Ed Pheil on Molten Salt Reactors & Accelerator Driven Systems after ThEC13
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- Ed Pheil on Molten Salt Reactors & Accelerator Driven Systems after ThEC13. This was an extremely casual interview, and we hit a few of the same subjects repeatedly so I could acquire better coverage. Captured for ThoriumRemix.com/
20m50s - ADS people focus on accelerators not chemistry
25m05s - ADS feeds into anti-nuke arguments
45m00s - ADS create exact same fission products
How ironic Ed is talking about liner-No-Threshold cancer rates from radiation while the guy behind him is smoking like a coal plant and then he goes on camera to explain that nuclear is no good because it kills people. A Dunning-Kruger moment for sure.
I love talks by Ed Pheil. His insight and knowledge are simply incredible, and he is straight talking. When considering thorium and molten salt reactors, I feel that Ed is 100% on the right track with molten salt. The reactors appear to be much easier to build and operate, and are much safer, whilst consuming nuclear waste materials from normal fission nuclear plants that would normally take many thousands of years to become safe. Definitely the way to go, using the waste from normal nuclear plants to generate energy in a safe manner, whilst reducing the radioactive deterioration of said material from thousands to only a few hundred years.
Ed..........is not the most dashing or stylish man..............but he is the real deal...........experience,knowledge and answers.
Ed Pheil has since left Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corporation and co-founded Elysium Industries and serves as CTO. They are working on developing a liquid-fueled molten salt reactor.
I think Gordon has a video on just about everyone in the world doing an MSR startup.
thanks will try contact him and ask
Then just 5 years later we get this. ua-cam.com/video/pqVt8cxx-44/v-deo.html
@@chapter4travels And if I was an investor, my money would go to Elysium.
I frickin love this guy. Kirk too. One day they will have an epic battle and one will emerge victorious.
@@matthewgrotke1442 Ed has the answer for the start,to get us down the road for the next 1000 yeas...............Kirks dream (2 fluid blanket) is the long term answer.
There are probably more deaths due to more driving required to access remote sites where wind and solar is installed than there is from reactor power.
I remember talking to a BPMI guy a few years ago about fluid fuel reactors and how him and many of the guys who worked on a the AP1000 and SMR programs all favored the fluid molten salt systems.
Ha!
Great guy. "Fail" is not a good name to quote in nuclear reactors😝.
Unfortunately gen4 reactors are above the IQ level of most, including 103% of politicians and the news reporters.
It has to be reduced to a cartoon.
To make an argument for and against any issues, you have to comprehend what the issues are and make proportionate statements of positioning that can be adopted as policies.
If the opposition is inappropriately emphasizing potential, not actual, risks incoherently, then it's best not to react at all unless the Psychologists can help.
This video is a comprehensive review of the state of research and knowledge, and is a reliable, reasonable and rational reason for continuing to address the actual risk associated with insufficient energy supplies and the overkill acquisition of nuclear weapons/political insanity.
If "the weapons don't kill, it's the persons carrying out the threat", then there is the actual risk of "nuclear". So far, everyone agrees that the MAD situation is barely contained insanity, so Defence has been defensive, except for the generation of Electric Power..
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Can't help but feel that "green anti-nuclear" hysteria is actually prepaid fiscal hypocrisy. More than a few MAD hints.
@20:50, Dr. Pheil has made an astute observation, that the people working on accelerator driven systems are accelerator people. Most accelerators are for research systems. So the designers, wanting to create really cool Ferrari class systems, are looking for higher voltage, like 1,000,000,000 electron volts. Fission occurs at much lower energies. I think the killer app for accelerators is the destruction of nuclear explosives (Stop Calling it Waste! We are wasting it!). It seems to me that we need more amps instead of more volts. We don't need the Superconducting Supercollider or the Large Hadron Accelerator. A utilitarian accelerator might cost less, I don't know, I'm in this way over my head.
Very Good I am hoping Canada or China will build a NaCl Reactor
All I can say about giving someone a million dollars for energy production is Ed Pheil would make a much better candidate for the money than Gordon McDowell.
Ed Phiel is simply our best nuclear physcist. We need to pay close attention to what he is saying. Changing dirt into electrical grid energy is a miracle in itself not having to burn hydrocarbons for fuel and our trucks can run on diethel ether will free us for our food production produced from small modular reactors also grid energy producers.
Man, John Oliver sure gained some weight. And got smarter too. :)
Are you talking about the Marxist English guy on late night TV?
@@thermionic1234567 no he's just English though he does have a green card. Could be an angle to write in to his show production team though!
I only know Ed through Gordon's work, but that would be sufficient reason to grant him unlimited access to a Gaian Planetary Rescue Plan.
