It is a crying shame that we (the rest of the world) did not think to encourage Iran and other states to develop thorium-based nuclear power many years ago. The thorium fuel cycle provides nuclear-powered steam generation, but is largely absent the use of fissile isotopes in the cycle which may be used for nuclear proliferation. Thorium-232 is more abundant that uranium-(235 + 238) isotopes and does not require isotopic separation as uranium does.
The great exploration boom in progress with rare earth elements would facilitate thorium supply. Thorium and uranium are commonly found in rare earth ores and, to the dismay of extractive metallurgists since the Manhattan Project, these elements tend follow along in rare earth extraction process. The isolation of thorium was developed long ago. Point is, since so many rare earth element extraction process streams are either in operation or are pending, now is the time to accumulate thorium.
At present however, thorium is a troublesome and undesired radioactive metal whose isolation and disposal can be quite problematic. The best process schemes partition thorium away from the value stream as early in the process as possible and channel it into the raffinate stream for treatment and disposal in the evaporation pond.
The specific activity of natural thorium is 2.2 x 10^-7 curies per gram (an alpha emitter). The specific activity of natural uranium is 7.1 x 10^-7 curies per gram. Alpha emitters pose special hazards in their handling. Dusts are a serious problem and workers must be protected especially from inhalation or ingestion. While alpha’s are not difficult to shield from, their low penetration through ordinary materials or even air makes them a bit more challenging to detect and quantitate relative to beta’s and gamma’s. In spite of the mild radioactivity of thorium, managing the occupational health of workers is known technology in practice in the nuclear industry.
Regrettably, most of the world’s nuclear power infrastructure is geared to uranium and plutonium streams. Thorium, the red-headed stepchild of the actinides, is thoughtlessly discharged to the evaporation ponds or to the rad waste repository- wherever that is- to accumulate fruitlessly. If we’re digging the stuff up anyway, why not put it to use? It is a shame and a waste to squander it.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
First off its a myth that fissile plutonium cannot be created in a lftr reactor. Thorium reactors can produce highly pure plutonium and uranium.
Secondly the whole Iran-nuclear issue has nothing to do with atom bombs, its about the nuclear fuel cycle. Currently only a few countries can produce nuclear fuel and these countries (USA, France, UK and a few others) form a fairly united political front – an OPEC of the post oil age if you will. Obviously in is in their interests to prevent Iran from breaking that syndicate – how can access to nuclear fuel be used as a political bargaining chip when Iran is sitting across the table making an alternative offer?
I think you make a good point about the possibility of breeding plutonium. If you have a good source of thermal neutrons you can in principle produce plutonium. But if Iran would cooperate with the IAEA like other nations do, this would be detectable. If Iran has nothing to hide, why does it continue to hide?
Where we disagree is the assertion that the sole issue is that of Iran facing down the nuclear establishment in becoming independent from existing nuclear fuel infrastructure. There may be a component of this. The unencumbered use of nuclear electric generating capacity is a legitimate goal for a state.
But the idea that Iran has no interest in nuclear weapons is a fantasy promoted by the Iranian leadership. Of course they want nuclear weaponry and for the same reason other ambitious states want it: Nuclear weapons are a bargaining chip like no other form of influence. It allows a state to shape the behavior of surrounding states. Their value is not in their use, but in the uncertainty of their use. Nuclear weapons throw adversarial states off balance.
The elementary fact of the existing asymmetry in nuclear capability between Israel and Iran practically demands that Iran develop the bomb. The existential antipathy between these states endangers everyone. Hostile, opposing nuclear
theocraticstates with incompatible goals within missile range is a malignancy that should not be tolerated.Allowing Israel to develop a nuclear arsenal was a bad idea in the long term and allowing Iran or any other state in the region is now a bad idea squared. To be fair, the American and subsequent Soviet development of nuclear arsenals was a bad idea as well.
Against the odds the USA and USSR mananged to avoid a nuclear exchange. We avoided nuclear war in part by having a great deal of institutional infrastructure in place and lots of national treasure to throw at the problem. But mostly we were lucky.
I’m not sure how one could say that Israel is a theocracy. There is a dominant religion, to be sure, but the clergy have no role in government (except occasionally as elected legislators), let alone any veto power.
