Advantages of thorium: Much safer than uranium-no pressure vesel, no fuel rods to melt down Much simpler reactor-Thorium salt liquid is pumped from the reactor tank through a heat exchanger and back into the tank Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium--in fact so plentiful it is considered a waste product from rare earth mining Thorium doesn't need expensive enriching to make it usable Thorium is of little use for weapons If power goes off liquid fuel simply drains into a pit which stops reaction. No fuel rods to cool or melt down if power fails This technology has been around for years. Why was it not developed long ago? Politics, methinks.
Why were thorium reactors not developed? I think the main reason is thorium is of little use for weapons. Governments would rather build bombs than safe, inexpensive power plants, and thorium just doesn't fit that bill.
You forgot 2 other real benefits: 1. conventional Uranium & Plutonium reactors convert only around 0.5% of the available energy compared to 99% with LFTR reactors. 2. And this is the most important, the waste products fall to background radiation levels within 350 years compared to 100,000 or more with conventional reactors
Some misleading points in your comment: Thorium is only more plentiful than Uranium if you only consider earth's crust. Uranium is much more plentiful then Thorium in sea water. (However, extracting U from sea water is more expensive as of now). Thorium does need enriching to start the reaction (some Uranium is needed for that), but once it started, there is no need for further enrichment. So it's a bit misleading. It doesn't need expensive enriching, but it needs some enriching. As for weapons, it can be used, but as you stated, there are other more usable materials. But otherwise your points are valid. Here's a list with some Thorium myths: whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
This is one of the BEST Google-tech talks ever presented. Tight editing for concise content and Sorensen's masterful command of the subject shine here. This is THE MOST IMPORTANT topic for humankind and the future of Earth. We need LIFTRs NOW!
+Learner-Learns LFTRs? Now? It's a tad bit too late (50 years too late) for that I'm afraid. We missed out on so much R&D on LFTR that it'll be a blessing if the technology will become viable in the upcoming decades.
+darthvader5300 So, after you find the caps lock key on your keyboard, turn it off, then take all your meds, check this out: I'm not an American. Before you start ranting about conspiracies and scientists' powerful enemies, let me tell you that many other countries built MUCH bigger breeder reactors too, some with a power capacity of 1000MW (electrical) even and yet all of them have been scrapped. You wanna know why? Because it's still far too unfeasible to everyone who has access to U235. While U235 is around (and it WILL be around for quite some time in fact), building ANY kind of breeder reactor is simply not economically viable enough. The Americans had to spend billions of dollars to realize this and probably many other countries have also invested an ungodly amount of money in it too. And until no feasible FBR (let alone a LFTR) design is found (patents are pretty much irrelevant anyway, because the designs patented by Americans are useless anyway, otherwise they'd already be using at least some of them), no private company will take a risk of building a power plant utilizing that technology either (they rarely build nuclear power plants anyway, because they're so expensive).
+darthvader5300 Even if I take the position that I agree with you, which I don't, let me ask.... has *your* government ever done anything wrong? Let he who is not sinless throw the first stone...And then after you throw that stone, throw your caps lock key, ok?
Probably not. Dr Kirk Sorenson's assertions are wildly optimistic. If the molten salt configuration were so much better, they would have been used long ago. Thorium IV has certain drawbacks as well. Do not be caught up by Dr Kirk Sorensen's charisma. You need to consider the issues objectively.
Kirk, your relentless advocacy for this technology has been heroic, and there are a ton of people who appreciate it, and want you to succeed in realizing this sane re-definition of a practical standard for safely utilizing the 'king of all fossil fuels'.
Neither thorium nor uranium is in any way a fossil fuel. That stuff existed before the syn ignited. They are the remains of gigantic stellar gravitational collapses, such as supernovae
I watched the Oakridge documentary from 1970's, then this. What has happened in the last 11 years as there doesn't seem to be any 'new' information except China is researching Thorium reactors
@@1crazypj and China knows a good thorium design offers more sales potential which feeds orders for concrete, steel and Chinese workers with a lower risk design at a lower cost which for nuclear is the biggest hesitation to governments and private capital pooling investment. Africa will need nuclear no matter how many solar farms and offshore wind relies on strong grid design. Plus less tender competition from Russia who can access fuel as a sweetner
To say this guy knows his stuff is an understatement. Yet here we are in 2021, to my knowledge there are no plans for a LFTR in the US. China, however, is building at least one if not more.
Indonesia is receiving a ship from China carrying a Thorium fueled, Liquid Salt (aka LFTR) Nuclear Reactor. It will tie up at a wharf and supply the city with cheap electricity 24/7 - 365 for more than 20 years. The reactor was built using information obtained under the US freedom of information laws from The Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
If you are interested in this technology and it is 2024 and beyond, call your elected representatives and let them know you want to see this technology do this at the state, federal and local level. Also, know this, there are several companies and other organizations working in conjunction with department of energy laboratories around the country that are developing this technology and working their way through the nuclear regulatory commission licensing process. Your elected representatives need to know that these license applicants that are, several years involved in the licensing process need to be granted emergency prototyping status so that they can start building and running these machines and getting data to improve designs before they go to developmental, reactor status, and pre-commercial testing status. Let's get the ball rolling and start cooking up some salty soups, as well as many of the other fine reactor designs that are out there. I'm in favor of building all kind of reactors light water reactors, boiling water reactors can do reactors. Fast reactors slow neutron reactors but I am especially interested in seeing molten salt reactors come online ASAP.
I am currently using information on MSRs for two college class final projects, and I'm only in my first semester of my freshman year. I believe very, very strongly in this concept, and all I did was do some research and read scientific articles on recent experiments in Japan. They work. They are cheap to operate, especially because Thorium is a waste product of Rare Earth Metal production. They are safe, becoming less reactive as the salts expand outside operational temperature range. Hotter salt is less dense, and less dense salt becomes less reactive. The salts are also chemically not very reactive, with minor corrosion issues solvable by a highly reducing environment inside the pipes. The negative temperature coefficient of reactivity + atmospheric pressure operation + chemical stability means that it's PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for an explosive Chernobyl-style meltdown. The way fuel is bred inside the reactor means it is very, very difficult for U-233 to be turned into nuclear weapons, as fission/decay products from U-233 create massive gamma radiation hazards to all but highly trained scientists and engineers, while terrorists are almost never that highly skilled. Not to mention the fact that these things could be used to power spacecraft, and it has been proven that asteroids are rather rich in heavy metals, including but not limited to thorium. There's enough thorium on Earth to power society for 80,000 to 100,000 years, and likely much more on asteroids to extend that to a million years or more. Stepwise re-development towards MSRs is going like: 1. Solid Fuel Reactor cooled by liquid salt 2. Solid Fuel Pebble-Bed Reactor cooled by liquid salt 3. Smaller Pebble Fuel 4. Slurry reactor of tiny fuel pebbles flowing with coolant 5. fuel is literally dissolved in the coolant as an MSR
It eventually became common knowledge that the main reason the UK promoted the implementation of a string of fast breeder reactors was not for the electricity they generate but to create enough excess plutonium for Great Britain's military to become a credible nuclear power.
