MCSFR - Ed Pheil & Elysium Industries @ International Nuclear Materials Management (2018-03-22)
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2018
- In March of 2018, Ed Pheil spoke to International Nuclear Materials Management (Vienna Chapter) about Elysium Industries' Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor (MCSFR).
"Safeguards by Design"
This is a newer, lengthier and less-edited version of the talk Ed gave at TEAC8: • Fast-Spectrum Molten-S...
The reactor's rendering has been replaced (when possible) visually in post-production with their newer design.
www.elysiumindustries.com/
v20181002a - Наука та технологія
Ed is a genius. He is 100% on the right track.
Holy cow, this guy has thought more than anyone about how to mitigate proliferation concerns, burn up spent fuel and long-term sustainability
Using plutonium as fuel would be a great way to clean up the weapons factories.
I would love to hear a conversation, not necessarily a debate, with Ed Pheil and Kirk Sorensen.
Totally
Agree, it would have been awesome.
There is also Seaborg and Thorcon....two more guys who could join in....just build one soon.
I would love that
I’ve sort of witnessed Kirk Sorensen having these kind if discussions, I actually talked with him for a bit during a convention. But it turns out that he is sort if close minded about his technology. He does not want to hear anything about non-thermal reactors, for some reason. It was kind of strange. Imo this design is superior in many ways compared to the LFTR.
Thank God this works finally getting done it's way overdue it's the future of power generation
Hey... are we related?
Thanks Gordon, Elysium's design is really appealing, glad to see an update.
Personally I dream to see an update where Thorcon and IMSR get a launch reactor inside of a couple years and that MCSFR becomes the basis of their follow-up reactor units after burning through spent fuel for a few years here.
@@mukiex4413 The reactor self governs it's output to met the load applied. Ed's idea to build a demo using the standard reactor vessel is very clever. He connects a small heat exchanger and proves the concept. Then adds a bigger heat exchanger to drive a turbine then adds a few more to drive more turbines. All done with the original "demo" reactor vessel.
I've watched all this molten salt videos, many converted into podcast to have them at work, and this is my favourite. Maybe is the fact that sounds closer to become reality, I must have played it like 10 times. Just love it
Is there a public feed people can subscribe to? I never created a podcast because figured too much visual information would be lost (and not time to verbally annotate what was being shown), and a video feed would require a heck of a lot of bandwidth. Or are you saying to ripped and moved it onto your own device? (Which is fine, just not something useful to anyone else.) If there's a zero-cost way of me creating a video podcast from all this video data please let me know. I do understand there's zero-cost audio solutions but that would take some editing effort on my part to make them understandable.
A podcast is not a bad idea. I'm also completely sold on the Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor, it is precisely what we need.
@@gordonmcdowell sorry I've missed the reply. Yes I just extracted the audio to be able to play it at work. But in most of your videos I come back to youtube to play them
9
This man is a genius! He is practical and also very educated
Nice to see a new video. keep it up.
Ed....has forgotten more...than most “nuclear experts “ know!
Awesome video! Thanks for sharing.
Not gonna lie, it's my favorite design so far.
Yea It's the most flexible by far. You get the benefits of SMRs and the old big reactors by being able to be modular, while only needing one facility to get you to 1GW. Also it's likely to get help from both the DOE and DOD because of it's versatility.
It didn't even occur to me to build fast molten salt, i've been ignoring molten salt because most of them are graphite moderated. This is really damn good. Simple, flexible, safe. Made by a small team of experienced test reactor designers and operators who know exactly what you want. I wonder why this hasn't been done already. And it's good to see the Argonne guys finally has something useful to do again.
If you have seen Elsa Merle-Lucotte's team (With Jan-Leen Kloosterman et al) out of Euratom, or Rosatom's MOZART then you will realise that molten salt fast reactors, be they fluoride or chloride salt based, are the superior implementation with fluid fuel. ua-cam.com/video/Yz07sALwDcU/v-deo.html
Graphite has been the Achilles heel of MSRs both because the need for breeding means that your reactivity coefficients almost begin to be positive by the time you get appreciable breeding ratio, and because of limited graphite lifetime necessitating core replacement or moderator replacement. Both of which generate additional waste streams unrelated to the fuel cycle. A thermal breeder also necessarily means the possibility of U-233 diversion as detailed by Edward Pheil here (and Ralph Moir elsewhere) if using a blanket; and totally unproven online chemical reprocessing at scale if using a single fluid breeder.
