2015.01.02
방사선 물질을 원료로 사용해 달리는 자동차가 개발될 것이라는 소식이 전해졌다. 미국 레이저 파워 시스템 연구소는 최근 방사선 원소인 토륨을 원료로 사용하는 핵 추진 '토륨 자동차'의 콘셉트를 공개했다.
토륨은 흙이나 암석에도 있을 만큼 자연계에 존재하는 방사성 원소 가운데 가장 흔하고 방사능이 약해 크게 위험하지 않은 것으로 알려져있다.
이 연구소는 "토륨은 우라늄보다 4배나 많은 매장량을 갖고 있는 풍부한 원소인 반면 방사능 물질은 적게 배출하는 장점을 갖고 있다"며 "자동차에 적용하면 아주 적은 양(8g)으로 약 30만 마일(28만km)를 주행 할 수 있다"고 말했다. 가솔린으로 환산하면 무려 2만 8390리터에 해당하는 동력 에너지를 얻을 수 있다는 얘기다.
연구소가 공개한 콘셉트카는 모두 4개의 바퀴 안에 각각 6개의 다른 바퀴가 들어가는 독특한 방식으로 24개의 바퀴마다 모터가 장착되는 인휠 모터 타입으로 구동이 된다.
토륨 연료차에 대한 반응은 크게 갈리고 있다. 일반적인 연료는 물론 전기차와 수소연료전지차 등 미래 자동차와는 비교가 되지 않는 경제성을 갖고 있지만 "핵을 실은 자동차가 도로를 주행하는 셈"이라며 "사고가 빈번한 도로에서의 운행은 사실상 불가능한 구상"이라는 반응을 내 놓고 있다.
레이저 파워 시스템 관계자도 "안전에 대한 위험을 감수할 만한 가치가 있는지의 여부를 판단하는 것이 가장 고민스러운 부분"이라고 말해 양산 모델에 적용하기까지는 상당한 난관이 예상된다. 레이저 파워 시스템은 그러나 토륨을 이용한 자동차 뿐만 아니라 보트와 이륜차 등 개발에 주력하고 있다.
한편 토륨 연료 콘셉트카는 지난 2009년 시카고 오토쇼에서 캐딜락이 세계 최초로 소개하면서 주목을 끈 바 있다.
< 저작권자 © 오토헤럴드 무단전재 및 재배포금지 >
Thorium the future of Energy & Transportation
Information
In very general and broad terms the Mission of LPS is to create an economic boom for the area in which it is located, providing high paying jobs with full benefits, provide a growing tax base for the expansion of local infrastructure (school, hospitals, roads, utilities, government building and services) wail maintaining a high quality of life. The R&D center will have a secondary spin off effect on the local economy in many other areas such as hospitality, construction, transportation. This in turn will create an industrial base that will impact the world economy with new cutting edge technology in health care, bio-tech, nanotechnology, manufacturing and alternative energy technologies that will provide the world with clean green energy slowing global warming and stimulate and developing sustainable economic progress, There are just as many definitions for it. Ours is "meeting the needs of our stakeholders today, while preserving choices for future generations to meet their needs".
New Block 2
Who We Are
NOW Imagine a NEW power generators systems that is small, cheap to build, safe to operate, can be used to power homes, business, cars, trucks, ships, and even planes and spacecraft!!
Laser Power Systems (LPS) was founded in 2007 with offices in Sturbridge, MA and Bethel, CT. LPS has a proven and experienced Management Team combined with influential business partners and industry alliances. LPS is focused on the bulk of the $150 billion market over the next decade to build a clean sustainable energy future by delivering proprietary, patent and trade secret cutting edge energy technology. This will successfully create an alternative to oil, gas, coal and conventional Nuclear power plants as well as replacement technology for the internal combustion engines. LPS has already created a strong sales pipeline with several immediate multi-million dollar contracts and letters of intent.
LPS offers Transformative technology in a hyper-growth market opportunity with strong IRR potential for investors. LPS is currently seeking structured millions in growth capital from a reputable Institutional Investor.
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Welcome
The investment opportunity is not in the thorium itself, it's in the technology that unlocks the value of thorium.
