Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor: Copenhagen Atomics Onion Core - Thomas Jam Pedersen @ TEAC12
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- Onion Core is the heart of a Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor built by Copenhagen Atomics. It is currently undergoing stress testing at CA's workshop.
Onion Core:
• Unpressurized room temperature heavy water moderator.
• Double barrier and insulation between salt and heavy water.
• Segments made from metal or composite material.
• Below 2% neutron leakage.
• Reactivity control using heavy water level adjustment.
Fuel salt: 7LiF-Th4-UF4.
Blanket salt: 7LiF-ThF4.
www.copenhagenatomics.com/
Video captured at TEAC12: Thorium Energy Alliance Conference #12 in Abilene, Texas.
This is a 16 minute version of a 32 minute presentation.
The full presentation can be found here:
• Why Thorium will be a ... - Наука та технологія
This is a 16 minute version of Thomas Jan Pederson's 32 minute presentation which is on Copenhagen Atomic's UA-cam channel. CA ran their own (additional) cameras, and released their own copy. So I'm trying to make a different-as-possible version where I'm only including my personally favourite parts... this was the portion I was most interested in. This version also uses additional angles such as the chroma-key angle... the chroma being a solid green JPG projected using a video projector onto a wall.
Please consider supporting my video capture/edit efforts: patreon.com/thorium ...costs $1 /year. Yes is a hassle, but certainly affordable. (Patreon implies it is $1/month but I don't charge every month.)
I have some questions to all this. 1 What is the pressure of the heavy water? 2 Why are proliferation issues not addressed? 3 How is the state of the chemical separation process? 4 Is the neutron economy for efficient breeding solved?
I always appreciate this channel. I have questions just like the oddvard. in addition I would ask about x-rays, xenon, hydrogens, etc. Obviosuly there are actual "running" conditions w/ the mixtures. I would think LIBS during startup and sampling thereafter kinda thing. Study of holes in fibers exposed to radiation was published this year I believe, seems pretty definitive that the fiber mesh goes to crap quickly. I like the modularization aspects. I am curious as to why someone with a known dry dugout cave or similar hasn't just offered to partner on some level. I don't see how the fast neutrons are getting slowed down enough on the outer onion, inner to inner is obvious. I don't think the onion has enough layers and there seems to be a lot of lacking informatics... em fields, etc. Steels can disperse as well as focus and i think one pipe bend in the wrong place could be catastrophic in the "core box" within hours/days. Not catastrophic as in boom, just having to unplug and be stuck with a box w/ a long half-life in the way. Go count your neutrons and get back to us. A temp withdrawal of 300 degrees doesn't seem to be enough to drive an efficient exchanger to energy. One 'box' would appear to be compareable to a slow moving freight train? Is that analogy in the ballpark? not sure of onion shape... i mean if input nozzle is small and output nozzle larger, wouldn't this make for self reciprocating fluid... I mean it's just a fancy heat pump. I'll shut up... I'm a layman, I like the sizing ... just maybe not all the engineering. $ in the pumps...yes. $ in Lith... yes. $ in chem. processing and exotic outputs, maybe. Onsite storage of waste chems and reprocessing regimes...yes... - $. Competition w/ nat. gas... costs what...$5/10-20kW more? yes, screw the NRC, smh.
Thank you for yet another superb educational video!
Pederson should be spelled Pedersen.
@@suutra3 Thank you. Fixed.
Gordon - thank you so much for putting this up on line!
And thanks for the very important supply chain questions about Li6 and heavy water. I still find it magic that the 20C heavy water does not absorb the lion's share of the heat when moderating the neutrons.
@@ericderbez2599 84% of fission energy released is kinetic energy of fission fragments, so it will be absorbed by the salt, and, assuming they design the thermal insulating wall well enough, it can be transferred outside of the onion core. Only 2.5% of fission energy is fission neutrons, and as he said, only a fraction of it will be absorbed by the heavy water via scattering. There will also be some energy absorbed from prompt gammas (absorption and scattering).
