What do thorium reactors and girls who can cite the periodic table from memory have in common?

Answer: Kirk Sorensen. Kirk just got back from England where a href="http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2009/07/lftr-and-manchester-report.html"he gave a successful and compelling presentation on liquid fluoride thorium reactors/a at the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Town_Hall"Manchester Town Hall/a.br /blockquoteI should have known right from the moment I walked in the building that this was going to go well. Right inside the main door are two large statues; one of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Prescott_Joule"James Prescott Joule/a, the famous physicist and thermodynamicist, and the other of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton"John Dalton/a, chemist and pioneer of atomic theory. As I walked by, Joule whispered that I better tell them a bit about thermodynamics, and Dalton reminded me that chemists could build the best reactor of all.br /br /...br /br /I went through the process of converting thorium to energy and showed how a LFTR uses liquid fluoride fuel to carry the uranium and thorium in a two-fluid arrangement designed to follow the natural processes of thorium's conversion to protactinium, uranium, and then to energy. I described the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment and how it demonstrated that this was a real and feasible approach to take to extracting the energy from thorium. I described a more modern version--the Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor--that would couple the fluoride reactor to a closed-cycle gas turbine and enable the extraction of energy from thorium at an efficiency roughly 300 times greater than we currently get from uranium in existing reactors.br /br /...br /br /This radical improvement in efficiency means that we could supply world energy needs with about 6000 tonnes of thorium rather than the 65,000 tonnes of uranium, 5 billion tonnes of coal, 32 billion barrels of oil, and 3 trillion cubic meters of gas we use today.br /br /Thorium resources are abundant and a single thorium site in Idaho could provide nearly all the world's yearly demand for thorium.../blockquoteAnd how did he feel about the event?blockquoteIt was a great experience!/blockquoteBe sure to stop by and read the rest of a href="http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2009/07/lftr-and-manchester-report.html"his post and to also find out who he got to meet there/a. On a lighter note, check out Kirk's two daughters, a href="http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2009/06/zoe-and-kaija-recite-periodic-table.html"Zoe (7) and Kaija (4, just turned 5), recite the periodic table from memory/a. I hope my future kids turn out to be as smart as them!br /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FGJK1qQ3Cxsamp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;hl=enamp;feature=player_embeddedamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FGJK1qQ3Cxsamp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;hl=enamp;feature=player_embeddedamp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10911751-765399631191986601?l=neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com'//div