That said, I still think that Thorium in thermal reactors still has a future - in _solid fuel._ The CANDU AFCR and Lightbridge's original plan to commercialise metal based thorium fuel offers tremendous final disposal advantages due to lesser minor actinide generation. But more importantly, metallic fuel from Lightbridge could potentially eliminate LOCA and core melt due to higher thermal conductivity. The U-Th-Zr alloy has a higher melting point than the peak temperature that is expected to be reached in a loss of coolant accident. It means that current PWRs and BWRs could potentially have longer emergency response times. Plus the metallic fuel is denser and designed to be self-spacing so there are no spacing grids to impede coolant flow.
inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/47/065/47065279.pdf
Thorium in fast molten salt reactors would still be advantageous even so, because the lower transuranic production and fast fission neutron generation means that thorium containing fuel would be less susceptible to reactivity decreases from fission product grow-in. Plus, going fast once again avoids graphite, positive k and facilitates slower, batch processing instead of necessitating online reprocessing.
Seems like the best way of making multi-megawatts of power on mars colonies. No graphite worries and fuel flexibility.
@@leerman22
I'd imagine that the first reactor in Mars would be running HEU to minimise critical mass. 80 or more percent U235. Every gram saved on payload is kilograms of fuel or tankage. Running on spent fuel might need too large a reactor system to lift at a reasonable economic price.
These are the techniques and technology of a genuine "Nuclear Age" , by solving the problems of the previous technologies in a way that enhances the next. (Justifies the "Engineers can do anything" motto)
Excellent lecture
Awesome give that man all the help he needs
I've been following developments in this field for a few years now, and I've learned enough now to know that there are a lot of interesting looking designs for which compelling cases can and have been made, and I have no idea which of them will prove economic winners. These guys need startup capital though, and If each of these nuclear startups set up a gofundme or a patreon account or some other crowd funding account, I'd happily send a couple of shekels their way every month. I'm sure there are plenty of other people out there who would do the same. It's something they might want to think about.
A prototype is easily 10 million. A low power commercial model easily 100 million. A full size commercial model likely over a billion. I think it is highly unlikely that ordinary people could put that kind of money together. You need to be some kind of cashed up predatory venture capitalist with an MBA out of Harvard and old money from the family fortunes to fund this sort of thing.
And that's the tragedy. Ed Pheil would likely wind up on the wrong end of a VC's "exit strategy" and see his company turned into a "technology company" trolling for profits by selling patents rather than actually building it. If Elysium can secure funding from a utility, that would be great. As it stands, I hope that the DOE grants will get his team the credibility to get cutting steel sooner rather than later.
@@MonMalthias I am not suggesting that crowdsourced funds would be anywhere near sufficient to finance a project like this from the prototyping stage through to commercial application. Crowdfunding could contribute in a meaningful way to raising the funds needed for prototyping and for covering some of the cost of the design approval process. The nice thing about this kind of funding is that it's not even like an interest free loan, it's basically like a gift.
Other people have raised hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars this way for ideas that are complete bullshit (solar roadways comes to mind - Thunderf00t has lots of videos about these crowdfunded BS projects if you haven't already seen them). If people are going to be opening their wallets for these kinds of ventures, one like this that has a high likelihood of achieving its stated goals seems like one that would be worth making a financial contribution towards. These reactor designers might at least want to consider it. The risk-potential reward ratio has got to be pretty favorable.
@@Marmocet
I offered to give $1000 to ThorCon because I thought it might help them out. They refused stating that they had no way to accept investments of such low size. I responded that this was not an investment but a donation of sorts. They again refused.
Again, the gulf between capital (millions backed by bonds or banks) and the fruits of labour (the savings of people like you and me) is too wide. Hell, I am lucky to have savings at all.
@@MonMalthias I think this might just be ThorCon not grasping how much can be raised through Patreon or GoFundMe or some other crowdfuning channel. $1000 might not be enough to make a difference to ThorCon, but I'll bet $400,000 would be (that's about what solar roadways generated this way, IIRC), especially at this stage in their company's development.
@@Marmocet
www.crunchbase.com/organization/solar-roadways#section-overview
The frauds over at Solar Roadways got 2.2 million together at the end. But keep in mind!
- The project was hyped out on to mainstream media
- Celebrities (even Nathan Fillon) mentioned it
- The team was able to leverage the 'small business owner' or 'entrepreneur' image to perpetuate their fraud.
- Government investment (DoT small business innovation reward grants) gave the team cachet and publicity beyond the "pure engineering" field.
