Aim High: Using Thorium Energy to Address Environmental Prob
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- Опубліковано 17 лип 2024
- Google Tech Talk
May 26, 2009
Presented by Robert Hargraves.
Mankind's fossil fuel burning releases CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and deadly air pollution. Natural resources are rapidly being depleted by world population growth. Safe, inexpensive energy from the liquid fluoride thorium reactor can stop much global warming and raise prosperity of humanity to adopt US and OECD lifestyles, which include lower, sustainable birth rates. - Наука та технологія
Wow! This talk is a tour-de-force! So many remarkable facts crammed in to this talk. I am glad he started the talk by describing social goals such as increasing prosperity and reducing birth rates. Most people will understand the social goals even if they are not patient enough to listen to Hargraves’ excellent description of the science.
CSP costs approximately the same as coal to build, and a bit less to run/operate. On the other hand, it doesn't provide 24/7 power - for that you need 3x the mirror area and storage tanks, which increases the return on investement to a bit higher than coal power - without subsidies.
I was not revolving on the issue of the error with the u-325/u-235 > but rather with the problem that depleted uranium has nothing to do with the isotope u-235. Depleted uranium is natural uranium ore that has had its natural composition changed by removal of a certain portion of the U-235 it contained when it was mined as virgin ore.
@Phyle9 the core of the earth is partially heated by nuclear reactions
In the crust of the earth, it's not common, but examples exist
@bigpchamber I like LFTR very much. But given the realities of a destructive regulation environment I think it is a better idea to concentrate on establishing a thorium fuel cycle that can be used in current reactors. This is more achievable and would help make things like LFTR more possible. For a while LFTR has been getting a whole lot of attention - and not without good reason - it's a great idea. I think it might be time for some consolidation of efforts to work towards something achievable.
it's essentially the same distinction as widespread agriculture vs. subsistence farming
once widespread agriculture becomes common in society, a class of people is created who are able to devote their energy to education, innovation, industry, etc.
the human resource component of power generation is similar - centralized power improves efficiency through economy of scale and simultaneously minimizes the human labor cost of extracting energy from the environment
@pNeeko The reason why reactors with plutonium were developed was because the governments wanted nuclear bombs.Then it just kind of stuck. And when something gets a good base in an economy, it's difficult sometimes to push alternatives.
I don't know if you watched the video, but dude made it pretty clear that conservation is not a clear solution.
Did youtube have a character limit on titles at this time? Although even still "Aim High: Thorium Energy to address Environmental Problems" would have been a reasonable solution to the title character limit If there was one. Which honestly seems a little stupid considering the video is going to take many orders of magnitude more storage and bandwidth than the title of the video.
Alven Weinberg was on target with Molten Salt Reactor IMHO.!
Carbon tax is not aimed to reduce co2 emission, it is aimed to incentivize green solutions, in a market where coal is costly because of taxes RnD of green solutions will explode because of the competition advantage.
Or, you will have lowered the cost of coal to the point where nations such as China/India will proliferate their coal based power plants more easily and, once Thorium becomes an easier commercial alternative, will only need do convert their installation to do the switch.
This would have propulsed them to a hedgemony that wont be contested by those who were bound by accords who didnt allow such transition.
This presentation and related materials are available on the web. Just Google "aim high thorium".
Is any practical demonstration if your amazing "graphene supercap" technology available in transportation, or are you making things up because you like to regurgitate random marketing speech?
For @gukonni: Hargraves is saying that if we want that poor countries like Bangladesh be able to buy LFTR reactors, it is better to sell a 100 MW reactor than a 1GW. He shows in detail the calculation of cost (200 Million $, perhaps financed by the world bank), the monthly repayment, and the cost of KW-hour generated.
The second consideration is that smaller (safe) reactors can be placed near where energy is needed without need of long transmission lines. So again a poor country benefits.
A 1GW kiteplan would be 1.6km² . Thats about one squaremile...not several.
It is a rail...
There are approximately 233000 miles of railroad track in the United States.
A 60GW kitegen would use a 10km diameter ring.
But it does not cover the area.
There is enough space for such a structure anywhere.
I don't like how everyone's first idea for "where to get the money" is gutting NASA.