Not true. Reactor grade plutonium, no matter how it's produced, won't make a bomb. The "Windscale fire" was indeed a consequence of Britain's stupid idea that having nuclear bombs was a Good Thing. Windscale, right beside a decent honest civilian reactor site, was a hasty design like the "Chicago pile" for producing bomb grade plutonium, which requires interrupting the process every 90 days, or there's too much Pu-240 and the plutonium will explode too soon. It suffered inadequate cooling by air, to allow the graphite to recover from displacements caused by the neutrons it was 'moderating'
@@albertrogers8008 English atomic scientists had good university designs that on paper were more efficient than the US, the problem was the ultra high end cooling design didn't work in reality, the state of industrial design was not there in reality. The UK never ran a test design using that design to see the flaws. They had no oil and even then coal was finite so nuclear generated power was the gold mine. The Americans had the industrial design skills born of unlimited expenditures in WW2 plus a industrial engineering poolset unlike the UK. Ironically the French went with a design that worked once done at scale
Thank you Kirk Sorensen for all of your marvelous presentations. We are fortunate to have an expert in the field also be such a master speaker and educator. Nuclear power, I am convinced, will be the only resource that will get the world to a point where we stop killing each other over scarcities (many of them manufactured), and direct our attention on peaceful, more exciting endeavors, like exploring and profitably using our solar system.
Nuclear power is a dead dog… almost nobody is building it anymore because it is too expensive. The lobby is pushing to get its next generation subsidies for a completely uncompetitive power generation mode. Look at France, their nuclear power strategy is collapsing with the tax payer picking up the tab in the end.
Excellent Presentation Kirk. I've been following your work for some time now and as a layman with no scientific background it's taken me many hours of listening to your presentations and those of your peers to understand how important your work is. I think that a 3 min video presenting the case for Thorium power that could be understood by anyone. Simple diagrams, powerful pictures from nature and the key non technical points put across in a video that could go viral on facebook and google+
@@mantisnomo5984 Mining coal to make rods for a few power stations or mining coal to just burn endlessly away producing a faction of the power a Thorium reactor could. Priorities as always
@@AlanDeRossett What? The lithium in the salt is ionised. When the lithium metal reacts with water, it becomes Li+ that bonds with OH-. In fact, LiOH is the intermediate step in producing the salt. It's no longer reactive anymore. Do your research.
J D - That's right, while picking his nose with a pencil it occurred to him that the nib was sharp and hurt a lot. Thinking on his feet, he grabbed some Cellotape, slapped it on the end of his pencil then continued with rooting through his snot filled nostrils... After removing and subtly tasting the goods, he took the cellotape off and discovered graphite was stuck to it. Thus solving a life-long puzzle, securing him a Nobel Peace Prize and many bodacious babes.
It happened because making bombs was more important to the politicians and corporations so thorium reactors were not favored, now the nuclear energy business is so firmly entrenched they are standing in the way of a boundless energy future for short term goals. in other words greed is the culprit as usual
Really it was much simpler that that. Reactors were built for US subs first. What was known, was how to build reactors for making bomb material so this is what was used in the subs. Of course boiling water was what was also known how to make a boat go. These designs were simply scaled up for power reactors. Most likely if the issue was first build a power reactor something else may have been built. A lot of industrial development works this was. Like the key board I am typing with. It is the way it is because the first typewriters had swinging keys that would get tangled if one typed to fast. To ovoid this the letters on the key board were placed to slow the typist down. We still use this keyboard even though there are much better keyboards for less strain and faster typing out there.
Thank you for this clear explanation of the past and present situation. The main reason for not developing the Thorium Molten Salt reactor is most likely the influence from the oil and coal companies, both producing the most pollution in the world. They see this development as a threat to their business. And the many people who work in those industries and the shareholders will do everything in their power to stop or at least slow down this development.
Wrong!! You have been taught wrong. To keep the world green you need carbon dioxide. It's a good thing however, the "elites" want to BS people for their own control and wealth.
@@volt-amps3385 I agree, we need carbon dioxide, but for every element, there is a good amount or an exeeding amount. Apart from the polluted air as we find in some industrial areas. That kills people.
@@nibiruresearch So it's OK for China and other Countries to Build coal burners for their energy? Yes; I don't believe the Sham scientists that promote the sky is falling. There is no global warming! This world was created and We don't have the ability to destroy it. We are not that smart. This world was created with balance and aforethought!
@@nibiruresearch Lots of things kill people- big pharma, etc. China building 3 new coal burners, USA has most clean coal and Schwab the NWO guy likes the China model with others. It's a joke to those that know the truth. The people understand. I can go on but; thank you.
Interesting history behind the decision for fast breeder reactors. I also suspect the decision was military, as the nuclear arms race needed plutonium, which required FBRs.
What a fantastic presentation. Highly informative, easy to follow and sensible. I really can't see any good reason why the Thorium MSR shouldn't be pursued.
I remember the gas crunch from the oil embargo, being in the back seat of a hot car in the hot sun for hours in gas lines that stopped traffic for blocks.
The problems are in the Uranium reactors mostly, the 1940's - 1950's design... think of a 1950 car... still running but not in any way safe the way modern cars are. The Oak Ridge MSR is also from that era, but they are studying Molten Salt there right now, with all new parts.
The one problem that the mention of liquid salts will always bring immediately to mind is the problem of corrosion. We are already familiar with the problem of corrosion and leaks in our aging nuclear plants. The idea of extremely hot corrosive salts flowing around in the plant seems very dangerous. What materials offer practical solutions? Also what other potential problems are there in such a design?
Monju is based on fast neutrons and highly reactive liquid sodium metal coolant! The molten *salt* used in Th-MSR is stable. The U233 (contaminated with U232, as others have noted) is an intermediate produced in the salt for burnup, not to stockpile for weapons. The U233 has ~92% chance of fissioning; ~8% will capture a neutron instead and move to U234, which almost always captures a second and moves to U235. U235 has ~85% chance of fissioning; only ~1% of the Th232 input gets to 236+
Thanks, just reading his bio. I am so amazed of this Thorium reactors and it could be beginning of the new era. As for now Chinese government seems to be really interested in that and I think once they develop this reactor they will be selling more electricity to foreign countries and make them even more powerful.
My father briefly worked for the DOE back in the 70s-80s before going to the DOT and he said it was a shit show... Hard to press new tech while there is so much money spent on current reactors.. just may be a small part of it
As a machinist in the 1980's, I machined tungsten honeycomb devices for a liquid sodium reactor being built by Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Rumor was their reactor was tested in Hanover ID and allowed to go super-critical and the design theory was proven as it shut itself down properly. Is this Thorium reactor similar?
Liquid sodium systems are still uranium-based - and anyone who thought that sodium is "safe" is from a different planet to me. No matter now many precautions you take there will be leaks and molten sodium burns pretty hot when exposed to air (the japanese have found this out the hard way) There are a lot of online resources about LFTRs and to be honest I think they're the best design available, with pebblebeds coming in close behind - the really big advantage of LFTR is that they're thorium-cycle based and that means you have a readily available supply of safe, cheap fuel which is extremely hard to weaponise.