Thomas Jam delivering a consistent message straight-up, raw and unfiltered, just as he did 6 years ago. Reminds me of that reusable rocket guy, you know the one.
I'm hoping for better things than fanciful Mars colonies and autodestructrive rocketry.
@@colinmacdonald5732 You cannot ignore the accomplishments of SpaceX.
I agree, he stock in the past since Russians start running their nuclear reactor on 100 % MOX fuel
Functional orbital rockets have existed for decades. Musk simply made them better. But Thorium reactors don't actually exist yet. There are some major technical problems standing in the way.
Say his name!
Holy crap the Bloomin Onion core looks delicious!
😂
Unlimited Thorium is what put Red Lobster out of business I hear.
This is something I really want to buy some stocks in. This sounds amazing!!!
Bravo...reason to be optimistic. Will look forward to further development. Cheers.
Interesting talk but I leave with more questions than answers.
Mostly though, I want to know how they project such cheap power when these reactors are only supposed to last 5 years? How does the blanket salt to fuel salt processing work? Do they plan to recycle these modules somehow? Do they need to sit for a few decades before they are processed?
Good job sir, I also support fusion but there is no reason we can not have two clean power sources.
It seems like as long as a suitable/durable optical window/lens is used, it may not be too significant a problem to routinely replace the optical fiber if it degrades (I don't know where the end of the fiber optic must be in the reactor, or whether a channel/housing for it would be allowable, in order to remove and insert a new fiber).
I wonder if pure Al2O3/ synthetic sapphire would be suitable in the midst of gamma and neutron radiation. I know there is a market for monocrystalline sapphire shields and windows for use in semiconductor manufacturing (high optical transmittance, resistance to etching in the midst of plasma).
I am sure you already know this, but just in case.
China is running a massive molten salt reactor. Maybe time to give them a visit.
Your small design reactors will be a game changer. All the best to you.
TMSR-LF1 is on-par with CA's Onion Core. SINAP might be doing actual fission tests, but they are not sharing that fact.... No one (including me) knows what to make of the "radio silence".
Thanks
One can't help but notice parallels between Starship and Onion core.
Godt arbejde Thomas👍
How about continuously feeding your fiber through a pair of ports to allow a spool of fiber to be used in this step. Then you will not care if the radiation destroys the fiber, at least not until you develop a better fiber that can hold up under radiation for LIBS.
I hope they are re-considering going to the USA; I hope that the ADVANCE act will help with the regulatory piece, and perhaps the facilities to test (in the deserts of Idaho?).
Corporations that build the nuclear power plants also have an agreement that the plant can only buy nuclear fuel rods from them exclusively and they can charge whatever they want. I don't see these coming into play anytime soon as multibillion-dollar corporations don't want to lose their profits.
While I'm not sure about the technology you use to separate lithium isotopes, I would presume that it involves molten salts. If so, could it separate other isotopes? Could you use this to say, separate uranium or transuranic isotopes. Perhaps even fission products, such as Cs-137 and Cs-135? If so, you might be able to remove certain isotopes. For example, you could remove Pu-238, for use in space applications, while you're preparing transuranics for the reactor. Or you could remove specific fission product isotopes, which could lead to pure I-129, for easier disposal and I-131 for medical uses etc.
Sadly with all anti-proliferation laws that we need, having the technology to easily separate isotopes will probably not be allowed.
No on site processing
I wonder if thorium technology is scalable to the degree that a micro-reactor could be developed and built. Somewhere in the 1-5 kilowatt range. It might be easier to have it regulated or possibly not even need approval if it falls under some criteria...
The problem with small reactors like that is that the physics do not scale. You can't really model temperature changes the same way because of the lack of mass and the movement of thermal mass inside the reactor. They are different machines. And why bother with 1000-5000w reactors at all? You can buy a gasoline generator for a whole lot less money.
it is possible [ ignore old mate below in the comments] BUT you must play with much higher grade enriched fuel proportionally to smallness you are trying to obtain , if we were allowed to play with weapons grade then a shoe box with a household outdoor a\c heat exchanger sized dump then your 1 to 5 kilowatt system is viable , or a car reactor unit , but putting reactors in cars is as crazy as putting reactors in the fukushima eatrhquake zone...
