Posts
Thorium;
What Is It?
By
Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, February 10, 2018
Until
yesterday, February 9, 2018, I had never heard of Thorium. So what is it? Here is a definition from the internet, note
the date 2011 – clearly over 6 years ago.
Nov 1, 2011 - Thorium is a radioactive
chemical element that could in theory be used to generate large quantities
of low-carbon electricity in future decades. Compared to the uranium that
powers today's nuclear plants, thorium is more
abundant and widely distributed in the Earth's crust.
I
underlined the most important parts of the above definition, primarily the last
line where it explains that it is WIDELY
DISTRIBUTED in the Earth’s crust.
If you would like to see:
- Cheap and abundant energy
- Clean water source
- Cures for cancers
I
first learned about this Element (it is on the table of known Elements) by
reading Dennis Lusk’s book, A New Paradigm for Humanity, it is
available on Amazon at:
Since
I had never heard of Thorium, I looked it up on the Internet and found several
sites that explain it. Then Mr. Lusk
sent me a YouTube link that at first I found extremely interesting and then it
made me very angry. Sorry folks but that
is exactly what happened. Please,
please, please, take 20 minutes to watch the link Mr. Lusk sent to me via
Twitter: You can find it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
If you don’t watch the
video, the rest of this Nugget will be meaningless so you may as well stop
reading right here. The video was
produced as a TED Talks presentation.
Why
did I find it interesting? If true and I
believe it is, building Nuclear Thorium Reactors around the world would solve
three very real problems. Cheap and very
abundant energy. They would provide
clean drinking water. And they would
provide the means for treating many types of cancers.
Why
did it make me angry? If I told you on
February 11, 2018 that I had found an Earth’s really abundant and available
Element that when merged with our Nuclear Reactor Technology that it would do
the three things mentioned above; what would you think? Hopefully you would be as excited as I was
when I first learned of this breakthrough technology. So why the anger?
This technology was
discovered in the mid-1960s well over 50 years ago. Think about that for a moment and I would be
shocked if your next question is not why someone hasn’t, especially the
government done something with the technology?
That was my first thought. Then I
had a lot of other thoughts such as:
- If the technology was available in the 60’s, why wasn’t it developed?
- Would we have been fighting wars in the mid-East for the past 17 years if it were developed?
- If the answer to the above question is NO, how many American lives where just thrown away fighting wars that didn’t need to be fought?
- Cape Town South Africa is about to run out of water in May 2018 due to a severe draught in South Africa. If this technology was available couldn’t they have planned for their repeated seasonal draughts by using this technology years ago?
- Many parts of the world are struggling to have clean drinking water AND cheap electricity? Again, couldn’t these problems have been solved by this technology years ago?
- If America were to implement this technology, could we not have done away with the more life threatening Uranium fueled Nuclear Reactors we currently use and have stopped building which by the way is our current cheapest form of energy?
Let
me ask you a hypothetical question. You,
in your garage at home, invent a very cheap to build alternative to the
gasoline combustion engine. You would be
jumping for joy over your invention, right?
But
as soon as you try to alert the world as to your find, what do you think would
happen? First the car manufacturers
would do everything in their power to stop you.
Why? Because you are threatening
their life-blood. What about the people who
work in the oil and gas industry? Do you
think they would just lie down and or do you think they too would try to stop
you? What about our Federal
Government? Do you realize how much money
the Feds take in from both the auto industry and the oil & gas
industry? Do you think the Federal
Government would not make it difficult for you to get your product to market?
You already know the answers to all of these questions.
Want
proof? The world knew that smoking
tobacco could and probably would cause cancer in anyone who smoked. What did the Federal Government do about
it? First they ignored the threat. Then when enough people contracted cancers of
all types and began an outcry, the Federal Government put a warning sign on the
all cigarette packages as if that would stop anyone but the most concerned from
smoking. At first it did but then more
and more people, especially teenagers began smoking again. It’s 2018 and cancer causing cigarettes are still available on the market and yes,
a lot of teenagers have picked up the habit, why? The sale of cigarettes provides the Federal
Government a lot of money in taxes plus there are a lot of jobs in the tobacco
industry.
So
why hasn’t Thorium been brought to the forefront of our search for cheap energy? I could be wrong but I believe it comes down
to income to the Federal Government and jobs.
A second reason lies in the term Nuclear Reactor. What first comes to most people’s minds? Two Mile Island, Japan and Chernobyl
disasters. Nuclear energy has a
stigmatism on it that is very difficult to break. Simply put, people are afraid of Nuclear energy.
That may be true, but did you know; from the Internet:
There are 61 commercially operating
nuclear power plants with 99 nuclear reactors in 30 U.S.
states (the Indian Point Energy Center in New York has two nuclear reactors
that the U.S. Energy Information Administration counts as two separate
nuclear plants). Of these nuclear plants, 36 have two or more reactors. Aug
15, 2017
61 plants means to me
that there is are more reasons why Thorium Reactors have been put “on the shelf”
in 1960s:
- Federal income
- Jobs
- Nuclear weapons
Some detractors will
claim that Thorium is not ready for the market place. Seriously?
That is their response? Remember it was discovered in the 1960s; over FIFTY YEARS ago. Less than 20 years ago, it was hard to afford
a portable telephone let alone carry such a large device around with you. 20 years later, we have more computer power
in our pockets than they had on the first manned space craft orbiting
Earth. Do these detractors honestly
believe that if there were any kinks in the development of a cheap, available
and relatively SAFE Thorium reactors
that they could not be worked out in 50 plus years? I am NOT
a scientist but I seriously doubt that.
I, like the author
Dennis Lusk believe that the primary reason it was put on the shelf in the 60s
was because America was more interested in creating Nuclear Weapons than
creating cheap Nuclear energy that could not be converted to weapons. Maybe I am wrong but I seriously doubt
it. Our government is far more
interested in raising income, creating jobs that convert to more income,
preserving their own personal power, and growing government as a form of job
security.
If you watched the
video, what do you think, and why do you think it? An inquiring mind would like to know.
No comments:
Post a Comment