Fluorination using NF3 - Kirk Sorensen of Flibe Energy @ ORNL's MSR Workshop
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- Опубліковано 12 жов 2018
- The appeal of fluorination as a technique for the removal of uranium from fluoride fuel salt has been noted for many years and fluorination formed an integral part of most of the chemical processing flowsheets that were developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory under the Molten-Salt Reactor Program from 1957 to 1976. Fluorinators were envisioned at a variety of locations in the chemical processing, universally under the assumption that they would remove uranium from the fuel salt. Despite the prevalence of fluorination as an envisioned chemical processing technique, the actual amount of development that was undertaken on continuous fluorination was surprisingly small.
Batch fluorination was utilized to remove uranium from the fuel salt of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) in 1968, but this was done in the drain tank of the reactor vessel and led to the introduction of a significant amount of corrosion products. Repeated fluorination of the MSRE fuel salt in this manner would have undoubtedly led to the structural failure of the drain tank due to corrosion.
But the aggressiveness of F2 led to many practical engineering challenges in the development of a continuous fluorination system. To protect the fluorinator from F2 attack, ORNL engineers envisioned using an extensive interior cooling system to freeze a layer of salt on the fluorination column’s inner surface. A fuel salt containing fresh fission products has considerable internal heat generation that can be opposed by a cooling system to form a frozen wall on the interior surface of a fluorination column. But a chemically-similar simulant salt, such as LiF-BeF2-UF4, where fission products are replaced with stable isotopes, has no such internal heat generation term. It was necessary to simultaneously heat the salt internally, to simulate the heating effect of fission product decay, while cooling the wall of the fluorinator to generate the frozen wall. Thus testing the frozen wall of the fluorinator under these conditions was very difficult. This was never satisfactorily resolved during the Molten-Salt Reactor Project.
In the years since the MSRE concluded in 1976, alternative fluorination agents have been advanced for consideration. Most notable among these is NF3. NF3 has been considered for rocket propulsion and is extensively used in the electronics industry to clean and etch microelectronic silica chips. It is minimally hazardous and not corrosive at temperatures below 70C and is likely less corrosive than other fluorinating agents. It is not known to react with moisture, is thermally stable at room temperature, and has been demonstrated by PNNL to be an effective, thermallytunable fluorination/oxidation agent for spent nuclear fuel constituents. By controlling the treatment temperature, NF3 will selectively fluorinate/oxidize spent nuclear fuel constituents. The different temperature sensitivities and NF3 concentration effects for the fluorination/oxidation of the different constituents potentially provides mechanisms to effect separations of the volatile fluorides.
The hazard level, and chemical reactivity attributes potentially make NF3 a very attractive fluorinating/oxidizing agent for managing the composition of the fuel salt in a liquid-fluoride reactor where uranium is the dominant or even exclusive fissile material. Fluorination/oxidation of the fuel salt with NF3 would produce UF6 and remove uranium from the salt. Reductive extraction could then be employed to remove non-volatile fission and activation products from the salt. Hydrogen could be used to reduce UF6 back to UF4 and reconstitute the salt for return to the reactor.
Flibe-Energy.com - Наука та технологія
I am a retired name professor organic chemist who has followed nuclear energy and especially the thorium story for many years. It has been especially frustrating to endure the political drama associated with the overblown reactions associated with every failure of the existing technology. I believe you have the will, expertise, business plan and concentrated informational nuggets to finally sell the idea to those who will need to expose their political futures to strongly support our nation’s crucial energy quest. Thank you for your continuing leadership.
Congratulations Kirk on your funding award, i really do believe your going to change the world.
I believe Kirk Sorensen will go down in history as one of the heroes of humankind's nuclear renaissance, and the ultimate decarbonization of humanity's energy generation and consumption cycle.
It is great to see our main man Kirk on video again.
I'm pretty sure that a few decades from now on, students in universities, or maybe even in high school, are going to be learn about Kirk and what he's doing for us.
Thanks, Gordon, for making this LFTR technical content available on short notice. I found it most compelling.
An unlimited source of energy will be key to human salvation .
Thank you kirt for all your hard work and dedication.
Unlimited, continuous and clean = nuclear only.
And we will do these things and more, not because they are easy but because they are hard. And we will learn and learn and turn the future into a reality. You can wallow in fear or rejoice in the knowledge that energy makes people more free.Thank you Kirk and all who are working on our future.
Catchy.
