THERE’S ATOMIC ENERGY IN GRANITE: CAN WE UNLOCK IT?
常见的，普通的火岩含有文明可以使用的所有能量。单吨花岗岩中的能量等于50吨煤。同样的岩石占据了巨大数量的有价值金属。
Consider this: 100 tons of granite, a chunk somewhat larger than an automobile, contains eight tons of aluminum and five tons of iron. Other ingredients include two tons of magnesium, 180 pounds of manganese, 70 pounds of chromium, 40 pounds of nickel, 30 pounds of vanadium, 20 pounds of copper, 10 pounds of tungsten and four pounds of lead.
在100吨平均花岗岩中，有14盎司的铀和大约两磅的钍。这些放射性元件的能量等于5000吨煤的能量。
是否有可能从岩石中解锁这种能量？
It is surprisingly easy. The two elements are concentrated in accessory minerals that make up less than one percent of the weight of the granite. The rock merely needs to be crushed to gain size and leached for a short time in dilute hydrochloric acid. The acid dissolves and retains important percentages of the uranium and thorium. These may than be separated from the acid by a series of straightforward chemical steps.
这种简单的工艺仅提取25％的放射性物质，但即使在此基础上，100吨花岗岩也会产生核燃料，可以产生与燃烧超过1000吨煤的相同能量。
From the standpoint of energetics it “costs” less than three tons of coal to mine 100 tons of granite and extract its radioactive ingredients. This cost includes the power devoted to quarrying the rock, crushing it, disposal of wastes, transportation, acids, water pumping, shop facilities and other considerations. Thus, by burning three tons of coal one gets a profit, in energy, amounting to 997 or more tons of coal.
In dollars and cents the picture is not as bright. The price of producing uranium from average granite is estimated at around $340 per pound. Uranium can be extracted from richer ores much more cheaply than this.
然而，一些火岩体的一些大体含有高于平均平均铀和钍量。在这些机构可以在利润开采之前，铀的价格不需要爬上最高水平。
More study needs to be given to recovery methods that would extract possibly 80% of the radioactive materials in granite. Too, it may pay to investigate the recovery of uranium and thorium as by-products in ordinary hard-rock mining and milling operations. Some mine dumps, also, might pay a profit if their pulverized materials were reworked for their radioactive contents.
In any event, there is ample uranium and thorium in the igneous rocks of the earth’s crust to power a highly industrialized civilization for an extremely long time, certainly for thousands of centuries. No nation need be a have-not in atomic energy, for the raw materials are available everywhere.
The role of thorium as a source of atomic energy is relatively new and is still experimental. Thorium is three times as abundant as uranium. In its refined state it is a gray metal resembling platinum in hardness and ductility. It can be extracted form more than 100 different minerals. One source of thorium is the colored glassy monazite particles in granite.
事实上，花岗岩的放射性导致周末探矿者的大量混乱。在盖革柜台上徘徊山丘，当他获得高计数时，一个业余探索器易于兴起，形成花岗岩或分解花岗岩的身体。他确实犯了丰富的罢工。有时候很难说服那个花岗岩目前几乎毫无价值，尽管它是我们将来会挖掘的仓库。
Monazite今天的钍首席商业来源，在印度和巴西的海岸上开采了海滩沙。它也被发现是俄罗斯和澳大利亚的海滩沙子。较小的单藏沙子发生在佛罗里达州和俄勒冈州的海岸。钍的其他来源是爱达荷州，南卡罗来纳和加利福尼亚州的稀土沉积物。
In the past thorium was used chiefly in the manufacture of mantles for gas lamps of the Welsbach type. Today the Atomic Energy Commission is buying small amounts paying about $4 per pound for a product containing at least 30% thorium oxide. After reducing this to a metal, the AEC offers it for use in experimental reactors at a price of around $19 per pound. Until recently the thorium was refined into metal by an expensive hatch process that required costly reagents. Now a semi continuous process, much less expensive, has been worked out.
Thorium is not readily fissionable. It does not maintain a chain reaction as do U-235 and plutonium. It is a raw material for atomic energy, rather than being an atomic fuel in itself.
