2023 marks a huge milestone for The Thorium Network and our division the International Plasma Research InstituteTM, or IPRITM. We successfully serviced a number of clients and cracked their inert materials using Plasma Assisted DigestionTM, PADTM.
We did this at indicative costs and time much less than industry standards. Indeed, one client gave us material they are unable to recover anything from. We obtained almost 80% of the precious Rare Earths from the material. That’s case study 3 below.
Here are the summaries of three case studies from some of our work in 2023:
Why Plasma to make Rare Earths and Thorium
Our plasma team is the best in the world, covering the United Kingdom, the Middle East, Russia and USA.
Using a proprietary configuration of gases, geometry and plasma, at IPRITM we are able to change the structure of a mineral matrix such that we crack a normally locked, tight crystal mineral lattice, such as monazite or apatite. This makes them quite accessible using mild liquid separation technologies.
The benefit are:
Removal of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORMS) early from the process. This makes at-mine pre-processing possible before sending off for concentration.
Selective separation of element species using different wet conditions by adjusting temperature, pH and time.
Separation of low value rare earths, such as cerium, from high value rare earths in minutes.
We are excited by the potential to apply PADTM to other inert mineral structures to explore their viability also.
Here are some research papers from Necsa on Plasma technology that prove the technology.
Typical separation of rare earth elements is a capital intensive and expensive operation. With our partners we have PertraXTM. At a fraction of the cost of tradition solvent extraction technologies PertraXTM is able to safely separate rare earths with the smallest of environmental footprints with only a fraction of the hardware and consumables traditionally used. It’s a revolution in rare earth production.
PertraXTM is also part of our activities at IPRITM.
During 2023, the esteemed and highly experienced scientist Dr. Necdet Aslan joined us at IPRI.tech. Dr. Aslan is Türkiye’s expert in plasma physics and technology and professor at Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Türkiye.
As we move into the future we are excited by the prospects we have to expand our activities. Reach out to us here if you would like to join our illustrious team.
About The Thorium Network
Our objective at The Thorium Network is to Accelerate the Worldwide Adoption of Liquid Fission Thorium Energy. We do that through three main activities:
1) We strive for easy access to Thorium as a fission fuel and focus on Liquid Fission – its technical superiority is unrivalled. The track and trace of nuclear fuels provides a solution for countries to go nuclear faster. Less headaches. This is done in full compliance with international guidelines and country regulations;
2) Raising public awareness to the benefits of Fission. As well as being an innovator of supply chain logistics we are also a public relations group as as advocate Fission Energy;
3) Driving licensing and installation of Fission machines across the world, using our network and access within the industry. For this we include all advanced fission technology, as well of course, Liquid Fission Thorium Burners (LFTBs).
Because 33% efficient windmills only have 20-year lifespans, they must be rebuilt two times after initial construction to match the 60-year lifespan of 90% efficient nuclear power plants.
Here’s what an anonymous wind technician from North Dakota said about the usefulness of windmills:”Yeah, we all want to think we’re making a difference, but we know it’s bullshit. If it’s too windy, they run like sh , if it’s too hot, they run like sh , too cold, they run like sh . I just checked the forecast, and it’s supposed to be calm this weekend so hopefully not very many will break down, but hell man, they break even when they aren’t running. I’ve given up on the idea that what I’m doing makes a difference in the big picture. Wind just isn’t good enough.”
Organizations like the Sierra Club wear blinders that exclude wind’s defects, and when I or my associates offer presentations on the safety records and costs of the various forms of power generation, including nuclear, we rarely get a reply, and my Minnesota chapter provides a case in point.
Because of those blinders, they apparently don’t know that It will take 9,500 1-MW windmills running their entire life spans to equal the life-cycle output of just one average nuclear plant. Perhaps they don’t realize that those windmills, which last just 20 years, require far more steel and concrete than just one nuclear plant with a lifespan of at least 60 years.
As a result, the carbon footprint of inefficient windmills is much larger than that of a 90% efficient nuclear power plant.
Furthermore, the wind industry doesn’t know what to do with these 170-foot, 22,000-pound, fiberglass blades that last just 20 years and are so difficult to recycle that many facilities won’t take them.
A 1-GW windfarm needs 1300 tons of new blades per year, and because they cost USD100k each, that’s USD200 million every 18 years, or USD33.6 million per year per gigawatt created just for the blades – all this for a fraud that primarily relies on carbon-burning generators to supply the majority of their rated power that they don’t supply.
Those who guide the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, etc., should know that windmills require magnets made from neodymium, which comes primarily from China, where mining and refining the ore has created immense toxic dumps and lakes that are causing skin and respiratory diseases, cancer and osteoporosis. If they know this, why are they silent? If they don’t, they should.
According to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences, “a two- megawatt windmill contains about 800 pounds [360 kg] of neodymium and 130 pounds [60 kg] of dysprosium.”
Unlike windmill generators, ground-based generators use electromagnets, which are much heavier than permanent magnets, but do not contain rare-earth elements.
