Interview with Benjamin Soon, Flibe Energy, at ThEC15 in Mumbai
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- Опубліковано 4 лип 2024
- More information and news on: www.thoriumenergyworld.com/
Watch Benjamin Soon talk about the importance of Thorium Energy to the world, Flibe Energy’s goals, the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) technology, challenges in the path towards Thorium Energy deployment, and geopolitics in an interview conducted during the Thorium Energy conference ThEC15 in Mumbai.
Benjamin Soon got to know about thorium, and specifically liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR), over the course of his career as an analyst in the air force when he was examining subjects like energy security and geopolitics. He came across this technology (LFTR) and thought ‘Wow, this is black magic. How can something so good not have been our primary energy source like yesterday?’
‘Energy is the master commodity. Nothing is done or made without energy.’ concludes Mr. Soon. ‘If we can solve the energy problem, we basically solve world peace, or at least a significant section of the things we could potentially come in conflict over. Thorium represents a virtually limitless source of energy, and if we can harness it, it is tantamount to solving the problem of energy’, Mr. Soon answers when asked about the importance of Thorium Energy to the world. Flibe Energy’s dream is to solve the energy problem of the world by powering it with liquid fluoride thorium reactors.
There are some challenges in the path towards a thorium powered world. According to Mr. Soon, the first and most important obstacle is ignorance. ‘People don’t understand that the field of nuclear energy is way more than what they see, and they don’t understand what the options are.This obstacle can be overcome by increasing awareness among the general public, decision makers, policy makers, politicians and even engineers about the fact that there is this option, the thorium MSR, running on the pure thorium fuel cycle.’ Mr. Soon explains. Also the regulatory environment needs to change to enable the deployment of this technology.
What else is needed for Flibe Energy to succeed? ‘It’s really really about money’, says Mr. Soon. ‘Building on from the awareness problem, is that investors and governments who would invest in a technology, don’t generally understand the technology, lack of awareness. And because of that nobody is really willing to put money forward, and everybody is waiting for somebody else to go first.’ Mr. Soon sums.
Can Flibe Energy achieve this alone? ‘Of course not. We are only one company. We need to build an international community of not just scientists and engineers but business people, leaders, the thought leaders, the decision makers. They all have to see we have a problem.’, sums Mr. Soon the solution for Thorium Energy to become a reality.
‘Assuming that we manage to overcome the regulatory resistance, and the funding resistance, there is no reason the believe that a pure thorium fuel cycle MSR cannot be ready for deployment within 5 years.’ concludes Mr. Soon the time frame Thorium Energy deployment.
What do you think about Flibe's vision, and the challenges to be overcome? - Наука та технологія
IT'S NICE TO SEE THAT FLIBE HAS ANOTHER GREAT SPOKESMAN ! THERE WILL CERTAINLY BE MAJOR CHALLENGES TRANSITIONING FROM AN OIL ECONOMY TO THAT OF THORIUM, BUT IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN; SO WE MAY AS WELL EMBRACE THE CHANGE AND START THINKING ABOUT WHAT THE WORLD WILL BE LIKE WITH UN-LIMITED ENERGY ! VERY EXCITING !
The heat platform the LFTR provides allows us to keep both. Hydrocarbon fuels can be made using water and air and the waste heat. The heat could probably be used to process crude into plastics and all the other forms we use at a lower cost than burning some other resource to separate the different chains.
YOU'RE CORRECT.
FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, I STUMBLED ACROSS THORIUM, AND LFTR TECHNOLOGY, WHILE LEARNING ABOUT DESALINATION; I'M AN ADVOCATE FOR BOTH, NOW.
If Nixon wasn't such a fool southern California would have cheap safe energy and abundant fresh water from the ocean now.
Brilliant!...well explained and clear vid. Thanks
excellent talk. We have no time to lose. we can do this, we can build these things, and we can run them, albeit not as efficient and clean as we would like to in the first decade or so. After that, though, the sky is the limit, in a literal sense. I've studied renewables for 15 years, and was closely involved in the growth of German solar power, which is delivering exactly what we predicted ten years ago, amounting to not much at all. This needs to be done, better today than tomorrow.
Absolutely brilliant, keep going, spread the word , inform the people!
Also, Thorium rhymes with Dorian ! Wooohooo! :)
If this info is new to you, please check out Kirk Sorenson at Protospace giving a talk on Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors. It's informative, entertaining and brilliant. Key words Thorium an d Protospace. Trust me, it will open your mind and change your attitude about nuclear energy.
Or you can watch all TED Talks on Thorium here: www.thoriumenergyworld.com/ted-talks-on-thorium.html
Well If I hit the lottery, you wouldn't have any funding problems.
+TheAtheistPaladin that's the spirit, where do we play?
How about with the MacArthur Foundation. They offer the "Genius" prizes. They are now going to give 100 MILLION dollars to people or organizations who can identify serious problems and show how to solve them. Deadline for getting on the list is soon. This will be offered every three years.
31:11"Freinds" quote = Lord Palmerston (John Henry Temple) of Great Britain.
