Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Tasmodevil44]

The more I got to thinking about this ” outside – the – box ” idea, the more I began to realize how correct belbear is in the major technical and nuclear physics obstacles to trying to ” burn ” thorium, uranium, etc. in the DPF. Belbear said it takes about 6 hours for protactinium to decay into U233. But it gets even worse than that. After reading more on thorium nuclear power, I found that it can take as long as a month and a half for the transmutation to occur ! ! ! Far too long for only a 6 picosecond time window.

I also looked at other possibilities. For example, you might be able to leapfrog over the lengthy protactinium step if a thorium nucleus absorbs an energetic enough alpha particle and goes directly to becoming uranium. But this would be working against the binding energy curve and would actually tend to absorb energy from the plasma rather than heat it. Not to mention the enormous X – ray loss from an atom with such a large atomic number. I also checked – out on the internet an exotic new type of thorium fisssion discvered by researchers in Ohio back during the 1990’s. ( Read my other post) . But alas, this produces no energy at all, even though it’s a nuclear reaction !