The environment in which Solar Roadways succeeded and in which Elysium is entering is very different. Elysium is going to government institutions like Savannah River. It has no celebrity cachet or mainstream media hype. The team itself comes from government and unlike in countries like, say, Australia or in regions like Europe, government researchers "spinning off" seem to barely merit any attention in the US. I would argue that Elysium's approach is more sustainable. But it also means less accessibility for the public to reach out to them.
The right way to go. Is there a blog for the Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor?
Those last sentences are amazing.
Shit just got real
Nuclear Engineer in Training towards grad school. Please keep posting these videos. They are very informative about current technologies and challenges. Please also consider posting Fusion videos or Fusion updates if you attend their conferences. Nuclear = Neutron Loading and Heating whatever your source term is . Challenges are similar but unique
I'm hopeful regarding fusion energy as well, but couldn't possibly try cover that topic too. With more time could do a better job covering Molten Salt Reactors, but can't even imagine the time/resources I'd need to go beyond advanced fission and into fusion. But if you find a good subscription for that let me know I'll watch as am curious.
Nuclear fusion is still vapourware, but nuclear fission is a proven carbon-free energy source. Sadly we have allowed the industry to rely on plant designs with some serious safety hazards that can only be managed by very costly engineered solutions. The new Hitachi/Westinghouse PWR being built in UK is a massive white elephant and the builders have just walked away from developing a second site.
Fast spectrum reactors are great for dealing with spend LWR fuel but Moltex say their thermal spectrum MSR burners can also use spent fuel.
I think fusion is coming. And I think it is may lend itself to small (50 megawatt or so) units. That would be ideal for powering communities without the need for long distance transmission and the resulting cost that entails. Even is that does come to pass there would still be a place for these reactors where dense power is needed: refineries, steel mills, fertilizer plants, desalination facilities, and anywhere where lots of process heat is needed.
The post credit scene is just priceless. LOL
Thank you Ed.
so at 25:30ish, Ed says his system is better than pyroprocessing, and he does give a decent explanation of why. The simplicity is certainly appealing. However, Roger Blomquist from Argonne National Labs has stated that pyroprocessing does not separate U from Pu and doesn't remove all the fission products either. He didn't go in-depth as to what gets left behind, but I'm curious as to who is right or are they both right and Ed is simply selling his reactor and processing technology here and making it look it's best for prospective investors?
Not that I begrudge anyone the funding to make one of these designs happen. I'm just curious if one of them is right or wrong, or are we just splitting hairs here?
ua-cam.com/video/vuunX3Oc4n4/v-deo.html
Video with Roger Blomquist speaking on the IFR's reprocessing tech, for reference.
The pyroprocess uses an electrorefining to separate the uranium and plutonium from the fission products. the saturation station ratio that uranium and plutonium form in the salt solution used in the elctrorefiner is 1:4.1 & at this ratio they plate out on the cadmium cathode at a ratio of about 1:1.6 U to Pu. Other major transuranics behave very similar to plutonium so they tend to stay together. So you never get pure plutonium, it always has uranium as well as americium and curium with it.
The main advantage of Ed's system over pyroprocessing is that it's so much cheaper.
Ever thought of developing a space rated reactor that can fit in Space Xs BFR rocket for moon and Mars colonies.
can't use this design. Fuel weighs 80 tons. Unless you use uranium and/or Thorium you mine there.
Awesome!! Should be interesting to see how the Chinese are approaching fast neutron Spectrum breeder designs.
I haven't seen any mention of fast-spectrum MSR at CAS. China does have solid-fuel fast-spectrum experimental reactor, however, and is also working with Bill Gates's TerraPower to deploy their solid-fuel fast-spectrum reactors (when commercialized). TerraPower is also working on fast-spectrum MSR but I haven't heard any mention of that in association with China. If you discover different please let me know.
Wow so we could use DU for fuel instead of putting it in tank rounds to leave on the landscape...? Im converted.
Fast reactors in a nutshell 😏
What about using the nuclear waste from plutonium production at Hanford and/or Savannah River? I don't know what form it is in, probably uranium nitrate. Neither do I know how much waste is there. Probably a lot. I know they cycle uranium thru pretty quickly.
the thing he said about ships is important. was reading were going to have to do massive water pumping/displacement around the glacier to re-freeze the water as it melts off. only works if the studd is nuclear powered!
AC-ing a glacier sounds like the least efficiant geo engineering methode.
@@patrick_test123 I would aSK THAT YOU read beofre dismissing somnething out of hand. "Isaac Arthur Climate Mitigation Strategies". We have to pump freshwater out of the arctic or well cause another ice age, its quite serious. not a joke.