Wow! 😀
"Take the energy out of the ball" That's about as simply put as possible.
it's about how you interpret your data. it's the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Even if there are unsurmountable problems, I commend their pioneering spirit.
I am very much in favour of Copenhagen Atomics and Thorium as a fuel source.
But I have some questions about this particular design. Isn’t thorium salts water soluble? If there was some kind of failure where the molten salts and the water mixed wouldn’t there be a risk of wide spread contamination?
Why not use graphite as the moderator?
The salts are not water soluble in the traditional sense, they will decompose in water over time.
@@chapter4travels
That is interesting.
I did not know that.
Thank you for informing me.
Dose it come out solution? Is it because they decay and no longer can form salts?
There is also the risk of the salt and the water coming in to contact with one another causing an explosion. I would feel more comfortable if the radioactive salt heated up non radioactive salt that then was cools down by water. That way if there is a failure it’s not radioactive salt that is spread all around.
I am not saying that I know this stuff better I’m just trying to understand it. I am very enthusiastic about nuclear power in general and molten salt thorium reactors in particular. But it is very complicated for a non scientific like me to understand. I also don’t want to trespass on your time if you don’t have time or wish to respond to my question then please disregard them.
@@isakrynell8771 The radioactive salt never leaves the reactor area, it transfers the heat to clean salt that then goes to either electricity generators or to industrial process heat. There is no water coolant in either case. Steam generators use water but that's a separate non-nuclear side of the power plant. There is no possible explosion.
@@chapter4travels
Ok but in the core they are using water as a moderator. At lease that’s the way I understood it. The water and the salt are layered that is why they call it the onion design isn’t it? In that diagram they showed there is heavy water coming in on one side of the reactor as a moderator not as a coolant and liquid salt coming in from the other side, right? So that’s where I get nervous what if the wall between the two is breached then the tow will mix and kaboom, steam explosion, radioactive salt water all over the place. Even if the chances of that happening is minuscule there is no chance of that happening at all with graphite. So why not use graphite?
Вода мокрая, ВОДА мокрая!!! ))) Кроме красивых картинок, где хоть один физический реактор? Мы, по крайней мере, построили Ломоносов и строим первый РИТМ-200Н в Якутии.
Love to see young people doing something to solve the energy problem,, salute to Copenhagen Atomic..
1:11 While $4500 per kg sounds a lot but if you can get even 1 GWh from it that a lot of energy and less then one cent per kWh or 4.5 dollars from 60-120 MWh. Doesn't sounds we have any issues with uranium price at the moment.
I think the main takeway is how scale sensitive the fuel issue is. If we take the decarbonisation mission seriously, realise that how much extra nuclear is necessary beyond all the renewables (so we can expand energy production while decarbonise too) then it measn a lot of new nuclear developement. Once it's really built out, the fuel becomes a big question as the wide spread relience will be there, and then, the decision between thorium and uranium can make all the difference. Somewhat similar to the oil crisis in the 70s which probably wouldn't be a big deal at the start of that century.
@@CraftyF0X Biggest problem with nuclear technology is that once you have it you can make a nuclear bomb is it thorium or uranium doesn't really matter it will be just more or less efficient or take more or less time to get enough fission material to make it. Bet everything in this area is heavily regulated mostly because of this and not because of some nuclear waste have seen some numbers that we only have like 10k tons of them since the first nuclear power plant. With proper particle accelerator technology you could make nuclear fuel even from depleted uranium that is user as cheap substitute for tungsten shells.
@@Ayvengo21 Yea ppl tend to think this but I actually think we are loong over the point where we should throw away a useful technology because it can be used in nefarious ways. Nuclear weapons are not trivial to make and even less so to deliver them, regardless if you have power plants or not. As you said some material are a lot more practical than others for such purposes, without going into technicalities I can tell you thorium is better on this front.
As for the particle accelerators, it would be very unpractical and wildly inefficient to produce fuel that way, its not even theoretically possible to have a gain on that, as accelerators would eat a "mammoth shit load " of more power than what you ever could hope to recoup from the fuel you produced that way.