Hi JFK...
The candle burns brighter from Wigner, Weinburg now to Sorensen, glad it is still burning
Hear, Hear!
Looks like I've made the right choice in choosing to do chemical engineering for my undergraduate degree. This is a full-on chemical plant!
I figured the "optimal" version of this plant will basically be a near-automated facility where thorium comes in one end and bricks of neodymium 'n NASA-grade plutonium comes out the other. But that "near-automated" status would be designed after years of manual management by chemical engineers and the like.
dont forget the siphon for Xenon. yea the chemical processing plant will be hot in temp and radioactivity. Would almost require it to be automated. Monitored from behind shielding.
Eventually we'll see it engineered into an automated system. After the "seeding" process, thorium goes in from one end and a variety of useful fission products come out the other, contained in reusable containers with decay sensors and timestamps so you know what the likelihood of near-full decay is.
Molten salt reactors are a chemist’s wet dream 🤣
Thanks again Gordon. Lots of chemistry. I'm beginning to get an idea of why it is taking such a long time to develop an optimum process and mix of technologies to make this work. You can't just go down to the lab and mix up some chemicals to see what works when a reactor is MAKING the chemicals you have to process. Cooling a layer of salt and using it to line the walls of the reactor to limit corrosion is a neat idea. Fortunately, the heat required to drive this engine is almost free. But each reactor has the burden of supporting a chemical processing plant to extract the beneficial byproducts as well as removing the neutron-absorbing elements that want to shut the whole process down. And all of this has to be done on a high-temperature molten salt. It's no small task. We could be 100 miles down the road had we not had the anti-nukes and Nixon to contend with.
Hear, Hear!
I believe in what you're doing Kirk. I am astounded at your follow through and vision. You are an inspiration. I applaud your efforts
and look forward to your further contributions toward this monumental difference making technology.
Go Kirk, Go FLIBE !!
Great to hear more from you, Kirk! And, Congratulations!
I feel like all the different MSR startups aren't so much as competing with each other as they're simply all interested in different aspects of the reactor.
ThorCon seems to be extremely focused on the assembly and manufacture of modular MSRs, but is slow on the details of how and why the reactor and the plant in whole will work.
Terrestrial Energy definitely has the most efficient and most laid out design plan for their reactor itself and how it operates, but deliberately leaves fuel reprocessing as an open ended slot that can be put aside for future thought.
Flibe Energy was always from the start interested in the potential of the MSR's fuel reprocessing opportunities, but Kirk (IMHO) is too stubborn to admit that a full blown LFTR with an online reprocessing plant is not a rational place to start out if you wanna test MSRs out for the very first time in the market.
So here's my crazy business plan that I'd suggest for the MSR start up community.
1.ThorCon should invest specifically in becoming a factory chain that specializes in the manufacturing process of small modular reactors. They could actually produce and assemble TE's IMSR.
2.Use the IMSR. It's very obvious that Leblanc's reactor is going to be the first MSR to make it to the market. I'd go further to say that I think he's actually discovered the silver bullet of reactor design with his integral architecture that keeps everything that comes in contact with radiation isolated in a singular, self contained unit. No need to worry about pipes leaking radioactive fuel salt, because there is no piping with fuel salt in it! It flows directly from the graphite core into the heat exchangers and pumps that are all next to each other in the exact same integrated module.
3.Finally, Flibe Energy could fill in the "blank" spot that Terrestrial Energy created with the question of what will happen to the spent fuel salt once it's accumulated too many fission products. Flibe could invest in becoming the company that runs the 'reprocessing plant' that all spent fuel salt is sent to be refreshed with through the separation of the Uranium and other fissiles from the fission products, or even the separation of fission products from each other! This would give them enough experience in the handling process of radioactive molten salt to start work on an online reprocessing plant that could connect to an integral style 2-fluid thorium fueled reactor, creating a true LFTR.
It doesn't even have to sentimentally be any of these companies in particular. It's just that I feel all the different ideas for molten salt reactors have their strengths and weaknesses, and there's no reason why we can't combine what's best about all of them into one while it seems helpful to do exactly just that.
Yes, or you could just move your company to Canada and pretend that you're in America!
Well, Canada is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much the exact same country. But all I'm saying is that if you Americans ever need a regulatory environment for reactor development that's not as intrinsically suffocating as the NRC's, feel free to bunk with us and we promise we won't take credit for your work ; )
As the MSR sector begins to mature you will see some consolidation. I think Terrestrial has a great team in place and have a good chance of being first to market. I think Moltex and Elysium designs have the most potential. I don't think it matters who has the best design as they are all needed. A working MSR of any type would be awesome.