Thanks a lot for a video there so much topics from engendering point of view that i have never heard before when there is some discussion about future reactors design.
Susanna reactor accident near LA probably caused some cancer deaths
There was a death demolition of fukishima
Hi Gordon, love your videos and the work that you do, think I've watched almost everything, but had difficulties watching you guys eat. It obscured Ed's great ideas and knowledge. Thx
PWR's are INHERENTLY UNSAFE, and were originally designed for shipboard use only. MSR's were designed for land use.
actually not true. they are safe but in the confines of a sub and at small scale too. Soon as you scale it up, it's a disaster. This is what Alvin Wineberg commented on back in the day.
@@mrrolandlawrence a disaster how?
But sodium catches fire all time . Can anyone discuss more about it….!!
41:40 - these guys were cute, but a textbook example of public ignorance created by media sensationalism :/
Not cute, just plain ignorant.
R Kave indeed. This is why democracy will be the end of us as a civilization.
Interesting enough, the person who claimed that " nuclear kills " was smoking a few minutes before that !
I suppose EV took a lot longer than expected against the tide of paid opinions..?
The anti-nuclear guy sounded French. Which was weird, as France has a lot of safe nuclear reactors.
While French public not as insane anti-nuclear as German, it wasn't until recently that any effort was made by gov to promote nuclear. They were in the process of letting most of their fleet retire. Still recovering from that. And this is a very old video.
They are saying that no one at Fukushima has died because you can not measure the
Low dose risk that people get. In other words you can not tell if the cancer comes form this plant or from the chemical plant in the next town.
Nuclear engineers often talk about external exposure without considering that the BIG hazard is when widely distributed, tiny particles become INTERNAL, VERY DIRECT and concentrated exposure sources, once ingested from air, water, or food.
That said, and having been anti-nuclear for as long as I’ve lived on this planet with land based BWR and PWR technology, I fully support the development of non-pressurized reactor systems like this.
Why not
Unless you are a bird, wind is not safe
Radiation gives people super power
Excelant speaker I love you
Ed, I am your cheerleader. I am converting one person at a time.
he is not taking into account that a nuclear accident means you can't use that area any more, and these things are built near large water supplies. None of the other energy technologies have this "game over" aspect, life can go on and the place can in principle be cleaned up and used.
MSR proponents (such as Ed) are in favor of a reactor which operates hot enough that it need not be cooled with lake-or-ocean water to get a large temperature delta. Only Chernobyl warranted evacuation. I'd compare the steady stream of oil spills (have those actually been cleaned up?) from oil tankers and pipelines, or deaths in coal mines. Nuclear has a lower body count straight-up and also lower when looking at per-watt. I've run the numbers myself, and the only thing safer are solar farms. (Which are very expensive.) Here's the video I created from the numbers... [Th] Deaths / Watt - music by KiloWatts [p02v374] ...I did consolidate solar-farm and roof-top-solar into a single death/watt figure, so you don't get to see the much-higher deaths from rooftop and the much lower deaths from farms.
gordonmcdowell thank you for responding to me, I love what you are doing. I see he wants an even safer type of nuclear, and I acknowledge that there are numbers showing that even solid fuel Uranium reactors are "clearner" overall, and safer... however, it's a fact that any reactor prone to meltdown presents a unique long term danger... it is not an event that passes, it persists very long term. To a degree this is also true of oil spills, but really, a problem like Fukushima must simply be acknowledged, all liquid designs seem much safer, and all thorium designs also tend to be more controllable... liquid thorium is obviously more safe. I like the point in another video about the energy you could get from the radioactive isotopes in coal ash being able to produce more energy than the coal that produced the ash. That is a very well framed point there.
cheers.
PS: I was realizing we were better off with the dangers of nuclear power, where the main problem is bad management leading to sloppy engineering and lack of innovation, before I found out about thorium. It's clear to me now that this is the energy source we need to develop, nuclear, and equally clear that thorium is what you want.
The ability to burn "waste" from first and second generation reactors is also a well framed and strong point. cheers!
An accident with a Molten Salt Reactor does not result in the dispersion of fission products - the MSR isn't pressurized - it operates at atmospheric pressure and very high temperature.
It cannot "do" a Chernobyl or a Fukushima.
Any leak of nuclear material would cool and tun back to solid salt - easy to clean up and put back in the repaired reactor.