Perhaps theocracy is the wrong term. They do have a secular governmental structure as you point out. But the practical exercise of power is less than secular in my estimation. (This is the danger in publishing first drafts.)
Possibly, but in this case it’s very easy to confuse nationalism with religious fervour. The vast majority of both the Israeli public and its legislators, up to and including the Prime Minister and President, are “secular”, much less religiously observant than even typical North American Jews.
There are areas of day-to-day life where the rabbinate makes its presence more strongly felt (e.g. marriage and divorce) but this isn’t unknown in the Christian West either. Israeli government has its issues, but nothing even remotely like the veto power of the Ayatollahs, clerical interference in daily life, use of the police to publicly enforce religious edicts, etc.
Hi Joe,
I’ll defer to your superior knowledge in this matter. I should restrict my comments to scientific matters I suppose. My original thesis was that had Iran been guided into the thorium cycle, the matter of nuclear proliferation might have been extinguished or at least made more difficult for them while at the same time still delivering electricity. I strayed into the morass of facile geopolitics based on what I can decipher from over here.
I’m far from an expert — and I’ve been to Israel exactly once, as a child — but I try to follow what’s going on there, and get a sense of the “lay of the land” (if only out of a sense of shared ethnic heritage).
My thoughts about Israeli policies go both ways. The country has some deep-seated social problems that it has only just started to address (classism and sometimes overt racism towards new immigrants, lack of economic opportunities for Israeli Arabs, and the coddling of the ultra-Orthodox at great expense to the country). I think they need to dismantle the settlements and get the hell out of the West Bank ASAP, but I also don’t for a moment believe that doing so will stop rocket attacks on Israeli towns — at least as long as the Iranians are paying for those rockets.
Iranian foreign policy — at least under the current president — seems at least partly driven by the same kind of eschatological fantasies that motivate movements like Hamas, and I think that this outlook (along with the need to look independent of the West) is what is driving both their nuclear ambitions and their thinly veiled threats against Israel. So I wonder if they even would have gone for a thorium solution if it had been offered to them at the time.
I would be fairly dubious of a “great exploration boom in progress with rare earth elements” : the recent fluster about REE supply was not about the unavailability of deposits, but the result of several half-decades worth of economic decline of the REE mining industry.
Until the (relatively recent) advent of the semiconductor industry, the industrial uses of REE elements were pretty limited. Pryophoric alloys (“misch metal”) ; colouring additives for glasses and ceramics ; phosphors for the fluorescent tube industry. Most people found it increasingly easy to buy from the cheapest alternative supplier, than to buy locally. The waste-management issues of the processing added a drive towards letting someone else have those particular hassles.
And, probably deliberately, the Chinese ended up as pretty much the only supplier in the game.
That’s pure economics and economic manipulation ; local geological industries and extraction-rights owners know where there is plenty of good supply ; but the Chinese by coincidence have better supply.
Look back to your Periodic Table : look at how many elements are named for Ytterby (Anglicised Spelling? “That mining town.”) The mine isn’t played out ; it’s just no-longer economically viable. When the price goes up, the mine will re-open.
Hi,
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I think there has been a fair amount of recent REE exploration from what I can divine from the websites of numerous REE exploration companies. These folks have produced the expected reassuring reports on the extrapolated values of their deposits. But that is a long way from having a producing mine and truckloads of REO’s heading out of the gate. Being involved in the REE business myself, I certainly agree that it is a fickle business and that investing 0.1 to 0.4 gigabucks on opening a mine is probably foolhardy.
A lot depends on the high volume products using REE’s. I’m thinking lanthanide containing magnets in particular. Given China’s interest in offering value-added REE derived products rather than rare earth oxides (REO), I think markets outside China will smell scarcity. China knows full well that the money is not in REO’s, but in devices. In my view, relying on China as the source of cheap REO’s assumes that Chinese REE suppliers are functioning in a free market. Of course, they are not. They are organs of China’s industrial policy and as such will create scarcity to China’s advantage. China knows that they have the advantage and I think they will beat the rest of us over the head with it.
Since #Emperor# introduced gold currency, mining and politics have been hand-in-pocket. But I’d still hesitate to describe planning extensions or expansions of existing mines as “exploration”. In my industry (hydrocarbons) our political masters are nit-picking in distinguishing between “exploration “, “appraisal” and “production” ; different phases attract very different tax regimes.