Jones— What isotope of thorium is it that you believe could replace U as a target for energy production?
I do not think there are any naturally occurring Th isotopes that fission. The closest reaction is a thorium-232 transmutation by a thermal neutron to U-233, which does fission. In the late 1960’s, early 1970’s Naval Reactors demonstrated a Th-232---U-233 light water breeder reactor that produced more U-233 than it started with and worked as predicted. The demonstration was the last reactor to run in the Shipping Port Nuclear Facility producing electricity for the grid. Some of the odd numbered Th isotopes have a fission cross sections, but they are all radioactive. Bob Cook From: Jones Beene Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2017 1:48 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:Could the future that started out as cold fusion be ... tada... thorium fission ? Axil Axil wrote: The text covered by the picture as follows: ,,, metallic hydrogen produces reactions at a distance. This was shown in the exploding wire experiments where uranium was fissioned in a separate chamber isolated from the exploding wire by a glass wall. I missed the citation for this? However, it does sound very much like what I am suggesting but using thorium instead of uranium as the target of muon production. The beauty of muon-induced fusion is that you do not need to be concerned about critical mass and hunreds of tons of reactant, lots of moderators and an optimal neutron economy etc - all of which require a large form factor In fact, with muon induced fission, the thorium fuel can actually be mixed with boron to immediately convert free neutrons into energy before thorium can absorb them. We want to avoid any proliferation risk. Smaller would be better. Of course, LENR is preferable since it promises small devices with no radioactivity at all, but that may not materialize as quickly as a larger form factor, which is intermediate between grid power and home power. The requirement for gamma shielding is still there .... with any kind of fission or hot fusion, but one can imagine many applications for medium-sized power plants and large vehicles which can accommodate adequate shielding - locomotives, earth movers and boats. This could happen years or decades sooner with thorium fission than LENR can be perfected and introduced. Let's face it - there is no operational LENR today, nothing even close thanks to Rossigate -- and yet we had operational thorium reactors in 1965 (the MSRE at Oak Ridge) but that design was doomed from the start (by needing enough fissile inventory to make a bomb, which is the main thing that muon-induced fission avoids). I think there is a place for this technology - assuming of course that Holmlid is correct.
