[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 107, Issue 19

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Fri Aug 17 00:43:38 UTC 2012


On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>wrote

> You have to understand how cheap these things are.  They produce power at
less cost than any other way.  If they can't be made that cheap, then there
is no point in building them at all.

Cheap? Find a way to cheaply put something as small as a life jacket into
low earth orbit, actually do it in reality and not just on paper, and then
it might be meaningful to talk about how much it would cost to put a
supertanker into geosynchronous orbit; until then all the cost numbers are
imaginary numbers not real numbers.  And I hope I'm wrong, I hope you can
find a way to make power satellites work.

> That wasn't the question.  If the human race were pulling the majority of
> power from thorium reactors, how long would it [Thorium] last?
>

The amount of coal mined per year worldwide is about 6 billion tons, the
USA accounts for only about 1 billion tons of that. One ton of Thorium
contains as much energy as 3 million tons of coal so you'd need 2 thousand
tons of Thorium to equal coal. The U.S.Geological Survey's latest estimate
says that one company, Thorium Energy Inc, has  915,000 tons of thorium
reserves in Idaho and Montana. That alone could replace coal for about 450
years, and that's just from the claims that one company has in 2 states.
And Norway has as much Thorium as the entire USA,  and Australia about
twice as much, and India has about 3 times as much. And we've already
discovered Thorium deposits on the Moon and Mars.

Although it would be more economical to mine high quality ore that can
approach 50% Thorium content first, if at random you picked one cubic meter
of rock anywhere in the Earth's crust you would find about 12 grams of
Thorium in it. if placed in a liquid Thorium reactor 12 grams would produce
the energy equivalent of 37 tons of coal, enough to power one person's
western middle class lifestyle for about a decade.

Or Imagine it this way, the entire Earth's crust (and then some) being made
of nothing but coal, every rock you have ever seen in your life was made of
pure coal and you're worried about running out of coal. Finding enough free
oxygen to burn up all that coal would be a legitimate concern, but running
low of that fossil fuel itself not so much.

 > I think the answer will concern you
>

It's true that large as it is we will eventually run out of Thorium, does
this concern me? About as much as global warming concerns me. Not much.

  John K Clark
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