Thorium nuclear reactors: a possible solution of the energy crisis? (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LeM-Dyuk6g

by japaget • 15 years ago

227 102 15 years ago

mcritz• 15 years ago

Thus video just gave me something to research for the next few days.

mrothe• 15 years ago

This cutted version feels like none of these persons said anything that is in the video, because the statements (or even words) are "out of context". I just can assume the author of the video has good intentions and did not change the context.

tomelders• 15 years ago

I really liked this. I doubt I would have had tie to watch the original, but yeah... it does rely heavily on the integrity of the editor.

pyrhho• 15 years ago

FWIW, I recently watched one of the talks this is spliced from, and it seemed fairly accurate.

moreati• 15 years ago

Here are the original videos:

The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor: What Fusion Wanted To Be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8

Aim High: Using Thorium Energy to Address Environmental Problems http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgKfS74hVvQ

Lessons for the Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (from history) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8

icarus_drowning• 15 years ago

I've watched all of the videos-- this is a very good summary of them. Plus, it isn't like the editor/uploader doesn't make it easy to find the original videos anyway.

Detrus• 15 years ago

I watched one of the videos and seems accurate enough. The cut left out an important bit from the end of that video. Developing those kinds of thorium reactors would take the US five years with a Manhattan Project style investment. Ten or more years at a slower pace and lower price.

This is by no means cheap and easy, "it's not THAT hard" is a quote that made the cut. I imagine the effort would be comparable to making uranium reactors for power stations which took around thirty years.

seamonster• 15 years ago

Kirk Sorenson on Dr kiki’s Science Hour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEpnpyd-jbw

api2• 15 years ago

I hear a lot about the LFTR, and I wonder what the problem is. Is there a major technical hurdle that prevents this from seeing widespread use?

Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes a really good idea never gets used because... well... because nobody really picks it up and runs with it. It's that simple sometimes.

But sometimes there's some hidden gotcha.

jpk• 15 years ago

My understanding is that building the reactors are significantly more expensive. So until the price of Uranium increases enough to justify the total cost of the Thorium reactors, we won't see many of them outside research settings.

The other issue is building a new reactor of any type right now is a giant pain in the ass, which doesn't help either.

edkennedy• 15 years ago

In the video he states that the cost would be 30-50% lower because the reactors are very simple. The cost for uranium based fuel is also significantly more expensive (watch the vide). He states that the reason people don't build these is because they don't know about them, or they are stuck in the existing structure of legacy reactor thinking.

The reason that anything new is a pain in the ass is simply because of bureaucracy.

api2• 15 years ago

CANDU, one of the best uranium designs, has the same problem.

It's sort of like inkjet printers. Either it's cheaper up front and more expensive in the long run, or it costs a fortune up front but the ink is cheap.

DennisP12• 15 years ago

Thorium reactors should be quite a bit cheaper. Light-water reactors operate at 160 atmospheres of pressure. They need a very strong reactor vessel, which currently can only be forged by a single facility in Japan. They need a large containment dome because if a pipe breaks, that high-pressure water will flash into steam with a thousand times the volume. They use lots of redundant emergency active cooling mechanisms. Some of them have giant slabs of ice inside the containment dome, which reduce the volume of steam if it's released but have to be constantly refrigerated, to keep them frozen in close proximity to a nuclear reactor core.

LWRs are resupplied every year with expensive fabricated fuel rods, which are non-standard and can only be purchased from the company that sold the reactor. The fuel rods are complicated because they have to withstand a thousand-degree temperature gradient, and the fuel pellets are prone to cracking from the production of xenon gas. Xenon and other reaction products prevent the use of more than one percent or so of the energy potential of the nuclear fuel, another reason the rods are frequently replaced, and the reason we have so much nasty nuclear waste.

The nuclear industry makes most of its revenue from selling those fuel rods.

LFTRs operate at atmospheric pressure. No super-strong steel, no containment dome, no ice. It's a liquid fuel, so no proprietary fuel rods. Xenon just bubbles out of it.

The fuel has a strong "negative coefficient," meaning the reaction slows down as it gets hotter. If it nevertheless gets too hot, a salt plug melts and all the fuel drains into a passive cooling tank. No need for all those active cooling systems.

