Thorium isn’t just a superior fuel for molten salt nuclear reactors, it’s a key component in superior optical coatings, alloys, organoactinide catalysis and more. So, why has it been neglected by industry and even suppressed by government for decades? Join James Corbett and John Kutsch on this edition of #SolutionsWatch where they examine those questions and talk about the slowly shifting tide on the thorium issue.
Video player not working? Use these links to watch it somewhere else!
WATCH ON: 
/ 
/ 
/ 
/ 
/ 
or DOWNLOAD THE MP4
SHOW NOTES:
Corbett Report Radio 193 – The Thorium Solution with John Kutsch
A Thorium Reactor in the Middle of the Desert Has Rewritten the Rules of Nuclear Power
Thorium – World Nuclear Association
Thorium’s Long-Term Potential in Nuclear Energy: New IAEA Analysis – IAEA
Excellent interview
I’ve been meaning to look more into the thorium process, and, uhhhh… well, this interview has made me much more skeptical as to their viability.
So… thorium expands under heat meaning the atoms are further apart but uranium… doesn’t…? Is that what I’m supposed to takeaway here? If uranium atoms get further apart, somehow there’s no difference in how much energy a neutron loses traveling to another atom…?
Maybe he just poorly explained it.
But… what about this idea of the demand?… and… how to manage it?
All heat-based power plants work on the second law of thermodynamics and Carnot’s theorem. Hot rock makes steam and you got a turbine that goes roundy roundy and viola! Electricity!
So, when there’s a higher demand for electricity, turbine needs to do more roundy roundy. For turbine to do more roundy roundy, you need more steam. To get more steam, rock needs to be hotter.
That means more coal to burn or more atoms to split or whatever. So, from the way he explains it, I feel as though I am being led to believe that there is nothing needed to manage the heat output, and if there’s nothing needed to manage the heat output, then that implies there is nothing needed to initiate the heat output. That says to me that the material is inherently volatile. Something’s not making sense.
So, regardless of what the reality of the use of thorium is, these things that he says don’t make sense.
Just to clarify:
When I say something needed to initiate the heat output, I mean the idea of something suppressing the reactions until more reactions need to take place to have the desired outcome.
Vienticus Prime,
I think that John Kutsch tried to explain that there are two ways that Thorium is being used in Reactors. One as a fuel and secondly as a heat transferring agent in place of water. In the case where a Thorium Salt is being used in place of water to absorb the heat from the reactor, John explains that the Thorium salt heats up and cools more in line with demand than a water cooled reactor. A Nuclear Reactor was being cooled with Thorium Salt back in the 1960’s at the Oak Ridge Tennessee Base until it was shut down by Richard Nixon. It was know at that time that Thorium Reactors with Thorium Salt cooling would be much safer, yet the morons that we let rule over us had other plans.
Thoriums problem is it can’t be made into nukes. The department of energy was created to make nukes, power for the masses wasn’t the goal and energy abundance isn’t desired. After all it was big oil who saw nuclear power and electric vehicles as competition.
“Scotty, increase the Thorium crystals”
“I’m giving it all I can Captain”
“Jim, I’m just a country doctor but…”
AIN’T IT FUN BEING ALIVE (song)
https://old.bitchute.com/video/hiWFUYcpz8oC/
Thanks for covering this subject in more depth James.
Near the end of the interview, John mentioned he has an electric car and spoke to how inefficient batteries are, and then he seemed to imply that Thorium could address this inefficient battery problem somehow (but he never elaborated on how, unless I missed it).
Could someone tell me if I missed that part of the interview or someone that knows more about John’s work tell me what you think he meant by that.
Was he saying that he wants to put little thorium nuclear reactors in cars to power them? or that he wants to make a thorium based battery?
I do remember reading about a few people that made thorium based batteries. Unfortunately, two of them ended up dead and one disappeared. Big oil? “Big Lithium/Cobalt” ? Not sure, but it seemed fishy and reminded me of what happened to Stanley Meyer and Eugene Mallove.
For more info: https://www.rexresearch.com/articles2/thorium.htm
G,
I think John was implying that Safe Thorium Reactors could easily produce all the power needed for Electric Cars and what not. They would be far more cost effective than Solar, Wind, or Batteries.
I have seen models for small Thorium Rectors that could power an individual home thus eliminating the Power Bill. My guess is that the Power Companies don’t want you to know about this.
@TruthSeeker
Thanks for your interpretation.
So option number one then, “small thorium” reactors in cars (that are fed thorium as a fuel I assume?)
Power companies are very fond of their monopolies yes, and here in Canada they love to engage in data mining and invasive surveillance using smart meters… a lovely bunch of people.