This has been happening for 30 years
According to his diagram, there's about 800 years of thorium storage and reserve in the US to power the country. But in one of his earlier slides, he states that there's enough thorium in lemhi pass to power the US for a milleneum. Is this a simple error?
he was making an argument that kitegen power is better because it "creates local industry"
this is crazy - it is essentially saying that it is beneficial to have MORE people devoted to power generation. Yeah you might pay 20,000 people to "maintain" your kitegen, creating a local industry, but their time would be better spent elsewhere if possible (e.g. with centralized nuclear power)
the more efficient option is the option which uses the least physical resources and the least human resources
Part of being skeptical is realizing that there are people more qualified to address certain scientific questions.
In this case, most of those people believe global warming is happening, so I tentatively believe them.
I am willing to at least entertain the possibility that they're wrong, just as much as any other scientific theory.
But when you start calling something a "religion" and dismissing it, you give away your motivation as not really coming from genuine skepticism.
Its not a simple fix. Especially not when enriched and depleted uranium are isotopic mixtures which have generally understood terms in isotopic composition. And primary and secondary depleted uranium are also understood as "terminus technicus" with differences in composition.
Thorium will be our savior. If not, I don't know what will. Fusion is always 50 years away. It gets kinda HOT in a fusion reactor...
The USA is not growing coal... Everyone else is. I thorium reactor sized like the utility uranium reactor (1Gw) would replace TEN 100 mw coal reactors! The reactors have an energy density of 70mw per cubic meter. so a 13 cubic meter plant would power a medium sized city... Add in solar for peak power generation or wind for the same and you have a nice mix.
Once greater efficiency standards become the norm, in a world with vastly lower energy demands, providing that energy with green energy sources becomes a much more achievable option. Plus, it is much more democratic, since energy produced from wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and biomass can be done by a multitude of businesses or individuals or groups, decreasing the concentration of power in the hands of a few.
Great talk! Let's do it! Alas, stirring the nuclear industry would far harder than turning a nuclear carrier at full speed...
Maybe the solution is to get the funding to prove that these reactors can be built at a small modular scale, and then convince the big companies to jump in. That would be like what happened when microcomputers were introduced, before the big companies were convinced they were good business.
1:50 Within the first few seconds of his talk, he says we have 300 ppm of CO2. In 2009, it was close to 400. Not an auspicious beginning. Well, maybe he's just nervous.
the figure was under debate at the time he was being safe
Perfect!
thankyou
I figure you have not read about the kitegen.
Where does it waste land? How many more people would operation require than an ordinary powerplant?
It is a ring structure. Like a Railroad.
How much space is wasted! by highways, coal mining or mining in general? You can still have agriculture inside a ring structure.
You sure know the difference between a lift and a drag machine? You know how much power you can extract from a given flightpath? How do you know the exact footprint?
@heavyweather
Solar power is one of those medialized promoted but useless alternative energies. (At least in Belgium). I am not opposite too alternative energy but I would defenitly rate windenergy much higher than solar because of price/kWh (29euro/kWh minimum for wind versus 190euro/kWh for solar. Then if you look at windenergy you still need a backup to store it when there is no wind (most likely hydrostorage at this moment) which costs immense money. So i rather follow the LFTR idea.
@pNeeko The uranium/plutionium industry is cartelized. This multi-billion industry (controlled by the financial industry) has ultra high profits, when they build and sell fuel rods on a global scale. Th-232 MSRs don't need fuel rods. Hence, the cartel would be circumvented. Therefore, they maintain a strong political lobby and stall every attempt to introduce Thorium-MSR technology. Sweden attempted to build a MSR, but the banks threatened the govt to shut down all credits.
Could it be that the US signed nuclear cooperation agreement with India as a tactic to interrupt their thorium research?
not really as india's thorium was always in the solid form
START @ 15:42
Besides, climate change is NOT the ONLY reason to build more nuclear capacity (and rely less on fossil fuels). You will always have large numbers of energy poverty when you rely on chemical energy that is so less efficient than nuclear energy (especially third and fourth generation nuclear). I could hold a supply of thorium in my hand that has the energy equivalent of a supertanker of oil. That should tell you the problem with fossil fuels, right there!
"A 1 GW kitegen"
Would cover several miles of sky.
I think it's a mistake to try and commandeer NASA's budget, space exploration is one of the highest achievements we make together. Budgetary shortfalls have many sources, one of which is a lack of progressive tax policy, too much power concentrated in the hands of giant corporations & their principal owners. Giving them more control over the energy sector would further erode our democracies. A diversity of socially responsible businesses & cooperatives + honest government is the answer.