All these companies that talk about regelatory approval should just make a test platform ship and test it in the middle of the pacific.
Same ol' Same ol'. The government REGULATIONS are THE problem... and have been THE problem since the 70's.
Too much government.
@@jwdory
Nope!
@@MostlyPennyCat Wow! Way to put the ID10T in Idiocracy.
Given the energy and climate crisis, it’s about time the regulatory authorities modernized
@@goodfodder What energy crisis? Is none. What climate crisis? Is none. Regulatory authorities modernize? Are you delusional? They have to have their regulations completely REMOVED for molten salt reactors to be viable.
I truly hope this is a promising tech not just hype, smoke and mirrors. All fossil fuel/carbon free power sources are wanted and needed ASAP. Hope this is part of the solution...
unfortunately there are many people against cheap reliable energy. like the WEF
It's not smoke and mirrors. It's been done before. Look up Alvin Weinberg
@@tommyboi0 And Argonne National Labs EBR-2. We know how to build advanced reactors.
Nuclear anything is NOT the answer. We have a perfectly good nuclear reactor - free to all, anywhere in the world. All you need is some doped silicon any you too can access this unlimited supply of energy. That same reactor causes air to more and that energy can be collected. Why should be spend billions on stuff that is absolutely guaranteed to cause future generations huge clean up hassles and expense. The fossil free solution is NOT nuclear.
@@rhetorical1488it's conflation of this type of technology with the far right of politics that will stand in the way of this technology
He says that he doesn't extract out protactinium but only the uranium in the blanket, but why? Wouldn't protactinium still be produced in both the fuel salt and blanket layers and still act as a neutron poison for the duration it will remain in that form?
Liquid fuelled reactors? Yes.
Thorium? Let's get it working with LEU and MOX first please.
We are, Terrestrial Energy and Thorcon are doing just that.
@@chapter4travels
As are Moltex!
@@MostlyPennyCat I'd like to hear more from Moltex, they project their first test reactor in 10 years and these companies are usually over-optimistic.
@@chapter4travels
They're somewhat talkative, via UA-cam and their website news section.
Their liquid fuel in static tubes is just... gorgeous, that's an elegant piece of design.
Much as I hate that prat musk, talk about your best part is no part.
Shit! Why are we concentrating on mobile reactors? Diablo canyon reactor is becoming more visible to the public and seen as good. Large MSRs are becoming more possible.
Mobile reactors so that you can build the reactor in a factory instead of on-site construction. Big econimic advantages to facrory construction
@garywalker8493 we need to have this ability here for that to happen. I don't know if we do, that would be great though. As far as I know we neither have the materials nor the industry to make... anything really. It's all imported.
Daaaaamn. 40MW in a shipping container? That's outstanding!
just thermal energy, not electricity
Is any chance that the nuclear waste ☢️ from this reactor would be able to produce electric or thermal energy while it cooling down for long term ?
Does not produce heat at that rate.
Heavy water is really expensive (hard to produce) and is also a controlled substance I believe, any words on how they plan to handle the associated difficulties?
A few thousand dollars per kilo. Controlled substance? We used to have sitting on our warehouse floor, anyone could have walked in and taken 10litres!
@@colinmacdonald5732 Also I think it's controlled nature is because it can be used as moderator. So if the company buying is building reactors I don't see that as an issue.
Judging from what is described here this company hasn't yet "gone live."
Fix the audio!
We all have to ask ourselves, whats really important in life ?
Prosperity for all.
I came here to make a joke about salt, onions, butter, sage and thyme. But then I was gobsmacked at this guy pronouncing Thorium as "thorum" over and over and over. It's so weird it killed my comical mood.
his points are often disengenuious, 30 seconds in he says his breeder is 1000X any uranium reactor, what about a U238->Pu239 breeder?? yes you need HALEU to start it but not long term..