Any MSR that enters operation will pave the way for the others following it.
I suspect that the SINAP TMSR will ultimately enter operation first. They are working with the regulator to write up the rules that might govern MSRs. Meanwhile Western design teams have to cope with a regulatory system ultimately modeled upon the safe and effective operation of PWRs. The regulators themselves lack expertise on non-water cooled designs and only now are the first cohorts of new nuclear engineering students coming online with _any_ exposure to novel reactor concepts.
Canada's CNSC might be said to be a performance based regulator but honestly I think they would be giving NuScale a free pass over many of the questions they might have before they might do the same with Terrestrial Energy. NuScale can point to prior art on PWR fuel and the way it behaves while being cooled with pressurised water. Terrestrial Energy has to produce coupled codes (how neutrons behave within core region, how they behave outside the core region, where do fission products wind up) and then has to demonstrate it in an instrumented design. Speaking of which, instrumentation and control expertise is widespread on water cooled reactors, while only now are projects like Seaborg Technologies bringing essential tools like laser induced plasma spectrometry to the nuclear field.
I think that ultimately this balkanisation of focus on MSRs may hurt individual players more. Transatomic power making their work publicly available is an excellent example that all teams in the field should emulate. But to go further than that - to actively work together and share their experimental results. The way Terrestrial Energy has gone about it in the standard manner - building a patent portfolio for investors, keeping their coupled codes to themselves - will slow everyone else down rather than the MSR community banding together to share their mathematical knowledge to develop an MCNP or Serpent tool that the industry as a whole can show to regulators and say that this is how a fluid fueled reactor will work. In this respect, Elsa Merle Lucotte's team at Euratom is doing better than anyone else.
If we lived in a prison planet like you are proposing, that wealth wouldn’t exist for you to steal.
Keep up the great work Kirk. The world is listening!
Outstanding! Can't wait to see the next post!
Wish I had attended this presentation ... Big fan of molten salt technology
Great we hear some progress on thorium nuclear energy ,that will save the world
Almost a year has gone by, I can't wait for the update :)
hope to see LFTR in my lifetime.
I heard of your work recently and I'm rooting for you ! Congratulations on you funding!
Its really nice to see MSR work moving foward..........
I am stoked to hear that the DOE has indicated a willingness to fund a great new potential technology(or renew funding) given the constraints and expense of renewables and the practical need to replace light water reactors. Given that Kirk was the one to renew this interest, it couldn't be to a more dedicated industrial entrepreneur. I have high hopes for LFTR - for all of us.
Green Sheen also, yesterday: gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/2019VoucherAbstracts/19-088_NewsRrelease_GAIN_announcesFY19-2ndRoundVouchers.pdf
Nice to see some progress!
About time you received funding!
Most excellent! Go for it, Kirk.
Thanks Gordon for you excellent coverage of these important topics surrounding the future of safe nuclear energy.
I don't care what It takes. I'm going to do my best to get as many people as I can to know about this technology.
I wish people would just take the time to watch the videos a few times. First pass I did not get it, but I found it fascinating. So I watched it again and again, and now I am rattling it off to other family and friends. But they dont get it because they cant see it. Sometimes it takes that little visual nudge for people to understand it. Always been a fan of science, but until watching the clip of Carl Sagan do his rendition of "our friend the atom" I did not realize that protons dictated what element it was. Did not understand that till 3? years ago, and Im 43!!!!
Great news Kirk 👍
Hot Dawg! I'm pleased to see Kirk and FLIBE get attention and funding to reverse some of "History's" mistakes.
That was 2018. Here is first 2019 DOE GAIN news for Flibe: gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/2019VoucherAbstracts/19-088_NewsRrelease_GAIN_announcesFY19-2ndRoundVouchers.pdf
Kirk Sorensen is fighting the good fight. Real time reductive extraction is just chemistry and sounds easy.
I'm so glad Flibe has some funding from DoE :)
Good gravy! I had considered this as a fairly consistent stumbling block, looking at the original MSRE design, and not knowing the full gamut of chemical processes necessary for the extraction of materials. NF3 does seem like the way to go, especially if it cuts down on the corrosion issue. Go chemical engineers!
Nice.
