Thorium reactor discussion thread!

[Souper]

What are the ups and downs? I understand Thorium has less potential for weaponization, has all this availibility and environmental friendliness, but what about the money and the construction? Should America invest in it's startup?

In my opinion, definitely yes, it would be an amazing source of energy.

[xenomorph555]

Ho boy, beginning Thorium discussion #1,052,762;

In all seriousness though yes it's a good investment, however people also need to realise it's more about the reactor then the fuel. It would be better to have MSR's using uranium then LWR's using thorium although a Th-LWR would be a massive improvement (Look into India's Th-HWR program).

As for if America should invest, as always the answer is YES, however it may be too late to become the leader in the technology, China and India are on the road to becoming the Thorium kings. Which is good for them considering the coal situation over there.

[Shpaget]

If the "western" countries set aside just 0,1% of their GDP for just one year and put it into a joint fund, they would amass many many billions. Certainly enough to finance an intensive R&D.

They could pursue multiple different designs, figure out which one is the best/most cost effective/easiest to construct etc. Different teams would naturally compete with each other and the best design would soon emerge.

[PB666]

The problem is that america is educated just enough to have radiophobia, but not educated enough to have carbonophobia.

here is the first thread on thorium, its like the tenth thread posted in this group.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/23778-Thorium-LFTR

Edited October 10, 2015 by PB666

[Hcube]

If the "western" countries set aside just 0,1% of their GDP for just one year and put it into a joint fund, they would amass many many billions. Certainly enough to finance an intensive R&D.

They could pursue multiple different designs, figure out which one is the best/most cost effective/easiest to construct etc. Different teams would naturally compete with each other and the best design would soon emerge.

But the world isn't a fairy tale and this is never going to happen

[PB666]

But the world isn't a fairy tale and this is never going to happen

Research on reactor generated such as wasteless fast breeder reactors takes years to decades.

[Shpaget]

But the world isn't a fairy tale and this is never going to happen

It wouldn't be the first time for big countries to collaborate on nuclear energy research.

https://www.iter.org

[Elthy]

The problems are not technical, but economical: You would need gigant investments and a long time to get commerial reactors running. Since there is also a lot of research neccessary you would need even more money than for a new uranium powerplant, which are allready only profitable with gigant subsidies (Hinkley Point C as an example). While new subsidies for renewable go down with cheaper production the costs of nuclear powerplants go up due to increasing security requirements. When you finished the first Thorium reactor renewabled propably allready dominate the energy market...

[wumpus]

It might not be a threat to thorium (since it is still aways from production), but the biggest threat to building a nuclear plant has to be the price of solar.

Building a nuclear plant means paying a huge amount of money over way too long to provide power for the next n decades. The price of solar PVs have been dropping drastically (nearly to the point of coal). It would be extremely silly (but pretty much standard for the industry*...) to be half way through building a nuclear power plant only to know that the electricity won't be worth the cost of finishing the rest of the plant (never mind the sunk costs). Yes, I know that nuclear is a base power generator and solar is not, but the fact remains that nuclear power simply requires that you sink the cost of decades of power all at once. Should the price change, you now have a low-value generator and some monsterous debts. Gods help you if you already started generating power (in which case you go bankrupt early, produce power, and go bankrupt again due to decommissioning costs (which I strongly suspect are due to an unholy union of superstitious anti-nukes with the power company brass that were terrified of "too cheap to meter**").

* largely assumed due to the number of plants canceled.

** when the nuclear regulations were written, the power industry were basically regulated monopolies with a cost-plus structure. Raising costs [over the long term] meant raising profits. Whether this is still true today or not, the regulations remain.

[RainDreamer]

So it might be unlikely to see commercial thorium reactors for the public. What about other uses? Military and scientific uses for example. Both may require a massive amount of power that solar and other can't support.

[AbhChallenger]

This again?

Already it is cheaper to use solar energy to add a gigawatt to the daytime grid then... Just about anything else. No matter how many advancements fission makes. It will not be enough to justify the cost and the time to activation.

And before anyone whines about subsidized solar. EVERY power plant in the US (And likely most of the world) gets some kind of assistance from the government. Solar likely gets far less and still manages to be cheaper.

I can become a power plant next month by having grid tie solar produce excess energy to feed back into the grid. As opposed to a reactor that takes upwards of a decade to activate. Fancy thorium can't compete.

[NuclearNut]

What are the ups and downs? I understand Thorium has less potential for weaponization, has all this availibility and environmental friendliness, but what about the money and the construction? Should America invest in it's startup?

In my opinion, definitely yes, it would be an amazing source of energy.

