Interesting, but will it work? Using "Thorium" as a power source through laser excitation?

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Mike Beauford
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Interesting, but will it work? Using "Thorium" as a power source through laser excitation?

Post by Mike Beauford »

Here's a link to a story on Slashdot. My question is this, is this even possible with what they are talking about or is this a scam?

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/0 ... ne-In-Cars

NOTE! Sorry I posted this. After reading it a little deeper I find this guy is a scam artist. At first I was wondering if I was missing something, after which a little digging found that this guy who's behind it is selling snake oil! Sorry for the post!
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Re: Interesting, but will it work? Using "Thorium" as a power source through laser excitation?

Post by Nicker »

While we are at it, we can use some of this for our fusors:

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/nex ... 3.28b.html
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Interesting, but will it work? Using "Thorium" as a power source through laser excitation?

Post by Chris Bradley »

> "Charles Stevens is an inventor and CEO of Laser Power Systems. His idea is to replace the gasoline engine with an electricity generator that doesn’t require a battery. He is proposing the use of the rare earth mineral thorium in conjunction with a laser and mini turbines that easily produce enough electricity to power a vehicle.
>Thorium is abundant and radioactive, but much safer to use than an element such as uranium. When thorium is heated it becomes extremely hot and causes heat surges allowing it to be coupled with mini turbines producing steam that can then be used to generate electricity."


It is difficult to comprehend what 'heat surges' mean, but a little more digging in the links provided reveals what might be the claim at the heart of this:

>"Ultrasonic cavitation of water speeds up thorium decay
>It is a common belief that radioactive decay rates are unchanged by external conditions, despite many examples of small shifts (particularly involving external pressure and K-capture decays) being well documented and understood. However, Fabio Cardone of the Institute per lo Studio dei Materiali Nanostrutturati in Rome and colleagues have shown a dramatic increase – by a factor of 10,000 – in the decay rate of thorium-228 in water as a result of ultrasonic cavitation. Exactly what the physics is and whether or not this sort of effect can be scaled up into a technology for nuclear waste treatment remain open issues.
>Further reading; F Cardone, R Mignani and A Petrucci 2009 Phys. Lett. A 373 1956."


and

>"thorium trigger: Nikola Tesla, who did a lot of experimental work with Electromagnetism, suggested that some type of ray may trigger radioactive decay. Others have taken up this idea and have proposed various ideas about what the rays could be. Some suggest neutrinos, since they are associated with nuclear reactions and are detected by their triggering a nuclear reaction. If neutrinos or some other agent trigger nuclear decay, an increase in the presence of this agent would accelerate nuclear decay.
> The required intensity parameter zf _O (1) can be achieved with a laser, but the small temporal duty cycle is disqualifying. For example, the requisite intensity could be supplied by a Ti : Sapph laser with a pulse length of 100 fs (10−13 s) at a repetition rate of 1 kHz (103 s−1)."


Sounds like yet another attempt to fleece folks for some 'project funding' for yet another hair-brainer, given how important energy is, and all, don't y'know.
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Mike Beauford
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Re: Interesting, but will it work? Using "Thorium" as a power source through laser excitation?

Post by Mike Beauford »

I was trying to figure out by what mechanism they where somehow inducing decay in Thorium, but from what you've pointed out, this seems to be another scam. Thanks for the info.

Mike Beauford
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