Good news: Thorium based nuclear power may provide free and safe power in just twenty years !

[cb_890]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

However, unlike uranium, which is only found in suitable quantities for extraction and processing into a suitable fuel for reactors, thorium can be found virtually all over the world and so is preferable for nations which do not have natural reserves of high purity [SUP]238[/SUP]U, which is why India and China are both interested in the technology. Given the current imbalance of power and resulting political conflict that is largely due to the irregular distribution of petroleum, developing an energy source that allows nations to be essentially independent of one another for a basic resource should be of serious consideration in selecting to develop new technologies for future use.

Although the LTFR design does have some distinct advantages over current uranium-powered light water reactors (LWR), it is incorrect to say that they cannot suffer a meltdown or catastrophic release of radioactivity. Certain design features make them less prone to failure, but the use of a molten salt coolant is technically challenging from both a materials standpoint and ensuring containment from the environment where the salt could react energetically with atmospheric vapor and ground water. It is also incorrect to say that there is no weapon-grade material proliferation risk; it is more correct to say that a reactor designed to breed material suitable for manufacturing a fission weapon would be very evident to even cursory inspection as it would require continuous separation of weaponizable materials as compared to conventional reactors where the separation process occurs off-line.

The major advantages of the LFTR design are that it minimizes the fuel processing/preparation cycle and associated wastes, operates in a low pressure regime, and consumes most of the “waste products” it produces with a much reduced resulting end waste processing and disposal compared to current once-through cycles or proposed reprocessing technology. As uranium has been so cheap in the past (as Chronos has noted) and the worldwide nuclear industry is very conservative in considering new technologies given the regulatory hurdles and expensive of proving out a completely new-type design, there has been little impetus by established companies such as Westinghouse Electric and General Electric to develop thorium-based reactors.

In short, while the thorium reactor has some desirable characteristics and should be considered as part of a comprehensive long term plan to reduce global energy dependence on carbon-based natural fuels, it is not the end-all be-all of energy production. The Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor, PRISM, hybrid fission-fusion, and of course, supplementary renewable sources such as solar, geothermal, tidal, and wind power should all be considered on the basis of their respective technical merits and environmental and sociopolitical impact. Short of a simple, cost-effective, and passively fail-safe aneutronic fusion power generation source, there is no one ideal energy generating source that will satisfy the future energy needs of global civilization.

Stranger

Hi all,

Newbie here and just saw this thread and thought I should contribute.

Notwithstanding the above post, I’d urge you all to study this in a bit more detail, as I still think it is potentially very exciting.

I take all the points about this being a new and potentially risky opportunity for investors, but I do believe there are significant potential advantages over current Light Water Reactors.

The key drawbacks for current nuclear power plants are 1. The huge capital expenditure which needs to be delivered up front for the building of power plants ( the main reason for this is the extreme safety/containment/back-up measures which need to be put in place to run these reactors). 2. The issue of storage of nuclear waste left over from the nuclear reaction (in current reactors this typically contains a large amount of trans-uranics which have a decay time of 10,000s of years). There is also the issue of nuclear proliferation, which while problematic is not a technological issue. This is a matter which is currently under debate and I will not deal with it further here.

Thorium on it’s own does not solve either of these issues. There are approaches where thorium is burned in conventional nuclear reactors and the advantages in this case are only minimal. However, when implemented in a liquid fuel reactor such as a LFTR (which is ideally suited to implementation with Thorium) then many of the major problems associated with nuclear power begin to go away.

Potentially, this type of reactor is inherently safe with no need for complicated back-up systems or any additional containment features outside of a drain tank to capture the salt containing the thorium in the event of power outages. It is not possible for this type of reactor to have an explosion due to meltdown and this means that the footprint of a plant is very significantly reduced (no containment dome) and the capital costs for the building of a plant are very significantly reduced. In addition the LFTR could potentially be implemented in smaller modular reactors which would be very attractive for deployment in a power grid.

The other great advantage of LFTRs is that the amount of waste produced per megawatt is substantially reduced (approx 1/35th that produced by an equivalent Uranium LWR). In addition the proposed reaction is significantly more efficient than that which occurs in current all solid state reactors. This is achieved by running the reaction in a liquid form which encourages a more uniform decay of the radioactive material than occurs in the currently used solid state fuel rods. The use of the liquid salts also results in potential reductions in turbine size as well as the requirement for large volumes of cooling water. In addition when this approach is combined with Thorium, the reaction occurs very efficiently to elements with much lower atomic number (ie. there are no transuranics). This is very important as the decay products (waste) while still radioactive would only need to be stored for between 30-300 years (depending on the product). Combined with the very significantly reduced volume of material this goes a significant way towards solving the waste problem.