As the effects of climate change is getting increasingly apparent, the need to do something about it has increased. I hope that Thorium Molten Salt Reactors can counteract the degradeation of our climate.
Kirk, first, thank you for your work and Gordon, thank you for the vids. Second, why not use a graphite tube as a liner and thermal barrier inside the molten salt pipe to support a frozen salt layer and induction coil? At about 9:27 the cross section view would replace frozen salt film with a two layer graphite and frozen salt or sandwich frozen/graphite/frozen, both inside the metal wall. I am assuming the graphite can tolerate the corrosive environment and the salt is not fissile or the geometry can tolerate the moderation.
The last paragraph, UF6, UF4, sort of set off my spider sense (not common sense) that this system as conceived might be too complicated. I have heard of another related, process, using chloride (from potassium chloride) as the coolant-moderator. Also, it comes down to cost. I like the UK designed Stable Salt Reactor, by Moltex, that will be worked on in Canada. We still don't have a working waste remediation system (meaning that it attacks radiation via physics), but that will take 100 years, probably.
Mortimer Hasbeengud: First and foremost, I am really really unqualified to give any sort of knowledgeable response, so here goes with my totally amateur thought: I would be concerned about using chloride because of its different corrosive characteristics. However, you are working in a much wider range of temperatures than I am qualified to evaluate. Also, it seems to me that many of the chemical manufacturing processes we use commonly require several different steps in order to process the various intermediate stages of the chemicals in order to get to the desired end products. I do agree that this may require a lot of tinkering/adjusting/monitoring on an "on-the-fly" basis when in actual use. However, I also believe that our systems for doing so are vastly more robust and sophisticated than they were only ~50 years ago, when this stuff was first being seriously developed (the MSRE).
Finally, I am not convinced that this is really all that much more complicated than the stuff we go through currently (with our rather quaint and primitive radiological designs) to produce many of the medical radioactives, etc., which we use today. The real difference is that we would be producing this stuff on an ongoing, production-line basis rather like running Model-T's off an assembly line (OK, maybe Tesla's or something...) rather than doing small odd-job lots specialized in only one thing. As I see it, this would be analogous to having a 3-D printer on site which you could then use to produce whatever you needed, rather than trying to have a huge stores department to keep a bunch of replacements in stock. (OK, I admit its a pretty poor analogy, but, hey, I'm an amateur here...)
Net upshot: Yes, its complicated, but doable, and with enough effort, it can even work. Yes KISS is a *very* valid principle, but sometimes multiple steps is exactly how you achieve that. KISS at every step can induce reliability, and reduce complexity.
Sincerely, Mortifiably Willbegud...
Very good! Thanks for your input. I am unfaithful as far as electricity-making goes. I too, am not a go to, guy. I like to listen to them, however. Bottom line, we as a species need to go with whatever works. Having said this, doing fission, KISS, as easy and cheap X Safe as possible, has to be the way to go; baring any mass improvement in fusion, solar, wind, geothermal, ocean thermal, tidal, , etc...? I have read about old reactor types like using CO2 as coolant-moderator, in the old, Magnox reactors in the UK. I ponder if atmospheric nitrogen, extracted from air, might be a good choice. MIT used to promote their pebble bed reactor, which to cool, using helium?? My mind is boggled, so I was hoping that MSR, some variation , might be more workable, than light water reactors :-/ ?
I suggest you look at some more vids by krik
Great video.
i would have like to come to brussels ( bruxelles ) in belgium for the conference that is going to be there, but because i am working the 28 and 29 october, i can't snirf ( i live next to bruxelles )
very upset that molten salt reactors aren't in operation world wide
i can't come because i am working ^^
I'll take notes for ya!
Just a question... There is no "Ln" element, so I suppose at 10:13, Ln stands for Lanthanide?
I have been following Kirk and most other advocate Thorium scientists for the past 8 years, and not the last 2 But now there's on Facebook a site that believe and are trying to show all the benefits of Nuclear energy.
But one thing is that they do not want to talk about Thorium as if it's not the right thing or choice to use.
What's I like to know what's been done in the past 2 years on Thorium.
Or better yet, you could do a better and clear conversation with them.
PLEASE!!!!!
Way to go Kirk! Congrats. I wish Jeff Bezos would get into MSR. We would probably have a working one in 4 years. He wants to build a moon base, maybe approach him with the idea of powering it with a MSR.
