Thorium LFTR

[bsalis]

Some threads around here on nuclear energy and Malthusian doomers reminded me of this...

Energy from Thorium! So sad that nuclear energy from uranium was chosen because you could use it produce plutonium for bombs.

[zapy97]

now that is cool

[phoenix_ca]

Just don't call it "nuclear" energy. People will be totally down for it then.

Seriously though. We need this stuff. The fact that these concepts exist already makes our non-use of them inexcusable.

[Kryten]

It's going to take a heck of a long time to develop, though. India have had a program to produce thorium reactors running since the 60's, and they don't expect to be making full use of them by 2040-at least. These are basically standard reactors with throium instead of plutonium or uranium as well, turning it into an LFTR would take even longer.

[Whptheenah]

Took me 5 minutes to stop my science-spasms after watching this video. Now we have an easy-to-find, carbon neutral, high energy element at our disposal and it's just SITTING THERE. I feel like giving scientific motivational speeches in India, because when they get this up and running, It will be the biggest thing since the invention of non-lead pipes. If they get it to use a Liquid Fluoride cooling system, my heart might just stop. (now, where to buy one-way tickets to the moon?)

[phoenix_ca]

If/when. My money for the short-term is still on travelling-wave reactors, because of their ability to use good ol' common U-238. The major benefits there is that we already have all the fuel infrastructure set-up, and it has the same benefits as a thorium reactor would in terms of compactness. No need to go digging for thorium just yet, because we already have piles and piles of "waste" U-238 just sitting around that we could use as fuel.

In any event, I'm not bashing the idea of thorium reactors, just saying that I wouldn't bet on it short-term. Long term, sure. The point is we desperately need carbon-neutral energy that actually provides for our current consumption. Wind and solar just can't cut it; they're nice supplements, sure, but there are lots of places that couldn't use them. (Vancouver, solar? Not in winter. And Singapore is completely screwed for wind power...actually, they're kinda in a bind for everything.)

[nhnifong]

A tavelling-wave reactor is a breeder right?

Edited October 15, 2012 by nhnifong

[phoenix_ca]

It's similar to a fast breeder, yes. Enough that the company is looking for a test country with a fast breeder reactor to do their testing in.

Similar, but not strictly a fast breeder. It's a different beast.

[nhnifong]

We totally need a thorium mod ;D

[colmo]

The Chinese are hot on thorium - they've been stock-piling it since they started mining rare earth metals in a serious way. Kirk Sorensen also reckons they lifted the ideas off his website....!

[bsalis]

India is also onto Thorium as well.

As for travelling-wave reactors, they seem like just a fast breeder that consumer the plutonium. Not sure how the waste products compare. As an interm.. i don't know. If there was a thorium test reactor being run in the 1960s, surely they can't be decades of R&D away.

[phoenix_ca]

Well neither are all that far off. The benefits of the standing-wave (it's depicted in media as travelling but...oh nevermind). It is a form of fast breeder, sure, but it eats up the plutonium so fast that it'd be crazy to try to extract it. After running, you're left with enough U-235 to start ten more of the things of the same size. As I understand it though, it'd be cheaper to operate and maintain than conventional fast breeder designs, for various reasons. (Okay so liquid sodium isn't the nicest thing to mess with but still.)

As I said, main benefit is that they can use the crap we've already mined and is just sitting about using space.

Astor China and India, of course they're into nuclear. They have a LOT of people, and tiny increases in an individual's average energy consumption means a huge overall change. They need cheap energy, and lots of it. There just isn't any conventional "green" energy source that can deliver.

[nhnifong]

I'd guess China doesn't care at all about the greenness of an energy source. They don't even put scrubbers on their coal furnace smoke stacks.

Have you guys seen the TED about liquid salt batteries? http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy.html

[thorfinn]

Yeah, molten salt reactors are a nice idea. The attractive part is the relatively mild thermal management problem after a serious failure - the history of nuclear accidents demonstrates that decay heat is probably more dangerous than reactivity excursions. Those, we learned quite fast to prevent and control, and barring Chernobyl-scale incompetence they don't seem a realistic problem to me anymore. The fact that a PWR cannot be left unattended after shutdown for weeks, THAT is a serious worry.

But, to be honest, there are some nasty corrosion problems with molten salts, nothing impossibly hard I believe, but not easy either. Plus, the reactor by necessity has a built-in reprocessing plant inside... and that will be both an engineering problem and a political one. (Politics will probably be the worst. Until we collectively acknowledge the rising water and suddenly change minds, as humanity usually does...) I'd like to see some Russians working on MSRs, they have a history of being quite good at metallurgy and solving some problems that western engineers studiously avoided.

Anyway, you people who like learning about nuclear power can lose hours and hours on the U.S. Department of Energy fundamental manuals (1 and 2 about nuclear physics, plus others)

They are kinda military in style, focused on job training with lots of examination questions, not really science textbooks; but extremely interesting, nevertheless. Also, the very important looking U.S. govt logo on the front page

But first, check out the old and venerable TRIGA reactors. They will never be much use for power generation, but good old Freeman Dyson and the other guys who built them made some real marvels of applied physics. A reactor that can be safely operated beyond prompt criticality, in a university environment, designed when Elvis was a young rising star.