Thorium Power (THPW) is a “US” company that is in the final stages of testing Thorium as a reactor fuel in place of our current Uranium fuels. This Thorium Technology testing has been in process for over 5 years and it can be retrofitted into current light water reactors with minimum changes.

Our current Uranium fueled reactors produce plutonium as waste. This is the waste storage problem currently stored at the reactor sites and originally aimed for storage at Yucca. This waste plutonium could be used for Nuclear weapons if it gets into the wrong hands. This waste plutonium also contains much unused energy due to the inefficient burn of Uranium fuel.
Thorium Power’s technology will burn plutonium along with their Thorium fuel within the reactor. So, we can slowly burn off the stockpiled Plutonium “as we use it to make electricity”. The spent fuel from their reactor has an efficient burn, therefore the waste is minimal and not useful for weapons.

This is a “US” company, with existing patents, that could place us in the forefront of the nuclear renaissance. Unfortunately, from a US point of view, our policies are preventing it from moving forward here in the near term and we may see this implemented in other parts of the world 1st.

This Thorium technology makes way too much sense. If our government jumps on this, we could bring hundreds of billions of revenue/jobs back to the US.

http://www.thoriumpower.com/

• A nuclear power plant produces each day the same amount of radioactivity than 4 nuclear bombs the size of Hiroshima!

• The 5 Swiss nuclear power plants contain radioactivity approximately the size of 10′000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs! This in the production of 2 years.

This inconceivable amount of radioactivity – this «Climatic Change caused by Radioactivity» – threatens and destroys the foundations of life for our and all future generations. The physical half-lives are completely irrelevant, as they are eternal from a human perspective. Also irrelevant is the calculated probability for accidents, as the potential for damage is far too gigantic. The nuclear physicist Garwin says: «Reactor accidents … too horrible to think about.» A trustworthy banker would advice: «We do not buy these shares» and insurances don’t cover this risk anyway.

Upon the election of Barack Obama, it was the German politician Hans Dietrich Genscher, who reminded strongly and multiple times to the global top priority: The complete abolition of all nuclear weapons!

Beside the financial crises and despite the «Climatic Change caused by CO2», we should not forget this. And we shouldn’t forget as well, that this – the abolition of all nuclear weapons – finally is only possible together with the abolition of all nuclear power plants, therefore the switch to Natural Power (electricity from renewable energies, so-called green power) is a pre-requisite. The nuclear conflict in Iran is one but not the only example of this undividable relation between nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

If you use a metric of human lives per kWhr, nuclear power costs less than oil.

The problem with nuclear power since its inception has been a political one: peoples’ fear and misunderstanding of the techology and its capabilities. The reason why reactors have not been built in the past 30 years is due to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) reactor and site liscensing procedure, and small help due to anti-nuke protesting and boycotting, not due to the safety of reactor operation or risk of failure.

For the past 30 years nuclear power has been stunted by regulation which prohibits healthy growth. The system was such that a new power plant would have to be submitted for liscensing at a significant upfront cost; once accepted the site on which the plant was to be built was required to be liscensed and inspected as well. Protesting a site location, or local politics passed post facto to prohibit construction, or simply insuitability of the site meant a loss on the plant liscense and the process would have to be started over again. No lending, nor energy company, was willing to attempt this procedure after several costly failures.

Recently, this situation has been remedied as the entire plant is submitted under one liscense: plant and site. With this remedy a surge of new applications has been submitted (the first being in Texas, not Illinois. This really has nothing to do with Obama). The NRC has been swamped with applications and is now trying desperately to meet the demand of all utilities willing to build more plants. Why are they willing to build more plants? Because nuclear power is one of the cheapest-per -kilowatt energy sources around, and has always been a large revenue earner for any utility with nuclear plants in their portfolio. Uranium resources in the US alone are estimated at 100 years supply, given current useage and technology. That amount is quadrupled if reprocessing spent fuel is allowed.

Let me focus more on reprocessing since nuclear waste seems to be a go to topic for anti-nuclear-enthusiasts. The nuclear waste issue is also one of politics, not of technology or capability. We have been storing spent nuclear fuel in storage facitlities on site for the past 30 years. There have never been any contaminations of the pools to groundwater sources or the surrounding environment. The only issue is that these local pools are running out of storage space. However, this issue has been solved many years past, as the Yucca Mountain facility waits eagerly to be opened. Only political policy prohibits use of the Yucca Mountain facility at this time, although opening is immenent. Yucca mountain will hold another 50 years waste easily, with capability for expansion if required. However, if fuel reprocessing is allowed this number is tenfold: 500 years storage. Let me stress the absolute safety of the Yucca Mountain facility: Sitting inside a geologically stable mountain 100 feet below the surface, segregated from the local watertable will sit blocks of waste encased in special glass which is proven to be corrosion resistent for 100000 years and prohibits nuclear reactions from taking place.

I know nuclear power is not a panacea. Every form of energy we can produce should be investigated. Eventually easily accessible Uranium ores will become scarce, just as easily accessible oil reserves have run out years ago. However, nuclear power is a proven technology well understood by the engineers and technicians who run them. We can and are increasing our fleet of nuclear plants right now to meet future energy demands, and will continue to meet demands for many more years to come.

I sincerely hope at least one more person now understands the plight of nuclear power. Maybe someone could elaborate their reasons why nuclear should not be expanded in a world with ever increasing power demands? If the solar technology were up to snuff, I would agree that solar is the only truely renewable energy source. However even the sun uses resources to fuel its ever-burning flames.