Well actually it has both more and less potential for weaponization. More because the uranium it produces does not have a nasty neutron emitting isotope to deal with like Pu-240, thus making weapons design very easy. Oh, and it is uranium, so really easy would be a better term. Now it has less because it is also, due to decay of one of the other isotopes of uranium it produces, quite radioactive, thus requiring it to be handled in a hot cell, impeding some steps of production.

Personally I prefer the uranium-plutonium cycle because it has already been done and is just as good as the thorium-uranium cycle. We also have all this uranium just sitting around waiting for us to use, and if we used a fast reactor that uranium could quickly be turned into fuel rods. Oh, and uranium can be extracted from seawater, unlike thorium.

- - - Updated - - -

This again?

Already it is cheaper to use solar energy to add a gigawatt to the daytime grid then... Just about anything else. No matter how many advancements fission makes. It will not be enough to justify the cost and the time to activation.

And before anyone whines about subsidized solar. EVERY power plant in the US (And likely most of the world) gets some kind of assistance from the government. Solar likely gets far less and still manages to be cheaper.

I can become a power plant next month by having grid tie solar produce excess energy to feed back into the grid. As opposed to a reactor that takes upwards of a decade to activate. Fancy thorium can't compete.

Where are you going to store your non peak hour solar energy? What, put it in megaexpensive batteries?

Also, solar power is still more expensive than coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. It also gets far, far more subsidies per kilowatt hour than any of the above and still maintains itself as more costly.

You can get a nuclear reactor online in five years, less if you cut the red tape, and it will run 90% of the time, I choose that 90% of that time, as opposed to the >30% capacity factor for solar. (solar also takes quite some time to put online for similar reasons) The thing that slows down reactor construction is not that it is hard, but that people are whiney and stop it at every point.

[peadar1987]

Solar energy is non-dispatchable. The sun shines or it doesn't. It's great for a small proportion of your energy needs (up to 20%), but anything more and you need to back it up with storage, which pushes the price up hugely.

We need nuclear or large-scale energy storage for base load generation. There is no way around it.

[magnemoe]

Solar energy is non-dispatchable. The sun shines or it doesn't. It's great for a small proportion of your energy needs (up to 20%), but anything more and you need to back it up with storage, which pushes the price up hugely.

We need nuclear or large-scale energy storage for base load generation. There is no way around it.

Solar works pretty perfect if the sun almost always shine and lots of your energy need is air conditioning.

In Morocco lots of the hot water was solar heated, this worked even better as you just have to pump water trough the heating element while the sun was heating it then shut down the circulation then hot enough or then the sun did not heat the water.

In other situation its not very good. Yes nice combined with hydro but rare with both lots of water and lots of sunshine.

[Bill Phil]

Solar is good for deserts and other low rainfall high sunshine areas. But it still loses energy production at night. So you can burn natural gas at night.

Nuclear is the most efficient, but also the most costly to set up. Mainly due to political things. But we have to avoid that topic.

Combustibles are cheap, but dirty. However, that cheapness makes it a good option for developing nations, which can't afford other sources.

Hydroelectric is good but limited to bodies of water.

[Darnok]

In most developed countries are depleted mines can we use then to build safer nuclear power plants?

[lajoswinkler]

In most developed countries are depleted mines can we use then to build safer nuclear power plants?

Safer from what? The existing containments are capable of handling pretty much anything, from inside and outside. Direct aircraft hits, bombs, nuclear explosions. Bunker busters and asteroids are really not important.

[Darnok]

Safer from what? The existing containments are capable of handling pretty much anything, from inside and outside. Direct aircraft hits, bombs, nuclear explosions. Bunker busters and asteroids are really not important.

If that would be true we wouldn't ever knew about Fukushima

[Shpaget]

What about Fukushima?

Tell me, how does that incident compare to more than 150 000 people that die each day?

How many people die or suffer serious health issues as a direct result of coal power plants emissions?

[sgt_flyer]

Solar is good for deserts and other low rainfall high sunshine areas. But it still loses energy production at night. So you can burn natural gas at night.

Nuclear is the most efficient, but also the most costly to set up. Mainly due to political things. But we have to avoid that topic.

Combustibles are cheap, but dirty. However, that cheapness makes it a good option for developing nations, which can't afford other sources.

Hydroelectric is good but limited to bodies of water.

Hydroelectric dams are better to be considered more as a battery than an energy source. Their very fast response time to peak demands is great (only need to open the valves) - though, as you empty your dam, you'll need to use overproduction from the rest of the power grid to refill the dam. (precipitations alone are generally not enough to keep up with the demands) - Swiss actually plays on that a lot - they buy electricity to europeans when they are overproducting (this electricity still need to be somehow spent - so swiss get that cheap) and use it to refill their dams - once european face peak demands, they sell back electricity from their dams at a higher price (as the rest of the europe still need additional energy to meet the peak demands)

- the only 'renewable' versions of hydro dams are the ones that use sea / river currents or tides (those tidal dams need specific geographic conditions, but their output is totally predictable - you only need to pick your tide tables, and you'll know your output a long time in advance)

Afterwards, dams are still a costly infrastructure to create - especially if you want to minimize environmental damage - as you need to remove all the trees from were the water will be stored - if you let those trees there when filling the dam - you'll end up with a lot of roting biomass creating notably methane gas in huge quantities. (Can't really say that dams are 'green' in this regard...)