I would argue with your "game over" point, not in relation to nuclear, but to hydrocarbon energy. We have numerous, perpetually burning sources of these fuels that someone set alight, and which have destroyed the areas around them and rendered them inhospitable. Nuclear only really harms the general area in the worst case scenario, whereas these underground fires also constantly send waste into the air.
gordonmcdowell right.. so your saying fukashima was cleaned up.. you nutjob
Excellent video. Enjoyed your mention of ackinides...obviously the beer was working...hic. One minor criticism, political rather than personal, was with regards to the reprocessing of fuel. Fabulous for efficiency and cost reasons, but problematic from a highly enriched uranium/plutonium perspective (i.e. proliferation)...unless denaturing can be assured. Quite possible Ed would assume this to be the case, but it was not stated specifically - sorry Gordon but you gonna have to go back and ask a few more questions and have a few more beers.
I'm confused as to your point. Our reactors were originally built to breed plutonium for reprocessing before our rp centers were shut down by Carter. Now the fuel sits in cooling tanks on site, or is about to be shipped to holding centers like Yucca Mountain. It's going to move around anyway, but with a LFTR we can turn it all into salts and then burn it for energy, thereby destroying the potentially weaponizable components. LFTR also creates no weapons-grade fission products. The fuel can either sit there waiting to be stolen, or we can actually use it and rid ourselves of the danger.
***** Two fluid designs, i.e. LFTR, require that the blanket be processed to transfer the bred U233 to to the core. Some people might consider this to be a potential risk, in that a State might be able to subvert some of the U233 to a weapons program (assuming U232 can be avoided or managed). MSRs using denatured fuel avoid this possible objection. Of course, this is a political rather than a purely technical point, but getting the MSR revolution started requires overcoming those objections.
@@mjv1121 I know for a fact that Ed agrees with you and is quite frank about his assessment that the LFTR design comes with a huge proliferation risk.
Do they seriously serve beer in tall glass cylinders in Geneva?
Awesome.
When does the talking stop and the building begin? I see conferences have been going on for years but not much physical progress!
SAMOFAR is the latest material test pumping salt near an operating reactor. China presented at a SAMOFAR conference in 2019 and they're moving along. samofar.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Progress-in-TMSR-Materials-Research%E2%80%94%E2%80%94Hefei-Huang.pdf Many MSR startups still looking to late 202s for operating pilot plants, but the fast-spectrum like TerraPower and Elysium don't have such aggressive schedules... probably because MSRE didn't use fast-spectrum or chloride salts.
@@gordonmcdowell the current,hardening panic about China just might spur a 'catch up' shift to actually doing MSR...........otherwise the status quo would shelve it forever.
An open channel salt loop reactor would allow the accelerator beams to impact the molten salt fuel mixture from above,thus making a more efficient interaction.
I am thinking of a accelerator that would work differently than conventional ones.
Tesla turbines could be used in the secondary water steam loop for greater efficiency.
All Rights Reserved
Molten salt reactors don't use water, because water sucks.
Honesty is the only policy of value
thanks keep pushing molten salt reactors
I think the DOE could be pushing ADS as a long term strategy to get the anti nuke movement on side and also still have the ability to produce fissionable materials on the side.
I don't think pushing ADS would accomplish that goal. Anti-nukes are interested in shutting down nuclear, not pursuing safe/clean energy. Any reasonable assessment of nuclear shows it is one of the safest forms of energy generation. In the same way anti-nuclear-organizations dismiss these facts, arguing for safety features of ADS will inevitably become twisted into an argument to shut down existing reactors. Anything and everything that can be twisted towards that goal will be.
So you're left with the general public who do not yet have an opinion on nuclear. Is there a positive enough message to be found with ADS, and get people excited about nuclear power? I have not seen that happen yet.
Typically vehement anti-nuke people will not be persuaded no matter what. But a lot of people have a general aversion to nuclear power, but little emotional investment in that opinion.
The true argument is that nuclear is incredibly safe, and liquid fueled reactors can be much safer still.
However, Liquid fueled reactors are different enough, that what would be a VERY unfair, but potentially successful strategy, is to throw current reactors under the bus, so to speak. Say: "Yeah, your concerns are all valid for these old reactors, but not for these new ones."
That's more persuasive than "You're concerns are not valid for these old reactors, and even less for these new ones." People don't like to be told their concerns are wrong or invalid - and I don't particularly blame them. They're more likely to trust people that validate their own bias. Basically by throwing solid fuel under the bus, they get to keep all their negative opinions, but you get them to compartmentalize them on solid-fueled reactors, freeing the liquid fueled reactors of the stigma.
I just wish/hope it isn't necessary because that's a huge disservice to the sterling record US nuclear power has earned over the last 40 years.
Or one could try distinguish between PWR tech and PWR industry. There's an explanation needed, for sure. It is just too easy to assume nuclear's current state is a result of bad technology, and so an alternate, simple, plausible, and true explanation is needed if PWR *technology* is to be not dismissed. The simple part is hard, in video. And the plausible part is hard, coming from the established industry.