The world is slowly running out of fossil fuels, and the transition to cleaner natural sources of energy is on the forefront of everyone’s mind. Over the last couple of decades the price of oil has almost quadrupled, and the reserves are disappearing almost as fast as it can be produced. As well as, natural gas has become increasingly more expensive to produce and manufacture. On the other hand, wind and solar power energy can produce enough energy but the infrastructures cannot support this type of energy conversion. However, the answer to this foreseeable energy crisis could be Thorium. In fact, some scientists believe that Thorium could be the abundant energy solution that the world has been looking for, and quite possibly provide the entire world with enough energy indefinitely.
History of Thorium
“Thorium was discovered in 1828 by a Norwegian mineralogist named Morten Thrane Esmarkon on the Lovoya Island in Norway and identified by the chemist Jons Jakob Beezeliuson.” (Wikipedia, Para. 2, 2014) It wasn’t until seventy years later in 1898 when Thorium was observed to have radioactive properties. Up until that point in history Thorium was commonly used as a bonding material for TIG welding steel and iron. Since that discovery at the end of the 19th century, Thorium has undergone a large transitional and developmental phase that has resulted in the possible answer for the next generation’s source of nuclear fuel.
It was during this development stage that Thorium would became radioactive when a neutron passed by its molecular structure. When this happens the “Thorium captures the neutron and it undergoes a series of nuclear reactions until it eventually emerges as Thorium-233, a fissile nuclide which will readily fission an...
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...t is Nuclear, Thorium as Nuclear Fuel, What is Thorium Nuclear Fuel? Copyright 2013
Retrieved from http://www.whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium.html
Forbes, Energy, Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire? Possibly, William Pentland, September 11, 2011.
Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/11/is-thorium-the-biggest-energy-breakthrough-since-fire-possibly/
Gizmag, Science, Thorium, a Safer Alternative for Nuclear Power Generation, Frank Leonard, May 26, 2011 Retrieved from http://www.gizmag.com/thorium-nuclear-power/18204/
Advantage Environment, Is Thorium a Cleaner, Safer, and Cheaper Alternative to Uranium? The Advantages of Thorium, Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, Copyright 2012
Retrieved from http://advantage-environment.com/framtid/is-thorium-a-cleaner-safer-and-cheaper-alternative-to-uranium/
On top of it being cleaner it is cheaper the mining of uranium is cheaper than the mining of coal
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”.
Carbon, Max W. Nuclear Power: Villain or Victim?: Our Most Misunderstood Source of Electricity. Second ed. Madison, WI: Pebble Beach, 1997.
Central Idea: Nuclear energy only contributes a small amount to the world’s electricity yet it has hazards and dangers that far out-way its benefits. There are many other alternative power producing sources that can produce energy more efficiently and more safely than nuclear power plants can.
...nce World War II to the present day, the technology of nuclear power has increased significantly in terms of energy output and safety. The energy efficiency of nuclear power is far superior to its counterpart fossil fuel and renewable energy. Compared to fossil fuels, tiny amounts of fuel used by nuclear reactors is equivalent to a large sum of coal. This is a no brainer. Why mine a ton of coal when a little uranium can be used to gain the same amount of energy? Not only is it efficient, it’s safe to use. Used fuel is packed away in storage safely, so there isn’t any chance of radiation leaking out. In the present day, nuclear power incidents haven’t been occurring lately. Advancements in technology and equipment used have made nuclear energy a very reliable and safe source of energy. With today’s energy needs, nuclear power has the ability to keep up in the race.
It is concluded that uranium is a long term sustainable power source with an equal number of positives to negatives. In my eyes the rewards it creates outweigh the negatives as the majority of them only happen on very rare occasions. Things like nuclear meltdowns and the issue with storing and mining will soon pass as we learn from past mistakes and develop new methods of storing and mining. Nuclear power is starting to look like the future and uranium is they key we need to unlock it.
at worst, we would get about 2 million years of power from it. Thorium is
8) "Interesting Energy Facts." : Nuclear Energy Has Great Potential. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2014.
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.
For years man has relied on energy in order to be successful in life. The industrial revolution relied on coal for the new inventions brought into the world. Life as has never been the same since then. However since that time, there has been little done to improve on energy efficiency and humans still primarily rely on fossil fuels for energy. For over a hundred years the Earth has become more polluted and dirtier than ever before. Now, with new, innovative technology there is an opportunity to change that and to rely on renewable, cleaner sources of energy. The main source of energy for the world should be alternative energy instead of energy from fossil fuels.
Web. 07 Dec. 2011. . Alternative Energy - ProCon.org. Web.