Right now, thorium is so "worthless" that the US government buried 3200 metric tons of it in the Nevada desert due to lack of demand. If it was economically advantageous to go and put thorium in today's light-water reactors, it would have already been done. This has been looked at for decades, examined in documents like WASH-1059, and even attempted in the last core of the Shippingport reactor. Can it be done? Yes. Is it economically advantageous? No.
Create a new era in sustainable green technologies Revitalization the US economy by bringing back large scale high tech manufacturing
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Information
Project Description: R & D and manufacturing complex for the building of Laser Power Systems, a highly differentiated, unique and significantly superior product. At this time the 2.5 Mkw High speed generators have been building and are being tested by the USAF. The 2.5 Mkw unit is a 1/10th the size of conventional generators at only 28 x 21 inches and 360 lbs., number of other sizes, 5Kw, 30Kw. 90Kw, 200Kw, 1.2 Mkw have also been built and tested under a number of development programs and larger units are being designed to meet the demands of the commercial power industry. The Tesla turbines are simple and cheap to build the one in the picture is 75% Complete but is just a new prototype design that has much application. The complete system, MaxFelaser, turbine, need to be sized to the generator that it would be powering. At this time more than 20 years of research and development has gone into these technologies. To produces a complete prototype systems will take 3 to 6 months and another 6 to 12 month for small scale manufacturing to start and 12 to 24 months for larger scale production to be in place. This time scale is based on minimum investments of 250 million dollars over a 3 year period. It would be possible to fast track the project and cut the time in half but the faster and larger the project the more money it would cost, cost is relative, the profits would be larger and come faster as well. The key to this system is the Ultra HI-OP MaxFelaser that makes it possible to generate power with zero emission NO GREEN HOUSE GASES. The laser utilizes the power in “Rear Earth Metals” and a new laser plumbing system to flash water to steam and drive a LPS turbine SR high-speed generator producing clean emission free energy for just about any power system requirement or application: large central power systems, distributed power systems, local, stand-by or back up power systems, or small in home or business system as well as the 250 Kw to 1 Mw systems that could be put into cars, trucks or just about anything that now uses an internal combustion engine. Other applications: Industrial cutting and welding, medical, communication, military, Alternative power generation, transportation: cars, trucks, trains, planes and space craft. This system can be produced at a cost less than current power systems such as coal fired or nuclear power plant. These systems have many advantages over other systems:
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Introduction to Thorium the fuel of the future.
This is intended to be a location for discussion and education about the value of thorium as a future energy source. Despite the fact that our world is desperately searching for new sources of energy, the value of thorium is not well-understood, even in the "nuclear engineering" community.
The fundamental basis for considering nuclear energy over chemical energy is the binding energy released in each case. Chemical energy is released when the electron configuration of atoms is rearranged through a chemical process (combustion, digestion, etc.) Electrons are bound to nuclei with binding energies measured in electron volts (eV).
The protons and neutrons in an atomic nucleus, on the other hand, are bound with energies measured in millions of electron volts (MeV). Thus, rearranging the nucleus of an atom (through fusion or fission) releases roughly a million times more energy than chemical energy release.
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LPS TECHNOLOGY
Laser Power Systems has spent more than 20 years in the quiet research and development of Uranium and thorium-fueled High-energy and Ultra-High energy lasers. LPS is now ready to make its research public and offer-for the first time in history - safe, clean, affordable, abundant, carbon-free energy on a global scale.
In the past ten years, computer technology was developed that allowed us to move thorium forward as a viable fuel source. The key factor in the computer analysis is discerning the difference in the reactions of thorium and U235.
Eliminates production of greenhouse gases
Dramatically lowers the volume and toxicity of waste
Significantly improves safety
Removes the hazards associated with current fuel production
Operates in an environmentally safe manner
Prevents nuclear weapons proliferation
Significantly reduces MaxFelaser size and complexity
Drastically reduces fuel costs
The LPS MaxFelaser fueled Thorium laser can produce electricity for less than $0.01 per kilowatt-hour
The natural abundance of thorium, its low cost of mining and milling, the low volume of waste produced, and its lower long-term radiotoxicity mean that the LPS MaxFelaser systems.