Take, @chuckkottke, the beautiful (no irony) Gemasol power plant in Sevilla, Spain; it takes 185 hectares of rural land, thousands of reflective mirrors, and delivers... 20 MW of (peak) power. Cost: 33$ /watt
Now imagine having to power a datacenter in Sweden (like the one for Facebook) which requires 120 MW. You'd need 10 Gemasol centers (for 24 hours ops) and run intercontinental lines to deliver the power...
The result, if there is no LFTR? simple: Coal will do the (dirty) job.
Observation.
A 1 GW kitegen would effectively cover several square miles of sky. 60GW would cover a small city.
Seriously, almost any method of power generation is more cost, land and labor efficient.
Given that you *know* this stuff and still think kite is a good idea, you can't do math well enough to discuss these things rationally.
NASA, @chuckkottke, should have a great interest in the LFTR. There is a key material used by all spacecrafts sent beyond the asteroid belt: Pu-238 (see RTG).
Obtaining Pu-238 from conventional reactors is very difficult and even the Russians (who sold it to the US in the 90s) gave up. So NASA has a very big problem.
Instead in the LFTR, Thorium => Uranium-233 which (not always fissions and) => Pu-238 (1000 Kg of U-233 => 15 Kg of Pu-238).
NASA badly needs the LFTR.
We need the best minds on this and pour money on them. Let's take it from the military budgets, since we won't need to fight for oil anymore.
the thing is it dont even need a lot of minds or money well not in the scheme of things. 1 billionaire could do this with 1 billion $
@pNeeko "they" need the waste for nuclear weapons. You can't build weapons with thorium waste.
[enter stage right: Graphene] Well, not a battery, but a supercap.
It's too expensive anyways. A 1GW kitegen would cost 80-100 million. No fuel needed and no decomissioning costs.
Only maintainance work which would create a local industry.
first hurricane or lightning strike. and what about the land underneath does that not need the sun also you are slowing the wind witch will affect the weather at large scale and you can only put so many so close as each affects the next just like wind turbines. 11 years on a cheap power source you say where are they
35': It's at atomspheric pressure, so no containment building needed. Great. But don't tell me, at the same time, that this will withstand an impact from a jumbo jet. Maybe there's another way to deal with that issue. But don't just pretend the containment protection from external threats is still there.
@ Ronald Garrison if a jumbo jet hit it then that would spread the salt and it would just set as it cools nuclear reactions stop straight away as it needs to be in a certain shape (of the container) to do fission. also it has not volitiles so now gas vapour release. it would cover the site with frozen salt that is radioactive but this is easy to clean as its not soaked into the soil or anything or in the air
you mean like just save energy instead of a power plant...thats right, thats what we should do in the first place.
He "pleads" for a national energy program to reroute some of hte money in NASA to thorium energy R&D. But why can't the private sector do this? If thorium is so wonderful as he argues here then why aren't the private companies doing the R&D to commercialize this?
If constructing safer nuclear plants to replace older units would carry us on into a renewable energy future, this I could see as beneficial to humanity; and for use in navy vessels which rely on nuclear power, if these designs improve safety and reliability, ok. But as a mainstay, I believe the answer is with efficiency and ubiquitous solar and the like. Much of the developing world is toasted with the sun's rays - combine solar desalination plants with solar-electric water pumping ;--).
He states 100 MW plants versus (economies of scale) 1 GW plants are integral in a production environment with competitive suppliers and rapid turnover on the production line. He sees these smaller units facilitate "economies" as the technology develops.
What exactly was he meaning to say? He lost me.
Also in another point of his talk he refers to the transmission losses that're apparent when you have large units. This is because the larger units are serving more people. But is this misleading?
like what?
It is best to create something that works with the least trade offs.
You are reaplacing your glas windows with what?
You seem to be making a distinction between nuclear energy and natural forces.
There isn't really one, you know; nuclear energy is a natural force.
we would not need to raise taxes, rather lower spending on military action (transporting military hardware is a huge cost) and subsidizing multinational businesses to the tune of billions of dollars. this money would be better used funding nasa, energy programs, and public education
No offense taken, I meant pretty much what I said though.
In 1963 - 1969, the NASA budget was about 3 - 5% of the US Federal budget. This has slowly been whittled down to 0.52% for 2010.