Where can I find an unedited recording of this interesting talk? The lousy jump cuts is not doing a service to the cause of molten salt reactors
There is none. ORNL didn't post the talks.
I don't know what you just said.
But I love the idea of cleaner safer nuclear power for the whole world.
This is obviously a presentation to people with technical knowledge. The video should have more terms defined on-screen, as Kirk used lots of words and concepts that he doesn't normally go into when speaking to a crowd of enthusiasts, words that the layperson is unfamiliar with.
second thought: maybe a two step extraction would do the trick- the first one with little Lithium to predomenantly extract all Plutonium, and a second one to get rid of - Plutonium free (hopefully!) fissionproducts. If that's the plan, ididn't get it during the video!
@Gordon: what happened to the project? Do you have a new Video?
So, Did Secretary Perry have any role in making this funding change, Gordon?
No idea.
I'm a molten salt proponent. What I don't understand is why two nuclear physicists, former Sceretaries Chu and Moniz, did not more proactively promote MSR. Can anyone help me understand that?
Most Nuclear Engineers, let alone Physicists, had never heard of Thorium Molten Salt Reactors before Kirk Sorensen started his crusade and that "LFTRs in 5 minutes" video got made.
@@cowboybob7093
politics
congress
funding committees
lobbyists
lost and found in translation
etc
There are too few people in important government posts who know science, engineering, R&D.
Too few whp have any real Social or lNFRASTRURE VISION.
The Democracy is a thin skin, which sheds every four years, having spent half of that time on campaign groupthink civil -war.
The Kleptocract is alive and well.
The timing and chroreogprahy is really hard. Takes a long view and urgent brilliant vision. How to pay for that, thrive and succeed?
It's not an engineers game, even though it is all about engineering.
Even if / when there are the right kind of pople running DoE etc , they are most likely to keep a low public-media profile. I suspect Chu might have responsible for this last-minute funding offer. After all they expected Hillary to win. Consider how intense, unrelenting and vicious the corrupt obstruction by GOP + Cabal was to anything by the Obama administration, such as Healthcare.
Proposing some new energy idea idea with the keyword Nuclear in it would not play to dumbing down contra-forces. BUT quiet lunches, calls, meetings probably all good. I would imagine Kirk Sorenson will tell us someday.
We need a perfect storm to blow the right way for this to happen in next 25 years
my 2 cents.
@@JasonCunliffe The winds are headed in a better way than I've seen them in a long time. Filibuster proof Senate majority like 2008? The winds are strong but the obstruction is too. The secret ballot has a way of making people say "yeah, but I can't take it any more." -- About my Chu/Moniz observation: Maybe the next guy. There's a world of money to be made to be made switching to the green economy.
How terrible would it be if all nuclear waste was spread over the glove evenly? Are we talking the end of everything? or something like Chernobyl where it can be cleaned and be lived around again.
If fluorination with NF3 doesnt remove Plutonium, it will be extracted together with the lanthanides, and be part of the waste stream. Apart from loosing it as a valuable fuel , it extends the otherwise benign decay time of some centuries to some 10 000 years!
No, wait. What is generated in the thorium fuel cycle is 238Pu, not 239Pu. 238Pu has a half life of 87 years, and it's the basic material of RTGs for space missions. Completely different beast.
Do they put the waste into toothpaste?
Great way to o get rid of it in a minute quantity
Dumperdriver1 The salts are quite expensive/valuable and will be recycled... although they DO indeed contain Fluoride, an element featured in toothpaste.
fluouride is a compound of Fluorine and some other element. Sodium fluoride, as found in toothpaste, is non radioactive, harmless, and even beneficial to the enamel of your teeth.
Scrap Catastrophe Except when you wear a tin foil hat, n believe the world is flat & chemtrails are a thing. Then fluoride is a mind control substance. Funny how before fluoridation, dentures in twenty something year olds was the norm. Ut hey, let’s not allow facts to ruin a great conspiracy.
I want to corner the concession on bronze statues of Kirk Sorensen that will be in public squares within every major city worldwide
This is a very good idea by the way I was just joking in my other comment
Interesting seeing Flibe develope their idea of what their reactor will look like. Gordon, would you agree that Flibe is compromising fast deployment for seperation of actinides and fission products?
Viktor Nerlander: compromising? in what way, please. I don't understand the point you are apparently driving at. I am, however, perhaps misunderstanding the entire thrust of your comment. Thank You! in advance for any explanation.