Uses fuel that—mass for mass—is 500 times cheaper and produces about 18 million time more energy than Coal.
has less than 50% of the capital costs, based on a design philosophy of robust mechanical simplicity
Project Description: R & D and manufacturing complex for the building of Laser Turbine Power Systems, a highly differentiated, unique and significantly superior product.
There are four basic nuclear "fuels" found in nature: deuterium, lithium, thorium, and uranium. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen that is found wherever hydrogen is found (such as water). Lithium is a light metal found in lake evaporates. In a traditional fusion reactor, lithium is converted to tritium (another hydrogen isotope) and then fused with deuterium, releasing energy and additional neutrons. But fusion is fundamentally difficult because positively charged particles tend to repel each other strongly, and only extraordinary temperatures, magnetic confinement, and complicated engineering can coax them to fuse. Despite all this effort, the goal of economical fusion energy is distant and perhaps unreachable, even if the physics can be conquered.
Fission of uranium or thorium, on the other hand, is much easier because neutrons are used to induce destabilization and splitting of the nucleus. The neutron is uncharged, so there is no magnetic repulsion to contend with in the fission process. No magnetic confinement or vacuum chambers are required either. The downside of fission is the generation of unstable, neutron-rich fission products that seek stability through successive beta decay.
Fission of natural uranium requires the construction of reactors that maintain high neutron energies (fast-spectrum reactors) throughout their operation. This is because the fission of plutonium-239 (the result of neutron absorption in uranium-238, the dominant isotope) does not produce enough neutrons to sustain the process unless it is bombarded by high-energy neutrons.
Fission of natural thorium, on the other hand, is much easier because its absorption product (uranium-233) produces enough neutrons from collision with a slowed-down (thermal) neutron to sustain the fission reaction, given that the reactor is designed to be frugal with its neutrons. This feature, and the abundance of thorium worldwide, gives thorium a profound advantage over the other nuclear fuels for sustained energy generation.
Thorium is abundant in the Earth's crust and widespread across the United States and around the world: The major distinguishing factors between thorium and fusion are feasibility and power density.
Controlled thermonuclear fusion is intensely difficult. The more you learn about it, the more you realize just how difficult. It's easy to point to the Sun as an "existence-proof" for fusion, but the fusion type and conditions in the Sun are totally different than what we try to do on the ground. The fundamental reason that fusion is so difficult is that positively-charged nuclei repel each other strongly. To give them enough energy to overcome this repulsion, you must get them very hot. So hot that measuring temperature in degrees kind of breaks down, and we go to measuring temperature in electron-volts. The typical temperature needed in a deuterium-tritium fusion reactor (the easiest one to build) is about 10,000 electron-volts, or about 200 million degrees Fahrenheit. Even at these temperatures, fusion of nuclei is still very improbable. Most interactions simply scatter (deflect) away from one another. only once in a great while do you have a head-on collision that doesn't scatter, and then you can have a fusion reaction and energy release. This is why the other two components of the Lawson criteria (the basic blueprint of fusion) come into play: density and confinement.
You have to have the nuclei hot enough, you have to have enough of them, and you have to keep them there long enough for fusion. Up to this point, we have not built a fusion machine that maintains these conditions in sufficient quantity to release more energy than it consumes. We may someday, but we haven't yet.
Even if we did build such a machine, it would have a very low power density. This is because fusion plasmas are a pretty good vacuum, and the amount of fusion power taking place (per unit volume) is pretty low. So you need a very big machine. And a fusion machine is not a simple machine. It's essentially a very, very good vacuum chamber, surrounded by intensely power superconducting magnets, held together by a huge steel superstructure to keep it from ripping itself apart. (the magnets don't like each other) As if this wasn't enough, it also needs to be a nuclear breeder reactor, converting the neutrons from D-T fusion into more tritium. This is done by surrounding the inner chamber with lithium (the precursor of tritium) and beryllium (as a neutron multiplier). And all the extraction systems to remove gaseous tritium generated in the breeding blanket. Contrast that with a thorium reactor, which operates at relatively low temperatures (<1000 K), has no magnets, vacuum chamber or high-pressure systems, and no huge superstructure holding it together. A liquid-fluoride thorium reactor is very power dense, compared to fusion, meaning that it physically has a smaller "footprint" and could conceivably be built small enough to fit in submarines or trailers. You won't be able to do that with a fusion machine.
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