News update #2 for readers of "A serious but not ponderous book about Nuclear Energy"
In these updates, we try to bring you news of significant current scientific and technological developments in the field of nuclear energy. New, still in development, not yet completely tested, some will be tomorrow's news headlines, some may be obsolete within months or years. Often we have to rely on information from the people who are promoting them, who have a personal or financial interest in them, and who promise results which may or may not materialize. Many numbers that we cite are estimates, and differ from source to source; rarely are all the raw data they are based on available. We do our best to sort out fact from hype and to be accurate and understandable. You'll be the judge.
Walter Scheider Cavendish Press Ann Arbor, PO Box 2588, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
cavendish@worldnet.att.net Thorium: Is It the Better Nuclear Fuel?
It may turn out to be a quantum leap in the search for economy and safety. Carlo Rubbia won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 for the discovery of two elusive high energy particles, called the W and the Z. The discovery was a feat not only of physics, but of engineering. He is good at both, and now has another idea which could revolutionize the methods we use to retrieve nuclear energy.
You may never have heard of thorium. It is a plentiful element; there is more of it in the earth's crust than uranium. No, it is not fissionable. But it can be made into a low weight isotope of uranium that is fissionable. Rubbia thinks it may be worth the trouble to do that, even if it is a roundabout route to nuclear fission. countries. | |
|