Let me guess, the cost to install/replace a thorium pod that lasts 20 years will be on par or greater than the cost of 20 years worth of power bills? 🙂
Just sayin’.
The guest stated something about battery energy storage efficiency being 10%, but that’s wholly inaccurate. Unless he wanted to dump the whole of system inefficiency on batteries.
When it comes to power being drawn by the battery itself, lead acid batteries waste about 20% and then they proceed to lose charge due to self discharge up to 50% over a longer period of time. They are inefficient, but not 10% inefficient.
Li-Ion batteries are a lot better in this regard than lead acid batteries, but they bring problems of their own, as we already know. Still, the technology itself is far better than stated 10% efficiency.
It was likely an off the cuff remark that meant to imply something or the other that went unstated due to time constraints.
@mkey
Thanks for speculating and elucidating on the battery aspect.
I have lithium batteries in a bunch of stuff I use, but given what I now know about the cost for people up north (and all over the globe) I just cannot bring myself to buy any new ones anymore.
Another thing worth keeping in mind with enthusiasm for mining rare minerals from hard rock deposits is that it is “a crime against nature” for the same reason John described batteries being as such in the interview above.
All modern industrial mining involves deforestation, draining lakes and rivers, blowing the land into pieces with explosives, carving deep gashes into the Earth with giant machines, using truckloads of industrial solvents like sulfuric acid (resulting in water contamination with toxic sludge) dragging that processed rubble to processing facilities with fleets of heavy machinery then processing the ore with extremely high energy furnaces using another slew of toxic chemicals (which further contaminate the water table, lakes, rivers and ocean elsewhere).
Open pit mining especially causes surface water contamination, it also destroys other water sources. So, it’s also responsible for the creation of toxic rain. The water cycle largely depends on the limited forests. The trees extract underground water and release it into the atmosphere for this process to continue. Therefore, open pit mining hinders the water cycle from providing adequate rainfall in the affected areas. The impacts are severe. The long term result will be increased regional droughts, biodiversity loss, poisoned fish, livestock, vegetables, fruit, soil erosion and the risk of desertification.
So John advocates we should be doing this mining here so we can be thorium self sufficient, but I wonder how he willing he would be to continue advocating that if they found a big thorium deposit right next to his backyard?
This brings us to the question I posed in a poll recently, that I invite all of you to consider now (especially those of you that claim to live by some variation of the Golden Rule.) and that is :
If all the minerals required for the modern technologies in your life had to be extracted from mines directly adjacent to where you live, would you still want the tech?
For more info on what that looks like and where you can vote on that poll and see the results of others voting:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/poll-of-the-month-if-all-the-minerals
Many of us would like to say that we value the wise teachings of that famous carpenter from a little town called Nazareth in that we see the inherent moral truth of “The Golden Rule”, yet, how can we claim to live by such a moral code when we are willing to throw other humans and non-humans under the proverbial bus so that we can have the modern technological conveniences we have become accustomed to?
If we are not willing to live next door to an open pit pine that poisons the water, air and makes our life a living hell, how can we morally outsource that cost onto others through our continued purchases of products that require those conditions being forced onto others in far away places?
G,
So how is mining Thorium any different than Mining Uranium, or Gold, or Silver or, Copper, or Aluminum ?
@TruthSeeker
Great question.
While I may have done a fair bit of research into the types of mining going on (and planned to happen) in Ontario, which led to some deep dive research that gave me a pretty big reality check and slap in the face regarding the impacts of mining in general, I do not claim to be an expert.
That said, based on what I have learned the elements you listed there can be mined on an industrial scale in a few different ways, usually in some form of hard rock mining. The most common being open pit mining and strip mining (and then some of those tend to have deep ore veins so underground mining is often used, as it is for the mine in Sweden I describe here: https://open.substack.com/pub/gavinmounsey/p/indigenous-european-land-defenders?r=q2yay&selection=ed7868da-582a-42e1-95fd-b8236fbca6c5&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web&aspectRatio=instagram&textColor=%23ffffff&bgImage=true )
All of those types of mining are devastating to water quality in the region where that mining occurs (some of those elements being more likely to severely contaminate the water with a long list of poisons, while others may only contaminate the water with a few toxic elements/compounds).
Thorium is typically extracted as a byproduct of Rare Earth Mineral mining, which is typically an open pit mining operation.
Rare Earth Mineral mining is one of the types of hard rock mining that creates and releases an especially long list of toxic contaminants into the waterways.