I literally can't wait until the right investors gets their hands on this, i am confident that with the right research and improvements this can be our way into a infinite energy source for the world. and massively improved lifestyles from the tiniest organisms all the way to us, the humans. Unfortunatelly though, therer's still alot of people around the world who thinks that we dont need to improve our environment further...
I have small amounts of faith still though
Sam G, who do you think would be the best 'hero investor'?
Elon Musk knows solar is not a viable energy source for space travel. Especially travelling away from the sun. Batteries are not a reasonable means of power storage on the moon or mars. If he wants to put people on mars he needs your help.
When I describe one of the many differences to people about current Uranium pellets vs suspended Thorium in molten salt, I tell them the current method to render uranium is like burning an uncut full tree log. It takes forever, and really it only burns the outside and in the cracks. Whereas thorium would be like burning fine sawdust. I realize its not totally accurate, but its a good visual to get the point across. That's when they say well why can't we do that with uranium? I say, YOU GET IT! Exactly! its just thorium is better suited for the role based on degradation of the thorium to other elements.
I have faith in all of you companies investing, researching and trying to promote this. Someday maybe
Looks like US DOE has funded pebble bed research. Moltex seems to make the most sense in the short term though. I can't help wondering how much of the resistance to liquid fuels is the potential loss of solid fuel processing and waste storage revenues. Pebble beds presumably allow fuel processors to keep cashing checks.
Less than 8k views on a video about arguably the most important technology on the planet... This is beyond me...
What should I go to college for now in order to work in this field in a few years? chemistry/engineering?
+Daniel Hoch Energy systems affect many aspects if not all of modern society. Therefore, if you want to work in this field your choice should be to follow what aspect of it seems most interesting to you. Not only do we need science and engineering, it will also require entrepreneurs policy makers. If you want to work with the fundamentals of reactor designs you should go with physics since it gives you a solid base to stand on. Let us know your thoughts and interests.
Correct, don't believe anything without understanding it, because you can work it out for yourself what our universe is, QM-TIMECompleteness, ..how it operates technologically, and why the Gold-Silver Rules of our common sense morality, of our all inclusive Self applies in conscious awareness of real-time Actuality.
Since reading the EPRI PRA on the LFTR design: www.epri.com/abstracts/Pages/ProductAbstract.aspx?ProductId=000000003002005460 I have had to curb my enthusiasm. Not because the idea is unsound, but because there is so much work to do. And I have to applaud Flibe Energy's courage in seeking out criticism and having a third party identify knowledge gaps, because all projects benefit from having another set of eyes to find out what has been missed.
The two-fluid, graphite moderated, thorium pure cycle molten salt breeder is the "reference design" as identified by the Gen IV forum. But is it necessarily the best design that can greet the market in the next 5-15 years? Based on what I read in the EPRI report, no. The neutronics are so lean as to require constant, high throughput online reprocessing. The graphite columns separating the primary salt and the blanket salt are subject to significant thermal and neutron flux gradients. The drain tanks, reprocessing, and barrier material are as yet untested. There is no reference supercritical CO2 turbine for power conversion. There are no pathways for recovering fission products except in groups of certain redox states via the electrochemical route.
These are not insurmountable problems, but they are problems that require long times in testing and proving. Benjamin Soon mentions that no-one wants to go first and everyone wants to go second. There is a reason for that: investor uncertainty. Uncertainty in timelines and R&D outcomes stymie efforts to attract capital.
The two fluid breeder flummoxed ORNL and drove them towards the DMSR. Kirk Sorenson re-ignited my hopes for nuclear, but in setting the bar too high Flibe Energy may not be able to meet it.
I firmly believe that there are possibilities for iteration in nuclear; just as there has been for every industry. So just as the LFTR represents the "pinnacle" - or one of the pinnacles; there can be many steps on the way there.
Terrestrial Energy's IMSR and Martingale's ThorCon DMSR variants represent the best bet for near term rapid commercialisation of MSR technology; although Moltex SSR is also promising. (I have doubts as to the "superiority" of chloride based salts given Cl-36 activation and sulphur intergranular attack). The concept of a recyclable primary loop mitigates development timescales and economic risk. Are they the 100% solution? No. But every journey starts with the first step. The urgency of climate change demands deployment of 90% solutions available today instead of 100% solutions available at some indefinite juncture.
The second steps will probably be taken by Moltex SSR and Transatomic, proving that a long-life core is possible after materials testing validates primary loop lifetimes out to the "standard" of 30-40 years. Their deployment will represent utility scale acceptance and penetration.
The last steps will probably be LFTR or Rosatom's MOSART or Euratom's MSFR. My bet is on MSFR and MOSART over LFTR because they offer a pathway to transuranic disposition, something that LFTR's lean neutronics will unlikely be able to achieve. Euratom and Rosatom have the supercomputers. They have the salt loops and pyrochemical cells and the instrumentation labs. They have formidable minds at TU-Delft and Rez; at CNRS and Kurchatov. Most importantly they have the expertise; because Rez and CNRS both have backgrounds in pyroprocessing - a key field upon which the reprocessing of MSRs and fast reactors depend; while Rosatom holds the only program that has mastered and commercialised MOX for both fast and thermal reactors. I don't see the same expertise still residing in the US - the EBR-II pioneers and the ORNL chemists are retired, if not dead. The Tsinghua TMSR program will likely stumble upon the same blocks as Flibe Energy does - only difference being that they have the resources to overcome it; unlike Flibe. More likely, they will see the opportunity in moving to a fast spectrum instead of being constrained by graphite, and join Eastern and Western Europe in the efforts.
