the fission of Uranium, plutonium or thorium or the fusion of hydrogen into helium. Today uranium (U-235 and U-238) is most commonly used in the production of nuclear energy. The expa...
Uranium, a radioactive element, was first mined in the western United States in 1871 by Dr. Richard Pierce, who shipped 200 pounds of pitchblende to London from the Central City Mining District. This element is sorta boring but I found something interesting, they used it to make an an atomic bomb in the Cold War. In 1898 Pierre and Marie Curie and G. Bemont isolated the "miracle element" radium from pitchblende. That same year, uranium, vanadium and radium were found to exist in carnotite, a mineral containing colorful red and yellow ores that had been used as body paint by early Navajo and Ute Indians on the Colorado Plateau. The discovery triggered a small prospecting boom in southeastern Utah, and radium mines in Grand and San Juan counties became a major source of ore for the Curies. It was not the Curies but a British team working in Canada which was the first to understand that the presence of polonium and radium in pitchblende was not due to simple geological and mineral reasons, but that these elements were directly linked to uranium by a process of natural radioactive transmutation. The theory of radioactive transformation of elements was brilliantly enlarge in1901 by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and the English chemist Frederick Soddy at McGill University in Montreal. At dusk on the evening of November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen, professor of physics at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, noticed a cathode tube that a sheet of paper come distance away. He put his hand between the tube and the paper, he saw the image of the bones in his hand on the paper.
In 2007, the world consumed 5.3 billion tons of coal, 31.1 billion tons of oil, 2.92 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, and 65,000 tons of uranium. All of these energy needs could have been met with only 6,600 tons of thorium, an abundant, slightly radioactive element found in the Earth’s crust.
The most important use of radioiactivity is in the production of nuclear energy. There are two basic ways in which nuclear energy can be released from ...
As one of the greatest alternatives to fossil fuels, an important advantage of nuclear energy is the significantly lower emission rate of CO2 in comparison to plants which use coal and natural gas.2 Nuclear power is not reliant on fossil fuels and therefore producing energy by this method reduces pollution and the contribution to climate change. However, whilst the actual process of generating energy releases few emissions, uranium must be mined and purified and in the past this has not always been an environmentally clean process.2 Ultimately, uranium will one day run out, but nuclear reactors are versatile and may also run on Thorium. Despite being finite, this would allow nuclear power stations to function for a longer period of time.