Rare earth mining necessitates forest, river and lake destruction, severe water and soil contamination from toxic chemicals and radioactive waste, and air pollution (not CO-2, I am talking about poisonous particulates). The extraction process requires massive amounts of explosives, solvents and creates a large volume of waste, including toxic sludge and radioactive residue, which leak and seep into groundwater (every single time).
In Laos, this year, a rare earth mineral mining operation began released high levels of cyanide into rivers, leading to widespread fish die-offs (a food source incredibly important to locals).
In the river valley Wadi Faynan, in modern-day Jordan, is the site of an ancient Roman copper mine. Two thousand years has not been enough time to heal the damage from the mine. To this day the growth of the plants is stunted and their reproductive systems severely damaged. The sheep there still have disturbing concentrations of copper in their feces, urine, and milk. Goats that live there have adapted genetically to survive but their milk and meat is poisonous to humans. A deathly monument of slag still rises 30 meters high.
Mining is one of those things that happen in a half-mythical “somewhere else” less important, unless you live there, in which case it’s your water and air, your lungs and skin, your cancer, and your child’s health. Which is why mines are always fiercely opposed by the people condemned to endure them.
Thanks for asking.
Some will say that all the solar energy we need can come from coppiced wood.
@mkey
Good one man! Very true, and something my Gaelic ancestors were into big time.
Hazelnut trees/shrubs (in a wild untended state generally lives around 70 or 80 years) but with regular coppicing it can thrive and produce wood and nuts for centuries.
Willow, Beech, Linden, Elderberry, Birch and several others are all excellent candidates for regenerative coppiced food forest management.
You can have access to fuel for building, basket weaving, art, growing mushrooms, building soil, garden tools and heating (and potentially producing electricity with thermoelectric generators and/or a wood powered furnace).
That type of “solar power” does a lot more jobs than a photovoltaic cell.
Combine that solar power with an intact place based culture that has a reciprical relationship with the land and some really cool things start to happen.
In pre-colonial times, Hazel and Willow Wicker basketry became such an elevated artform in the Albion (now known as the British Isles) that fine Celtic baskets were imported by Roman aristocrats. The word ‘basket’ itself (originally ‘bascauda’) is one of the only words of Gaelic Celtic origin in the deeply colonized English language.
Talk about solar power! It compelled “civilized” Romans to pay top dollar to the forest dwelling “savages” for their creations and forged linguistic artifacts in the English language!
Coppicing is a technique I intend to highlight in my next book in a number of pertinent tree species profiles.
Thanks for the comment.
I thought the title was familiar. It cannot easily be weaponized (as you pointed out back in the day) is why they didnt develop it. No doubt, if we make it that far, people will in the future. China and India (I read) are apparently working on developing thorium reactors.
Lastly, I wanted to highlight that not all “eco-activists” are attempting to tell you that you should live in a “hovel” or in “energy poverty” James.
The caricature of the “eco-activist” or “environmentalist” that is sometimes portrayed relating to the global warming / CO-2 emissions cult is a generalization that demeans the efforts of many of us that have very legitimate concerns about the corporate and government enabled destruction the ecological integrity of the hydrological, soil and forest eco-systems we depend on to live a long, healthy and meaningful life. Many of us engage in activism to protect the last few ancient forests and the waterways for future generations and all of humanity and I think it creates a polarized and fallacious image to use terms like those I mentioned above in a generalizing derogatory way.
There are a lot of idiots freaking out about cow burps, co-2 emissions and other “climate change” psyop related nonsense in protests etc yes, but that does not mean all of us that engage in activism to protect the ecology of this planet are like that.
The following posts could be described as “eco-activism” and yet these endeavors have nothing to do with wanting people to live in a hovel or force energy poverty on them:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/death-by-a-thousand-clearcuts
(continued..)
(continued from above..)
On a Pilgrimage through the wastelands of civilization towards the living Cathedral called the Fairy Creek watershed:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/on-a-pilgrimage-through-the-wastelands
(continued..)
(continued from above..)
Indigenous European Land Defenders resist “Green Colonialism” and geoengineering over their ancestral lands:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/indigenous-european-land-defenders
One of the things those indigenous Sami European land defenders are engaging in ecological activism to prevent by the way, is exploitation and poisoning of their traditional lands and waters for extracting rare earth minerals, which includes thorium.
In Sami territory (in one of their communities that has been invaded by corporate profiteers) Sweden — Every night, sometime between 1 and 2 a.m., everyone feels it, right on schedule: a deep, rhythmic rumbling that reverberates through their floors, shaking their walls and their beds. Three-quarters of a mile below the ground, miners have just detonated a massive quantity of explosives. They’re blasting out ore from the bedrock — around six Eiffel Towers’ worth.