And it shows - back then NASA built a rocket platform from scratch and put men on the moon. Nowadays it accomplishes very little in comparison.
It just seems like whenever someone needs money for a pet project, they propose taking the funds from NASA because they know that not very many people will object.
That's no more relevant than saying water is a "deadly pollutant" because you die if you seal your head inside a bowl full of it. The fact that a particular substance was never meant to be breathed by humans is not enough to make it a "deadly pollutant".
Wise ass.
Hi, I'm the Devils advocate and I say no to all this silliness and on this planet I say what goes so there suck on that.
@williamb293 I would say secularism rather than athesim has a stabilising effect. But prosperity is far more important. Also by implying that people of religion have as many children as possible with disregard for the planets resources you are implying that non religious peoples choice of having less children is based on some conscious decison linked to saving the planets resources. I highly doubt this is ever the reason. It is more to do with personal cost and personal freedoms.
To begin with, let's examine the assumption that energy use correlates to improving living standards. The way I see it, 80-90% of the energy we currently produce is wasted in inefficiencies from stem to stern, so let's start there. To incentivise the transition to a green efficiency economy, we need honest government that works for a well educated & informed citizenry. And the way to achieve that is by limiting the money flowing into politics, establishing fair contests for office.as a right.
WTF?!? Shouldn't it be possible to maintain NASA projects and develop thorium reactors at the same time?! Cutting a small portion out of the gigantic U.S. military budget to pay for NASA and thorium development should be plenty to work with!
@bigpchamber China would be interested in this technology.
"depleted U-325"
Are you really that ignorant on the subject? I suppose you mean U-235. That is NOT depleted uranium - depleted uranium contains mainly U-238.
broken window fallacy
it's better for everyone to create something that doesn't need maintenance in the first place
Burning fossil fuels do produce deadly stuff, not just CO2.
The description is badly worded. It's more a talk on innovation in nuclear power than anything else - do you object to that?
I love technology and I love what people are trying to do, but , am i feeling over paranoid when i think these feel like the last recordings before Armageddon? Like in 2 years from now will will smith will be raiding UA-cams server center just to get some more cat videos and he stumbles across this. Anyone else think i'm not totally crazy?
An almost perfect battery that one could use to build electric cars that aren't actually a ripoff would change the game, but until then we're going to need fossil fuels. I'm skeptical that such a good battery could ever be invented so for now at least, you can take your thorium and shove it.
This is NOT about if there is space - its the COST/RETURN investment - its nearly zero with solar power using current tech(!!!!) (including CSP) without subsidies.
@2Manolo3 "....Then if india achieves it their economy will boom and ours will drop...." That's correct. The bad news are, our economy is already on its final stage of disintegration. When China pulls the credit plug, we can say Good Bye to our wealth. It's a historical fact, all high cultures declined in the moment, they abandonned the production of their (physical) goods. Manufacturing goods is the key to economical prosperity, since science, technology and education are required to do that.
Except efficient energy production from poor energy sources (and all renewables except large hydro are energy poor dilute sources) requires high-tech manufacturing that is expensive to set up and operate, leaving you where you started in the first place with concentrating power in the hands of the few...so time to wake up and stop dreaming.
So what...you can scale it up to 60GW.
There is enough sky.
You know...you need a no flight zone for nukes too.
2km³ for 1-4GW is nothing.
Kites can avoid obstacles automaticly.
Go offshore and built kitegenstems.
There are numerous other real world solutions.
00:24 --> Forever alone :D
So... is when Google going to get into the energy sector and shake things up in that market with cheap electrical energy?
Let's get to it Google! Make the world a better place, eh? I'm tired of the negative effects coal has on my state's politics & air quality, and local utilities have a monopoly power production that is predominantly coal based.
He has jumped to the conclusion that poverty makes people have more children.
How does he know the cause and effect relationship isn't the other way around?
More likely still is that they are both the effects of a third factor not on his graph.
it does not really matter the data shows that no matter which country (all with different factors with only the poverty of people as the difference) the birth rate falls as people get richer
The data shows that factors such as religious beliefs have a predictable effect.
You have been watching too many TED lectures.
You are referring to non existent data.
Stop inventing facts to support your arguments.