Hi John! I'm by no means an expert in reactor design. What I see many other projects do is to compromise extracting different thing such as actinides and fission products for a simpler design with the reason being getting the design faster through the regolatory process.
For example keeping Moltex Energy just keep their fuel salt in long tubes, very similar to contemporary reactor design with only the state of the fuel being the difference. I believe that regulators see an advantage of knowing the fuel is in one place at all time.
In addition to that, seperation is concentration. You have to prove to regulators that extraction of U333 is not possible.
Flibe has the most optimal design feasible right now, which is noble but I think it's a compromise to deployment.
Viktor Nerlander: Thank You! I now understand what you were getting at. Yes, since the DOE regulations were designed for solid fuel reactors and they indicated that they thought it take ~40 years for them to develop proper regulations for fluid reactors (sorry, don't remember where I got that, but I do remember it from somewhere which had a reasonably authoritative source....) so the regulations they had for reactors, in combination with the DOE's reluctance to consider alternatives what they were familiar with, resulted in a lot of resistance to development of MSRs. Accordingly, that has resulted in a lot of compromises so as to be able to present the DOE with something that they might be a little comfortable with rather than something which would seem to "out of the mainstream" for them. The good news, though, is that, due to people like Kirk, John Kutsch, Jim Kennedy, and many others, the light is beginning (however slowly...) to penetrate even at the DOE level, which is the epitome of Governmental stodginess.
The camera could have gotten a little closer to his face and really zoomed in more.
The trouble with LFTR is that it's too ambitious. There needs to be a pathway to its development because not only are pumped radioactive salts daunting to commercialize, the online reprocessing of blanket and fuel salts even more so.
As a suggestion. The FHR reactor uses triso graphite pebbles to hold the fuel and a molten salt as the coolant.
Why not put thorium in the coolant and just reprocess that without worrying about the fuel?
Once that's perfected, cleaning a liquid fuel will be the next logical step.
Perhaps Kirk should go work for Kairos?
Ben, lots of people are pursuing "easier" paths to MSR. Kirk's work on Chemical Kidney is in parallel and can apply to many categories of MSR. I personally wouldn't want to see everyone all rushing down a single R&D pathway, and all effort being duplicated.
A quick question: why fluorides? Why not chlorides? I'm not a chemist (not even close), but from what I've gathered, common table salt would be a much less toxic and far more abundant substance than beryllium-fluoride. Or is there a problem with uranium-(x)chloride or thorium-(x)chloride? (x meaning tetra-, hexa- or any other multiplier)
More R&D was done on Fluorides during MSRE days. FLiBe has some moderating properties, and while I'm not sure all reasons for choosing either way, IF you are pursuing thermal-spectrum you can choose Fluoride or Chloride, but IF you are pursuing fast-spectrum then the moderating behavior of FLiBe will be slowing down your fast neutrons. Hopefully folks with more insight than me will chime in.
Why no ClF3 😉😝
If I understand this technology correctly, it will allow the use of what is currently considered High Level Waste (HLW) material, mostly in the form of spent fuel rods, in these reactors more rapidly reducing its level of radioactivity (effectively consuming part of it). Is this correct? Does anyone here know if this is true? If this is true, it sounds great. If not, and Uranium must still be strip mined in huge quantities, it only adds to the problem. I spent a year on the island of Eniwetok (Enewetak) where it is painfully obvious that governments can't be trusted to tell the truth about nuclear waste or safety. It is up to the industry to police itself and be the safety watchdogs since governments can't be trusted. And I know that most anti-nuke people would never trust the industry either. Tepco and the Japanese government are NOT helping this situation at all with their massive lies. Because of Fukushima, more whistleblowers are stepping out in the light to describe what is being hidden from all of us in the thousands of classified energy patents that have hog-tied the power industry forcing us to us far more dangerous technologies to generate power. And that is really very sad for humanity.
Can someone tell me why we cant get a thorium reactor up and running today when they could in the 60's? (China spends 2 billion dollars a year on studding thorium and has 1200 phd's on the job)
Gustav Shippingport was solid fuel. It proved that Thorium-U233 breeding was possible but was not a practical design to use breeding for commercial power production.
MSRE was NOT a thorium reactor. Trace amounts helped test chemistry, but no Fluid Fuel breeding blanket has yet been demonstrated.
So it today’s environment, moving ahead is more expensive than it would have been if MSBR had continued on heels of MSRE.
