Rare Earth Minerals and Thorium
American Thinker,
by
Mac MacDowell
Original Article
Posted By: Judy W.,
6/3/2019 8:57:21 AM
There seems to be a similarity between international trade disputes and Texas Hold’em. (Snip) To understand the problem, we first must understand where rare earth mineral deposits are found and why, we in the United States, no longer mine the deposits that we have domestically.
Rare earth minerals are found in a number of areas around the world, including North America. Rare earths are comprised of the 15 Lanthanide Elements in the periodic table and two outliers; Scandium and Yttrium. As with many mineral deposits, there are also other less desirable minerals collocated in these veins of rare earth minerals. These include uranium and thorium, which are radioactive.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Safari Man 6/3/2019 9:18:16 AM (No. 89670)
Wow, this guy knows his stuff! Fantastic to have people like this on our side.
If we have learned anything from Trump’s dealings with China, its that we cannot allow ourselves to let China be the sole source for anything. Not iPhones, not rare earth minerals, not nuthin.
Rare earth minerals are not rare - they’re just messy. As a matter of national security, we need to get busy taking away China’s monopoly on this.
11 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Clinger 6/3/2019 9:28:39 AM (No. 89675)
Great article. Everything government does to interfere with the free market manufactures more need for government to mop up the mess. If you believe that our regulations are in the best interests of we the people then you also have a responsibility to explore all of the consequences. Outsourcing the destruction of the planet to the Chinese while destroying our jobs in the process, isn't exactly what WTP had in mind when we supported environmental issues. We have got to begin to think deeper than a bumper sticker.
5 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
jeffkinnh 6/3/2019 9:56:34 AM (No. 89699)
This sounds like a terrific solution. Rare earth competition. Thorium for far safer nuclear reactors, use of old, stockpiled, dangerous by products in the reactor to dispose of them, non weapons grade by products, and by products that degrade much quicker than for uranium reactors. Also sounds like good, high tech, well paying jobs.
We could do the first part immediately; mine rare earths and stockpile Thorium. The new reactors could come later.
If only the government will get out of the way.
3 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
PlayItAgain 6/3/2019 9:59:48 AM (No. 89702)
It's good that we are talking about Thorium.
I've done a bit of research over the years, just out of conspiracy minded curiousity, of course :-). There is some really meaningful potential here.
3 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 6/3/2019 10:57:33 AM (No. 89749)
We should be building "earth -friendly" and "sustainable" mini-nuclear power plants in every major city in the USA to reduce our dependence on mind-blowingly energy poor wind and solar energy.
3 people like this.
What needs to be highlighted in the 2020 campaign ads is how the Democrats were okay with removing a key component from U.S. manufacturers which could jeopardize national security.
Trump is also making sure that the means for producing things remains in the United States, again for national security purposes.
It's a main reason the U.S. was able to ramp-up so quickly in WWII, due to the large-scale manufacturing capacity and access to resources.
0 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
DVC 6/3/2019 4:38:01 PM (No. 90070)
EXCELLENT article with one really glaring error.
He wrote:
"In a worst-case scenario, such as the Chernobyl meltdown, when there is a breach in the
containment vessel (a profoundly dangerous event), a HPWR molten core will continue to melt
through the Earth causing a “China Syndrome” event with the molten core continuing through the
Earth until it hits ground water, then explosively spewing radioactive steam back up the same path
into the atmosphere killing some in the area immediately and other a bit later with leukemia and
other forms of cancer."
This fantasy, always highly suspect, was disproven CONCLUSIVELY by not one, not two , but three
live, full scale, operating reactor "tests" at Fukishima. THREE nuclear reactors of the oldest designs,
with the crudest, simplest protection against this scenario - called a toroidal catch basin, did the unthinkable
and entirely melted down, the cores melted through the containment, and the molten radioactive cores
settled out into the toroids, which, exactly as designed, spread out the core materials so that it was no longer
a critical mass and the reaction just stopped. All the radioactive core material is still entombed in giant concrete
enclosures directly under the breached main reactor containment vessels.
The "China Syndrome" is totally disproven, and all later reactor designs have far better, more effective protections,
so are even LESS at risk.
ALL of the radioactive material released at Fukishima came from the spent reactor core storage pools
which have always been considered to be temporary storage, except that the anti-nuke crazies closeing
all reprocessing plants and all long term storage areas has forced the plants to use this unsafe, literally
open air storage with only water over them. When the quake broke the pools and the water drained, the
cores were not covered by anything except a tin roof, meant to keep rain out.
Thorium reactors are a good idea, but if the only reason was to avoid the disproven "China Syndrome" movie
plot scenario, then it isn't worth it. But there ARE other reasons to use thorium, and they are worth doing.
His excellent work is marred by this glaring omission/error, IMO.
3 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
GO3 6/3/2019 9:06:19 PM (No. 90239)
There are other errors as well. Natural Uranium (which you probably have some in your back yard) has a half-life in the range of in the 10 to the ninth years. IOW, it remains active for a long, long time, but it's level of activity is extremely low. In the past, uranium miners were affected by the radon gas in the mines rather than the uranium - that and most of them smoked cigarettes.
Another error. We don't keep spent fuel rods in a cooling pond for "thousands of years." The industry standard is 150 days IIRC.
Another error. Reactors which "burn" uranium do not produce fissile uranium, they produce plutonium, which requires a chemical process, not nuclear, to produce fissile plutonium.
I agree on the thorium part.
1 person likes this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
DVC 6/4/2019 2:11:08 AM (No. 90344)
Another point on the Chernobyl reactor accident. One of the huge problems is that the uranium fuel
rods are inside a matrix of pure carbon bricks. Think uranium inside coal. Once it overheats, the graphite
burns so you have a runaway nuclear reaction inside a coal fire. And the Chernobyl runaway
did not form a molten blob and "burn down to the water table". They were dropping water on it to
put out the graphite chemical fire, and putting boron in the water to intercept the neutrons and slow
the nuclear reaction. Double problem, and did not do a "China Syndrome". but there was no
containment other than a metal lid laying on top of the graphite, which blew off very early, leaving
a gaping hole filled with chemically burning radioactively "burning" mess, spewing radioactive smoke
into the air.
0 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
DVC 6/4/2019 2:12:55 AM (No. 90346)
Clarification: the graphite comments above ONLY apply to that particular style of Russian reactor. Not
like any US commercial reactors which operate on entirely different principles other than the uranium.
0 people like this.
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Comments:
Thorium is the problem -- it's now classified as radioactive waste and that's very expensive to deal with. But a working thorium reactor has already been created; it's safer than uranium reactors and doesn't produce waste that can be used for nuclear weapons. I'm glad a knowledgeable scientist has weighed in on this issue.