[wumpus]

What about Fukushima?

Tell me, how does that incident compare to more than 150 000 people that die each day?

How many people die or suffer serious health issues as a direct result of coal power plants emissions?

Ever wonder what would have happened to Japan if they hadn't have used so much nuclear power? All the flooding would have been contaminated by all the coal ash left over from burnt coal. You would have a measurable increase in the cancer rate, as opposed to the scare stories repeated ad nauseam.

Also, solar power is still more expensive than coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. It also gets far, far more subsidies per kilowatt hour than any of the above and still maintains itself as more costly.

The catch is that when building nuclear power plants, you are betting enormous amounts of money that solar power [presumably plus batteries, although most of the draw is during the day] will *stay* more expensive for decades, while it is presently falling fast and could pass all of those in the next few years.

[lajoswinkler]

If that would be true we wouldn't ever knew about Fukushima

Fukushima's containments were fine, as well as the reactors. They performed flawlessly even though it's very old boiling water reactor technology. It's the electrical engineering part that was stupidly designed and not the nuclear part. Vital systems were placed at positions where they can get washed away by a tsunami or get bombed. When the vital systems that kept the cooling pumps failed (outer power connection, diesel dinamos), the internal system that can use the decay heat to pump some of it out could only work for a while because, well... thermodynamics.

What then happened was deliberate release of steam with hydrogen which ignited and blew the building apart. The containment structures were fine, though, but then, as pressure still rose and the workers plugged the whole thing, some of them got breached at the torus down below. It's really an "end of world" scenario.

Today plants are being built, some existing right now, that could survive even total neglect and destruction of the vital systems. They have core catching pools and strong passive, gravity driven mechanisms to avoid breaches. Some people even say it's overkill.

What I was saying before is that those containment systems, when done properly, are absolute tombs. The weakest part are the main doors, such as the one on this photo.

Edited October 12, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[Elthy]

When you build nuclear powerplants to be safe (which is possible, but hard), they get so ....ing expensive that right now even solar+batterys is cheaper. Also you have to consider that if you build more solar/wind you need less energy buffers, since there is allways sun somewhere...

Hydro dams cant realy give great power storage capabilitys, since they are quite low capacity (compared to the actual need), dams have a huge impact on the enviroment, so you dont want to build that many. There are better solutions:

Biogas: Its storable and gas is perfect for peak demand, you just have to be carefull to avoid replacing food plants with those for power. A good waste recycling system would help a lot.

Decentral storage: Something like the Tesla powerwall or batterys of electrical cars, when they are available for normal customer. Today they are to expensive, but the prices are dropping fast.

Good, large area energygrids: By distributing power over large distances you could dampen the impact of long times without wind/sun by using the overproduction of others.

Power to Gas: At the moment quite inefficient, but whats efficency for "free" power? There is lots of research going on on this field, so it should get cheaper and better, soon.

[Darnok]

What about Fukushima?

Tell me, how does that incident compare to more than 150 000 people that die each day?

How many people die or suffer serious health issues as a direct result of coal power plants emissions?

Interesting argument. So if one technology kills people then other technology that cause deaths is fine?

snip

Ok, I get it, it is pretty safe... but does making deep underground power plants would make them any safer? Or cheaper, since this "tombs" probably cost a lot?

[GreenWolf]

Also you have to consider that if you build more solar/wind you need less energy buffers, since there is allways sun somewhere...

So? Wide area synchronous grids aren't intercontinental. If it's night time over North America, it doesn't matter if you have solar panels producing in Europe, you can't (easily) move that electricity across the Atlantic. Even if we /did/ have undersea power cables connecting the two continents, you run into line loss issues, voltage differences, and the fact that you are placing your critical infrastructure under several miles of ocean.

You can't get around the fact that you need base power generation, or an extraordinary amount of storage.

Here's another thing to consider. Solar isn't actually renewable. Photovoltaic cells decay over time, and are constructed using some pretty expensive (and nasty) rare earth minerals. Eventually, we will run out of said rare earth minerals. Building enough solar panels to meet global energy demand would bring about that shortage much sooner. (Of course, this point is moot if you have asteroid mining, but that is a subject for another time.) On the other hand, we have enough fissile material to meet global energy demand for centuries.