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NO! Corn Ethanol takes a total of 8 calories to produce 1 calorie of fuel. It is environmentally devastating because it requires fertilizer / massive irrigation and has a very inefficient conversion process. Corn Ethanol is a big business subsidy for the massive farming companies, that's all there is to it.
Now sugar cane is definitely better, but it still isn't some magical carbon neutral process.
I fully agree with you. There is no such thing as free energy. When you grow vegetables by definition the result is always less then what you put in to it.
People think that solar radiation which is EM radiation which is nothing more then photons(for simplicity) are turned magically into atoms used as building blocks. No people, this is not the case. The radiation is used to power energy expensive reactions. Plants and all other life too, take building blocks (read atoms of different elements) and use EM radiation to connect the atoms together as desired. That is what life does.
As a side note : I can tell you what hell means : It is not a hot place filled with energy and fire and brimstone. It is a cold place, a void without EM radiation or any atoms. Perfect void in all dimensions. In such a void no life can naturally be created.
To return to the ethanol corn utopia :
From different perspectives such as waste processing and leaching the ground to an empty and death state. Nature will always find a way to live in toxic environments for existing life, but when that happens, all other lifeforms who cannot with stand the toxic will have a problem. Evolution will just start into a certain direction at a faster pace. And that might be a dead end for other life as we know it.
Growing vegetables for fuel is the most idiotic idea there is. Not until we fully understand genetics and life and can safely produce exactly what we want, it will be possible to properly use just proteins to create what we need. All these green options are not green at all if you take into account all the side effects and after post processing. What we want is a little biological state machine that instead of replicating, the sole purpose is to generate hydrogen bound in such a way to other molecules that it is easy to release when we want to but safely to transport. It will be a slight reduction in efficiency but also an increase in safety. Again, in nature we have to properly deal with the laws of nature. And research is being done.
The construction, operation and fueling of thorium reactors is considerably more complex.
The use of uranium fuel is well understood, and can be done simply. You can build a very basic reactor that runs on natural (unenriched) uranium, without the need for exotic materials or alloys. The British constructed a number of power reactors in the 50s, building the reactor vessels out of concrete, with a graphite core, and fuel consisting of unenriched uranium oxide powder in an aluminimum casing. Because of the great simplicity of uranium reactors (and the side benefit that they could be used to produce plutonium for weapons), they proliferated, and the designs were progressively refined.
Driven by the need for weapons, some research was done into plutonium fuel cycles, these have been little used due to the huge costs and complexities of 'reprocessing' the plutonium out of extremely radioactive waste. Only France, Japan and the UK use significnat plutonium fuel - and the UK has largely abandoned it as it's too expensive and dangerous to reprocess (compared to the amount of uranium saved) - lots of specialist remote manipulator equipment is needed, corrosive acids with intensely radioactive substances dissolved in them which are kept boiling hot by the decay heat from teh radioactivity; the complexity of reprocessing is not to be understimated.
Thorium is not a fuel in and of itself. However, when irradiated in a reactor, it is possible to convert the thorium into fuel, which can then be extracted by a reprocessing method. There is a huge amount of subtlety involved in working out how much thorium can go in, in which way it goes in, etc. (e.g. some designs require numerous different types of fuel element with different fuel/thorium blends, each of which must be loaded into different zones of the reactor for different periords of time - this is a big departure from current reactors, where there is typically one type of fuel module which are all replaced after the same amount of time)
Not only that, but thorium produces U-233 fuel, which is a very strong gamma emitter with relatively short half life, making the fresh fuel for the reactor extremely radioactive. By contrast natural (or enriched) uranium fuel can be hand made, and man-handled for delivery and loading. Even plutonium fuel is safe to handle for short periods (albeit not recommended). U-233 fuel requires an exclusion zone - all manufacturing, handling, inspection, etc. must be by remote control.
In short, thorium requires more complex reactor design, very complex fuel handling, and a nuclear reprocessing infrastructure.
With all respect, you make thorium and it's fuel cycle sound far worse then plutonium or uranium. And i think that is not fair. Ofcourse it has a dangerous side, but do not take it out of proportion. It is still a non radioactive material that is made radioactive to be used as fuel. Thus it is obvious it generates radiation as well. I personally wonder about how much research is being done in scintillation to lower the energy and turn the radiation step after step into less energetic photons that can be used to create electricity. But i am wondering of the subject.
First the advantages.
1# I am not an expert but with the Thorium cycle, existing radioactive waste is used. That is an advantage.
2# The nuclear reaction cannot sustain itself, that is a big plus because it is the biggest fear that a melt down can occur with the result of releasing radioactive material in the wild. The fear is that we have no control over the amount of radioactive material released and what it will do. Once it is in the wild we have a problem. The fuel cycle
may be seem to be more radioactive
( only shortly) but it is located at one position in the reactor where we have control over it. As such, the radiation in the reactor is a non issue
when comparing to existing designs. You cannot possibly deny that current generation and next generation reactors do not produce highly radioactive material which is much more radioactive for a longer period.
Analogy :
As an analogy, suppose we can produce a large amount of hydrogen. When all people drive with an automobile with an hydrogen tank, just by the numbers, the chance that something will go wrong and such a car will explode with accompanying victims is large . This is the case when comparing with this situation : When all automobiles are using a rechargeable electrical storage medium that does not explode as easy as compressed hydrogen and these automobiles are charged at a stationary facility where the locally stored compressed hydrogen is used to create electricity to charge the automobiles. It is all about controlling the situation and minimizing risks. We cannot break the laws of nature but we can use the laws against themselves.
End analogy
3# I am guessing here, but there is enough thorium to last for another 8 centuries while taking into account the increasing consumption of energy.
Now as in every situation there are hurdles to be taken.
And those are the ones you mentioned. But to be honest. is a horse with carriage also not a lot simpler then an ICE automobile or an electric automobile ? We deal with nature. We deal with the rules of the universe and as such we always have to come up with complicated and difficult solutions. Otherwise the human race would never have come as far as it has.
To put it in the autotuned words of Charly Sheen :
We are always winning.
That is how we roll.
That is how we go.
That is how we flow. :awe: