Gasoline was considered useless too. It was simply dumped by Rockefeller in the process of making lamp oil, because it was to dangerous for lamps. At the same time people working on combustion engines were looking for something to run their engines. Today it would be considered to dangerous and dirty to be used. I find it funny when people say lithium batteries are dangerous for use I cars. Because a couple have caught on fire. How many cars catch on fire every day? I know my truck burnt up in my driveway and want even in a wrecked.
@@nealramsey4439 yeah but how many combustion cars are out there? Like a couple billions meanwhile not even a million electric cars and they already started to catch fire
Actually thorium can be used as a fuel in special nuclear reactors that take only 100 years to decompose so doesn't create that many nuclear waste but no one wants to develop those reactors
@@emilianoramirez5340 Except that's only a half-truth... One being promoted by a couple of pseudoscience conmen. Thorium has a much longer half-life than Uranium 235... which means that just like Uranium 238 it needs a hot neutron source to initiate criticality... So it needs to be salted with U 235 to kick it in the ass. Sustaining criticallity requires more than just getting the neutron cascade started though. As the fuel decays it produces daughter products that absorb neutrons, gradually reducing the output to a level that can no longer sustain criticallity. Thorium isn't "cleaner." It runs for only a fraction of the time that uranium fuel can before requiring that the fuel rods be changed. It leaves you with more rather than less hot spent fuel to store until it's cooled off enough to reprocess. Reprocessing of both types of fuel is expensive snd dangerous, but with thorium is must be done more frequently. Thorium itself is safe enough to be around... the spent fuel rods however are just as dangerous as uranium fuel rods. The people pushing this half-truth tend to pretend there is some sort of conspiracy to hide cheaper/cleaner energy from consumers. They are the same sort of folks who rant about perpetual motion machines and "free energy" systems they claim are being covered up by "big energy." So... no. Not in reality. If they were actually more efficient/cleaner/safer they would be in use. They do however inspire lots of people to throw money at conmen who promise a lot of BS to their "investors."
@@theanonymous4443 Their regulations with such material are more relaxed then say, the United States, or really any other country in the world, maybe there's a few others out there besides Russia, but they're probably less notable.
Thorium is very useful indeed. It's used in TIG welding electrodes because being a beta emitter it starts an arc very easily. Also used as a cold cathode emitter in some electron guns.
It is not to do with being a beta emitter. In fact, it (or rather its daughters) is a rather poor one. The benefit in the electrodes is a metallurgical one. The electrodes last longer and produce a better weld.
@@revcrussell Simply not true. I don't know where that idea comes from but I used to work in research in electron microscopy where these things are studied at University level. Look up thoriated tungsten work function. (Work function is the voltage needed to 'pull' electrons out of a metal surface) physics.stackexchange.com/questions/359187/thoriated-tungsten-filaments
@@qwadratix Yes, it has a lower work function. That is a 'metallurgical' property not a nuclear radioactive property. Thorium is not radioactive enough to reduce the energy to start the spark (enough to matter). There are places where this is done but here it doesn't matter. Look up Kr-85 filled vacuum tubes.
@@revcrussell True, Work function is a property of the quantum states of the electronic structure of the bulk metal. As such it's extremely complex and there's no practical calculation I'm aware of that allows you to compute it directly from basic parameters. However. I entertain a (possibly unjustified) conviction that the electrical potential developed by an unstable nucleus is going to influence the bulk property. I shouldn't have stated it as fact. I'll also add that the beta particles emitted will also tend to produce some ionisation in the surrounding air, Also probably a factor. But at the end of the day, thorium is added for it's ability to initiate an arc, not it's thermal properties. That much is certain
Because thorium has the potential to produce more than one million times the energy of gasoline by weight it has been called the most valuable worthless element. Of course there was a time when crude oil was also worthless.
Well it radiates alfa radiation which can produce heat so maybe possible to make an weak nuclear reactor in your garage which will supply lights so good luck ;)
If you liked the cloud chamber, you'll probably like this if you use an android phone.. Keep a cloud chamber in your pocket. : play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sifnt.CloudChamber
@@RowOfMushyTiT it's even cooler: what was making the track was even smaller than a complete atom: it was merely a particle (two protons and two neutrons).
Thorium is a metal that is actually underestimated in importance and underutilized, mainly in fission. Th-232 is not fissile but it is very fertile, and when it takes on that extra neutron it becomes Th-233 for a very short time then BETA decays into Protactinium 233 for 2 weeks then on to U-233. There are times where it will decay into U-232 which is junk and has a half life of 60 years but there are ways to deal with it. U-233 as fuel is the best stuff you can get with a fission to capture ratio of 12 (fission) : 1 (Capture) making U-233 50% better at fission that U-235 which is as rare as platinum and is 4x better than Plutonium 239 which is bred from U-238 because U-238 is not fissile but it is fertile. Also the U-233 fission cycle produces transuranic wastes that are radioactive for 300 years instead of U-235's thousands and U-238 -> PU-239's tens of thousands. It will also produce considerably less waste due to it's considerably better fission ratio. So yeah, Thorium is not a metal that no one needs, it's exactly the metal we need and need to properly utilize.
@@theepicslayer7sss101 its gonna have a lot to do with the price of stuff imo. the normal way we do it makes rhem farfar more money. unless forced its unlikely they'll change any time soon
I also feel I need to add that U-232 in its base synthetic form (there are no naturally occurring instances of U-232) is junk as it is not good for fission, HOWEVER it can be bred into the highly fissionable U-233 with a thermal neutron capture and U-232 is fertile. One of the proposed ideas and can be done with MSR's is the live removal of U-232 and it's chemical separation and subsequent neutron bombardment in a separate fuel chamber via PU-239. This means the current waste products we have and be "burned" in a breeder for U-232 into U-233 while Th-232 is bred into U-233. This makes U-233 a more viable fuel source and since MSR's can actively filter their fuel cycles unlike solid fuel BWR/PWR's they can greatly increase their efficiency and reduce transuranic wastes. This does not come without its hefty technical challenges but it certainly needs to be fully explored and tested because the positives outweigh the negatives for civil power production.
@@Spartan536 i have to admit my knowledge of Reactors is limited to some Minecraft mods like IC2 and ReactorCraft or Factorio and the Kovarex Research that lets you turn U238 to U235. (in Minecraft IC2 as well) tho in ReactorCraft, i used Thorium to make power and less waste since in game it produces less when being fission in the Reactor, i just used the Radioactive waste to launch neutrons at the Thorium to make my power... i doubt it is that easy in real life!
@@RadiusNightly What he says is quite incorrect. Ionizing radiation *can* affect you instantaneously... if it is energetic enough. A dose of 5 Gy will be enough to fry your eyeballs, metaphorically speaking. After receiving a full-body dose of that intensity, you'll develop acute radiation sickness within an hour, which will entail vomiting, shitting yourself uncontrollably, seizures, coma, and death. Likewise, getting exposed to high-energy X-rays will cause visible and painful burns. So yes, radiation can affect you instantly. But for the average person, you have more to worry about from high voltage than ionizing radiation.
that cloud chamber exploded my brain, this is the best visual explanation of radiation I've ever seen in my whole nerd life, I hope whoever starts reposting that part of the video links back to your channel, people need to see that!
Yeah, I mean, cloud chambers are common practice in the examination of decay products and cosmic rays but I've never seen such a low effort and low cost version of it.
Never in my life would I have thought to follow a chemistry channel. After watching a few of your videos after yt recommended them I am hooked. Thank you for making chemistry so interesting!!!
Dhruv Sharma why do we need to produce energy, when solar energy is left unused? Isn’t energy conversation to meet any need better than energy production and transmission with loss?
The vapor chamber and being able to see the alpha particles was one of the coolest things I've seen. Your always told about something "emitting"radiation but to actually see it was awesome.
Thank You Sir for your wonderful videos! I am a ham radio operator and I know that thorium was sometimes added to Tungsten vacuum tube filaments to increase the electron emission in certain vacuum electronic tubes. This augmentation was called a "Thoriated tungsten" filament. Thoriated tungsten in welding rods make for more robust welds, but that seems rather dangerous to me!
@@chrismetal15xbox306 You could always do a magnesium sulfate head wrap;Celts used to do that as a medicinal poultice..You could also add in some type of chlorella such as water cress,blue green algae,or small small portions of kelp(14 days)..Asian medicinal..Just add in sulphur dioxide to prevent a blockage in the arteries or veins and to prevent infection..Sea salts and greens are extremely corrosive of excessive metals built up in the human body..Topical applications of zinc in industrialized aluminum manufacturing works okay but if the zinc coating is not applied; tree pollen usually digs a hole in aluminum after a while..The corrosion factor of using sea salts and greens orally and topically also depletes carbon buildup with metal particulates that are sometimes oxidized from stainless steel valves and heads/engine blocks,also depletes/corrodes metals from iron ore nickel deposit engine blocks,and numerous other metals used in machine shops and construction job occupations..but you have to work at it like you work on an automobile..Beta carotene that converts to vitamin A in the human body also helps to regrow the lungs when paired with vitamin c and some type of dairy "with" growth hormone to increase rapid lung repair..Then you just apply high grade 80 bill refrigerated probiotic or homebrew kefir and some high fatty omega 3's & 9's/Hyaluronic acid to feed myelin insulators and brain collagen to prevent damage from high human biological emf's from increased metal exposure..Like the swedish around cast iron engine ore mines gobbling way too many omega avocadoes..Throw in hot pepper to increase blood circulation,some Gingko biloba to stimulate memory,and some nicotine to increase the synapses between the neurons in the brain collagen in case you get a break in the collagen and she misfires and you need to fire hotter to skip a few places until you heal up/regrow the collagen..Running around in machine shops since 91 and on construction sites playing with metals since 99..Tore down a VW 4 cylinder at the age of 11;yeah the human flesh car is a more tenacious task...
Sadly they're only a hypothetical rn. India is researching the technology at the moment but they have not yet found a breakthrough that would allow a thorium reactor to work. You can convert thorium to uranium to use in nuclear power plants, but it defeats the safety issue, and is actually far more expensive than just buying uranium.
@@justcallmenoah5743 I thought there was already a good plan for them, I just remember thorium having to be combined with another element(plutonium?) And it doing the same thing a pure uranium reactor does. But when it fails it seperates thorium from the other element and the entire process stops
@@spicylemon9339 not sure what the other dude is talking about, but there are actual designs that work. We just haven't really seen one of those since the sixties. One thing to get out of your head is "thorium reactor". You can breed uranium with thorium, but the reactor still technically runs on uranium. Breeder reactors just use the nuclear reaction to make more fuel (like by turning thorium into more uranium) as it generates energy. Other fuel cycles exists but the thorium concept is the best known. Thorium is also not really about safer reactors, at least not directly, though the proposed designs we see all use fourth generation intrisinsically safe designs. You could not use thorium at all and just use uranium directly and it would be as safe. The Molten Salt Reactor is the most common type of next-gen reactor that is presented to the public, often in the context of presenting the LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) concept. These reactors are intrinsically safe, meaning that there is basically physically nothing that can go really wrong with these reactors. No explosions or meltdown is physically possible. There is also no radioactive gases to escape and all of the fuel is trapped inside molten salt. This is true whether you use thorium/uranium or just uranium. For reference, most of the commercial reactors around the world are second generation. Third gen reactor are not that common since we built few reactors in the last 20-30 years. Fourth gen reactors are still in experimental stage. While second gen reactors are extremely safe, third gen are insanely safe (due to integral passive safeties) and fourth gen are absolutely safe (due to intrinsic safety design). I could also talk on and on about fuel cycles and recycling of nuclear waste, but that'll be for another day.
@@medexamtoolscom ah yes fully ignoring the amount of people that die due to fossil fuel consumption. Nuclear energy is the future whether you like it or not. I think you are one of those annoying ass kids that cry about chernobyl.
I'm hopeful that when supplies of Uranium get more expensive the Thorium cycle will be useful. We've got to do something to control the waste issue, though! Great video love the content. Thanks
I'm not sure that'll happen for a good long time. We've somewhat recently devised methods of extracting uranium from the ocean, and it turns out it's fairly abundant compared to what you'd expect.
@hawkturkey Depleted uranium is still radioactive and can poison you if it enters your skin or blood. Using it as ammunition is still improper disposal of nuclear waste and littering other countries with it in conquest of resources, isn't much better than China dumping radioactive materials into products.
@hawkturkey DU is used because it's much denser than lead, which increases its penetrative power and it's pyrophoric so, it bursts jnto flames like cerium. Its perfect for armour piercing projectiles but theres a serious downside. DU isn't at all dangerous _radiologically_ but all uranium isotopes chemically unzip DNA. Because uranium is naturally present we do have machanisms to deal with it, unlike plutonium and other synthetic elements but, its far from benign in large concentrations.
Thorium containing coating is used in nearly every combustion turbine as a thermal coating to improve efficiency of the turbine. It was also used on gas lantern mantles to emit a bright white light.
That alpha particle expirement is so cool. I know people say they dont travel far but wow they go fast and then just lose all their momentum. They look like they could penetrate your skin if you held them!
If you liked the cloud chamber, you'll probably like this if you use an android phone.. Keep a cloud chamber in your pocket. : play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sifnt.CloudChamber
Actually, Thorium is a powerfully dense energy source. It’s also very safe. You could hold pure thorium metal in your hand for your entire life without resulting in radiation poisoning, due to its exceptionally long half-life.
there is a somewhat creepy story about thorium in turkey; it's believed that turkey has massive reserves of thorium and there were some Turkish scientist who worked on a thorium-based reactor mysteriously whole crew of 6 scientists died in an airplane ''accident'' 12 years ago
There was also a team of Indian nuclear scientists dead in mysterious ways, police rules them as suicide/accidents but the circumstances says otherwise. Something is fishy.
It is gonna power India for the next hundreds of years..BARC already devolved thorium reactor and it's currently under testing in Kalpakkam(south India) and they have found a large amount of thorium reserves at seashores of Kerala...
The cloud chamber is impressive because it shows how much energy a single atom has, think of the scale difference between atom and it's trail..plus the speed it shoots out at!!❤️😊
Thorium is not useless. It's just that nobody wants to harness its potential. Hell, I dare to say that it it could be the future of space travel if people wanted it to be.
Microwave oven tubes still use a tungsten-thorium alloy, so it is hard to say this metal is useless. That being said, great video, I always learn a lot from you.
Thorium is still used in big Xenonlamps as used in cinema projectors. It is the rod going through the Quartz glass and ends in the Wolfram tip where the Plasma Bullet emulates the perfect white light. If you brake the rod after (safely!!) destroy the big Xenonlamp, you can see the specific form of the Thorium. If you want pics, just ask me. Ps: Xenonlamps in cinemaprojectors will not be replaced by Leds but by Laser.
It was, and I think still is, used as additive to tungsten for cathodes in vacuum tubes because it boosts thermionic electron emission, and I think that all VFD displays were using it.
I recall it as a mix with copper to give strength and resistance to melting while passing heat to fuel flowing through nozzles. Makes the gods happy when their gas is heated :)
It's not that China is the only one with rare earth minerals, it's the only country that doesn't classify Thorium as a radioactive hazard. So to mine rare earth minerals outside China one incurs the cost of dealing with the unwanted Thorium. I find this a bit daft when we have people playing on beaches with thorium rich sand and we have natural gas pipped into our homes which contains a fair amount of radon.
Thorium is not really much of a hazard unless you eat it of breathe it in as it is an Alpha emitter. The journalists that were taken round Chernobyl after the explosion laughed at being given paper suits to wear but in fact that, along with face masks, was complete protection against the alpha emitting nucleotides. Most elements have radioactive isotopes which occur naturally. Carbon 14 is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope found in all organic material which is why it can be used for Carbon dating objects. As a rough guide, for a given mass, the longer the half-life the less dangerous the radiation. In radiation terms Alpha radiation is high energy, ionising but with a very short path length in free air, Beta particles have fairly long path lengths, have a range of energies and are ionising, Gamma radiation does not react with matter very much and can have enormous path lengths. Ionising radiation is the most dangerous to life. A standard Geiger counter will not detect Alpha particles as they do not make it through the window, Beta particles are counted with high efficiency in a Geiger tube and about 2-3% of Gammas are counted as they react only slightly with the gases in the Geiger tube.
Indeed thorium is not a rare earth element. Problem is to get certain rare earth elements you may also have to mine thorium which has to be treated as radioactive waste. That's an additional cost to miners in certain countries.
I play Mindustry. And yeah there's one generator structure there named "Thorium Generator" which uses Thorium and cryo fluid as inputs. I never expected that this Thorium really existed.
Most granites have about 12-12 ppm (grams per tonne) but some have higher levels. These still are nowhere near a grade that can be mined economically. Rare earth elements (REEs) are not really "rare" in terms of their occurrence, it is just that there are few geological mechanisms to concentrate them (including thorium) to economic grades, 100 to 1000x times. Uranium is different as it can be dissolved in oxygenated water and precipitated in reducing conditions to form a large economic deposit.
HI! Rare Earths are becoming a hot topic nowadays... It would be great if you could comeup with a video on these 17 elements, what each is used for, and where they are mined. Thanks!
@@DAB-gj3wl china is largely the only 1 processing rare earth materials because other parts of the world make the processing companies pay to get rid of the thorium as radioactive waste instead of keeping it for future power needs or just throwing it out harmlessly with the rest of the tailings.. good old government holding us back based on bull shit
Thanks for an interesting video. However, I am concerned with statements in this video about radiation. It is stated that thorium has a high radioactivity level. It is also inferred that there are significant health risks with exposure to thorium. It is rare to have statements like these backuped with real statements of risk. Of course it is really difficult to assess risk on a video but here are some things to think about but here are some general ideas that put the risk in perspective. Since the half life of thorium is more than 14 billion years it has a very low radioactivity! A better term in this case is to talk about the specific activity versus just activity. Specific activity is the amount of radioactive decay per unit of mass. Materials with a long half lives have low specific activity. Materials with short half lives have a high specific half life. If the specific activity is low there is lower risk of radiation exposure from that material!! We can detect radiation from natural and man made nuclear sources extremely well. With a good detector we can detect radiation from a single nuclear decay. With an in expensive detector (like the one shown in this video) you detect up to 90% of some types of radiation. Just because we can detect radioactivity at very low levels, does not mean that there is a significant risk to humans health. We are exposed to natural radioactivity daily! It is all around us and we cannot avoid. Some of this radiation comes from thorium. There is no indication that this natural radiation does anyone any harm. You could probably eat thorium bearing rock without a detectable increased health risk, except the excess wear on your teeth. It is sad that thorium was removed from use in gas lantern mantles because of perceived risk. There is no direct evidence, that I know of, that anyone was ever harmed by gas lanterns (I study these things all the time as part of my research). There is a lot of misinformation presented to the public about radiation. Please help educate the public of what the science really says about radiation.
Unfortunately my grandfather died of cancer as a result of Thorium that was incorporated into the welding rods he used to weld chain links together at Stockbridge UK steel works. I've always been fascinated by Thorium, especially its use in gas mantles. I think I understand why it was used in glass lenses. From what I believe it was used to keep down chromatic aberration. Keep up the great work. Love your videos.
Thorium is massively useful. Molton Salt reactors are a replacement for Uranium. The reason why it`s not been deleloped further, is Thorium cannot be used to "cook" Plutonium. Norway already have ships powered by Thorium.
I wish you had talked about the energy that it produces that could be used to power things. There was a car and motor invited that used this metal as a power source that would run for at least a hundred years before needing replaced. Thank you for the video's.
@Red Stoner This was true what they did. It was never released to the public. It was just a concept , but was scraped because of safety concerns which I, in my opinion, was a load of crap. The real reason was they could not make money as they do with selling gas and diesel fuels.
@Red Stoner Well you maybe right. I don't really know the details or why they did not take it into production. I just know they had it and decided not to bring it out. Thank you for the information.
It's amazing how history repeats itself. Radioactive jewelry and other things were very popular back before we knew how dangerous it was, now a hundred years later we're making the same mistakes
@@uegvdczuVF Thats because the uranium and plutonium industries lobbied to have it shut down. Working thorium reactors are out there, are far more efficient, safer and cleaner than their uranium and plutonium counterparts
I love this damn channel and it's in depth explanation of facts unlike other science channels on YT which only explain childish scientific facts which a chemistry or physics students s wouldn't give 2 fs about
400 years ago Crude oil was also considered Useless.
Gasoline was considered useless too. It was simply dumped by Rockefeller in the process of making lamp oil, because it was to dangerous for lamps. At the same time people working on combustion engines were looking for something to run their engines. Today it would be considered to dangerous and dirty to be used. I find it funny when people say lithium batteries are dangerous for use I cars. Because a couple have caught on fire. How many cars catch on fire every day? I know my truck burnt up in my driveway and want even in a wrecked.
@@nealramsey4439 yeah but how many combustion cars are out there? Like a couple billions meanwhile not even a million electric cars and they already started to catch fire
Actually thorium can be used as a fuel in special nuclear reactors that take only 100 years to decompose so doesn't create that many nuclear waste but no one wants to develop those reactors
First thing that came to my mind!
@@emilianoramirez5340
Except that's only a half-truth... One being promoted by a couple of pseudoscience conmen.
Thorium has a much longer half-life than Uranium 235... which means that just like Uranium 238 it needs a hot neutron source to initiate criticality... So it needs to be salted with U 235 to kick it in the ass.
Sustaining criticallity requires more than just getting the neutron cascade started though.
As the fuel decays it produces daughter products that absorb neutrons, gradually reducing the output to a level that can no longer sustain criticallity.
Thorium isn't "cleaner."
It runs for only a fraction of the time that uranium fuel can before requiring that the fuel rods be changed.
It leaves you with more rather than less hot spent fuel to store until it's cooled off enough to reprocess.
Reprocessing of both types of fuel is expensive snd dangerous, but with thorium is must be done more frequently.
Thorium itself is safe enough to be around... the spent fuel rods however are just as dangerous as uranium fuel rods.
The people pushing this half-truth tend to pretend there is some sort of conspiracy to hide cheaper/cleaner energy from consumers.
They are the same sort of folks who rant about perpetual motion machines and "free energy" systems they claim are being covered up by "big energy."
So... no. Not in reality.
If they were actually more efficient/cleaner/safer they would be in use.
They do however inspire lots of people to throw money at conmen who promise a lot of BS to their "investors."
"I DON'T RECOMMEND BUYING RADIOACTIVE PRODUCTS"
"I WILL LEAVE A LINK"
UHHH OK
only russians can click the link
U need the Gulag Pass
they sell other elements, not only radioactive ones.
@@d4lera why is that so?
@@theanonymous4443
Their regulations with such material are more relaxed then say, the United States, or really any other country in the world, maybe there's a few others out there besides Russia, but they're probably less notable.
Thorium is very useful indeed. It's used in TIG welding electrodes because being a beta emitter it starts an arc very easily. Also used as a cold cathode emitter in some electron guns.
It is not to do with being a beta emitter. In fact, it (or rather its daughters) is a rather poor one. The benefit in the electrodes is a metallurgical one. The electrodes last longer and produce a better weld.
@@revcrussell Simply not true. I don't know where that idea comes from but I used to work in research in electron microscopy where these things are studied at University level. Look up thoriated tungsten work function.
(Work function is the voltage needed to 'pull' electrons out of a metal surface)
physics.stackexchange.com/questions/359187/thoriated-tungsten-filaments
@@qwadratix Yes, it has a lower work function. That is a 'metallurgical' property not a nuclear radioactive property. Thorium is not radioactive enough to reduce the energy to start the spark (enough to matter). There are places where this is done but here it doesn't matter. Look up Kr-85 filled vacuum tubes.
@@revcrussell True, Work function is a property of the quantum states of the electronic structure of the bulk metal. As such it's extremely complex and there's no practical calculation I'm aware of that allows you to compute it directly from basic parameters. However. I entertain a (possibly unjustified) conviction that the electrical potential developed by an unstable nucleus is going to influence the bulk property. I shouldn't have stated it as fact. I'll also add that the beta particles emitted will also tend to produce some ionisation in the surrounding air, Also probably a factor.
But at the end of the day, thorium is added for it's ability to initiate an arc, not it's thermal properties. That much is certain
EVERYBODY knows this.
Why do people like you and the others that post the same comment keep repeating it?
Thorium may be a useless metal.
But dang, it's a must have mod for Terraria players.
I WAS EXPECTING THIS
Ffs mate, took the words out of my mouth...
Noice
damnnn 😲
Useful in a better version of the fission reactor. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor. Check it out.
Because thorium has the potential to produce more than one million times the energy of gasoline by weight it has been called the most valuable worthless element. Of course there was a time when crude oil was also worthless.
Everyone keeps repeating this, it's still fucking useless
Yea, because uranium can’t do that as well, but thousands of times more efficiently, reliably and cost-effectively, right?
@@bepisbepi also isn't anywhere as abundant...
@@bepisbepi imma leave this here...... ruclips.net/video/jjM9E6d42-M/видео.html
@@bepisbepi thorium reactors are more efficient and there is more thorium on Earth than uranium
Title: Thorium, a metal that noone needs
Sam o' nella: Am I a joke to you?
That's exactly what came to my mind when I saw the title. I was hunting samonella viewers in the comments and I found one.
I miss him
Dude, thorium rocks. Ba dum du ba dum *BANG*
@@simonhrusovsky7892 what happened to him?why doesn't he upload videos?
@@nistelroji9623think he said something about college
Stay tuned for thorium reactors in the near future.
Coming since 1969
Far future*
Well it radiates alfa radiation which can produce heat so maybe possible to make an weak nuclear reactor in your garage which will supply lights so good luck ;)
India does have a majority of reactors running on thorium
@@bobec2999 ohk thanks
That vapor chamber and the shots you took of it were beautiful
I was in awe! you can actually see the trajectory alpha particles
If you liked the cloud chamber, you'll probably like this if you use an android phone..
Keep a cloud chamber in your pocket. : play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sifnt.CloudChamber
Yes really awesome showcase actually.
Beautiful like your feet must be
Super cool
My god, this guy straight up sound like a mad russian scientist
But very calm mad russian scientist
Well, he have a russian channel. So no wonder actually.
Your words are redundant, all russian scientists are mad scientists.
@@medexamtoolscom 😂
@@kubamiszczz It's the calm mad scientists you need to worry about.
Alpha particles in ethanol vapour is one of the best experiment I have ever seen. Great !
pruthvi ck that was pretty sick wasn’t it?!
Cool, but it's not an experiment....it's a demo.
To think it's just a single atom making that track, incredible!
@@RowOfMushyTiT it's even cooler: what was making the track was even smaller than a complete atom: it was merely a particle (two protons and two neutrons).
@@jschlesinger2 True, it just the helium nucleus. So much smaller than with the electron orbitals.
Thorium is a metal that is actually underestimated in importance and underutilized, mainly in fission.
Th-232 is not fissile but it is very fertile, and when it takes on that extra neutron it becomes Th-233 for a very short time then BETA decays into Protactinium 233 for 2 weeks then on to U-233.
There are times where it will decay into U-232 which is junk and has a half life of 60 years but there are ways to deal with it.
U-233 as fuel is the best stuff you can get with a fission to capture ratio of 12 (fission) : 1 (Capture) making U-233 50% better at fission that U-235 which is as rare as platinum and is 4x better than Plutonium 239 which is bred from U-238 because U-238 is not fissile but it is fertile.
Also the U-233 fission cycle produces transuranic wastes that are radioactive for 300 years instead of U-235's thousands and U-238 -> PU-239's tens of thousands. It will also produce considerably less waste due to it's considerably better fission ratio.
So yeah, Thorium is not a metal that no one needs, it's exactly the metal we need and need to properly utilize.
finally someone with sense
i bet they just want the Plutonium and that is the only reason they avoid it.
@@theepicslayer7sss101 its gonna have a lot to do with the price of stuff imo. the normal way we do it makes rhem farfar more money. unless forced its unlikely they'll change any time soon
I also feel I need to add that U-232 in its base synthetic form (there are no naturally occurring instances of U-232) is junk as it is not good for fission, HOWEVER it can be bred into the highly fissionable U-233 with a thermal neutron capture and U-232 is fertile.
One of the proposed ideas and can be done with MSR's is the live removal of U-232 and it's chemical separation and subsequent neutron bombardment in a separate fuel chamber via PU-239. This means the current waste products we have and be "burned" in a breeder for U-232 into U-233 while Th-232 is bred into U-233. This makes U-233 a more viable fuel source and since MSR's can actively filter their fuel cycles unlike solid fuel BWR/PWR's they can greatly increase their efficiency and reduce transuranic wastes.
This does not come without its hefty technical challenges but it certainly needs to be fully explored and tested because the positives outweigh the negatives for civil power production.
@@Spartan536 i have to admit my knowledge of Reactors is limited to some Minecraft mods like IC2 and ReactorCraft or Factorio and the Kovarex Research that lets you turn U238 to U235. (in Minecraft IC2 as well)
tho in ReactorCraft, i used Thorium to make power and less waste since in game it produces less when being fission in the Reactor, i just used the Radioactive waste to launch neutrons at the Thorium to make my power... i doubt it is that easy in real life!
I use thoriated tungsten all the time for welding . It's probably one of the best TIG electrodes in the world . Some people prefer cerium , I do not .
Says guy with icon of hulk
@@jt3022 says the guy with name JT
@@jt3022 what that has to do with anything?
@@itiso1123 hulk's origin story is he was exposed to gamma radiation
@@mikebarnacle1469 oh haha okay that's pretty funny
WOW a radioactive pen? that's the perfect gift for your bully.
Fun fact: radiation dont affect ppl instantly it have effect only on their children
@@aluksus9327 Fair enough, i dont want my family tree to be able in future to merge with my targets!
@@aluksus9327 but what about cancer?
@@RadiusNightly What he says is quite incorrect. Ionizing radiation *can* affect you instantaneously... if it is energetic enough. A dose of 5 Gy will be enough to fry your eyeballs, metaphorically speaking. After receiving a full-body dose of that intensity, you'll develop acute radiation sickness within an hour, which will entail vomiting, shitting yourself uncontrollably, seizures, coma, and death.
Likewise, getting exposed to high-energy X-rays will cause visible and painful burns. So yes, radiation can affect you instantly. But for the average person, you have more to worry about from high voltage than ionizing radiation.
@@vainillachocolate5531 Cancer doesn't develop instantly
that cloud chamber exploded my brain, this is the best visual explanation of radiation I've ever seen in my whole nerd life, I hope whoever starts reposting that part of the video links back to your channel, people need to see that!
Yeah, I mean, cloud chambers are common practice in the examination of decay products and cosmic rays but I've never seen such a low effort and low cost version of it.
Never in my life would I have thought to follow a chemistry channel. After watching a few of your videos after yt recommended them I am hooked. Thank you for making chemistry so interesting!!!
See also "Periodic table of videos."
Thoisoi and Polliakov might make you a chemist!
Thorium - A METAL THAT NO ONE NEEDS! (Until molten salt thorium reactor era) :)
@@4johnybravo to slow to be afective, it takes more energy start when you get it back
I suggest watching Thunder foot, hedebanks this shit
Northerend Engineering and Blacksmithing?
Bad4You Please don’t even mention ThunderFoot, he’s a fucking joke
Check India's Nuclear program, fast breeder reactor IGCAR kalppakam, India. India is one of largest source of thorium.
Dhruv Sharma why do we need to produce energy, when solar energy is left unused? Isn’t energy conversation to meet any need better than energy production and transmission with loss?
The vapor chamber and being able to see the alpha particles was one of the coolest things I've seen. Your always told about something "emitting"radiation but to actually see it was awesome.
100% agree. I've never seen that before. Awesome
Thank You Sir for your wonderful videos! I am a ham radio operator and I know that thorium was sometimes added to Tungsten vacuum tube filaments to increase the electron emission in certain vacuum electronic tubes. This augmentation was called a "Thoriated tungsten" filament. Thoriated tungsten in welding rods make for more robust welds, but that seems rather dangerous to me!
Be careful about saying Thorium is useless, you might be struck by a thunderbolt.
You not see infinity war or endgame yet? Cant get much more useless.
More like struck down by radioactivity
Except that the replies are a bunch of idiots/Nerds that didnt even get the joke -_-
@@chadleach6009 Nothing is more useless in life than an underdeveloped sense of humour.
@pDemios yes, what did he accomplish exactly in either infinity war or endgame?
2 percent thorium mixed with tungsten makes a fine electrode for tig welding steel and stainless, just don't breath the dust when sharpening them.
Don't worry, I won't be laying any lines and doing a snort! Always seemed like a bad idea.
Now your telling me ...
@@obelixer9751 it's fine i've been breqthing in the dust for years. The most it's gonna do is give me cancer in like 20 years or something.
@@chrismetal15xbox306 Thanks, who want's to live another (extra) 20 years anyway. Although it would be cool to glow in the dark.
@@chrismetal15xbox306 You could always do a magnesium sulfate head wrap;Celts used to do that as a medicinal poultice..You could also add in some type of chlorella such as water cress,blue green algae,or small small portions of kelp(14 days)..Asian medicinal..Just add in sulphur dioxide to prevent a blockage in the arteries or veins and to prevent infection..Sea salts and greens are extremely corrosive of excessive metals built up in the human body..Topical applications of zinc in industrialized aluminum manufacturing works okay but if the zinc coating is not applied; tree pollen usually digs a hole in aluminum after a while..The corrosion factor of using sea salts and greens orally and topically also depletes carbon buildup with metal particulates that are sometimes oxidized from stainless steel valves and heads/engine blocks,also depletes/corrodes metals from iron ore nickel deposit engine blocks,and numerous other metals used in machine shops and construction job occupations..but you have to work at it like you work on an automobile..Beta carotene that converts to vitamin A in the human body also helps to regrow the lungs when paired with vitamin c and some type of dairy "with" growth hormone to increase rapid lung repair..Then you just apply high grade 80 bill refrigerated probiotic or homebrew kefir and some high fatty omega 3's & 9's/Hyaluronic acid to feed myelin insulators and brain collagen to prevent damage from high human biological emf's from increased metal exposure..Like the swedish around cast iron engine ore mines gobbling way too many omega avocadoes..Throw in hot pepper to increase blood circulation,some Gingko biloba to stimulate memory,and some nicotine to increase the synapses between the neurons in the brain collagen in case you get a break in the collagen and she misfires and you need to fire hotter to skip a few places until you heal up/regrow the collagen..Running around in machine shops since 91 and on construction sites playing with metals since 99..Tore down a VW 4 cylinder at the age of 11;yeah the human flesh car is a more tenacious task...
Cool literally 5 minutes ago i watched a video where a guy praised Thorium for 4 minutes and 32 seconds.
Hey kids!
Can I tell you a secret?
I miss man
Tararre
That ethanol vapor chamber was literally the coolest thing i have ever witnessed.
The alpha particle demonstration is something I haven't seen before, thanks for that.
"Thorium's is useless" safer nuclear reactors: am I a joke to you?
Sadly they're only a hypothetical rn. India is researching the technology at the moment but they have not yet found a breakthrough that would allow a thorium reactor to work. You can convert thorium to uranium to use in nuclear power plants, but it defeats the safety issue, and is actually far more expensive than just buying uranium.
@@justcallmenoah5743 I thought there was already a good plan for them, I just remember thorium having to be combined with another element(plutonium?) And it doing the same thing a pure uranium reactor does. But when it fails it seperates thorium from the other element and the entire process stops
@@spicylemon9339 not sure what the other dude is talking about, but there are actual designs that work. We just haven't really seen one of those since the sixties.
One thing to get out of your head is "thorium reactor". You can breed uranium with thorium, but the reactor still technically runs on uranium. Breeder reactors just use the nuclear reaction to make more fuel (like by turning thorium into more uranium) as it generates energy. Other fuel cycles exists but the thorium concept is the best known.
Thorium is also not really about safer reactors, at least not directly, though the proposed designs we see all use fourth generation intrisinsically safe designs. You could not use thorium at all and just use uranium directly and it would be as safe.
The Molten Salt Reactor is the most common type of next-gen reactor that is presented to the public, often in the context of presenting the LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) concept. These reactors are intrinsically safe, meaning that there is basically physically nothing that can go really wrong with these reactors. No explosions or meltdown is physically possible. There is also no radioactive gases to escape and all of the fuel is trapped inside molten salt. This is true whether you use thorium/uranium or just uranium.
For reference, most of the commercial reactors around the world are second generation. Third gen reactor are not that common since we built few reactors in the last 20-30 years. Fourth gen reactors are still in experimental stage.
While second gen reactors are extremely safe, third gen are insanely safe (due to integral passive safeties) and fourth gen are absolutely safe (due to intrinsic safety design).
I could also talk on and on about fuel cycles and recycling of nuclear waste, but that'll be for another day.
@@Numitronic wow I am very greatful for this deeper knowledge of reactors you've shared :D ty!
@@Numitronic That they are super safe is what you get told about every kind of nuclear reactor right until the shit hits the fan.
That alpha particle experiment was really cool. Very mysterious.
I love the Half-life references :D
Your comment is underated
STAHP!
"A metal noone needs"
Thorium reactors: say what?
"A METAL THAT NO ONE NEEDS,
BUT EVERYONE DESERVED."
A metal that everyone needs but no one cares about .
A metal that cares about everyone but needs no one
We all deserve it? What does that mean, that we all deserve to die of radiation poisoning?
@@medexamtoolscom ah yes fully ignoring the amount of people that die due to fossil fuel consumption. Nuclear energy is the future whether you like it or not. I think you are one of those annoying ass kids that cry about chernobyl.
@@nazeerkhot3651 the name already tells that he is that type of person
Thorium: "a metal that no one needs"
Sad ragnarok noises
Thorium mod reference
HELL YEAH BRO! FINALLY A TERRARIA REFERENCE!!
Ah, a man of culture
apparently they changed the name to the primordials? like wtf (the ragnarok)
@@genghiskhan4883 primodials are the 3 gods, the ragnarok is the purple circle, the real one
I'm hopeful that when supplies of Uranium get more expensive the Thorium cycle will be useful. We've got to do something to control the waste issue, though! Great video love the content. Thanks
I'm not sure that'll happen for a good long time. We've somewhat recently devised methods of extracting uranium from the ocean, and it turns out it's fairly abundant compared to what you'd expect.
11:22 - Wow, so that's how China is getting rid of its Thorium-based nuclear waste! Thanks for the warning.
The US gets rid of it's depleted uranium in a similar way, by putting it in bullets and shooting them into other countries lol.
@@mickenoss but thats for a noble cause, China poisoning the world is less great...
@@robinderoos1166 maybe irradiating the rest of the world is a noble cause, from the Chinese perspective of course.
@hawkturkey Depleted uranium is still radioactive and can poison you if it enters your skin or blood. Using it as ammunition is still improper disposal of nuclear waste and littering other countries with it in conquest of resources, isn't much better than China dumping radioactive materials into products.
@hawkturkey DU is used because it's much denser than lead, which increases its penetrative power and it's pyrophoric so, it bursts jnto flames like cerium. Its perfect for armour piercing projectiles but theres a serious downside. DU isn't at all dangerous _radiologically_ but all uranium isotopes chemically unzip DNA. Because uranium is naturally present we do have machanisms to deal with it, unlike plutonium and other synthetic elements but, its far from benign in large concentrations.
There is research on thorium based reactors across many countries, especially in those where Thorium is abundantly available.
"No one needs thorium"
Mindustry: ...
Just dont run out of criogen
finally a mindustry fan like me
also the comment above is too ture
Thorium Reactor go boom because dont know how logic block thingy works
@@anorexicwater4663 everyone when first playing v6:
Ahh yes.. i was there when uranium was only nuclear fuel..
I'm just interested why this is recommended to me xD
But love this guys English
Thorium containing coating is used in nearly every combustion turbine as a thermal coating to improve efficiency of the turbine. It was also used on gas lantern mantles to emit a bright white light.
Did you watch the video? He told about the mantles. Just not about combustion turbines.
10:32 in captions it said " i am thankful to my subscriber Vladimir" 💀💀
The cloud chamber was great, and so easy to make.....especially when you're Russian and already have a hip flask of pure alcohol :-)
Dude made a cloud chamber with dish sponges and ethanol. Best thing on RUclips this year. Well done.
Ikr
Ethanol from a hip flask.