当被中子轰击时，钍变成铀233，U-233可以保持链反应。这解释了钍的重要性。
钍用于实验“饲养员”反应器，旨在产生电力，同时在消耗时产生尽可能多的核燃料。从理论上讲，育种者可以生产它烧伤的115％的燃料，但在实践中可能无法证明。即使饲养员反应堆几乎与燃料一样多，它仍然是能源发展的一个重要步骤。
这种饲养剂将具有核心核心，其中U-235或其他一些原子燃料被烧坏。钍将像圆芯周围的毯子一样放置，使其捕获核心发出的一些中子。从钍形成的U-233又会发出更多中子，透射额外的钍。该理论是，只要胸部的新用品喂给它，育种者反应器就会保持自己。
可能是钍反应器可以在较高温度下操作，而不是其他种类的允许。由此产生的效率提高会产生更多的蒸汽。
今年夏季，北美航空部门的原子国际洛杉矶附近完成了使用丰富的U-238的石墨反应器。来自反应器的热量将产生蒸汽，这将驾驶涡轮电机，从而为南加州爱迪生公司局域网提供7500千瓦。
反应器的热效率为30％，但如果它是钍类型的效率约为33％。效率看起来略微略有提高，将蒸汽温度从现在的825度提升到高达950度，电力输出的明显增加。
Important experiments concerned with “thorium breeding” will be conducted in the sodium-graphite reactor at the same time that it is producing commercial power.
最终，钍可能成为促进所有大型中央原子发电站的有利原料。这可能不会发生一段时间，特别是在美国，其中大量的铀同位素238是手头的。
For every pound of fissionable U-235 that is refined, more than 200 pounds of U-238 are automatically obtained. This isotope can be converted into plutonium by bombardment, and plutonium can be used as a nuclear fuel. Too, U-238 that is enriched with U-235 is an acceptable atomic fuel.
这个燃料具有繁殖的性格cteristics of thorium but from an economic standpoint it may be cheapest to use them. When the AEC released 88.000 pounds of U-235 for power development purposes here and abroad this past spring, it immediately became apparent that we have a vast surplus of useful U-238 on hand. A stockpile of more than 6000 tons of U-238 was obtained when the 88.000 pounds of U-235 were refined.
Another reason why we may be slow in building numerous thorium reactors is that we don’t possess rich deposits of thorium. On the other hand, India is greatly interested in using thorium for power because of the deposits of thorium it possesses.
通常的趋势在任何采矿工作是work the richest deposit first. Another tendency is to extract only one or two of the most valuable ingredients from an ore and literally to throw all the rest of the mineral on the dump. Eventually, as our richest mineral resources are used up, it will become standard practice to extract as many as 20 or 30 products from any one mining and milling operation.
在一些独特的案例中，这是今天正在进行的。美国钾肥＆化学公司从盐水中提取了20多种化学品，即它从加利福尼亚州的碱土中储量泵中的碱性沉积物泵。在盐水中取出的其他产品中，是用肥料中使用的盐饼，用于玻璃和洗涤化合物的钠灰，硼砂，磷酸钠，溴化钠和氯化锂。
这些和其他化学物质在一系列蒸馏和沉淀步骤中从盐水中除去。其中一些步骤复杂，有些步骤非常简单。值得一提的是甘油盐从盐水中提取的方式。该物质在55度或更小的溶液中沉淀出来。在Searles，当温度低于55度时，盐水简单地喷洒到湖床上方的空气中。Glauber盐在喷雾头下收集大桩。当温度高于临界点时，喷雾器会自动关闭;否则，沉淀的材料将返回溶液并排出。
The Searles operation is exceptional because all its minerals are in solution, a situation entirely different than when handling a rocky ore. But it points the way to the metallurgical and chemical tricks that will be devised for extracting numerous ingredients from many kinds of ore.
我们现在知道甚至“贫瘠”花岗岩含有丰富的金属。我们知道，岩石还拥有足够超过足够的原子能来执行提取金属的工作，剩余能量。我们将成为采矿花岗岩的时间可能是很长的路要走，但猜测我们的资源在那个时间来的时候有趣。
Suppose that a few centuries from now the United States becomes much more industrialized than it is at present. Suppose, too, that industry in all other parts of the world rises to the same high level. By then, the world population may well have grown to 30 billion persons.
Such a population might consume rock for tis metals and atomic fuels at the rate of 1500 billion tons per year.
我们很快就会用完了摇滚乐吗？几乎不。假设所有土地地区都有这种加工，人们将以小于每年十分之十的速度“以”速度“向下向下。
