[ExI] Could Thorium solve our energy problem?

Michael D michaelfd1976 at gmail.com
Sun Jul 11 17:11:29 UTC 2010


"This is true. You are however neglecting to account for the energy needed
to extract said thorium (a common layperson mistake, which leads to people
believing things like corn based ethanol are good ideas) in your
computation.  If the energy return is less than 10:1,"

Thorium and Uranium are present in trace quantities in Coal.

"Figure 1 displays the frequency distribution of uranium concentration for
approximately 2,000 coal samples from the Western United States and
approximately 300 coals from the Illinois Basin. In the majority of samples,
concentrations of uranium fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts
per million (ppm). Similar uranium concentrations are found in a variety of
common rocks and soils, as indicated in figure 2. Coals with more than 20
ppm uranium are rare in the United States. Thorium concentrations in coal
fall within a similar 1–4 ppm range, compared to an average crustal
abundance of approximately 10 ppm"

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

Considering that the energy avaialbe from fissioning uranium, thorium,
plutonium, is more than 10 million times that of burning coal, coal should
be used as a source of these elements as well as the energy required to mine
the coal and seperate these elements from the coal.

-Michael F Dickey
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