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Persuasive Energy Crisis Essay

1155 Words5 Pages

Good afternoon all,
I stand here today, to provide a solution to the energy crisis in Australia.
As you know electricity is becoming more expensive by the day. Whilst the coal reserves continue to decrease, the price of coal will continue to rise. I, and many other fellow physicists, believe that thorium energy is the power of the future.

You may be wondering, what is thorium?
Thorium is a new earth metal, discovered by a Swedish chemist J. J. Berzelius and is named after the Scandinavian god of thunder, Thor. After a chemical analysis, thorium demonstrated to be different from all other metals containing around 60% New Earth. (Rare Earth Metal)

But how does this rare earth metal create energy?
With Thorium being a non-fissile metal, it is necessary that the reactor is to transmute thorium 232 into uranium 233. Uranium 233 is fissile which allows it to split into multiple atoms. The decay of thorium can be explained through a diagram.

This shows the chain of decay of Thorium 232 to Uranium 233. As previously mentioned, thorium is non-fissile and will exist for millions and millions of years in its present form, but when it is irradiated with a neutron it transforms to Uranium 233, which is fissile. This is the process when the atom decides it has too many neutrons therefore it has to do something. The …show more content…

A coal or Uranium power plant of this size would be around the same price if not much more expensive. With an overall energy efficiency of 42% this reactor is more efficient than majority of the power plants we have today. The 1000MW maximum output of this plant is 5 times the size of the desired electricity demand, making it powerful enough to produce 200MW with ease. The Liquid Fluoride Molten Salt Reactor isn’t just efficient; it is ridiculously cheap to run. With an initial starter fuel rate of 1kg per MW it is proposed that the reactor will cost three cents per

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