Love it. (39:00) I also think that the low breeding ratios of thermal spectrum MSR breeders and their small fuel loads are proliferation hurdles too.
If someone intends to divert U-233 from the reactor but isn't careful, pulling out too much, the reactor would loose criticality. If they were careful and didn't pull out too much, they are looking at 15-30 years to double the amount of material their reactor started with (which might not have been a lot given it was a thermal spectrum reactor).
I totally agree that there are proliferation issues with thermal spectrum designs, but given the time, effort, and cost, I just feel you'd have to be a real jackass to try to make weapons material using one of these reactors. It just seems like enriching natural U-235 or breeding Pu-239 with an accelerator or something would be so much easier and quicker.
That said, thorium breeders aren't the only method we have to skin this cat. They certainly can't handle the range of materials that your reactor can.
I'm probably wrong but thought breeding uranium fuel from thorium made the "wrong" isotopes (233 and 232) which are either poor bomb materials are just too radioactive for practical purposes. They are fine for power reactor fuel as they never leave the plant containment. Plus as WS says there is so little excess that its just not worth the bother. Kirk Sorensen explains it as a benefit of his LiFTR designs.
Using the "waste" LWR fuel and excess plutonium has to be a great start for Elysium as they'll probably get paid to take the stuff. Sorensen (again - sorry) says that fast reactor core design is much more critical for it to work efficiently but if Elysium can solve that then "way to go" as you say over the pond. :)
Some people say the carbon moderators of thermal reactors pose a service life and waste problem. I don't know, but British AGR gas cooled reactors have been running since the 1980s at comparable temperatures to MSRs.
I recently contacted Flibe about the transport of U233, and was told by Kirk Sorensen that they have no intentions of ever blending U233 with U238. This worries me. They want to use LFTR49s to produce starter U233 for LFTR23s. Unless they intend to start each site up with a LFTR49 and add four LFTR23s on site to use the U233, this would involve the transport of a lot of weapons grade U233 across the nation.
An Elysium MCFSR is a cleaner design. While a LFTR49 requires less startup nuclear waste than an MCFSR being started up with nuclear waste, the LFTR49 will always use nuclear waste as its feed stock, while the MCFSR can be transitioned to depleted uranium, or burn the uranium from the spent fuel, which the LFTR49 can not.
Additionally, one in four MCSFRs can be surrounded with a blanket of 50% thorium and 50% depleted uranium so that, by extracting the uranium at the right point, a blend of 3% U233 and 97% U238 can be extracted to be fabricated into fuel rods that can be substituted for 5% enriched uranium in existing PWRs. Plutonium from all four MCFSRs can then be mixed with the enriched uranium freed up in this manner to provide the initial fuel load for another MCFSR, instead of the Option 1 of 20% enriched uranium.
One thing Elysium needs to get over however, is their aversion to using a moderator. The fission core should be a leaky core with a breeding ratio of 1.0 or less, surrounded by a breeding blanket, with a moderator between the fission core and the breeding blanket. Without a moderator to slow down the neutrons, 10% of the U238 will fission when it absorbs a neutron instead of transitioning to plutonium. The buildup of fission products in the breeding blanket is undesirable.
@@dalesplitstone6276 The buildup of fission products in the breeding blanket is undesirable. But does it matter? The big issue is not engineering but regulatory approval. They go slowly at the best of times and look for reasons to stifle progress.
There is more than enough waste nuclear fuel to power the country (USA, UK France, Canada) for hundreds of years. The old PWRs could be replaced with MCFSR or Moltex Waste burner fast reactors. The costs of decomissioning the PWRs would be more than offset by the hyper low costs of the fast salt reactors.
@@davidelliott5843 It is true that the USA, UK, France, and Canada have enough SNF to last hundreds of years, and if you accept that fusion technology is only 50 years off, we can include Germany and India. But the largest environmental threat is from emerging markets, such as Africa. The prospect of shipping SNF around the world makes me nervous. The preferred approach is to breed U233 in a blanket, and ship U233 denatured with U238 to start up the reactors in these markets. These reactors can then be replenished with thorium, just as Elysium currently plans to do with the reactors started up with SNF.
@@dalesplitstone6276 If they wanted to go nuclear they will any nation that has been determined enough has done so. They are not waiting with bated breath for molten salt reactors. Your fears are overblown.
@godronmcdowell Why did they not let you film other presentations in the past?
This was my first ORNL MSR Workshop I've attended. All other types of conferences I'd been able to video, so it was a surprise when I got there.