That alpha particle expirement is so cool. I know people say they dont travel far but wow they go fast and then just lose all their momentum. They look like they could penetrate your skin if you held them!
That cloud chamber and visuals of alpha particles is the best demonstration ever!
Thorium, a metal that people should not use as jewelry
Also that vapour chamber with the tungsten-thorium bar was quiet beautiful and interesting.
If you liked the cloud chamber, you'll probably like this if you use an android phone..
Keep a cloud chamber in your pocket. : play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sifnt.CloudChamber
Actually, Thorium is a powerfully dense energy source. It’s also very safe. You could hold pure thorium metal in your hand for your entire life without resulting in radiation poisoning, due to its exceptionally long half-life.
7:30 So that's how Russians store pure Ethanol on a lab. радость!
hahahaha, i was asking myself why use a hip flask to store pure ethanol
Водка!
@@gedhole He's just using his personal lab chemical stash
😀
Estonian!
Used to be used in some types of vacuum tubes (thoriated filaments) to increase the cathode emission.
"used to be used"
Just kidding XD
7:28 - 9:21 The cloud chamber is easily the coolest simple experiment I've ever seen.
Love the intro this time. Keep up the amazing production quality! 💪
But will you love it.... next time? How did you feel about last time?
@@ElTurbinado stfu before I put you in an ice cream test
there is a somewhat creepy story about thorium in turkey; it's believed that turkey has massive reserves of thorium and there were some Turkish scientist who worked on a thorium-based reactor mysteriously whole crew of 6 scientists died in an airplane ''accident'' 12 years ago
There was also a team of Indian nuclear scientists dead in mysterious ways, police rules them as suicide/accidents but the circumstances says otherwise. Something is fishy.
@@nihalbhandary162 government expects you to believe that it was suicide smh
@@nihalbhandary162 which incident are you talking about?
@@ankurdebbarma6363 Google Indian nuclear scientists deaths due to mysterious circumstances
when you take what other people tell you are facts without verification then you are asking for trouble.
It is gonna power India for the next hundreds of years..BARC already devolved thorium reactor and it's currently under testing in Kalpakkam(south India) and they have found a large amount of thorium reserves at seashores of Kerala...
I understand it is an important part of the Earth's inner core and is a large part of the inner core circulating....
Thorium MSR for the win!!
Isn’t thorium used in tig welding rods for something? I remember it on the box
Yes.
Yes they are.
Do u have are stupid
It’s used in the tungsten electrodes.
Awesome work as always. Even with Half Life sounds :D
First thing I recognised as well :D
The cloud chamber is impressive because it shows how much energy a single atom has, think of the scale difference between atom and it's trail..plus the speed it shoots out at!!❤️😊
Thorium is not useless. It's just that nobody wants to harness its potential. Hell, I dare to say that it it could be the future of space travel if people wanted it to be.
Microwave oven tubes still use a tungsten-thorium alloy, so it is hard to say this metal is useless. That being said, great video, I always learn a lot from you.
Beryllium oxide is what is used in microwave oven magnetrons.
@@bradfordjeff BeO is used in the insulation parts of the magnetron. Th-W alloy is used in the cathode of this electron tube
Love the funny parts especially. Appreciate the info. Thanks.
Thanks! I have been learning more about chemistry ad the elements usage in everyday life than in several years of chemistry at school.
That alpha particle trick was 🔥🔥😍
Thoriated tungsten was also used in some vacuum tubes for old radios. I think it improved electron emissions from the cathode.
Still used in high power RF tubes. Thoriated tungsten cathodes increase electron emission. Worrying about the radiation is another boogie man IMO.
Thorium is still used in big Xenonlamps as used in cinema projectors. It is the rod going through the Quartz glass and ends in the Wolfram tip where the Plasma Bullet emulates the perfect white light.
If you brake the rod after (safely!!) destroy the big Xenonlamp, you can see the specific form of the Thorium.
If you want pics, just ask me.
Ps: Xenonlamps in cinemaprojectors will not be replaced by Leds but by Laser.
That "intro" was great! Love from Finland :))
You must have one of the new HEV suits. That will be very useful.
Loved the 1/2 life sfx in the beginning.
A truly beautiful demonstration in the cloud chamber! ❤️
The title should be: "THORIUM, THE METAL THAT EVERY BODY NEEDS"
It was, and I think still is, used as additive to tungsten for cathodes in vacuum tubes because it boosts thermionic electron emission, and I think that all VFD displays were using it.
I believe an alloy used in manufacturing rocket nozzles for large space rockets has thorium in it.
Just to please gods like Zeus.
I recall it as a mix with copper to give strength and resistance to melting while passing heat to fuel flowing through nozzles. Makes the gods happy when their gas is heated :)
"However it's considered fairly safe, unless you live within 10 Centi - Meters of the rock." That's the funniest thing I've ever heard.
The Thorium mantels were used with kerosene lamps as well. We had one on our boat.
The alcohol vapor chamber experiment was fascinating. Could TIG welding cause long term health issues?
It's not that China is the only one with rare earth minerals, it's the only country that doesn't classify Thorium as a radioactive hazard. So to mine rare earth minerals outside China one incurs the cost of dealing with the unwanted Thorium.
I find this a bit daft when we have people playing on beaches with thorium rich sand and we have natural gas pipped into our homes which contains a fair amount of radon.
India has world's largest Thorium Reserves..
Thorium is not really much of a hazard unless you eat it of breathe it in as it is an Alpha emitter. The journalists that were taken round Chernobyl after the explosion laughed at being given paper suits to wear but in fact that, along with face masks, was complete protection against the alpha emitting nucleotides. Most elements have radioactive isotopes which occur naturally. Carbon 14 is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope found in all organic material which is why it can be used for Carbon dating objects. As a rough guide, for a given mass, the longer the half-life the less dangerous the radiation. In radiation terms Alpha radiation is high energy, ionising but with a very short path length in free air, Beta particles have fairly long path lengths, have a range of energies and are ionising, Gamma radiation does not react with matter very much and can have enormous path lengths. Ionising radiation is the most dangerous to life. A standard Geiger counter will not detect Alpha particles as they do not make it through the window, Beta particles are counted with high efficiency in a Geiger tube and about 2-3% of Gammas are counted as they react only slightly with the gases in the Geiger tube.
but thorium isnt even a rare earth element.
Indeed thorium is not a rare earth element. Problem is to get certain rare earth elements you may also have to mine thorium which has to be treated as radioactive waste. That's an additional cost to miners in certain countries.
I play Mindustry. And yeah there's one generator structure there named "Thorium Generator" which uses Thorium and cryo fluid as inputs. I never expected that this Thorium really existed.
i heard there is a place in Norway (Nome / Fensfeltet) where the concentration of thorium is very high, along with other rare earth stuff
Most granites have about 12-12 ppm (grams per tonne) but some have higher levels. These still are nowhere near a grade that can be mined economically. Rare earth elements (REEs) are not really "rare" in terms of their occurrence, it is just that there are few geological mechanisms to concentrate them (including thorium) to economic grades, 100 to 1000x times. Uranium is different as it can be dissolved in oxygenated water and precipitated in reducing conditions to form a large economic deposit.