That's the catch with plutonium breeders; so much fissile is needed that they are entirely uneconomical to even start. 20% HALEU will be ~$25000/kg, and fast reactors need ~10x the fissile. The U-238 fuel cost is irrelevant if the reactor needs a billion dollars of HALEU up front. Thorium makes breeders affordable to deploy, and being a free byproduct of existing mining, it won't impede scaling.
@@Th-233 is there not heaps of weapons grade they wish they could down blend? Th232 still needs some to start aswell right?
fast spectrum seems to have large advantages aswell.. higher temps, less corrosive salt and larger neutronics window of operation.
@@samuelforsyth6374 That would waste a tremendous opportunity; those resources (including spent fuel) could support a rapid global transition to thorium energy, with essentially no increase in any mining. If wasted on starting plutonium breeders though, we'd barely make a dent. Most of the fissile would still need to come from an obscene amount of mining and enrichment, or we'd need to breed it, which takes a long time with reactors that need so much fissile.
Fast fission does produce more neutrons, but to maximize the value of that capability, we'd want plutonium iso-breeders with a thorium blanket. They'd breed just enough plutonium to sustain fission, while using the excess neutrons to produce U-233. In that way, each fast reactor could start a new thermal breeder every few years, rather than only one plutonium breeder every few decades.
Fluoride reactors have advantages too numerous to list, and are already demonstrated. Corrosion was merely one excuse used to cancel the MSR program, but even at that point, they understood how to manage it.
Just get on with it.
Tell me you never watched the video without saying you never watched the video.
Water in the core is a bad idea for safety.
The really big advantage with thorium is ; The nuclear processes can run in thermal spectrum.
Water in the core is not wanted . The coolant salt must be able to temperatures for thermochemistry.
Only then the big advanted feature can be achived.
Production of nuclear hydrogen. That will revolutionize the world economy.
Maybe find a nice little autocracy that's poor on energy to test one there. Say North Korea, Afghanistan or some small island nation. Should not be too hard to convince the local power with the promise of a few reactors.
North Korea doesn't care about CO2 emissions, so it's cheaper for them to just burn coal.
you had me until i studied your power production chart . it shows both uranium plants and thorium at $60 at 120 MWH. don't kill your program by juggling chainsaws. Thorium is the best use reactor material for safety and cleanup and size convenance and task. please check everything you say before you kill your goal's chance of fulfillment. and a better future for us all.
His comments are deceptive. He is comparing Thorium to "U-235". That is completely false. Thorium is equivalent to U-238. Thorium is not a fissile material, and is not suitable for nuclear reactors unless it is converted into U-233 first. Thorium, like U-238, must be put into Breeder reactor and converted to a fissile material before it can generate energy.
We have millions of tons of U-238 sitting around in warehouses, left over after separating the U-235. If used in molten salt reactors, this U-238 is enough for 5000 years of power.
So we don't need Thorium for a long, long time.
He does that in every video they make. He also likes to compare thorium in a MSR to uranium in a PWR, another terrible comparison.
Comparing U-235 fuel to thorium fuel is perfectly valid. Thorium breeders need about the same amount of fissile, but it is a one-time cost, since they don't send it to waste. Fast reactors need so much fissile, that their ability to consume U-238 as fuel is meaningless, because the reactors aren't affordable. There is no path to low-cost and rapid scaling, as there is with fissile-efficient thorium breeders.
@@Th-233 Not even close. U-235 is a fissile material. Thorium is not. No qualified nuclear engineer on the planet would equate them.
Its just annoying that he thinks he need to distort facts when he has such an amazing project going.
Claiming U235 is very rare and Thorium can fix it is just disingenuous. U235 is fissile and thorium is fertile just like the abundant U238.
I can appreciate the appeal of fast spectrum reactors. This is using heavy water moderator. It is a can of worms to get into fast vs slow.
@@gordonmcdowell that is not the point. Comparing fissile with fertile and pretending its the same thing is not good. If you need to breed fuel, you need to breed fuel. Don't pretend otherwise.
Liking one reactor type over another is good and well, just don't make false comparisons. Thomas doesn't need to but for some reason he does so anyway.