The same reason for using molten salt as your fuel, is the same reason they cool fast reactors with liquid metal. You don't need to pressurize the reactor vessel to keep the fuel or coolant from boiling. PWRs need to be pressurized to something like 150 bar (more than 2000psi) and despite the name, Boiling Water Reactors are still pressurized to well over 70 bar or 1000psi. Sodium is very stable when irradiated though, which is why it is preferred in LMFBRs. The worst Sodium isotope you're likely to find in an LMFBR is Na-24 which only has a half-life of 15 days. This means storing the used coolant isn't really a problem, and if you have a leak and a sodium fire, you're not releasing harmful contaminants. And most of the time, the best bet for extinguishing a sodium fire is to just let it burn itself out. As it oxidizes, it forms an airtight crust and extinguishes itself. That Japanese incident at the Monju reactor was in a secondary loop which meant no irradiated sodium was released and the fire put itself out in less than an hour.
wasnt a reactor built in the 50,s,??,ran for over a yr,then shut down as useless to the military.tesla was poisoned for same,other inventors dissapeared,or bought out,made to look stupid.this has been going on with advancement for thousands of yrs,.this is why we still have piston engines,batteries,ect,after 130 yrs.NOTHING NEW....thorium,graphine,tesla,free power,.not happening.
@@alanbrown397 I remember engine basics class, don't pull the valves from a head and toss in the hot tank until you have made certain they weren't from a leaded gas burning engine, they contained sodium, a cracked one would go boom.
+DrGJames Baxter Interesting that you've identified that there is potential for using tech like this in space, but tell me -- how to make use of that energy, in space? Have you any ideas for direct applications for it? "Desalinating water" in space.... if we also boost a huge tank of salt water up with the reactor and the spaceship that holds it...
+jamespfp The thing is with everything there is the positive and negative, we would have to take salt water to space to begin with , but then once we have a source there established it would solve the issue . In space it would be safer for long term power supply , for research stations, colonies, and exploration. all in due time things can be solved . The issue is why are we not doing this faster?
@DrakeDorosh "Plutonium for the cold war" means relatively high-purity Pu239; for that the military had special weapons-optimized reactors like the "B Reactor" at Hanford. Civilian (power-optimized) reactors (fast breeders included) that are operated normally will produce plutonium with significant quantities of contaminant isotopes like Pu238, Pu240 and Pu242 that render it fairly useless for weaponization.
Terrorists cannot get plutonium to build bombs without either building a nuclear reactor, and reprocessing plant OR a nation state furnished it to them. It cannot be obtained simply by separating it from used nuclear fuel, the reactor must be designed to produce plutonium-239 primarily. That is how one goes from irradiated nuclear fuel to a bomb.
This is by far, the best approach to not only solving the need for energy in a modern world but can also alleviate global warming. It would behoove the U.S. to invest in LFTR's much like it did for the Manhattan project. The sooner these come online the better.
Let us hope the politicians can keep the costs down rather than the big investors failing to consider the poorer people of our World. I am fed up with big Nuclear power companies and others putting their profits before those who need a cheaper energy source like Thorium 232 and 233 and similar breeder reactors described by Kirk Sorensen and his discoveries in small Thorium 232 and 233 nuclear green power plants. John Eric Hoare. British Brexiteer, and international deep-seaman, retired.
I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a big Nuclear power company. There are huge amounts of anti-nuclear propaganda, even from NGOs that were once genuinely Environmentalist. "Renewable Energy" is expensive rubbish.
Why isn't this transmitted or featured on youtube? Come on Google... it takes little effort to place it within the feed of the crowd to share the knowledge and initiate the moment across the planet.
Its diversion, however, is easily noted (hey, where's my start charge!?), and it's basically the same stuff we use in research reactors around the country. We've already got security protocols surrounding that. At the fueling phase, there's literally no proliferation risk. In the periodic defueling phase (i.e., removal of excess U-233 produced), proliferation is limited by the production of 232-U. In the spent fuel removal and storage, there is no risk, since there are no fissiles.
I'm convinced the future of nuclear energy is in the thorium cycle and the LFTR. I wonder what advancements have been achieved since this video was made.
The biggest disadvantage of water is the insane level of pressure needed to keep it liquid at reactor temperatures. Sorensen has done the world a huge favor in recovering the records of the MSRE. In that experiment, Alvin Weinberg, designer of the PWR, addressed and remedied about four weeknesses of that older design.
A friend is a nuke Physicist. I asked him why they never used Thorium as it was far safer and in abundance .he said to me that everyone is his business knows why they went for highly dangerous uranium and fast breeder reactors. It was simply because the military initially wanted the spent fuel for military weapons from the byproduct of making Urunium and plutonium. fact ... The very 1st reactor in the UK was created specifically for weapons grade pludonium only and it was electricity that came as a byproduct. not the other way around.thats why no expense was spared regardless of the danger of them blowing up on occasion. Plus also he said government so called leader could hardly organise a piss up in a brewery. Its big business that drives most of the major policies .
@@mantisnomo5984 It sounds as though you are talking about a bomb. I was referring to civilian power produced or facilitated by the Department's actions.
@@parrotraiser6541 - I was referring to the fraud of double-speak under which the DoE was founded. It's true they were given power over consumer energy production in the US, but their focus and primary interest has always been to exert control over the nuclear weapons of the US. The 2 responsibilities appear to be unrelated, if not diametrically opposed. It's time for a change in this part of the infrastructure. You're right: Turns out providing energy for the civilian sector is important, too.
That is immensely illuminating because there was a story told in a goggle lecture where the guy who was developing the Thorium reactor got fired and ridiculed for being over concerned with safety. The way that guy tells it the navy could have chosen his reactor instead. His telling of events left me very confident but somehow mislead. Naturally the oldest technology would earn the greatest loyalty and "safety" is what you know.
Molten salt is highly reactive if it is exposed to moisture. It also doesn't have a negative coefficient of reactivity, which makes it inherently unstable. The main reason MSBRs weren't pursued was primarily because of safety concerns and reliability. Thorium Breeder Reactors would be great, but it should be cooled by pressurized water, not molten salt.
Gr8 video Kirk have you solved the graphite moderator trouble in the LFTR yet is copper graphite laminates the answer? Or are you moving toward graphite pellets rolling around?
@@BringDHouseDown If somebody pulls of the vision discussed here, that's absolutely what the world needs. Maybe it's a good thing if china keeps the west on it's toes technologically.
Seth Bishop ...That’s encouraging to see. I wasn’t aware the DOE was pushing things along. Maybe it’ll gain enough traction to sustain a non-supportive presidency. However, it is well stated: ”The 7-year time frame also strains credulity...”. Overall hopeful, anyway.
An LWR has high resistance at the fueling, defueling, and storage steps - first, low enrichment; second, high radioactivity; last, high burnup meaning contamination of the 239-Pu with 240- and 241-Pu, which have gamma emitters in their decay chains (like 232-U) and a spontaneous fission problem (== premature fizzle). A LFTR has similarly high resistance, with one exception: the start charge needs to be fairly high enriched fissile uranium - 235 or 233. If 235, it's entirely useful for weapons.
We should have gone 100% nuclear power decades ago. France is over 80% nuclear power plants. Zero carbon emissions, 4 to 10 times the electricity than coal. Only 3 major accidents, only Chernobyl had fatalities. 3 mile island was a maintenance issue and Fukushima was due to natural disaster. Fact Check: The “gas crunch” was never about OPEC and the Yom Kippur war. It was about oil refineries saving oil reserves for UNLEADED GASOLINE.