_"60 minutes would love that."_
But their corporate owners with their ever expanding FCC granted monopoly wouldn't. ( watch?v=t-SztlLxgAE )
Also look into thoriumpetition com
For those interested, Dr Hargraves will be an Energy from Thorium Foundation guest speaker Dec 27th (2012) 6:30 EST G+ Google hangout.
No. You could see what Canada has to say, here, perhaps: ecDOTgcDOTca/default.asp
No, the plants in our environment are evolved to use the CO2 that's available. While adding more might briefly work, in the long run, like flooding humans in sugar, won't. And oxygen levels have nothing to do with CO2 at all.
Sure, world temperature has been higher in the far past, and the plants/animals adapted to it. We today are not.
Not batting any kind of an average here.
@SH0LVA Then there is nothing left to do but wait until India or another country comes up with a reliable Thorium power plant. It would be very dumb to wait. But hey that's what the world is now. Some people don't want progress. Then if india achieves it their economy will boom and ours will drop. In the end we will buy the power then from them. It's just sad. THE NR 1 REASON is SCARCITY. If a product isn't scarse prices will drop. But the powers that be don't want that and max their profit.
SEARCH ON UA-cam ''HTL GNN with Dr. Posadas: Thorium Reactor, The Alternative Nuke ''
Are you joking? More CO2 can't create more plant food when we are cutting down all the plants (deforestation). Besides, too much of anything is not a good thing for any organism. Humans will die without oxygen, but too much oxygen will send signals to human brains that oxygen is ample...and cause less oxygen to be absorbed into the blood, thus leading to hypoxemia. Is there a similar threshold for plants? I can't help but wonder. We are far from that threshold, though, for now..........
How about the "religious" view that we should be producing our own energy, rather than being dependent on saudi oil?
What about the "religious" view that nuclear power is literally six orders of magnitude more energy dense than fossil fuel?
What about the "religious" view that, for example, coal mining is literally removing the tops of our mountains?
That neither solar nor wind can either meet US energy demands, nor load follow.
That "clean" coal ain't?
Nuclear is necessary. Period.
So that dude knows everything and you switched off your mind?
I am off the grid with wind energy and planning a 14kw hydro.
Load balancing could save a whooping 50% of peak power alone.
You know what happens to liveforms that grow to much or get to inefficent.
What is the solution? Where is it? As long as you don`t have it we stick to renewables.
Solar Power will be about 70% of the market in 2080 if you believe in most studies...
It's 2012 and nothing happened! Sigh!
How talented are you at math? Because real world solutions require more accurate math than you can, apparently, do.
The real argument is that kitepower is cheaper...by a factor of 5 AND that it creates jobs.
Where is your problem with that?
You can still develope LFTRs.
Most communitys would still opt for jobs and cheap power vs. cheap power only.
yes cheaper 100 Mw is said to be 80-100 million only. so 1 Gw 1 billion. molten salt 200-300 per Gw
@@brianwild4640 the difference is that you can't buy that phantasy reactor.
@@heavyweather if you mean fantasy it has been done 40 plus years ago so no. Also I don’t see yours which are made getting deployed
I have no problem with both each will have it’s place.but none of them are getting deployed yet they all have problems
@@brianwild4640 skysails power already have some deployed.
@bigpchamber That's why you DO NOT BUILD IT IN THE US 1st. South Or Central America would be a great place to test and implement the 1st generation of these reactors, That would eliminate the Political aspect and just let the players play. Then the real issue is Can you get your hands on the Uranium
Public speaking is not this guy's forte. They should have gotten a professional speaker to make the presentation.
He's not the best speaker but not many people have written a book about thorium reactors...
Gordon McDowell. He has videos on here.
Thats exaxtly how you kill of sustainable growth. Once you free people from labor you have to create other work.
Cost is a very abstract figure in a complex society. What is a monetary gain for one human beeing can be a substantial failure for the whole society.
Local power generation does free people from centralized political power.
Economy of scale does not apply to every domain in life.
for you US guys...what if there was only centralized power...no weapons for people just army.
Earth Shift !
Now you try to compensate for your missing education by insult?
When you have local industry+cheap power vs. more expensive power and little local jobs you go for the second thing?
That might work if you pay unconditional basic income but in most places jobs are shorter than power.
Who would you sell your power to?
Now...that is a word...EROIE 375 and you are for the kitegen again...
Your economy will fail without jobs.
Nah, I just think you watch too many movies.
Nice science fantasy talk. Useless. But , hey, fun to dream.