But conceptually nothing has changed. Th can be still bred into U233 like was planned at ORNL in since 1950s.
fluidfueledreactors.com/
@@gordonmcdowell copy
@@gordonmcdowell I thought about another think too, what is keeping the molten fuel reactor from being produced?
@@gordonmcdowell So I was wondering what you meant by Shippingport and finally realized it. My first question was not about Shipping port but the Molten Salt reactor at ORNL, why don't we just copy that concept? Didn't they invent the MSR back then?
I Don't understand why you write that " no Fluid Fuel breeding blanket has yet been demonstrated."
@@Gustav4 ThorCon is the MSR startup most closely replicating MSRE, in that they're assuming the lifespan of their reactor core ("can") at 4 years. "CanShip replaces 500 ton Can every four years" thorconpower.com/spec-sheet
But that's not as fuel-efficient as LFTR. ThorCon is pretty clear they aren't aiming for efficiency or harvesting isotopes, they just want the least expensive design for mass production.
So that means that like MSRE, there's no dual-fluid design, there's no thorium blanket to absorb neutrons and breed U-233, and no chemical separation to pull out fission products (although they do remove gassious fission products).
ORNL planned on building a blanket, and closing the Thorium fuel cycle, but that was the MSBR which was designed but never built because funding was killed after MSRE.
MSBR would have used a Chemical Kidney as Kirk describes for LFTR, although Fluorination using NF3 is a new approach to it.
Closing the Thorium fuel cycle and harvesting medical isotopes would be a good thing to do. We need MSR to do that. But only China's CAS (funded by Chinese Navy now) and Flibe Energy are taking that exact approach. Most other "thorium" MSR (as opposed to "uranium" MSR) fuel with enriched uranium and focus on pitching high-temperature operation (for industrial processes) and passive-safety features of molten-salt. (Which LFTR also has on top of closed fuel cycle and harvesting of isotopes.)
I have been looking for Kirk to comment on Bill Gates and Terrapower...the travelling wave type reactor. I was hoping Gates would see the light on LFTR but apparently not.
TerraPower is now developing a fast-spectrum MSR, in parallel with their TWR. So when Bill Gates said liquid-fuel-reactors-sounded-like-a-hard-challenge in 2010, presumably he's "seen the light" regarding the benefits of liquid fuel. TerraPower is then (presumably) pursuing fast-spectrum rather than thermal-spectrum breeding because it would be a natural way to leverage their fast-spectrum expertise with TWR.
Well, I guess it is good new and good news....Kirk gets some funding and Gates is not entirely pursuing a different technology.
Am I to understand we're giving up on thorium as a fuel?
If the molten salt reactor is to be ever be realized, yes. My nuclear engineering professor thought that the use of Thorium as a nuclear fuel was ridiculous. The major argument behind using Thorium as a fuel is due to its abundance, but we have many thousands of years of Uranium in our earth's crust, thus making the previous argument for Thorium null and void.
@@joslinnick U235 has no competition because it is the only fissile isotope available in the nature. Both Thorium and Uranium fuel cycle needs U235 for startup. Between U238 and Th232, Th232 is better.
Uranium is the fuel used in a thorium fuel cycle, I would hasten to point out. That's why fluorination was such an essential technology in all of the ORNL MSRP work.
Nick Joslin: at one time the abundance of Thorium may have been a major factor in the arguments for it, but at that time people also tended to think in terms of solid fuel rather than fluid fuels. Now, there are tons of much more relevant arguments in favor of using thorium for fuel. Yes, its still abundant. (In fact, we can obtain it rather cheaply because a lot of it could come as an almost free by-product of rather common mining operations...), but the advantages are far more attuned to the lack of disadvantages of using plutonium or U235, etc. as anything other than a startup fuel.
Having said that, however, we do have a lot of spent fuel sitting around and it would sure be nice to burn that up simply to get rid of it... Simply stated, Thorium is a much safer fuel in many respects to use, without some of the proliferation concerns which you get with other fuel sources. And yes, Kirk is right. The thorium is sort of like a combination catalyst and fuel source inasmuch as it is converted to U-233 and the U-233 is the actual "fuel" being consumed to produce the energy.
Where is all the new Kirk Sorenson content? I know he works at Flibe but where is the videos of the working salt reactor or their work with medical isotopes?
Dude hyped up the internet about nuclear energy and then hides under the ground. I'm sure it would be more beneficial to your cause if you posted content on it. He speaks well and is a good educator compared to others in the field.