Politics gets in the way of everything that could improve lives. Also it has to do with money. Just look at science and medicine, only big money gets the go ahead for projects.
@@suzieseabee Thats 100% true. The reason money is the main factor in most decisions on this scale is of the enormous amount of R&D required. Private capital will expect a return on investment. On the other hand, government energy subsidies are somewhat of a norm in the modern age, but few elected officials will back any energy concepts with the word "nuclear" attached to it
There has been amazing progress in molten salt reactor technology that this talk inspired. Dozens of start-up companies are competing to be first to market. This is just a very slow industry by its nature.
@@trishgao8950 Oakridge national laboratory. It operated from 1965 to 1969, 7.4 mw reactor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment All of their research was essentially shelved because the military controlled everything to do with nuclear, and they wanted plutonium for bombs. The project was shuttered, but a few years back the chinese started asking around and they literally were let in and allowed to take all the research, or at least make copies of it. That would have included operating notes that you could use to calculate operating cost to benefit analysis, by knowing how much electricity they generated and what was required to maintain it.
'Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.'
31:40 The argument with the data center in Sweden and the solar power plants in Spain is a false one. Facebook build the data center next to the arctic circle, because the hydropower plants had not much customers there and it is costly to transport the power to the Stockholm area. High loads next to remote hydropower is the usual recipe with aluminium smelters in Norway, Iceland and Canada. In case solar power becomes widespread in Northern Africa, consumers will move there. Industry has always followed power sources (first run of river, later coal), not the other way around.
"The downside is that they are very expensive and have ”never been commercial”. Superphoenix, a breeder reactor in France, took seven years from 1974 to build, but produced a small fraction of the electricity it promised to produce and was eventually closed in 1998 Diesendorf is unconvinced about thorium particularly: ”The new technology doesn’t exist. It’s all talk, it’s all plans. India has been trying to build an incredibly complicated three-part system for thorium and if it ever works it will be much more expensive than existing reactors and even more dangerous.”
@Blyledge Actually if the salt does leak from the reactor (the worst case scenario) it quickly expands because it's no longer under slightly-higher-than-atmospheric pressure. As it expands, nuclear reactions cease, the salt cools very rapidly and eventually solidifies. The salt is insoluble in water and stays put until you clean it up. Because the salt is reprocessed constantly during operation, there is very little Radioxenon present in it at any time to escape into the environment.
lightfdar: I would get the Nuclear Engineering degree. I already have one including a PE license in nuclear engineering in the state of Maryland. It is guaranteed job security. Oh, and yes the MSR is more job security for nuclear engineers for the next 1000 years plus.
tumaru No,neither thorium or its byproducts can be made into a bomb. That is the other reason why thorium reactors were not funded when they were invented-it was during the cold war. (nuclear arms race,FTW)
A ten year old talk shows how AGW is bunk. If it AGW wasn’t a joke then it’s now a forest fire, I don’t know how cold of a winter Europeans can tolerate, but we are about to find out.
Great lecture on an issue that should be much more widely understood. If fusion won't be with us until 2050, the decision to scrap molten salt reactor research could see coal burning go on for decades longer than it needed to. Thanks.
Dr Kirk Sorensen has my vote; he has charisma and can inspire people in politics. Adolf Hitler had charisma and was able to influence a large number of people in Germany. We need more than charisma; we need objective thinking. Thorium LFTR has serious drawbacks also.
@clumma Ft. St. Vrain didn't hit a conversion ratio higher than one, so it wasn't a breeder. The thorium-U233 dioxide final core at Shippingport did have a conversion ratio higher than one, proving that thermal breeding in thorium was truly possible.
Batteries can be made from Paizo material which is salt and the frequency can be adjusted with diodes collecting into a capacitor sale of lithium ion and layers of navy odium
Correct. Thorium LFTR: hard gamma emissions in operation, corrosive materials, containment vessels (Austenitic stainless steel) becomes very radioactive after prolonged use, containment embrittlement, continuous chemical reprocessing needed concurrently (creating operating hazard and other types of nuclear waste). Dr Kirk Sorensen is naively over-optimistic.
@@tommorris3688 &,,??..so,all the 2000 plus reactors that exploded,is nothing,??,2000 plus nuclear bombs set of for what,??,we all know they go bang,.fuck.&,on the fuck subject,why dont you go clean up fukashima,,OR DOESNT ANY ONE CARE....its a joke.!!.
transmission is part of it, but the other part is storage. Because renewable like solar and wind are intermittent you need either some storage mechanism or base load plants which can be turned up and down at whim like nuclear, hydro, coal and oil. Anything which has a fuel really.
Kirk Sorensen has a bee in his bonnet for LFTR reactors. In my opinion he is not very objective about it. Much can be said in favour of Thorium as a nuclear fuel but plenty can also be said against it.
.. Mark Jacobson: New nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh. Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated. In addition, it creates risk and cost associated with weapons proliferation, meltdown, mining lung cancer, and waste risks. Clean, renewables avoid all such risks.
The CHINESE are going to be the first to build a series of Molten Salt Reactors, and with that technology they are going to make the U.S. look like a small backwards 3rd-world nation by comparison. the Chinese are already building their versions of this type of reactor and should be operational by 2018 to 2020.
+mikeyh0 No, they don't, because the US has almost nothing of note on the topic anyway. Had you watched the presentation you'd know that the only (experimental) American LFTR ever built was closed down more than 30 years ago.
+Honesty Counts And what kind of reactor will that be? A research reactor or a commercial reactor that actually will be connected to the grid as well? I REALLY doubt that it's the latter (the Chinese are not THAT advanced, nobody is) and if it's the former then that's nothing extraordinary. Also, do you happen to have a source on this bit of information you have too?
From what I have gathered so far Kirk seems to be saying that meltdowns have occurred in the past because of various chemical properties of the system leading to failure. This LFTR seems to have dealt with these issues by using a different fuel and a different fission method to eliminate not only the risk of a meltdown but the possibility of one. Since the fuel mix is already molten it can easily be drained into a containment unit designed to dissipate heat safely.
+hettygreene I agree partly with what you're saying, but it isn't his primary defence, is it? Beginning of the video, he says explicitly that it allows for some solution to carbon fuel, not because of environmental disaster, but because we recognize there's a limited supply of carbon fuels; he is not pretending that oil is indefinitely useful.
+jamespfp In a word No. As much as we'd want thorium to succeed, we shouldn't make concessions, however small, to the, basically, mass ignorance of "global warming".
I'm wondering if we could build LFTRs next to existing nuclear power facilities so the spent fuel pools and maybe the containment vessel and other buildings could be used for part of the LFTR after a shutdown and remodification. The grid network and steam generator set and infrastructure are already there that could make this more feasable. Maybe radioactive contamination would be too much of a problem but, what do you do with a nuclear plant when you're done with it? Recycle, Reuse?
[thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.'
fukushima, their were deaths. The area is costing billions to clean up, entire villages had to be evacuated and are still radiated. Not important? Tossed with the remark, "no deaths".
hastelloy n is the alloy (not aluminum) that was planned to combat the corrosion problems. But even if the reactor leaked, the waste would not explode and irradiate a 50 mile radios. It would dribble on the floor to be cleaned up by someone with the proper PPE.
look at all these youtube scientists lol you people know everything about nuclear power and how to fix all the world's problems huh? funny that you know all the answers but the smartest people in the world that have dedicated their lives to studying these things experimentally and theoretically simply can't figure it out. if only they watched youtube videos all day instead of wasting their time at the most elaborate science experiments in the world.
@FollyAwakened: Your sense of irony is genuinely amusing; I literally laughed out loud! But your mockery of the lay community coalescing in dialogue around what is arguably the most urgently vital topic of our day seems driven by a cynicism that runs counter to one of the noblest facets of the web... a more informed, aware general public! If you are in favor of an informational oligarchy where only those bearing the Imprimatur of the Avout are suffered to listen, speak, learn or debate about such lofty matters as what kind of Yak shit the tribe should burn to heat our huts, then mine some Thorium and Patrician-fist it up your time-hole back to Medieval-1984-Serf-Nazi-Illiterate-Dirt-Farmer-Land. There you shall be unmolested by us irksome internet ignorami. D!ck.
Walrus1911 So what. That doesn't make him a good scientist, or a good judge or engineer or anything. Lots of good smart people are putting genetically modified organisms into the world because they know better. There is no proof or even economic argument to say we need them, it's just another way to make money and lock others out of that stream. That is what dictates most of the stuff we see and hear ... educating the public, that's a good one. I supposed in regimentation and indoctrination some amount of education must take place. Nathan Duke you sound like a D!ck actually.
@Knepperify1 Actually the plugs are made of FLiBe salt, just like the molten salts in the reactor. The plugs are kept cool enough to remain solid by external fans. If the salt heats up too much, the plugs overheat and melt. The fans can also be manually stopped to purge the molten salts for scheduled shutdowns (they did this every weekend with the ORNL MSR project, before going home). If power is cut off, the fans stop and the plugs also melt then.
Carter worked with Rickover during his time in the Navy. Ford could not ignore Carter's expertise and authority there. TMI and Carter's presence and speach from the grounds was an authoritive effort to settle the outcry and panic.
The DOE studies on thorium reactors state that the main route of fission by thorium reactors produces 1/4 the Plutonium of conventional Uranium fission per joule of power produced. Due to its high burnup capabilities, being re-cyclable maybe 100 times, the amount of plutonium per burnup is maybe 1/400th of conventional reactors per unit mass. The conflationary tactics of the nuclear industry are well in evidence with thorium marketing. Per JOULE, which is the only valid metric, 1/4 as much Plutonium is produced as with conventional plants. That waste, like all the other plutonium waste, is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Other thorium routes exist and they produce some really nasty, high level waste.
A thermal neutron is a free neutron with a kinetic energy of about 0.025 eV (about 4.0×10−21 J or 2.4 MJ/kg, hence a speed of 2.19 km/s), which is the energy corresponding to the most probable speed at a temperature of 290 K (17 °C or 62 °F), the mode of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for this temperature.
Kirk: After listening to Crosby Lyle I have come to the conclusion that our flibe reactor can be proliferative without solid controls. The key here is praseodymium. In other words the capture of this chemical bypasses the concentration necessary to protect the material from high rad 242. Chemical separation of this chemical can be pure. Or have got this wrong?
Note to Kirk: fission is pronounced like "gone fishin" (like mission, compression, session, possession). The single 's' in fusion has the fyü-zhᵊn sound (like confusion, contusion, intrusion, etc.)
Obama through CRADA gave all the technology we had on the MSR and stated that the US had no will to have nuclear power-safe and clean and cheap energy....what a turd.
@@robertbrandywine Barack Obama. China's Shanghai Academy of Science and Technology entered a cooperation agreement with Oakridge national laboratory to develop MSR nuclear reactor. He greenlighted the cooperation. However US folks should not blame everything on Obama. US has no intention to carry on MSR reactor development.
Can the containment building safely hold the complete contents of the reactor in the event of a rupture? What is the output level of waste gases like xenon and how are they handled?
The ruptures you are thinking of are all caused by high pressure environments. Molten salt doesn’t release enough gases to have more than 1 atmosphere of pressure at the 1500 degrees Celsius operating temperature. Meaning that even if the container is 1 mm thick, it wouldn’t rupture because the air presses back on it the same amount that it presses out. The reason ruptures happen with light water reactors is that water must be compressed several times (on the order of 100 times) the pressure of the atmosphere, leading to the almost inevitability of a stress fracture that leads to the water flashing into steam and destroying everything.
I live near the Hanford Atomic Reservation in southeastern Wa. state where the Fast Flux Test Facility was built. Unfortunately it was shut down many years ago. I am also not far from the LIGO Observatory also at Hanford. Hanford is also a major radioactive waste dump that is major problem that never gets cleaned up. We get most of our Electric Power from Grand Coulee Dam's hydro-electric generators. There's plenty of space on the Hanford reservation for Fast Breeder Reactors, Fusion Reactors and even Solar-Thermal Power Plants. We also have the Pacific Northwest Laboratories and Batelle Northwest. The "government" can't find it's way out of a paper bag, it's up to Private Industry to make these things happen, just like the Space Program. Let's Reach for the Stars and get the job done.
Even if you don't care about nuclear energy, you should watch the tech talks by Sorensen (all of them). He explains so much about how nuclear works and the steps involved that it leaves you with the knowledge to understand issues like Iran and their enrichment program, what nuclear waiste is, and how we got into the mess of having waiste stored at all of the plants. This even goes for the trolls out there. You can do a much better job of trolling if you understand the material.
It should be noted that Molten Salt is not the only way to use Thorium. Thorium is the optimal fuel cycle from a proliferation standpoint and could work using the current PWR and Fast Breeder technology. There are many options, I'm quite a fan of a Thorium fueled traveling wave core.
Robert: you're perfectly correct that Thorium could be used in both cycles. but the big disavantage of both is the issue of "fuel rods" which end up containing an unholy mixture of fissile byproducts (and leave you vulnerable to Xenon poisoning) which are an attractive target for bad people wanting to do bad things as well as requiring that you periodically shut down the system to replace fuel assemblies. One of the big things that MSRs have going for them is that you can run continual onsite reprocessing (it's a necessary part of the design) and "clean as you go" - which means that the reactor seldom-if-ever needs to be shut down for maintenance.
Thorium is mined from the Earth. Currently it is being buried again (after extracting other rare earths from it's ore) because there is no market for it.
Additionally, since there's very little mas to deal with, relatively speaking, (~1 T/GWy fission products, ~10 kg/GWy 233-U, compared to ~100T/GWy of mixed fission products, XXX-U and XXX-Pu), the overall risk is lower. So LFTRs offer much more proliferation resistance than LWRs - but that is absolutely not to say LWRs are not resistant, or that they're "weapon-supporting".
Advantages of thorium:
Much safer than uranium-no pressure vesel, no fuel rods to melt down
Much simpler reactor-Thorium salt liquid is pumped from the reactor tank through a heat exchanger and back into the tank
Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium--in fact so plentiful it is considered a waste product from rare earth mining
Thorium doesn't need expensive enriching to make it usable
Thorium is of little use for weapons
If power goes off liquid fuel simply drains into a pit which stops reaction. No fuel rods to cool or melt down if power fails
This technology has been around for years. Why was it not developed long ago? Politics, methinks.