11:00 does weapons material mean fusion or fission bomb, because i dont think anyone who doesnt have access to fission bombs is going to be able to be able to do anything with fusion...
I think you're quite right but the anti-nuclear community and the regulators take no account of the difficulty in making a fusion bomb. So they regard all materials that could conceivably be used in bomb production as equally a proliferation risk. Go figure
Best NEWS on Planet Earth.
Maintaining a Democracy in a state worth defending.
my question is how much power will it take to power the proton beam that will make the neutron beam that will let you run a subcritical mass reactor or a reactor with no fissile material for startup?
@@AlexiLaiho227 the use of a beam pumped pile would be special case like for no proliferation the use of a pile that can be turned off or for a very small pile all being special case.
What you were talking about seems to be the excelerator driven molten salt reactor. Some of these designs have been proposed. Computer models suggest they can do much better than breakeven over the energy cost of running the Excelerator. The big problem is the considerable capital cost of building the excelerator. I think reactor like this could be a very good design for destroying the last of the heavy waste after most of it has been consumed by Ed's chloride salt fast reactor.
Don't understand: why at about 4:15 min a power 5 times bigger (from 50 to 250 MWe, for instance) means a speed only 70 to 100 % higher ?
Water resistance is non linear so power needed increases exponentially as speed goes up
Basically, motion power is more likely proportional to the the cube (rather than the square) of speed, so sqrt (5) = 70% "only" more
Ed needs to present these ideas in interviews to smart influential people in other fields. People like but not limited to Jordan Peterson. He is a good example because learns rapidly. His background would allow him to learn and understand these concepts. I use him as an example because he is logical and has access to a completely different group of people in leadership.
Wait, Ed, are you saying this CAN be used as a breeder? How much harder its it to use your design as a breeder vs a burner? I mean, what does breeding involve that you don't need if just burning?
If you listen closely Ed is talking about his reactor as a breeder. This is especially clear when he describes the increase in the amount of fashionable isotopes the longer the reactor operates.
How much would it cost to build one? I am really interested. No, not me who want one in the backyard, I do not have a backyard :-D
but I see Hungary building a new nuclear power plant, and we know the cost of it, so I'd like to see some actual plans of cost.
I used to laugh about the idea of small modular reactor designs and considered them a huge proliferation risk. Until, after having understood the difference in working principle, it dawned on me, that PWR were designed to fulfill a "dual role".
Exactly, taking something with a 10,000 year half life radoiactivity repurposing it to extract all that energy for power generation to something at the end has a 40 to 100 year half life while making power more plentiful, cleaner, and enviromentally conscious.
PWR reactors actually became the favored design because of admiral Rickover. He perceived them as the best design for his nuclear navy. They probably are too, but definitely not the best most economical design for powering an electric grid.
Don't know why dr. Pheil claims at about 15:35 min only a few centuries of nuclear fuel using already produced LWRs waste, in fact considering about 60 years of current 2500 TWh/year of world nuclear electricity production, there is enough depleted uranium and TRUs for a period between 10 to 15 thousands years of today world nuclear electricity. But besides that, the presentation is EXTREMELY interesting (didn't finish yet, though...)
I think Ed was referring in the sixty year case to powering a society completely with nuclear power, ie process heat, maybe producing synfuels out of atmospheric C02 too.
impressive contrast to Kirk's model... very compelling... it makes sense a fast reactor still works because Thorium is still hundreds of times more abundant than uranium 238... it gets the job done... with lower maintenance, less sophistication... relative to Kirk's...
Small correction thorium is hundreds of times more abundant than uranium 235. Thorium is only for about four times more abundant than uranium 238.
How much plutonium is available globally for starting these reactors?
A lot ! Only from commercial sector, at least 2000-3000 tonn of reactor grade plutonium. Enough fissile to start up at least 200-300 one GWe of such reactors
Ed mis spoke @ 31:15 Higher density means more fuel gets pulled in.
proposed location of first reactor 50:15
I do not udnerstand concept of "Chloride salt" bellow 600 degrees celsius. Eutectic mixture of NaCl and KCl has melting point of 657 celsius ?!?
Perhaps this include other Mg and/or K chloride salts, the exact formula is not given, yet. But besides that, there are U and Pu chlorides, as well, bear in mind fuel salt is maybe 30 or 40% of total salt, the other ~ 60% being carrier salt
The solar thermal power stations use molten salts 60/40 NaNO3/KNO3 "solar salt". These are well understood and work really well for thermal storage and heat transfer. Use this to extract the heat and there's no wheel to re invent. If its done as a third salt in the system, this solar salt should be outside the nuclear zone and not subject to nuclear regulations.
