Thorium - A Suggestion for Iran

Thorium is a far better nuclear fuel source than uranium, more efficient and abundant without the chance of meltdown, but it can't be weaponized. The United States should be jumping up and down suggesting it. Iran can have nuclear power, as they claim to be developing, and we can avoid another nuclear state in the Middle East. Based on its history, even if Israel wasn't there, if two states in the area developed it, the entire place would become a radioactive wasteland. There are too many who seeing dying and taking others with them as a good way to go. Not to mention too many brutal dictators willing to use them on their own people. The countries that have them now, world-wide, shouldn't have them either. Their only possible good use is in blasting asteroids while they are deep in space to change their trajectories, but as they are set up now, that isn'tt possible. We'd rather be able to obliterate each other and "salt the earth" for any who survive, than use our most powerful weapons for planetary defence - something it is certain we will need because there's a lot of big rocks flying around us unseen. It is one of my proofs for the existence of a god that it hasn't happened to us yet. The odds are against us.

See my post on Thorium - The Safer Nuclear Fuel that the Arms Race Buried
that draws from the website of Thorium Energy Alliance. 

Also see SuperFuel 

Below is an interview on CBC's Quirks & Quarks

Thorium, the Super Fuel

Even among supporters of alternative energy, there is agreement that nuclear power might have to be part of the solution to rising greenhouse emissions, at least in the near future. But especially since last year's disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan, support for building new nuclear reactors has fallen. Now, in his new book, SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future, writer Richard Martin makes the case that what we need is a new type of reactor, using a different radioactive material than uranium. And that material is thorium. He argues that using thorium in a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor would be greener, safer, cheaper and more efficient than our standard uranium-based reactors. And the material can't be used for nuclear weapons.  He predicts that thorium-based reactors will take off in the coming decade in places like China and India, while North America remains tied to its nuclear past.   
 

Related Links

• Richard Martin's web site
• Publisher's web site

Listen to this item (pop up player) or use this link to download an mp3.