In this northern Swedish Sami town of around 23,000, most people have been forced to get used to the feeling of reverberating dynamite. But a newcomer may find themselves jolted awake, night after night.
The signs of the ground being hollowed out below are everywhere. Cracks run up the brickwork of houses and apartment buildings. This town is ever so slowly being pulled towards the mine like a tablecloth dragged from a table set for breakfast. Kiruna is breaking apart.
Kiruna sits high up in the Swedish Arctic, a once starkly beautiful place, surrounded by primeval forests, powerful rivers and rugged mountains. More than a century ago, industrialists named it “the land of the future” because of the rich seams of ore that lay beneath the earth, ready to be extracted.
(continued..)
(continued from above..)
Alongside the “land of the future,” this place has another alias — “Europe’s last remaining wilderness.” There’s truth to the name: These vast boreal forests are home to the brown bear, golden eagle, Arctic fox, lynx, wolf and beaver. It’s one of the least inhabited places in Europe. But the Sami don’t like the term. For them, this isn’t a wilderness, and it isn’t empty. The land is replete with cultural heritage, with the traces of thousands of years of living alongside nature, tending the forest, planting medicine herbs, foraging for mushrooms, herding reindeer, fishing, hunting and storytelling.
But today, mining has carved out so much of the land that it’s caused deep, tectonic shifts in the Earth’s crust. Unlike the timed nightly rumblings from the mine, these are real seismic tremors that shake the town’s foundations without warning. The rivers once teaming with salmon are being poisoned by these mines crippling an essential food source of the indigenous people that have lived there for centuries.
Carina Sarri, 73, can barely recognize the landscape today — it has changed so much since her childhood. The Kiruna Sami native now lives in the south of Sweden, but recently returned for a visit.
“Two, three new mountains they have built, from the remains of the mine,” she said, describing the enormous piles of waste rock the miners have dumped, forming artificial mountains that dominate the skyline to the south of the city. She told me about the lake, once a treasured summer spot for swimming and fishing brown trout.
The Swedish state-owned mining company, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag or LKAB, began draining the Lake away about a decade ago to stop water seeping into the mine. Now people are afraid that what remains is too contaminated to swim in, and the brown trout have become scarce and/or mutilated/deformed.
Sweden’s deputy prime minister announced that in Kiruna, just north of where the LKAB is currently mining, is a second enormous underground deposit of metals, containing not only iron, but also Europe’s largest quantity of rare earth metals. This second deposit, she said, would be a treasure trove of much-needed materials for thorium reactors, making magnets that power electric car engines and help convert motion into electricity in wind turbines.
Opening up a sister mine — to dig for these valuable minerals — would be crucial, she said, “for Europe’s greener, profitable future” Busch told reporters.
(for more info on that mine read post a linked in previous comment above)
You know an impressive amount about this subject
@Iamfreeiamme
Thanks, I suppose it began when I saw how we were trading blood for oil in the middle east, then I looked at alternatives to oil, found lithium batteries for cars and then wondered if we would end up trading blood for lithium instead of blood for oil.
Then more recently my wife and I were looking to move to a less populated area and buy some acreage to plant a food forest and live the homestead life, but when I researched what the locals were talking about up north (in the boreal forest region of Ontario) with regards to concerns about water quality, it was lithium, cobalt, tungsten and tantalum mining.
I describe some of that in the poll post below:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/poll-of-the-month-if-you-were-given
So now in the effort to locate land less likely to have neighboring rivers, lakes and forest clearcut, drained, blown apart with explosives and turned into a toxic waste dump, I have had to research all the different types of mining occurring and planned for regions we are looking at property (which it turns out, is significant in the amount of hectares of pristine forested land that are already purchased by mining corporations now and set to be annihilated soon) so that I can avoid buying land, starting to set up a homestead and then having our well water poisoned by some mining operation next door.
It has been a pretty unpleasant wake up call for me, learning about the communities that have been seriously impacted by mining corporations all over the globe. People getting poisoned, becoming infertile, getting cancer, having all their animals die drinking contaminated water, having all the wild fish die and on and on.
These are big oligarch profiteering operations, so these details are swiftly tucked under the rug, surviving people are bribed, “Delphi Techniqued”, blackmailed and some are just disappeared. That happens regularly in Brazil where one of the biggest Iron ore mines on earth has been carved into the Amazon rainforest and it is also beginning to happen up north where I live.
I have talked to about a dozen locals that live in between Thunder Bay and James Bay (the so called “Ring Of Fire” mining region in Ontario) that know of people in their communities that were active critics and activists sounding the alarm about the impacts lithium mining will have on water and fish, and they went missing (some had their bodies show up and local officials said it was “suicide”).