This is what Moltex is doing and it could also be done on this or any other MSR.
Wouldn’t that boil around 400c? They want this reactor to go 600c+
@@chapter4travels TerraPower is also doing it.
Thermal storage using" solar salts " is doable easily in any molten metal or molten salt reactor.
What if you combined a nuclear waste consuming fast reactor with a zirconium hydride containment vessel for a thorium salt breeding chamber where the fast neutron reactor hit a slow neutron chamber for breeding thorium 232 into u233? So you can do both use spent nuclear fuel rods but also breed thorium taking advantage of high neutron flux to hit the target?
They will get paid to burn up nuclear waste but would have to pay for thorium.
@@chapter4travels Still they need something after they burn up all the nuclear spent rods.
@@travismoore7849 nearly unlimited uranium is always available.
@@travismoore7849Even if we double our present energy needs. SNF will still last several centuries and remember SNF is still being generated worldwide for another 20-40 years.
Then hire and train the new batch of replacement scientists, engineers, technologists, technicians, and master machinists to be familiar in handling and using fluoride salts of all kinds.
Perhaps Ed should do an interview with Scott Adams...
I don't get why you would wait a year with Thorium reactors. Yes, that will mean all of the PA breaks down, but U232 has a 60 year half life. Little of that will decay. So the PA233 will become U233, and you will have slightly less u232.
How is this MCSFR significantly different, in principle, from Moltex Energy's SSR?
SSR has fuel-salt contained in fuel-rod like capsules, while MCSFR allows the liquid-fuel to circulate. Also, it appears Moltex is pursuing both a thermal-spectrum design and a fast-spectrum design. www.moltexenergy.com/learnmore/An_Introduction_Moltex_Energy_Technology_Portfolio.pdf
@@gordonmcdowell
Just the fast for now. What is interesting is the similarity in thinking regarding fuel economics.
Moltex expect to have a plant running in Canada by 2030
www.moltexenergy.com/news/details.aspx?positionId=106
Isn't moltex a sodium cooled reactor?
Is there any roundabout way of turning Lithium 6 into Lithium 7?
@@AlexiLaiho227
With the end of the Cold War, a lot of the nuclear powers downscaled or even eliminated Li-6 production. The mercury based COLEX process is highly efficient but left a toxic legacy at nuclear weapons production facilities. There are stockpiles built up to the point that I don't believe that a restart of COLEX is on the horizon.
A process that would be less impactful would be laser enrichment. SILEX was demonstrated on uranium and it is several times more energy efficient than even ultracentrifuge cascades. The technology can be easily applied to other isotopes, and actually would be significantly easier to produce separated Lithium since the differences in atomic mass are much greater for Li-6 versus Li-7 compared to U-235 versus U-238.
Yes, and it's not so roundabout: neutron absorption.
How is Lithium-6 weapons material?
It's used as a the fusion "fuel" in a thermonuclear bomb. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_hydride#Lithium_deuteride
I asked myself the exact same question the first time I watched this video.
The simplified answer is lithium-6 is used in what we commonly call H bombs. In other words it's a fuel for the fusion reaction in a bomb. Hydrogen was used in the first American H bomb but it proved to be far too bulky to contain for use in a weapon that could be delivered, so slightly heavier lithium is used in all H bombs today. I don't think the Soviets ever used hydrogen in a bomb. So the name H bomb is a misnomer.
50:15 when and where can this be built?
USA has a tick box regulatory system that works well for PWRs but nothing else. Creating a new system for molten salt will take aeons, cost a fortune and limit the design choices.
UK always takes everything back to first principles so little better than USA. Moltex went to Canada because they have a more can do (sorry about the pun) approach.
@@davidelliott5843 Actually, NRC has been working on its advanced reactor review scheme for several years. The Advanced Reactor links at nrc.gov describe large workshops starting in 2015, and there was significant activity years before that, predominantly on NGNP, but much of that work was relevant to other non-LWRs, as well.
@@davidelliott5843 I'm Canadian ~ I love your pun!
The problem with a fast reactor is it probably will require 30 times more fuel to achieve the same heat output. In the fast spectrum, isotopes have a much smaller neutron cross section (reactivity)
Robert I don't know exactly how to quantify the fissile load of a fast-spectrum vs thermal-spectrum MSR (not a nuclear engineer), but here's an exchange where a ratio is stated... bravenewclimate.com/2011/11/17/ifr-lftr-exchange/ ...between LFTR and IFR: "1/5th the fissile load per megawatt" ...so that's not MSR vs MSR, but it is Breeder vs Breeder. And that ratio is closer to numbers I've heard before I'm sure it isn't any more than 10x the fissile load to run fast-spectrum instead of thermal-spectrum, although I can't find any other ratios quoted... sure I'll spot it when I'm not looking for it.