Fluoride?...
like what you brush your teeth with. Just hotter, and a different flavor ;)
Kirk put on a few lbs looks like
I think his fuel cycle is running carbohydrate-rich...
He should consider Paleo, Low-Carb, Atkins, ...
... anything but what he currently eats.
Yeah, gotta work on that, sorry.
Haha. Na you look pretty busy. Keep up the good work.
Kirk - Just stay happy and stay busy and keep up the good work. God bless you.
@@kirksorensen3923 we just want you alive and healthy as long as possible
I`m sorry, Ed Pheil beats you.
Once you see the long-ass hair coming out of his left ear, you will not be able to focus on whatever he says.
Why does this presentation look like it was put together by a kid? 🤔
Stanton High: because it was put together by one guy doing it on his own. He doesn't have a million dollar budget and a staff of writers and a few supercomputers sitting around to do graphics. He is simply a well-motivated individual who believes that the message needs to get out, and he has chosen to make their expertise available to the world.
Just for the record, Thanks Gordon! You have done a fantastic job in getting the message out! I have learned a tremendous amount by watching your videos of people who really do know what they're talking about. If I had had to try to research this all on my own without the benefit of your videos, I would have not been able to do so anywhere nearly as well or as quickly. Kirk, John, Jim, etc., may have been the ones to kick start it (again) but YOU are absolutely the one who got the message out to the masses. (sadly, rather thin masses, I admit, but you gotta start somewhere, and the crowd is beginning to gather to gather.) So, stay on your video soapbox, and keep up the fantastically good work!
Thanks, John.
john3pq doesnt take supercomputers to do graphics, but thats not what im even talking about. The images are cropped weird, strange spelling/grammar mistakes, horrid old sketches, updated sketches a cluttered mess. Its hard to take it seriously when it looks like some conspiracy nuts video explaining flat earth.
Thank You for your reply. Gordon is limited by the material he has to work with. I experienced the same thing in college all the time. Many professors are absolutely wretched at presenting material, and should never have been let out of their offices to attempt to teach in a lecture hall. Accordingly, Gordon can only present what they present. And, yes, they often deal with limited, horrid old sketches, etc. None of these presentations are intended to be comprehensive textbooks, and they sure aren't. This limitation is reflected in their presentations. However limited their presentation skills are, these guys actually do really know their stuff. You often have to look carefully to separate the wheat from the chaff, but there is a lot of wheat there.
Many of the things you see are originals left over from the 50's - 70's. The more modern stuff they produce themselves, but they are not professionals in using the top of the line presentation apps, but rather whatever they have picked up along the way. They clearly don't spend their time learning how to become pros at using Photoshop or whatever - they learn the basics and then go back to what interests them, their topical subject matter. Their artistry is not in the presentation, but in the implementation of their subject.
I remember from college the fact that you have professors who really don't want to be 'wasting' their time teaching classes when they have much more interesting (to them....) research to do. These guys are enthusiastic about their subject and are on a mission and want to get the word out, even if they don't have great presentation skills. Yes, you're listening to a bunch of engineers (and some of them probably have limited social skills and, occasionally, dubious personal hygiene....) but what matters is not how slick their presentation is, but rather the content. Their enthusiasm for their subject does really come through. The other thing that comes through is that when you examine their materials, it is reproducible and soundly based on reality, not flat earth earth stuff. So, no, they clearly are not conspiracy nuts, but rather inspired people driven to try to communicate their knowledge (no matter how limited their communication skills). Yes, it would be nice if they had really good materials, but to produce such things takes time that they don't have. So, they produce enough to get their idea across and we have to make up any deficiencies through our own imaginations.
So, that, I believe, is why some of this stuff looks like it was put together by a high school student for his/her science fair. But the content, regardless of its appearance, clearly is not high school level, but often well-informed and quite knowledgeable.
Finally, in any event, there is becoming a small wealth of information available on the subject, often due to the efforts of Gordon McDowell to try to document all this stuff so that the rest of the world can access it. Kudos, Gordon!
(Sorry, Stanton, didn't mean to go on a rant here, but having been to a few of these conferences, I am quite enthusiastic about the subject matter.... I am most definitely not throwing rocks at you for your assessment of the professionalism of the speakers presentation. Only observing that Gordon is doing a fantastic job of getting their message out.)
Lay off the cheese burgers, dude.