On top of that, LFTRs operate at higher temperature, so the turbine is more efficient, and the waste heat can be used to desalinate seawater. They don't require water cooling. As a bonus, marketable reaction products can be separated from the liquid fuel (http://flibe-energy.com/products/).

Misguided government regulation is the main problem, but Sorenson's company plans to get around that by selling to the military first.

known2• 15 years ago

The ratio of plutonium needed to seed and convert thorium into fissionable uranium-233 is very high (0.8:1)

ToddSimmons• 15 years ago

Except for that fact that we already have plenty of U233 sitting around being useless at Oak Ridge. Certainly plenty to do all the research and prototyping needed to get a design certification for a LFTR.

Clearly, the problem is the political will to do something different. If the nuclear lobby and the anti-nuclear lobby are both against it, it's hard to get traction. Kirk is likely correct. The only way to get this through is via the DoD. I wish FLIBE Energy the best.

vog• 15 years ago

> Is there a major technical hurdle ... ?

That's exactly my question, too. So I tried to find some alternative view on that topic. Unfortunately, I only found some criticism of questionable quality ...

http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/thorium2009factsheet.pdf

... as well as a rebuttal of questionable quality:

http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/03/23/sorensen-rebuttal/

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

The most common 'gotcha' is that you can't make a thorium reactor critical with just thorium. It needs 'boost' neutrons. The most way that was done in the past was a small bit of uranium or plutonium that was critical to provide the neutrons. A more innovative way is to use a small particle accellerator to provide the thorium with neutrons [1].

[1] http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-pint-sized-particle-nucl...

DennisP12• 15 years ago

It's actually U233 that fissions. The neutrons convert thorium to U233, and when U233 fissions it produces neutrons that convert more thorium. So once you get the reaction started, you don't need an external neutron source.

LFTR proponents figure the simplest approach is to just go ahead and use U233 to seed the reaction. The U.S. has one ton of U233, which it currently plans to dispose of.

DennisP12• 15 years ago

Mainly it's historical reasons. Light-water reactors were developed first, for nuclear submarines. Once they had those working, everybody went with what they knew, and thorium advocates got fired. Then people forgot about thorium.

At this point, NRC regulations assume solid fuel, and the nuclear industry makes most of its money from selling complex fabricated fuel rods.

However, there was a small liquid-fluoride reactor actually working back in the 60s.

The main technical objection I've seen is corrosion from the liquid-salt fuel. Sorenson claims there's an alloy that makes it a non-issue.

jackpirate3• 15 years ago

The first reactors were actually heavy water for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. Light water reactors were developed next because they could still produce plutonium, were cheaper, and could be put on a submarine. But their usefulness on subs was secondary. The USSR built Pb moderated reactors for some Alfa class subs that didn't require anyone working in the engine room. For lots of reasons, this is obviously superior as a submarine reactor tech. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_class_submarine)

The real reason we never went to Thorium is the best reason to go to Thorium. It creates U233, which is not usable for nuclear weapons. (Or at least, no nuclear weapon has ever been built with it.) This would have made it great for exporting to countries without worrying about proliferation. That's the reason we're seeing it become discussed so much more often now.

speleding• 15 years ago

The "advantage" that the LFTR doesn't produce fissile material was probably considered a disadvantage by most governments, at least until about a decade ago.

Now that we have decades of experience with light water reactors it simply is a challenge to propose a solution that unproven on a commercial scale. It may look good on paper but it would be a multi-billion dollar project with multi-billion dollar risks. Visionary politicians who would want to take such risks are in short supply.

b0rsuk• 15 years ago

Uranium reactors are children of war, much like hydrogen-bomb-shaped communications satellites. They are a byproduct of A-bomb research. From wikipedia:

1) Weapons-grade fissionable material (233U) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor

2)Thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming, so fission stops by default.

The focus with Uranium reactors wasn't to make reaction efficient over time, just violent. What I'm trying to say is the current atomic energy industry is heavily invested in Uranium. No wonder they're resistant to change.

lloeki2• 15 years ago

Just like (almost) every spaceship designed is a descendant of the V2 rocket.

War is an incredible catalyst of the discovery process, but it unearths such discoveries just to throw them into a local optimum.