I won’t deny that there are potential technological problems with LFTRs, but it’s worth noting that a prototype reactor has already been demonstrated at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. I believe that while there may be some technological issues to be resolved they are by no means of a similar magnitude to those facing fusion. It would seem to me that with a reasonably concentrated approach that it would not be unrealistic for them to be surmounted.

Our lifetimes will be defined by our access to energy. With the carbon crisis and our dwindling reserves of fossil fuels, within our lifetimes, we will have to make some kind of paradigm shift either in where we get our energy from or how we live as a society. I prefer the former to the latter on this. I do not think that any currently available energy source cuts the mustard in terms of what we need to go forward as a civilization. I include renewables in this - as an energy source which requires an order of magnitude increase in energy prices will only be of use to the very richest in society - the rest of the population will not be able to take advantage of such a power source. We need radical new approaches and to achieve them I believe that we must strongly engage in R and D for all promising technologies. In my view Thorium implemented in LFTRs is one of the most promising currently on the table.

What I’ve written above is only a very brief summary of the information that is out there. If you’re looking for more info or even just some light entertainment have a look at these:-

Thorium: An energy solution - THORIUM REMIX 2011

Energy From Thorium: A Nuclear Waste Burning Liquid Salt Thorium Reactor

[Gyrate]

I bet if they got Chris Hemsworth to endorse it the public would be fine with a Thorium reactor.

[jz78817]

The one area of interest for me with any new reactor design is its behavior after shutdown. LWRs can be “shut down” (fission halted) relatively quickly but- as we’ve seen more than once- they still require a long period of active cooling to deal with decay heat. What is the post-shutdown behavior of a LFTR?

[bump]

@NurseCarmen

wait… Fukishima fared WELL?

When you consider the alternatives, the power plant fared extremely well, even if it did damn near melt down and still contaminated a fairly large area. Both the earthquake and the following tsunami were both considerably larger than what it was designed to withstand, and yet despite that, didn’t catastrophically fail.

[Lucas_Jackson]

@Miller

In other news, the Thorin powered reactor remains stalled at the design stage.

Nah, I think they’ve given up on Thorium power. See this discarded reactor.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@bump

When you consider the alternatives, the power plant fared extremely well, even if it did damn near melt down and still contaminated a fairly large area. Both the earthquake and the following tsunami were both considerably larger than what it was designed to withstand, and yet despite that, didn’t catastrophically fail.

I guess I don’t understand your definition of “catastrophically fail”, because while the plant didn’t explode and take half of Honshu with it, it most certainly did experience complete “meltdown” (i.e. experience deliquescence of fuel elements) in Reactors 1, 2, and 3, and was classified as a INES Level 7 event. It is true that it experienced events that were beyond design basis hazards, but that just goes to the fact that you cannot assume that presumably statistically improbable (“swan tail”) events such as a 500 year earthquake will not occur during the operational lifetime of the reactor, especially when located in both a seismic and tsunami zone.

That being said, baring order of magnitude improvements in renewable energy or an unforeseen breakthrough in compact aneutronic fusion, nuclear fission is unavoidable as an energy source in the coming decades, and thorium-based reactors certainly have some advantages over existing light water reactors. In comparison to the aggregate hazards of coal and oil (environmental, political, et cetera) nuclear has provided an overall less damaging source of energy per kWh produced, but the magnitude and duration of a catastrophic failure (of which Fukushima or Chernobyl are really pretty moderate catastrophes) requires diligence in the failsafe design, maintenance, and mitigation of nuclear power. It does no service to be blasé about the attendant hazards and necessary mitigations regarding nuclear power production.

Stranger

[bump]

My point wasn’t that it weathered the storm well, exactly, but that considering how outside of the design parameters the quake and tsunami were, the failures were really rather graceful. It was only 10% the radiation release of Chernobyl and only over 10% of the area.

Nobody has died so far, and they’re saying that any cancer effects may be statistically indetectible outside of the very immediate area.

[ralph124c]

@bump

My point wasn’t that it weathered the storm well, exactly, but that considering how outside of the design parameters the quake and tsunami were, the failures were really rather graceful. It was only 10% the radiation release of Chernobyl and only over 10% of the area.

Nobody has died so far, and they’re saying that any cancer effects may be statistically indetectible outside of the very immediate area.

I think you are right-considering how many coal miners die every (400-500 in China alone), nuclear power has been very safe.