It feels more like a more sneaky and well organized re-play of the 1920s in Oklahoma, with what happened to people in the Osage Nation after oil was discovered on tribal land.
Or maybe I am just paranoid and there was a drastic increase in suicides and people leaving behind their family and friends to disappear all of the sudden… either way, this is the type of research I have had to do in order to find land that is safe for the long term, and so when people say “yay for mining” I feel moved to speak out.
The problem with thorium is Thor. He is always depicted as a muscular blond white man. To gain greater acceptance, he needs to be portrayed more sensitively. He could be a dark-skinned, dark-haired, overweight woman or transgender, or all of the above at once. THEN we will gain acceptance from the government!
Trust me, this a proven strategy.
Oh, and anti-tank projectiles rely on the heavy and hard metal of spent uranium rods from nuclear reactors.
Nuclear Scare Scam
For the Compleat Conspiracy Theorist… (1986)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIuNAbxa7OA&ab_channel=nobodyreally
A modern disciple?
https://www.tiktok.com/@planetamundobr/video/7545491132604632326
The self proclaimed elite don’t seem to have a problem creating new Nuclear Reactors for these Data Mining Centers that will be used to track and trace everyone. If the powers that be want to get the world population down to 500 million, how do you think they will select who they will let live?
For a more conspiratorial explanation, check this out for size:
we are drenched in a massive, overpowering cult of death and the vast majority do not even know it.
On the brighter side of news, when the interviewee was discussing what needs to happen for the next step, demented old Brandon came to mind, particularly the way he announced that the Putin pipeline was going to go under (or up). You think these thorium reactors can’t explode? Oh, they can, trust me, we can make them go boom.
Mkey,
Can you elaborate more on ” old Brandon” . I beg your pardon but I am a bit distressed at not being able to put this into context . I’m suffering here. You would not want me to suffer would you?
I don’t want you to suffer. I’m referring to Joe Biden announcing at a press conference that they are going to shut down the pipeline connecting Russia and Germany. And so they did.
https://odysee.com/@WHATNOW:8/EMERGENCY-ALERT-NORD-STREAM-1—2-PIPELINES-BLOWN-UP-!!!-JOE-BIDEN-PROMISED-TO-DO-THIS,-NOW-WAR-!!:9
I appreciate the contributions of “G” in this conversation string and am happy to discover the blogsite he has linked in his comments. I appreciate that James would engage in such a conversation but find the enthusiasm of thorium mining and processing as a “solution” to be misguided, especially in light of what “G” has contributed to the conversation.
I am only about halfway through watching the video, so perhaps there is some conversation about the concerns “G” speaks to that are addressed. Up to this point, it seems like a softball interview.
As a resident of a state with some of the largest deposits of thorium (and some very real plans to exploit it https://www.juniorminingnetwork.com/junior-miner-news/press-releases/1357-nysemkt/idr/177286-idaho-strategic-announces-its-plans-for-the-2025-rare-earth-elements-exploration-field-season-in-alignment-with-president-trump-s-recent-executive-order.html), it is very likely that we will soon be seeing this mining take place “in our back yard”. And, just like the antimony and gold mining project that has managed to bullshit its way into fruition, I don’t want it! (See my article, “The Justification of Exploitation” https://modernindigenouswordpresscom.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/the-justification-of-exploitation/ for more on the Midas Gold project…now operating under its 3rd name, “Perpetua Industries”).
I would like to encourage James to engage in a follow-on conversation with those who are most knowledgeable and critical of the mining and processing of this element that is being touted as such a modern miracle and a solution to so many of the world’s problems. Perhaps Arnie Gundersen of Fairwinds Energy could be interviewed? There is a very contradictory write up on he and his wife’s website that provides insights into this critical conversation. https://www.fairewinds.org/demystify/thorium-reactors
My concern here is that freedom advocates uncritically buy into and promote industrial exploitation of more natural resources.
I see China already has a thorium-powered cargo ship, nice.
https://www.thedefensenews.com/news-details/China-Unveils-the-Worlds-First-Thorium-Powered-Cargo-Ship-Carry-up-to-14000-Shipping-Containers/
“China has unveiled the world’s first thorium-powered cargo vessel, marking a significant milestone in nuclear maritime engineering and energy innovation. According to the South China Morning Post, the newly developed vessel is powered by a 200 MW thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR) and is capable of carrying up to 14,000 standard shipping containers, making it one of the largest and most advanced nuclear-powered cargo ships ever built.”