+MonMalthias indeed it is a large undertaking. However, developing an energy solution that is scalable without dependencies comes with an even bigger reward!
You find quite a bit of information on India, China and all the others here: www.thoriumenergyreport.org/
I have read the report. I did so in 2012, then 2013, then 2014, and again last year. The site needs updating to reflect 2015 accomplishments, especially developments within China. Bizarrely, SNC Lavalin's CANDU program is mentioned, even though there are no plans to develop thoria fuel (though thoria has been investigated by CNL and Chalk River).
For a site that purports to report on up and coming use of thorium, there certainly is much ado about uranium, given CANDU, given AHWR, given Lightbridge. To me it serves more as an overview of newcomers to the nuclear fuel cycle in summary than about the use of thorium. In this way, perhaps the site should be instead about recent innovations in the nuclear industry; but then there's World Nuclear News for that.
Regarding LFTR; at this point it seems only China will be able to produce one. India seems committed to solid fuel; as is Canada. X-Energy and Steenkampskraal I will only take interest in if they can sidestep the problems that dogged Peach Bottom, the South African HTGR program and the German HTR-10.
So far only the Chinese, again, have proven capable of doing so.
So I ask again. Is Flibe Energy pursuing the best design going forward?
My opinion is still no. They are trying too hard and making perfect the enemy of good. They don't have the resources to prove a Brayton, or high throughput reprocessing, or even graphite manufacture. They don't have the metallurgy programs that spawned MoNiCr or Ni-W-Cr or GH3535 or other successors to Hastelloy. They don't even have a successor to COLEX Li-7 enrichment; whereas the Chinese at least have developed a cascade process based on PUREX principles and using tributylphosphate: www.google.com/patents/CN104147929A?cl=en .
It is all well and good to produce engineering drawings. Bringing the draftsman's screed into the real world is the real challenge. Thus far I have yet to see anything from Flibe other than talk. No papers, no loops, no CFD. Just a PRA from EPRI outlining just how much work they have yet to do. Kirk Sorenson may be good at talking, but Per Peterson at UCB is the one doing the work.
which site?
Thorium Energy www.thoriumenergyreport.org/
+MonMalthias that is our site with the goal to give a clear picture of all the efforts from around the world. It is the Report in the menu here: www.itheo.org
a move toward world peace good move the states are sooo slow getting this together
Investigate the fusion reactor that Taylor Wilson designed. Combine it with LFTR and you would not have to transport fissile material to start up a plant.
I was thinking about the J.P. Morgan issue.
The biggest question I've had is why was Google the main firm to push the development of the self driving car and not AB Imbev.
If we are looking for buy in, think what industries would benefit most.
Well, you need to refine and purify the Thorium before it can be used. That takes a lot of Sufuric Acid, lots of Hydrofluoric acid, and Florine processing. Who is best positioned to benefit from the new fuel system. I'm thinking Alcoa. Has anyone sought buy in from Fluorine based material processing companies?
The J. P. Morgan financing of Our current energy economy is your major opposition.
The opposition which also controls Our government.
I support your goals but fear the reaction from Capital in the near term.
obviously there has been something holding this technology back. Governments has stopped innovation in energy, only promoting shitty expensive renewable solution because they know they wont be able to compete, this however will compete a 100 times over old energy technology.
I don't agree that Fukushima was such an isolated case either.
Need to merge the left and right audio together. Do you use Adobe Premiere or something else?
+Matthew Bowler I'm not the expert. Can you please explain? Is there something wrong?
+Thorium Energy It's only coming in on the left channel. Not really a problem, but would be more professional if the audio was on both left and right channels.
can that be changed??
+Thorium Energy sure, can you send me the raw file you uploaded? upload to google drive, share the file with me.
it might be faster if you describe how to do it?
Why not sell it to the environmentalists as a Liquid Thorium ion Molten Salt “Battery”
Well if the U.S. doesn't develop LIFTR, CHINA & other countries WILL. In fact, since China's Govt consists of a lot of former engineers/scientists, they are FULLY SUPPORTING LIFTR. They are pouring Billions of money into R&D, construction of a working LIFTR and have 700 nuclear engineers/scientists working on it. Therefore would the U.S. prefer buying LIFTRs from China and dependent on them for our energy? As in Artificial Intelligence & Quantum Computing they're investing heavily in nuclear energy via LIFTR while the U.S. President wants to invest in southern Border Wall. Wow do you think the U.S.'s priorities are insane? Do you not see why China will definitely be the Superpower of the 21st Century.
You shouldn't have said throw it in the ocean!
there is a story about a nuclear reactor explosion back in the 50's in California. How convenient that the story was not disclosed, The technology never would have been developed.