DennisP12• 15 years ago

I just wrote a bunch of comments arguing in its favor but here's an article I just found with various criticisms I hadn't seen before: http://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/ca/part-8-msr-lftr/

I'm not sure how credible this guy is, because he talks about thorium-232 as a dangerous nuclear waste, with a terrible 14 billion year half-life. The problems with this are (1) such a long half-life means its hardly radioactive at all, and (2) that's the only isotope of thorium, which means it's the same stuff that exists in large quantities already in natural ore.

Also I'm not sure why he thinks U-232 has to be separated from the U-233.

Aside from that, he raises some interesting objections.

He may be exaggerating the complexity of the reprocessing system. Wikipedia describes it in detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#On-line_rep...

DennisP12• 15 years ago

Kinda wish I could delete that comment. Here's a bunch of people on reddit ripping that article apart: http://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/ifx40/molten_salt_lf...

amalag• 15 years ago

Since India has a lot of Thorium, they are actively pursuing it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5DiTPw3dk&feature=relat...

ugh• 15 years ago

Any plans to build a reactor somewhere?

I fear that mere engineering heavy talking has no chance solving nuclear’s PR problem.

Actually building a reactor might help. Maybe. Maybe not.

demian• 15 years ago

Maybie with the generational shift things will change. For USA's sakes, let's hope it won't be too late.

zobzu• 15 years ago

text > video

fredoliveira• 15 years ago

A beautiful thing, opinions. Everyone can have one of their own.

texas-saluki• 15 years ago

I think the video is really interesting but it seems strange that it is highly edited and sliced together? Whenever I see something so hacked together I question the context that some of the message was cut out to benefit someones agenda

Create5• 15 years ago

This is project pursued by many[1]. The main hurdles are:

1. political [2], which Kirk mentions (it is no coincidence, that the pellets that the rods contain are as standard as the NATO bullet) -- the industry and power has a very different interest

2. technical: Kirk always mentions, that the fuel is not solid. It is liquid. The latter means, that you do have higher concerns about corrosiveness, hence (useful) reactor lifetime...

Also, the issue of scale, which tends to lie between 1. and 2. Uranium "won", because you got the real stuff with it (weapons as in actual projection of power, or the capability of threat to project power) and because you could make it work on a massive scale (current reactors are an order of magnitude larger than any LFTR design, and capitalism is based on the leverage of and concentration of power).

[1] http://energyfromthorium.com/

http://www.thorenergy.no/

http://thoriumenergy.com.au/

... besides China, India, France and (even) Czechs.

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom.... -> see Seaborg interview part

DennisP12• 15 years ago

Corrosion is one of the main objections people bring up, given that the fuel is a liquid salt. Sorenson says there's an alloy that solves the problem.

Create5• 15 years ago

I do not think that corrosion is the showstopper.

It rather seems to be the lack of irresponsible megalomania, which actually fuelled the GE/Westinghouse frenzy. And I can hardly blame anybody for the lack of it, because for all the better... Our planet has became smaller in the last 50 years, and running (tea)pot operations would be a tough sell, even on Fox. But obviously (offshore) oils rigs and gas are no better either, though people are still happy with oil running their cars and data-centres.

But useful lifetime/economics of scale/TCO does matter, because ROI in the strict and sole monetary sense is the only metric of success. Note, that most reactors have been rubber-stamped to operate beyond their design lifetime.

delinquentme• 15 years ago

Tailor made idea for the "reverse VC pitch"

VC >> find engineers >> provide $$ >> GO.

iwwr• 15 years ago

You can still make bombs from the thorium cycle, with U233.

shabble3• 15 years ago

Many people claim you can't, due to fact it's generally a mixture of U232 as well, which will decay rapidly and cook your detonator/firing mechanism, but a couple of interesting comments I found suggest a liquid fuel would be amenable to continuous separation:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/03/question...

The MET test of Operation Teapot being the first example of a successful U233 firing: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Teapot.html

InclinedPlane5• 15 years ago

The MET test was not a pure U-233 design, it was a mixture of Pu-239 and U-233, it also had 1/3 lower yield than the equivalent design using U-235.

DennisP12• 15 years ago

In theory you can, but nobody makes bombs with U233 because it's easier to make bombs in other ways.