To add to this, Ed states in this video that if the US was on 100% nuclear power generation we have enough SNF to power the US for over 300 years. I do not think the increased fuel burn is a problem in the near or long term. 50 years from now there easily could be advancements to have more efficient reactors in operation.
@@timframe570 bill gates says up to 700 years so either way it's an attractive possibility...
30 times more fuel, so what, that's easily made up for by the lack of a need for moderator materials and the structures to introduce them into the reactor core, And a much greater neutron production hints better neutron economy making it easier to achieve high burn up of the actinides. This is why Ed is calling for the leaving in of all the materials produced except for gases and a few decay products. It may still be subject to some problems like plating out in the heat exchanger, and leakage at the connection points of the external loops etc.
That's not correct, it only needs 3-5 times at max the fissile inventory start-up vs a LWR, for example (3.5-5.5 vs 10-15 tonn per GWe) as plutonium or nuclear waste. And this is not per "same heat output", it's only to start-up the reactors, at a steady state all reactors consume about one tonn of fuel (in the form of plutonium, nuclear waste, depleted uranium, etc... that we have plenty of) per year, so even that extra fissile is definetely not wasted
Nuclear is making a comeback. Why not this reactor in the Netherlands instead of a conventional one?
29:13 What is that sound??
An alarm signaling Ed's lunchtime.
@@AnsweringAtheism Ouch. Still, I had been thinking it would be good to set up a crowd funding account to pay for gym memberships for these reactor designers. Their cross sections are uncomfortably high.
@@Marmocet I already signed up for to receive notifications when this becomes available. There exists a site for this already. I'd post the link but I seem to have misplaced it. You should be able to find it with a little Googleing. They are currently just asking perspective investors how much they might be willing to kick in. With no commitment.
celcius should be celsius on the chart. Celcius is a rap album
I did notice that, too ! LOL !
theres something about Ed...............he's the guy, who has the experience...........so even though hes not "Tom Cruise"..................you know he can deliver.
I personally prefer the LFTR approach, since it's easier for "non rich" nations to manufacture their own fuel; plus, it makes better potential use of decay heat and fission products.
Also, I believe that proliferation concerns are overrated to a very large degree. Politics and public misinformation!
"But if nuclear waste and fuel availability aren't issues then they'll build more nuclear power plants!" --Says every luddite.
And so they should. But they must be walk-way-safe and cheaper per Mega Watt Hour than coal.
The luddites were pissed to be out of a livelihood when the mechanical loom was invented, sounds like a legitimate grievance to me.
@@patrick_test123 Ignorant to the fact that their labors were better put elsewhere. Why mine coal when there is plenty of every other thing out there to mine?
@@leerman22 That's usually not what happens, as the coal miner example shows. Where coal mines close people will be getting poorer and less well of at least for a generation. So the coal miners have reason to be worried about their mines beeing closed. Obviusly at stopping to use coal is the right thing to do overal, but unless there is the support needed to help people to not having to suffer because of that you need to acknowlage that it is in their indevidual best interest to delay this development.
@@patrick_test123 Mining towns are a poor example, limited economic shelf-life. They're positioned only exploit a single resource. Point is insisting on doing obsolete labor is unwise.
9:05 Fission product buildup. This reactor has no chemical kidney.
19:50 attempting to find loopholes to Plutonium regulation is a BIG RED FLAG.
21:25 "the actinides protect the plutonium"
Again, this reactor has no chemical kidney. The burnt waste is considered a virtue. Quite odd thinking.
Sorry. Perhaps I was not clear.
Without the chemical kidney you can't get the waste out of the fuel. This design considers that problem to be an advantage. I see this as much the same as claiming a '73 Pinto is a good cigarette lighter. Saying that does not make driving a '73 Pinto a good idea.
@@kurtisengle6256
That's not how it works.
Fission product grow in is only a neutronic penalty in thermal spectrum reactors like the LFTR. This is why the chemical kidney is necessary - every neutron lost to thermal spectrum capture by fission products is less fissioning.