Why were thorium reactors not developed? I think the main reason is thorium is of little use for weapons. Governments would rather build bombs than safe, inexpensive power plants, and thorium just doesn't fit that bill.
+wvhillbilly That is pretty much the reason right there.
You forgot 2 other real benefits:
1. conventional Uranium & Plutonium reactors convert only around 0.5% of the available energy compared to 99% with LFTR reactors.
2. And this is the most important, the waste products fall to background radiation levels within 350 years compared to 100,000 or more with conventional reactors
Wvhillbilly most of the advantages you stated only apply to the LFTR.There are multiple reactors that can use Thorium as fuels and are very different.
Some misleading points in your comment:
Thorium is only more plentiful than Uranium if you only consider earth's crust. Uranium is much more plentiful then Thorium in sea water. (However, extracting U from sea water is more expensive as of now).
Thorium does need enriching to start the reaction (some Uranium is needed for that), but once it started, there is no need for further enrichment. So it's a bit misleading. It doesn't need expensive enriching, but it needs some enriching.
As for weapons, it can be used, but as you stated, there are other more usable materials.
But otherwise your points are valid. Here's a list with some Thorium myths: whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
This is one of the BEST Google-tech talks ever presented. Tight editing for concise content and Sorensen's masterful command of the subject shine here.
This is THE MOST IMPORTANT topic for humankind and the future of Earth.
We need LIFTRs NOW!
+Learner-Learns LFTRs? Now? It's a tad bit too late (50 years too late) for that I'm afraid. We missed out on so much R&D on LFTR that it'll be a blessing if the technology will become viable in the upcoming decades.
+darthvader5300 So, after you find the caps lock key on your keyboard, turn it off, then take all your meds, check this out: I'm not an American. Before you start ranting about conspiracies and scientists' powerful enemies, let me tell you that many other countries built MUCH bigger breeder reactors too, some with a power capacity of 1000MW (electrical) even and yet all of them have been scrapped. You wanna know why? Because it's still far too unfeasible to everyone who has access to U235. While U235 is around (and it WILL be around for quite some time in fact), building ANY kind of breeder reactor is simply not economically viable enough. The Americans had to spend billions of dollars to realize this and probably many other countries have also invested an ungodly amount of money in it too. And until no feasible FBR (let alone a LFTR) design is found (patents are pretty much irrelevant anyway, because the designs patented by Americans are useless anyway, otherwise they'd already be using at least some of them), no private company will take a risk of building a power plant utilizing that technology either (they rarely build nuclear power plants anyway, because they're so expensive).
+darthvader5300 Even if I take the position that I agree with you, which I don't, let me ask.... has *your* government ever done anything wrong? Let he who is not sinless throw the first stone...And then after you throw that stone, throw your caps lock key, ok?
Probably not. Dr Kirk Sorenson's assertions are wildly optimistic. If the molten salt configuration were so much better, they would have been used long ago. Thorium IV has certain drawbacks as well. Do not be caught up by Dr Kirk Sorensen's charisma. You need to consider the issues objectively.
Rather incorrect, when studied in greater detail. Thorium LFTR is an obsolete relic from Oak Ridge from the1950's.
Kirk, your relentless advocacy for this technology has been heroic, and there are a ton of people who appreciate it, and want you to succeed in realizing this sane re-definition of a practical standard for safely utilizing the 'king of all fossil fuels'.
Neither thorium nor uranium is in any way a fossil fuel. That stuff existed before the syn ignited. They are the remains of gigantic stellar gravitational collapses, such as supernovae
I watched the Oakridge documentary from 1970's, then this. What has happened in the last 11 years as there doesn't seem to be any 'new' information except China is researching Thorium reactors
@@1crazypj and China knows a good thorium design offers more sales potential which feeds orders for concrete, steel and Chinese workers with a lower risk design at a lower cost which for nuclear is the biggest hesitation to governments and private capital pooling investment. Africa will need nuclear no matter how many solar farms and offshore wind relies on strong grid design. Plus less tender competition from Russia who can access fuel as a sweetner
To say this guy knows his stuff is an understatement. Yet here we are in 2021, to my knowledge there are no plans for a LFTR in the US. China, however, is building at least one if not more.
Indonesia is receiving a ship from China carrying a Thorium fueled, Liquid Salt (aka LFTR) Nuclear Reactor.
It will tie up at a wharf and supply the city with cheap electricity 24/7 - 365 for more than 20 years.
The reactor was built using information obtained under the US freedom of information laws from The Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Abilene Christian University is building one right now - ua-cam.com/video/eVKPussybWg/v-deo.html
@@trentballew I'm talking about a commercial scale reactor. We've tested the concept already.
If you are interested in this technology and it is 2024 and beyond, call your elected representatives and let them know you want to see this technology do this at the state, federal and local level. Also, know this, there are several companies and other organizations working in conjunction with department of energy laboratories around the country that are developing this technology and working their way through the nuclear regulatory commission licensing process. Your elected representatives need to know that these license applicants that are, several years involved in the licensing process need to be granted emergency prototyping status so that they can start building and running these machines and getting data to improve designs before they go to developmental, reactor status, and pre-commercial testing status. Let's get the ball rolling and start cooking up some salty soups, as well as many of the other fine reactor designs that are out there. I'm in favor of building all kind of reactors light water reactors, boiling water reactors can do reactors. Fast reactors slow neutron reactors but I am especially interested in seeing molten salt reactors come online ASAP.
I am currently using information on MSRs for two college class final projects, and I'm only in my first semester of my freshman year. I believe very, very strongly in this concept, and all I did was do some research and read scientific articles on recent experiments in Japan. They work. They are cheap to operate, especially because Thorium is a waste product of Rare Earth Metal production. They are safe, becoming less reactive as the salts expand outside operational temperature range. Hotter salt is less dense, and less dense salt becomes less reactive. The salts are also chemically not very reactive, with minor corrosion issues solvable by a highly reducing environment inside the pipes. The negative temperature coefficient of reactivity + atmospheric pressure operation + chemical stability means that it's PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for an explosive Chernobyl-style meltdown. The way fuel is bred inside the reactor means it is very, very difficult for U-233 to be turned into nuclear weapons, as fission/decay products from U-233 create massive gamma radiation hazards to all but highly trained scientists and engineers, while terrorists are almost never that highly skilled.
Not to mention the fact that these things could be used to power spacecraft, and it has been proven that asteroids are rather rich in heavy metals, including but not limited to thorium. There's enough thorium on Earth to power society for 80,000 to 100,000 years, and likely much more on asteroids to extend that to a million years or more.
Stepwise re-development towards MSRs is going like:
1. Solid Fuel Reactor cooled by liquid salt
2. Solid Fuel Pebble-Bed Reactor cooled by liquid salt
3. Smaller Pebble Fuel
4. Slurry reactor of tiny fuel pebbles flowing with coolant
5. fuel is literally dissolved in the coolant as an MSR
Hello Jason Its been 6 years now I'd like to know if Thorium MSRs became a part of your future in one way or another?