It seems to me that the real question for proliferation is not "is it theoretically possible to make bombs with this," but rather "if you wanted to make bombs and you had this technology, would you use it to make your bombs, or would you still prefer other methods?"

shabble3• 15 years ago

It's easier to make them other ways at the moment, because U233 isn't common. But popularize and reduce the cost of this cycle, as well as claiming it's "proliferation resistant" and hence suitable for export to non-members of the we-got-nukes club, may well lead to weapons being made out of it.

InclinedPlane5• 15 years ago

The non-proliferation aspects of Thorium reactors are a bit overstated. Consider that the easiest way to create fissile fuel for nuclear weapons is to merely have access to an abundant neutron source, such as any fission reactor (Thorium or not). If you have an LFTR you can just place natural Uranium-238 near the reactor core and use the neutron flux to breed Pu-239, easy peasy.

As far as producing materials that could be stolen and used for nuclear weapons manufacture, that at least is a little bit better with a Thorium fuel cycle. Presumably the U-233 would simply be left to burn up in the reactor, rather than being separated out and kept in storage. If someone happened to obtain some used fuel they could potentially separate out the U-233 and use it to make weapons, although it would require substantial engineering. Also, since U-233 is very much more radioactive than U-235 or Pu-239 it requires handling with remote manipulators. Any organization that had the ability to separate U-233, engineer the appropriate modified bomb design, then process and machine the U-233 using only remote manipulation is extremely likely to have a sufficient level of technology and industry to build reactors or separators on their own (meaning, able to build nuclear weapons independent of having access to used Thorium fuel).

daniel-cussen• 15 years ago

I read an American company is trying to make one in the north of Chile. It's because they really need energy (they're currently using coal and diesel to keep the lights on in the north) and there's not a whole lot of bio-anything to protect there. I think it's a great idea, but a lot of people don't.

rmason• 15 years ago

I've studied this for years and haven't found any credible reason why we couldn't do this today.

But there are a lot of forces allied against Thorium in both the government, energy companies and the current nuclear industry.

Senator Hatch (R) Utah with support from Harry Reid (D) Nevada has introduced a bill annually for five years to fund $200 million to research to commercialize Thorium power. Yet every year the bill never even gets voted on.

http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=releases&Cont...

What is stopping Google itself from funding this I don't know? Our country should make this a major initiative similar to the race to the moon and get us off coal, oil and gas.

shailesh• 15 years ago

Another data point:

Even in India (which has 25% of world's Thorium reserves), it is a mystery to many, as to why the Govt. chose not to invest more heavily in Thorium based research, rather than going for traditional ones.

Edit: grammar.

goombastic2• 15 years ago

India seems to only go for technologies that foreign companies have developed. Guess why? Kick backs are a nice way of living the good life. This, even as recent hikes in fuel prices across the country are putting paid to the dreams of a growing economy.

InclinedPlane5• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_India

"The country is involved in the development of nuclear fusion reactors through its participation in the ITER project and is a global leader in the development of thorium-based fast breeder reactors."

uvdiv3• 15 years ago

Not sure how you figure that, India's whole research program is geared toward a pure-thorium future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three_stage_nuclear_p...

static_cast• 15 years ago

I'm not sure if the following links refer to the same thorium architecture but in Germany there was a test-reactor and several rather hard to solve problems appeared

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300

http://juwel.fz-juelich.de:8080/dspace/bitstream/2128/3136/1... [50+ page PDF outlining the problems]

pilom• 15 years ago

That was a pebble bed reactor which had issues with high pressure containment vessels and solid fuel. The reactors recommended in the video are molten salt reactors which do not have the same issues.

InclinedPlane5• 15 years ago

We could start scaling up research today, which we should, but it's a bit much to say we could start building Thorium power reactors today. Other reactor designs are far, far more developed and generally have had full-scale pilot reactors built and operated, the same is not true for Thorium reactors.

dennisgorelik4• 15 years ago

Google is not in nuclear energy business.

