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RE: Do most of the worlds problems have a common solution? You won't believe what the chinese are building.

in #science8 years ago

Yes I'm aware of some details I missed, I contacted Gordon Mcdowell the creator of the documentaries. He said.

"- And 10 years of operation produces 1/1000th of a gram of waste

...that is not correct... it produces exactly the same amount of material that goes into it... only a tiny fraction is turned into energy most becomes fission products. The distinction between today's reactors is that an even SMALLER amount becomes energy, the rest is un-fissioned fuel (just like came out of ground, fission products (like LFTR creates too) and transuranics which create the 100,000y waste challenges (as opposed to 300y waste challenge of fission products).

  • It cannot be used in the production of nuclear warheads

Well it could, if the reactor was modified and operated illegally. You can make U-233 out of Thorium. You can make a bomb from that. It is just not the easiest path to take, and people tend to take easy paths to things. It should be very easy to safeguard against this... the waste produced by the reactor (the fisson products) are unsuitable for weapons, as no Plutonium leaves the reactor and no U-233 leaves the reactor. The waste stream is safe. But the reactor needs to be monitored still just like today's reactors are."

So technically I'm wrong but the gyst is right, its harder near impossible to make weapons from them and they produce a fraction of the waste which is what I got verbatim from one of the speakers on the documentary (this may not be accurate but still in general better)

I'm not sure where on the myths page there are myths that question the benefits of thorium, they all seem like historical or technical myths.

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