AW: [ RadSafe ] Article on Wired on Thorium reactors

[Maury Siskel]

Hi George,
Is this the paper you seek?

http://home.earthlink.net/~bhoglund/multiMissionMSR.html

Cheers,
Maury&Dog  maurysis at ev1.net

=======================
George Stanford wrote:

>
> (1)  FRANZ:  You say
>
>      "the uranium supply is limited first of all by the cost
>      of mining. Even the use of weapons uranium and
>      downblending will give only a few years or decades
>      of postponement of serious problems. . . . At this
>      time of history the use of breeder technology seems
>      to be politically impossible to choose."
>
>         Let's all hope that that political attitude will soon change.
> The current thermal reactors extract less than one percent
> of the energy in the mined uranium.  MOX recycle cannot
> improve that efficiency by more than 15% or so.
>
>         Fast reactors, however can extract the other 99%, or
> close to it.  Back in 1983, B. L. Cohen showed that, with fast
> breeders, uranium can supply the world's energy until the sun
> engulfs the earth -- in other words, uranium is just as inexhaustible as
> the other "renewables"  -- and it's much more available for bulk use.
> Given that efficiency, the cost of mining is virtually irrelevant; even
> extracting uranium from seawater becomes economically practical.
>
> Reference: B.L. Cohen, Breeder reactors: A renewable energy
> source, American Journal of Physics, vol. 51, (1), Jan. 1983.
> I have a PDF version, available on request.
>
> (2)  RADSAFERS:  U-233 is indeed a splendid material for bombs,
> provided it is not contaminated with U-232, which is extremely
> radioactive.  In a thorium reactor, Th-232 becomes Pa-233, which
> decays to U-233 with a 27-day half-life.  Thus it is possible in
> principle to get isotopically pure U-233 by chemical separation of
> Pa-233 before it decays.  I seem to recall that a practical method
> of doing that has been devised, but I can't find the reference.
> REQUEST : Does anyone out there know of such a paper?
>
>         Thanks.
>
>                 George Stanford

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