Stands to reason. I heard there's a place in France where the ladies wear no pants.
India has world's largest Thorium Reserves..
amazinnng
HI!
Rare Earths are becoming a hot topic nowadays... It would be great if you could comeup with a video on these 17 elements, what each is used for, and where they are mined.
Thanks!
Anywhere in the world. They're not rare at all. It's rare to see a country other than China mining them though
Rare earth elements one of them is neodymium which can produce super magnets and is useful for electric cars and exists only in china
@@DAB-gj3wl china is largely the only 1 processing rare earth materials because other parts of the world make the processing companies pay to get rid of the thorium as radioactive waste instead of keeping it for future power needs or just throwing it out harmlessly with the rest of the tailings.. good old government holding us back based on bull shit
Ironic fact:Thorium is actually an amazing replacement for Uranium,we just dont use it cuz we cant make nuclear weapons.
Thoisoi2: Thorium is Useless!
Terraria Thorium Mod Players: **sad thorium noises**
Mindustry players: I'm 4 parallel universes ahead of you
In fantasy, thorium is an extremely rare light blue glowing metal. Highly sought after for its unmatched durability and magical qualities.
John E u mean Thorium in wow?
Its used in the welding industry in our tungsten welding electrodes the call it 2% thoriatated. I believe its the same element
Everybody who watched the video knows this.
Thanks for an interesting video. However, I am concerned with statements in this video about radiation. It is stated that thorium has a high radioactivity level. It is also inferred that there are significant health risks with exposure to thorium. It is rare to have statements like these backuped with real statements of risk. Of course it is really difficult to assess risk on a video but here are some things to think about but here are some general ideas that put the risk in perspective.
Since the half life of thorium is more than 14 billion years it has a very low radioactivity! A better term in this case is to talk about the specific activity versus just activity. Specific activity is the amount of radioactive decay per unit of mass. Materials with a long half lives have low specific activity. Materials with short half lives have a high specific half life. If the specific activity is low there is lower risk of radiation exposure from that material!!
We can detect radiation from natural and man made nuclear sources extremely well. With a good detector we can detect radiation from a single nuclear decay. With an in expensive detector (like the one shown in this video) you detect up to 90% of some types of radiation.
Just because we can detect radioactivity at very low levels, does not mean that there is a significant risk to humans health. We are exposed to natural radioactivity daily! It is all around us and we cannot avoid. Some of this radiation comes from thorium. There is no indication that this natural radiation does anyone any harm. You could probably eat thorium bearing rock without a detectable increased health risk, except the excess wear on your teeth. It is sad that thorium was removed from use in gas lantern mantles because of perceived risk. There is no direct evidence, that I know of, that anyone was ever harmed by gas lanterns (I study these things all the time as part of my research). There is a lot of misinformation presented to the public about radiation. Please help educate the public of what the science really says about radiation.
Very well posited 👍👍👍
"you can massage hand with it."
*Jabs hand several times*
Unfortunately my grandfather died of cancer as a result of Thorium that was incorporated into the welding rods he used to weld chain links together at Stockbridge UK steel works. I've always been fascinated by Thorium, especially its use in gas mantles. I think I understand why it was used in glass lenses. From what I believe it was used to keep down chromatic aberration. Keep up the great work. Love your videos.
"Thorium, a metal that no one needs!"
*sad thor noises*
ah you idiot, it is so transparent what you did...what a sad human being you must be when you recycle the top comment, just for some stupid likes...
@@lukaskaucik8616 leave him he did not see the watermark on the original comment .
LOVE the HAZARD suite sounds
Thorium is massively useful.
Molton Salt reactors are a replacement for Uranium.
The reason why it`s not been deleloped further, is Thorium cannot be used to "cook" Plutonium.
Norway already have ships powered by Thorium.
Thorium is much better for Nuclear Reactor because with it u cannot build Nuclear Bombs.
So we all should support thorium based reactors.
You can build dirty bombs, same as you can with reactor fuel.
But you can drop thorium dioxide dust on people....... Btw nuclear bombs are made out of way different elements.
Somebody needs to make Thor's hammer out of this metal.
thx u, you made my night
Don't
I name it the "cancer hammer"
@@zamundaaa776 ok NVM now that's genius
Maybe Thor's Hammer made of
what would happen if you put a current through it while doing the experiment. or maybe stick a magnet to it ?
I wish you had talked about the energy that it produces that could be used to power things. There was a car and motor invited that used this metal as a power source that would run for at least a hundred years before needing replaced. Thank you for the video's.
@Red Stoner This was true what they did. It was never released to the public. It was just a concept , but was scraped because of safety concerns which I, in my opinion, was a load of crap. The real reason was they could not make money as they do with selling gas and diesel fuels.
@Red Stoner Well you maybe right. I don't really know the details or why they did not take it into production. I just know they had it and decided not to bring it out. Thank you for the information.
It's amazing how history repeats itself. Radioactive jewelry and other things were very popular back before we knew how dangerous it was, now a hundred years later we're making the same mistakes
i love the intro, complete with half-life sounds
LMAO. HEV suit voice from Half-Life
The best part of the video
I know, right? Heard that, and INSTANT nostalgia. Now if we could only convince Valve to finish the game...
@@tanyaerskine7657 well we got Half-Life Alyx so it's a good sign that Half-Life 3 or Half-Life 2 Episode 3 is closer than ever
Abut torum
Torum
Orum
Tahrum
Toroom
Torum
Bruh a c c e n t t h i c c
Some of the coolest experiment I've seen in your cloud chamber...
Thanks, this is exactly what i needed...for my school project...yes...*goes to ebay and orders 10 thorium pens*
And since Thorium is abundant, to the point that a 55 gallon drum of Earth processed would yield enough to power a home for one year...
thorium is so good because it adds a class and completly fleshes out another. also it one of the oldest terraria mods if not the oldest
what about thorium reactors? seems pretty useful there.
They're very good in mindustry
Name one place that has a functional, operating thorium reactor.
@@uegvdczuVF mindustry
@@uegvdczuVF
India making one would be launching it this year or the next.
@@uegvdczuVF Thats because the uranium and plutonium industries lobbied to have it shut down. Working thorium reactors are out there, are far more efficient, safer and cleaner than their uranium and plutonium counterparts
1:58 Are we just going to ignore the radioactive ants of that ore😂
And that's probably where Hank Pymm got the idea of Pymm Particle for Ant Man 🤣
I love this damn channel and it's in depth explanation of facts unlike other science channels on YT which only explain childish scientific facts which a chemistry or physics students s wouldn't give 2 fs about
Thoriated tungsten electrodes are quite useful when TIG welding.
Yup! Just don't breathe in the dust when sharpening lol
Everybody who watched the video knows this.