Obama stuck with nuclear waste

The answer to nuclear waste is the Thorium fuel cycle and the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). Dr. Edward Teller, the father of Fusion, after a lifetime of work on every aspect of nuclear technology had at the end of his life come to this conclusion in his final study: the LFTR is the best of all possible reactor types.
The LFTR is a very simple, efficient, and elegant type of reactor. It can use any kind of nuclear fuel, bomb material, or nuclear waste product to produce very high temperature heat and at the same time breed more fuel in the bargain. This thrifty approach to nuclear energy greatly appeals to me, but I became even more interested in the LFTR when the details of a new patent were revealed by Dr LeBlanc (see below @ minute 53). It opens up the possibility of building a very compact but powerful reactor that can run for 30 years without refueling. It can be operated in an unattended mode and sited underground while it breeds new fuel within the thorium structure of the reactor itself.

In order to get to this U233 that has been produced inside the very walls of this 200 ton reactor containment vessel, a proliferator must destroy and disassemble the reactor, lift its heavy reactor core out of a 100 meter deep reinforced aircraft crash proof hole in the ground, then cut the thorium up into small pieces while enduring heavy gamma radiation exposure, next reprocess these reactor pieces using isotopic separation since the U233 is denatured with enough U238 to make chemical separation of bomb grade U233 impossible, and do all this without being detected. Now, this is a tall order for any proliferator and may just be an impossible assignment.

At the end of the service life of the Lftr, the reactor vessel is sent back to the factory where it is reduced to liquid fluoride salts that become the feedstock of a next new Lftr. This feedstock can only be used by the new Lftr and not for bombs. The waste products are held at the factory for a few hundred years to cool down before they are mined for the many precious elements contained within like platinum and iridium. Now that’s what I call a safe, efficient and thrifty mode of operation!

To learn more see the following:

What Fusion Wanted To Be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=AHs2Ugxo7-8

Liquid Fluoride Reactors: A New Beginning for an Old Idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So

by Axil | Sunday, April 12, 2009  8:34:12 PM  |  Report