Here’s the problem: Accessing just those two elements produces tons of arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. And because the U.S. added about 13,000 MW of wind generating capacity in 2012, that means that some 5.5 million pounds [2.5 million kg] of rare earths were refined just for windmills, which created 2,800 tons of toxic waste, and it’s worse now.
For perspective, our nuclear industry, which creates 20% of our electricity, produces only about 2.35 tons of spent nuclear fuel (commonly called “waste”), per year, which they strictly contain, but the wind industry, while creating just 3.5% of our electricity, is making much more radioactive waste where rare- earths are being mined and processed – and its disposal is virtually unrestricted.
Windmills also use 80 gallons [300 litres] of synthetic oil per year, and because there are at least 60,000 US windmills, this means that the windmill industry requires 500,000 gallons [1.9 million litres] per year plus even more crude oil from which synthetics are derived.
We know that it takes several thousand windmills to equal the output of one run-of-the-mill nuclear reactor, but to be more precise, let’s tally up all of the materials that will be needed to replace the closed Vermont Yankee nuclear plant with renewables.
Dr. Tim Maloney has done just that, writing, “Here are numbers for wind and solar replacement of Vermont Yankee.
Let’s assume a 50/50 split between wind and solar, and for the solar a 50/50 split of photovoltaic (PV) and CSP concentrated solar power, which uses mirrors.
Amount of steel required to build wind and solar;
Concrete requirement;
CO2 emitted in making the steel and concrete;
Money spent;
Land taken out of crop production or habitat.
To replace Vermont Yankee’s 620 MW, we will need 310 MW (average) for wind, 155 MW (average) for PV solar, and 155 MW (average) for CSP… Using solar and wind would require:
Steel: 450,000 tons. That’s 0.6% of our U.S. total annual production, just to replace one smallish plant.
Concrete: 1.4 million tons; 0.2% of our production/yr.
CO2 emitted: 2.5 million tons
Cost: about 12 Billion dollars
Land: 73 square miles, which is larger than Washington DC, just to replace one small nuclear plant with solar/wind….
Offshore windmills use up to 8 tons of copper per mW.
The Nuclear Alternative
a.) Replace Vermont Yankee with a Westinghouse /Toshiba model AP1000 that produces 1070 MW baseload, about 2 x the output of Yankee.
Normalizing 1070 MW to Vermont Yankee’s 620 MW, the AP1000 uses:
Steel: 5800 tons – 1 % as much as wind and solar.
Concrete: 93,000 tons – about 7% as much.
CO2 emitted: 115,000 tons [from making the concrete and steel] – about 5% as much.
Cost: We won’t know until the Chinese finish their units. But it should be less than our “levelized” cost. [Perhaps $4-5 billion]
Land: The AP1000 reactor needs less than ¼ square mile for the plant site. Smaller than CSP by a factor of 2000. Smaller than PV by a factor of 4,000. Smaller than wind by 13,000.
b.) Better yet, we could get on the Thorium energy bandwagon. Thorium units will beat even the new AP1000 by wide margins in all 5 aspects – steel, concrete, CO2, dollar cost, and land.“
Ten, 3 MW wind generators’ use as much raw material as a 1-Gigawatt nuclear plant (Think of their carbon footprints.)
PV electricity generation requires 10,000 pounds of copper per megawatt. Wind needs 6,000, but highly efficient, CO2-free nuclear power needs only 175, which provides a huge financial saving and the smallest impact on the environment.
This was the last episode in our series Unintended Consequences. It’s been a wonderful experience and thanks to everyone in our team. Everyone has done a tremendous effort to put it all together. 30 weeks has gone by too fast.
A special warm thanks goes out to Dr. George Erickson for creating all of this wonderful material in the first place.
Thank you Dr. Erickson.
Stay tuned for the next series where we promote key, factual information relevant to a world focused on producing clean, green, safe energy from Molten Salt Fission Technology powered by Thorium.
Australia has committed to buying up to 8 small modular reactors*. It is conceivable to envisage similar technology rolling out across the country to produce SAFE, reliable, green energy. Thus, with a little imagination, one can envisage a burgeoning Thorium industry. And also eventual production of Safe clean fission energy from Molten Salt technologies. The imagination then expands further to the concept of a booming domestic vertical Rare Earths industry. With Boeing making UAVs in Toowoomba (Australia), how much of each aircraft could be supplied from ingenious, locally processed materials? Bringing it down to earth, how competitive would domestic EV and batteries industries become for export with local strategic supplies?
The mind boggles.
C’est la vie.
*Technically, these small modular reactors have a capacity of about 200MWt. They will probably be “9th generation” and hence have millions of safe operating hours behind them. Whilst the basis of the AUSUK decision is incorrect, the opportunities for correction open immensely.
Meanwhile, our consulting division, SAFE Fission Consult(TM), holds some of the brightest and experienced minds in the fission world. We are preparing countries for Safe Fission Energy:
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