In fast spectra, there is no need for online reprocessing. Only batch reprocessing is needed, say once every year in the MSFR if you want to run approximately neutral with top up by spent nuclear fuel, once every 3 years if you are okay with topping up with thorium + spent fuel rods, or once every 10 years if you are trying to reduce actinides on final discharge and you have extra fissile (like plutonium from defunct nuclear weapons) to top up the fuel with.
Now, you can still do online reprocessing, if you want maximum neutronic performance (say if you are wanting to produce extra fuel i.e. breed). But this places pretty high demands on the throughput of chemical processing of a molten salt fast reactor.
For a thermal molten salt breeder, you _must_ reprocess online. Otherwise the reactor will not work without constant topup of fissile. And the amount you need to reprocess is 10 times as much - around 500L per day for LFTR versus around 50L per day for MSFR (which is optional if you don't care about breeding). Keep in mind that ORNL never progressed beyond lab bench scales of reprocessing - millilitres at a time, not half a ton of highly radioactive salt a day.
Pinto analogies make zero sense.
ua-cam.com/video/jgef1Hx31ls/v-deo.html (see 8:00) for slide
Elsa Merle Lucotte's team at CNRS in France did a integral safety analysis of the LFTR-type thermal thorium breeder and concluded that the graphite aging process by neutrons, combined with relatively high fissile content, low fission product presence actually _decreases_ safety instead of increasing it. The ORNL design was found to have slightly positive coefficients of reactivity - that is to say, as power increases, more power is produced. This is a problem and leads to runaway reaction rates that can damage plant equipment. In catastrophic cases, as at Chernobyl, the heat spike can cause steam explosions (if the reactor is coupled to a steam cycle).
If you don't use a chemical kidney take the waste out of your reactor, you have a 300,000 year mess, all in one bucket. If you do take the waste out you have a 300 year mess and a lot of pure isotopes to sell.
i wanna see kirk sorensen on JOE ROGAN.....ahem....JOE ROGAN.
people need to be re-educated and quick. not much time with the environment, massive geo-engineering(sulfur dioxide particles, kelp foresting, CC membranes, etc) in addition to going thorium or were all toast! iPCC report on climate change is incredibly grim.
I personally favour nuclear for our countries energy solutions due to the massively efficient area to energy output ratio and their very low harmful emissions. Many people I talk to rule nuclear out as too dangerous on the off chance there is an accident and they go into meltdown and ‘run away’ spewing radiation into the air like Chernobyl did or into the ocean like Japan recently experienced. I share that concern too because no matter how many safeguards you build into them there is always a chance of some combination of human error or technical malfunction that could result in a disaster that renders large parts of the planet too radioactive for human habitation for 100 thousand years or so thereby erasing all the advantages we were enjoying from the clean energy generation. I’ve come up with a ‘Wild Idea’ or at least so my friends label my idea🤔. The idea is this: Bury The Sucker! Build our nuclear power plants in abandoned mine shafts day a kilometre under ground. The plant will be accessed and serviced via the same vertical mine access shaft used by the miners. The shaft will be mined (safely) with explosives. If the plant starts to ‘run away’ the usual steps would be taken to correct the problem or at least shut it down safely🙃. However, and this is a big however, if the run away CANNOT be controlled and the plant is in danger of spewing out radiation then a decision would be taken to Get All The Workers Out Safely and then blow the vertical shaft and bury the problem for the next million years or so safely underground. Naturally you have to do your geology and build it where it Cannot Pollute the Groundwater as it melts down a km or two under the surface. Ok so we lost a power plant not good but an acceptable risk as long as there is no collateral damage right. As we get better and better at nuclear plant engineering and operations we would expect never to have it happen, but crucially we have the ultimate insurance policy against catastrophe. After all we don’t expect our house will ever burn down either but we consider it prudent to take out insurance just in case right! I
The tech Ed is talking about here physically cannot experience a major meltdown. It does not share the vulnerabilities of earlier generation reactors.
""Mr President, we cannot allowww... a mineshaft reactor GAP!
Why you wanna pump molten salts when you can just sit them in a tank? Moltex is way ahead of this Shit.
Moltex also pumps the fuel salts.
How many times do we have to tell you guys, WE DON"T WANT ANY STEENKIN' NUKES!!
and
@@lennihaapala8169 and the death and destruction of health, wealth and habitat that it causes.
@@jackfanning7952 Unfortunately, it's either those or coal (which ejects radioactive particulates into air under normal operation, unlike NPPs) or gas (which often still means a lot of radioactive ejecta at mining sites - *unregulated* radioactive ejecta, unlike in uranium mines).
Quit whining and educate yourself!
Man get a life and leave those reactors for a while.