There is also a fast neutron molten salt design, because they are more efficient at splitting Pu-239.
It eventually became common knowledge that the main reason the UK promoted the implementation of a string of fast breeder reactors was not for the electricity they generate but to create enough excess plutonium for Great Britain's military to become a credible nuclear power.
Not true. Reactor grade plutonium, no matter how it's produced, won't make a bomb. The "Windscale fire" was indeed a consequence of Britain's stupid idea that having nuclear bombs was a Good Thing.
Windscale, right beside a decent honest civilian reactor site, was a hasty design like the "Chicago pile" for producing bomb grade plutonium, which requires interrupting the process every 90 days, or there's too much Pu-240 and the plutonium will explode too soon.
It suffered inadequate cooling by air, to allow the graphite to recover from displacements caused by the neutrons it was 'moderating'
@@albertrogers8008 English atomic scientists had good university designs that on paper were more efficient than the US, the problem was the ultra high end cooling design didn't work in reality, the state of industrial design was not there in reality. The UK never ran a test design using that design to see the flaws. They had no oil and even then coal was finite so nuclear generated power was the gold mine. The Americans had the industrial design skills born of unlimited expenditures in WW2 plus a industrial engineering poolset unlike the UK. Ironically the French went with a design that worked once done at scale
Thank you Kirk Sorensen for all of your marvelous presentations. We are fortunate to have an expert in the field also be such a master speaker and educator. Nuclear power, I am convinced, will be the only resource that will get the world to a point where we stop killing each other over scarcities (many of them manufactured), and direct our attention on peaceful, more exciting endeavors, like exploring and profitably using our solar system.
Well said sir
Humans will always be warring with each other and killing each other. It's eternal and baked into what humans are.
Nuclear power is a dead dog… almost nobody is building it anymore because it is too expensive. The lobby is pushing to get its next generation subsidies for a completely uncompetitive power generation mode. Look at France, their nuclear power strategy is collapsing with the tax payer picking up the tab in the end.
Excellent Presentation Kirk. I've been following your work for some time now and as a layman with no scientific background it's taken me many hours of listening to your presentations and those of your peers to understand how important your work is. I think that a 3 min video presenting the case for Thorium power that could be understood by anyone. Simple diagrams, powerful pictures from nature and the key non technical points put across in a video that could go viral on facebook and google+
Kirk Sorenson is the Carl Sagan of Liquid Salt Molten Salt Reactors. He explains complex things to basic elements so it is more reliably understand.
Since this video was produced we have been mining graphite in order to make graphine which eliminates the corrosion/oxidization problems noted here.
Mining coal for the graphene market? How many cups per year do you need?
@@mantisnomo5984 Mining coal to make rods for a few power stations or mining coal to just burn endlessly away producing a faction of the power a Thorium reactor could. Priorities as always
yes and any water still causes thorium salt to explode and leak out
@@AlanDeRossett What? The lithium in the salt is ionised. When the lithium metal reacts with water, it becomes Li+ that bonds with OH-. In fact, LiOH is the intermediate step in producing the salt. It's no longer reactive anymore. Do your research.
J D - That's right, while picking his nose with a pencil it occurred to him that the nib was sharp and hurt a lot. Thinking on his feet, he grabbed some Cellotape, slapped it on the end of his pencil then continued with rooting through his snot filled nostrils... After removing and subtly tasting the goods, he took the cellotape off and discovered graphite was stuck to it. Thus solving a life-long puzzle, securing him a Nobel Peace Prize and many bodacious babes.
Excellently presented! This man should be a professor! Best of luck to all of us!
Quoting: "This man should be a professor!"
Commenting: He is well on his way to that status!
It happened because making bombs was more important to the politicians and corporations so thorium reactors were not favored, now the nuclear energy business is so firmly entrenched they are standing in the way of a boundless energy future for short term goals. in other words greed is the culprit as usual
Really it was much simpler that that. Reactors were built for US subs first. What was known, was how to build reactors for making bomb material so this is what was used in the subs. Of course boiling water was what was also known how to make a boat go. These designs were simply scaled up for power reactors. Most likely if the issue was first build a power reactor something else may have been built. A lot of industrial development works this was. Like the key board I am typing with. It is the way it is because the first typewriters had swinging keys that would get tangled if one typed to fast. To ovoid this the letters on the key board were placed to slow the typist down. We still use this keyboard even though there are much better keyboards for less strain and faster typing out there.
you can get bomb material from thorium reactors
kenbrah but its very difficult and expensive
@@stanleytolle416 I read about that in the book "After the car" by John Urry, its a phenomenon in industrial development known as "locked in"
very compressed,dense , fast speaking, no blabla , a very good presentation.
A very good presentation on the history of nuclear engineering in the US.
Thank you for this clear explanation of the past and present situation. The main reason for not developing the Thorium Molten Salt reactor is most likely the influence from the oil and coal companies, both producing the most pollution in the world. They see this development as a threat to their business. And the many people who work in those industries and the shareholders will do everything in their power to stop or at least slow down this development.
Wrong!! You have been taught wrong. To keep the world green you need carbon dioxide. It's a good thing however, the "elites" want to BS people for their own control and wealth.
@@volt-amps3385 I agree, we need carbon dioxide, but for every element, there is a good amount or an exeeding amount. Apart from the polluted air as we find in some industrial areas. That kills people.
@@nibiruresearch So it's OK for China and other Countries to Build coal burners for their energy? Yes; I don't believe the Sham scientists that promote the sky is falling. There is no global warming! This world was created and We don't have the ability to destroy it. We are not that smart. This world was created with balance and aforethought!
@@nibiruresearch Lots of things kill people- big pharma, etc. China building 3 new coal burners, USA has most clean coal and Schwab the NWO guy likes the China model with others. It's a joke to those that know the truth. The people understand. I can go on but; thank you.
Only problem with this is the WGW / CC claim at 30:34.
The most important reason to move forward with LFTR is *public safety* .
how many years do you want to pay for safety? after its life get ready for $10 billion charges off to be paid by ratepayer to Guard from Terrorist
Interesting history behind the decision for fast breeder reactors. I also suspect the decision was military, as the nuclear arms race needed plutonium, which required FBRs.
No, fast breeder reactors are as unsuitable for bomb-making as retired fuel rods from the old kind.
What a fantastic presentation. Highly informative, easy to follow and sensible. I really can't see any good reason why the Thorium MSR shouldn't be pursued.
I remember the gas crunch from the oil embargo, being in the back seat of a hot car in the hot sun for hours in gas lines that stopped traffic for blocks.
very nice sir
The problems are in the Uranium reactors mostly, the 1940's - 1950's design... think of a 1950 car... still running but not in any way safe the way modern cars are. The Oak Ridge MSR is also from that era, but they are studying Molten Salt there right now, with all new parts.
The one problem that the mention of liquid salts will always bring immediately to mind is the problem of corrosion. We are already familiar with the problem of corrosion and leaks in our aging nuclear plants. The idea of extremely hot corrosive salts flowing around in the plant seems very dangerous. What materials offer practical solutions? Also what other potential problems are there in such a design?