It would be better for all of us if Google stays focused in software development.

brianbreslin3• 15 years ago

Google is in the renewable energy business. They have devoted well over $400Million US to solar, hydro, and wind power startups. They see energy as their biggest cost point in the next decade (powering data centers is not trivial).

pedalpete• 15 years ago

The response said what is stopping google from 'funding' this, not 'creating' this. Of course, they would benefit too.

neutronicus6• 15 years ago

Because uranium is cheap, so why bother? The price of nuclear energy is dominated by the cost of building the reactor, not the fuel.

regomodo• 15 years ago

Waste disposal/processing isn't cheap and Thorium produces significantly less waste than Uranium.

KeithMajhor2• 15 years ago

Did you watch the video?

The reactors he presented appeared to be much simpler (so... they'd likely be cheaper).

lloeki2• 15 years ago

And thorium is bound to be even cheaper, as it's readily available in massive quantities.

DennisP12• 15 years ago

For anyone who wants to delve into this more deeply, Sorenson's videos (http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/06/04/adventures-with-gord...) are really great. I recently watched the two-hour one, which was edited from a longer talk to cut out the pauses. It's a rapid-fire, passionate technical introduction that I found very compelling.

softbuilder• 15 years ago

Can I look forward to a Google thorium salt reactor in the near future?

zherbert• 15 years ago

I go to school at Boston University and took an Energy class with a Nobel Laureate in physics, Sheldon Glashow, last semester. He spoke in great depth about Thorium reactors, and is very supportive of the technology.

One of the main hurdles is that we have poured money into our modern-day reactors, and have constructed hundreds of plants. If we were to switch to thorium, we would have to essentially start from scratch - new research, new plant designs, new training, etc. It is very difficult to justify a complete switch from uranium, as it would be incredibly costly.

In other countries, however, thorium reactors could be very beneficial. Countries using thorium would not be able to produce nuclear weapons, which would give the world great peace of mind. This could minimize risks in unstable countries - we wouldn't worry if Iran was building a thorium reactor, for example.

There are also other types of reactor designs that use nuclear waste to create power. I believe our nuclear future lies with these types of reactors, rather than with uranium or thorium.

DennisP12• 15 years ago

Don't switch from uranium. Switch from coal.

ollybee• 15 years ago

the UK National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) undertook a recent independent assessment, in which it assessed a number of claims made by proponents of thorium fuel. The report can be found at: http://www.nnl.co.uk/positionpapers

bowyakka• 15 years ago

I would be deeply skeptical about position papers from the UK, British Nuclear Fuel are a massive, partly government owned company that makes a lot of money from reprocessing. The government started dismantling BFNL into private companies one of which is is the NNL.

fleitz• 15 years ago

Just use CANDU reactors, it will burn raw uranium, and can use the waste product from PWR reactors, just leave the thorium in the raw uranium. It's been working for years, no Yucca mountain, Yucca mountain is a purely US phenomena, it doesn't exist in Canada or France. It's not a new technology, it's 60 years old. All you need is a little heavy water, and in event of a meltdown you just flood the tank with regular water and voila no reactions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

Here's the fuel cycle for a CANDU reactor which will support the thorium cycle as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CANDU_fuel_cycles.jpg

brianbreslin3• 15 years ago

Slightly off topic, but could thorium be used for vehicle propulsion? as in nuclear submarines or even better: space craft? if the payload is efficient enough, it could solve the issues we have with getting rockets into space (fuel is heavy, and costly to transport).

u48998• 15 years ago

I have a whole lot of related links here making the case for thorium: http://webwanderings.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/thorium-based-...

earlyrise• 15 years ago

If the world was serious about nuclear non-proliferation, we would have thorium reactors everywhere already. They said a few times in the video that thorium reactors can't be used for weapons, and so they are not built. Governments have decided that we need nukes, so thorium reactors do not get funding.

But if we are serious about non-proliferation, then switching to thorium reactors and controlling which new reactors get built is a much more effective strategy then the current weapon-counting efforts. Once a reactor is built and starts creating fissile material, then it is difficult to keep track of and control. But it is much harder to hide a reactor while you are building it - Iran tried and failed.

So it seems to me that thorium reactors, in addition to their efficiency, low cost and low amount of radioactive waste, could also be a useful tool in enforcing nuclear non-proliferation. We've got these reactors that cannot be used to make bombs - why don't we sign treaties saying that they are the only reactors that can be built?

Thorium nuclear reactors: a possible solution of the energy crisis? (video)

Related Stories