March 31st 2011 saw Kirk Sorensen pay a visit to Calgary PROTOSPACE (in our previous downtown location). Kirk spoke for 270 minutes on the subject of LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors). This lecture was combined with over 10 hours of additional thorium lectures to produce the video summary: “LFTR in 5 Minutes – THORIUM REMIX 2011”

Thorium is a nuclear fuel which can offer many advantages over uranium, provided it is consumed in an appropriate nuclear reactor. Today’s reactors use solid fuel rods immersed in pressurized water. The ideal nuclear reactor with which to consume thorium fuel is the “Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor” (LFTR), a type Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (Th-MSR).

The biggest advantage LFTR offers, is that of increased efficiency. More of the nuclear fuel is converted to energy. Less of the fuel is left over as nuclear waste. And construction is much simpler because the fluoride salts can transfer heat much better at atmospheric pressure than water can even under the tremendous pressure found in today’s nuclear reactors.

A simplified test reactor demonstrated the practicality of this between 1965 – 1969. However, thorium molten salt research was cancelled as politics took precedence over engineering. (The Integral Fast Reactor had political allies, and remains the “favored” future reactor design.)

The video THORIUM REMIX 2011 is our attempt to “get the word out” about LFTR. It is Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-SA) licensed. That means you can copy it, remix it and even sell it. (If your own hackerspace wants DVDs at cost, get in touch.)

To-date, 4 remixes already exist. One that might be of particular interest to fellow hackers is “Thorium, Heavy Rare Earths, China & the Loss of Hi-Tech Manufacturing Jobs”. There are many reasons today’s consumer electronics are manufactured in China. Some of them (very much related to thorium) may surprise you:

Also, LFTR produces less nuclear waste and can consume our existing stockpiles of nuclear waste. LFTR can help facilitate new cancer treatments. And deploying LFTRs will help fight global warming.

We hope you find this subject as interesting as we do. And if you want to help propagate this message on your own YouTube account, check out YouTube’s [Remix this video!] button. You can extract your favorite portion and host it (under your complete control) on your own YouTube account. It is a pretty cool feature, and worth trying just for its own sake.