@@Kian139 He also likes to make a false comparison of uranium in a PWR to thorium in a MSR. He will never compare uranium vs thorium in MSRs.
@@chapter4travels the sad thing is that he has no reason to do these things. He and his team have built an awesome reactor in its own right that has huge promise.
What a bunch of horseshit, only 300 years to decay, this company won't even be around in a few years.
Why are you worried about 300 years for the company? Even some countries cannot survive that long. They either went bankrupt many times like Argentina or were torn apart by their neighbors.
All reactors he knows, hmmm, he doesn't know much. Reactors can use U238, and close the fuel cycle even easier than with thorium AND without weapons grade fissile, like U233.
I think Russia has a reactor that can do that. I hear it's quite finicky.
@@ancapftw9113 correct, it's called the BN-800. The successor of the BN-600 (operational since 1980). Russia has decades of experience operating sodium cooled fast reactor and are getting decent capacity factors.
The man speaks for his company, so it's understandable that he'd chose only commercial reactors as comparison to his reactor design.
You didn't mention that they are fast-neutron breeder reactors that convert the fuel into fissile ²³⁹Pu and other transuranics. Also that if unenriched uranium is used, it must be combined with Pu because ²³⁸U is not fissile.
Also that the thorium cycle burns high-level waste while the fast breeder creates a bigger waste problem than we currently have.
Also that they are cooled with molten sodium and the others in the past had to be cooled with mercury and that no one has managed to produce a water-cooled fast-breeder reactor, nor an FBR that doesn't quickly consume its fuel cladding. Thus they are not useful for power generation, only for the efficient breeding of large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium, at extremely high cost and waste-disposal footprint.
The new-generation ones proposed are cooled with helium or molten lead; they apparently don't consider it worth the effort to try to build a water-cooled one, for the apparent reason that any commercial power plant with this technology would produce power that would be completely unaffordable.
Not necessarily true. Thermal neutrons tend to make more isotopes. It's just Thorium's lower atomic number means more chances for a neutron to fission the nucleus after absorption. Fast Spectrum neutrons have a greater chance of fissioning long lived transuranics. @no_rubbernecking
@@treasurehunter3744 Look, I'm not a nuclear professional but let's keep our eye on the ball here. The leader of Copenhagen Atomics said basically that we can't use ²³⁸U to generate power. The OP says the CA guy (sorry I forgot his name) doesn't know what he's talking about because OP says there are reactors that can run on ²³⁸U, and incredibly (to me at least), tries to argue that it has less proliferation risk.
The facts I've posted, I believe show that this is crazy. To me, the OP's claim is like saying cake is much better than pie because all cake has garlic and garlic has much less pungency than the horribly pungent alternative, sugar, that’s used in pie.
The facts you've stated, it seems to me, don't really address the elephant in the room. If you disagree, I'd like to understand why, and I think most of the voting public would, as well.
There's a definite sense out there that one side in the Th v. U-Pu debate is lying their butts off, to cover up the valid arguments of the other side and thus secure the path for their preferred technology. But to know which ones are doing this, the public needs to be able to distinguish between what's relevant and what's smokescreen being put out just to make laypeople misunderstand the relevant things. It looks clear to me that there are professional nuclear scientists getting paid to do this, including in social media.
I hope you'll reply, because you sound pretty objective and there's a deficit of that right now.
all this crap is so corrosive we dont have a container that can be a reactor long term
Apparently, the corrosion from fluoride salts can be dramatically reduced by removing oxygen and moisture from the salt.
Copenhagen Atomics sells salt to other Molten-Salt Reactor startups, but it is just stored in giant piles on the floor because they don't have any containers that can hold it! I remember one order of salt, it arrived to the customer empty with just a big ole hole in the bottom of the cardboard box they shipped it in. True story.
Thorium reactors are not a new idea, and they are not easy. Yet this guy is talking about making them small and mobile, and scaling up to thousands of units. Maybe he should work on making a single, functional, stationary reactor first? This has not been accomplished yet by anyone.
Yes it has.... you just didn't look hard enough lol
Total bs. This will never work
This is a scam
Godt arbejde Thomas👍