Ceramics
Goddamn great presenter. If i ever had the chance to watch a speech from this guy in person I'd gladly take it. Two honors
science degrees later lol
Monju is based on fast neutrons and highly reactive liquid sodium metal coolant! The molten *salt* used in Th-MSR is stable. The U233 (contaminated with U232, as others have noted) is an intermediate produced in the salt for burnup, not to stockpile for weapons. The U233 has ~92% chance of fissioning; ~8% will capture a neutron instead and move to U234, which almost always captures a second and moves to U235. U235 has ~85% chance of fissioning; only ~1% of the Th232 input gets to 236+
Thanks, just reading his bio. I am so amazed of this Thorium reactors and it could be beginning of the new era. As for now Chinese government seems to be really interested in that and I think once they develop this reactor they will be selling more electricity to foreign countries and make them even more powerful.
Start talking to US DOE and US NRC now. The time is right to bring back MSR technology now.
My father briefly worked for the DOE back in the 70s-80s before going to the DOT and he said it was a shit show... Hard to press new tech while there is so much money spent on current reactors.. just may be a small part of it
As a machinist in the 1980's, I machined tungsten honeycomb devices for a liquid sodium reactor being built by Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Rumor was their reactor was tested in Hanover ID and allowed to go super-critical and the design theory was proven as it shut itself down properly. Is this Thorium reactor similar?
Liquid sodium systems are still uranium-based - and anyone who thought that sodium is "safe" is from a different planet to me. No matter now many precautions you take there will be leaks and molten sodium burns pretty hot when exposed to air (the japanese have found this out the hard way)
There are a lot of online resources about LFTRs and to be honest I think they're the best design available, with pebblebeds coming in close behind - the really big advantage of LFTR is that they're thorium-cycle based and that means you have a readily available supply of safe, cheap fuel which is extremely hard to weaponise.
The same reason for using molten salt as your fuel, is the same reason they cool fast reactors with liquid metal. You don't need to pressurize the reactor vessel to keep the fuel or coolant from boiling. PWRs need to be pressurized to something like 150 bar (more than 2000psi) and despite the name, Boiling Water Reactors are still pressurized to well over 70 bar or 1000psi. Sodium is very stable when irradiated though, which is why it is preferred in LMFBRs. The worst Sodium isotope you're likely to find in an LMFBR is Na-24 which only has a half-life of 15 days. This means storing the used coolant isn't really a problem, and if you have a leak and a sodium fire, you're not releasing harmful contaminants. And most of the time, the best bet for extinguishing a sodium fire is to just let it burn itself out. As it oxidizes, it forms an airtight crust and extinguishes itself. That Japanese incident at the Monju reactor was in a secondary loop which meant no irradiated sodium was released and the fire put itself out in less than an hour.
@@DriveCarToBar I wonder why gallium was never considered as a coolant instead of sodium and lead ?
wasnt a reactor built in the 50,s,??,ran for over a yr,then shut down as useless to the military.tesla was poisoned for same,other inventors dissapeared,or bought out,made to look stupid.this has been going on with advancement for thousands of yrs,.this is why we still have piston engines,batteries,ect,after 130 yrs.NOTHING NEW....thorium,graphine,tesla,free power,.not happening.
@@alanbrown397 I remember engine basics class, don't pull the valves from a head and toss in the hot tank until you have made certain they weren't from a leaded gas burning engine, they contained sodium, a cracked one would go boom.
4:50 is this where the saying "you couldn't hit the broadside of a barn" comes from?
We need to do this , this could also be used for space travel, and space exploration,this opens a lot of benefits for mankind, and the ecosystems
+DrGJames Baxter Interesting that you've identified that there is potential for using tech like this in space, but tell me -- how to make use of that energy, in space? Have you any ideas for direct applications for it? "Desalinating water" in space.... if we also boost a huge tank of salt water up with the reactor and the spaceship that holds it...
+jamespfp The thing is with everything there is the positive and negative, we would have to take salt water to space to begin with , but then once we have a source there established it would solve the issue . In space it would be safer for long term power supply , for research stations, colonies, and exploration. all in due time things can be solved . The issue is why are we not doing this faster?
+jamespfp The biggest benefit of this is safety and cheaper energy. Safer for everything and protecting life.
@@drgjamesbaxter7933 the materials are already in space...
@DrakeDorosh "Plutonium for the cold war" means relatively high-purity Pu239; for that the military had special weapons-optimized reactors like the "B Reactor" at Hanford. Civilian (power-optimized) reactors (fast breeders included) that are operated normally will produce plutonium with significant quantities of contaminant isotopes like Pu238, Pu240 and Pu242 that render it fairly useless for weaponization.
The dangers of fast breeder reactors are very scary and a scared public is more easily controlled (terrorism).
Terrorists cannot get plutonium to build bombs without either building a nuclear reactor, and reprocessing plant OR a nation state furnished it to them. It cannot be obtained simply by separating it from used nuclear fuel, the reactor must be designed to produce plutonium-239 primarily. That is how one goes from irradiated nuclear fuel to a bomb.
This is by far, the best approach to not only solving the need for energy in a modern world but can also alleviate global warming. It would behoove the U.S. to invest in LFTR's much like it did for the Manhattan project. The sooner these come online the better.
So basically Nixon, Milton and chet are all crips?
This company has been making nothing but beautiful charts for a decade.
So why The Hell isn't a Thorium reactor in operation somewhere Yet???
100% because of scare created by the illiterate humanist hippies in the 70's.
it dont produce weapons,work it out,the world is run by the military,NOT,the gov.,
It is being built right now in China. Look it up.
if,you look at history,more than 10 yrs ago,,,duh,,,they had one running for over a yr,till it was shut down by the gov.,in 1954...
its not economically sustianable. people do not want to pay more for energy and no private VCs or governments want to subsidize
Let us hope the politicians can keep the costs down rather than the big investors failing to consider the poorer people of our World. I am fed up with big Nuclear power companies and others putting their profits before those who need a cheaper energy source like Thorium 232 and 233 and similar breeder reactors described by Kirk Sorensen and his discoveries in small Thorium 232 and 233 nuclear green power plants. John Eric Hoare. British Brexiteer, and international deep-seaman, retired.
I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a big Nuclear power company. There are huge amounts of anti-nuclear propaganda, even from NGOs that were once genuinely Environmentalist.
"Renewable Energy" is expensive rubbish.
Why isn't this transmitted or featured on youtube?
Come on Google... it takes little effort to place it within the feed of the crowd to share the knowledge and initiate the moment across the planet.
+Rod Landaeta Especially when they own both formats... It couldn't have anything to do with outside influences could it?? No, impossible...
+Rod Landaeta Because most of the people are too dumb or too ignorant to care. And if they aren't, they would a hard time comprehending it as well.
It's really poorly shot
Its diversion, however, is easily noted (hey, where's my start charge!?), and it's basically the same stuff we use in research reactors around the country. We've already got security protocols surrounding that.
At the fueling phase, there's literally no proliferation risk. In the periodic defueling phase (i.e., removal of excess U-233 produced), proliferation is limited by the production of 232-U. In the spent fuel removal and storage, there is no risk, since there are no fissiles.
I'm convinced the future of nuclear energy is in the thorium cycle and the LFTR. I wonder what advancements have been achieved since this video was made.
I'm convinced the future of nuclear energy is on the moon, and powering nuclear rockets launched from a lunar spaceport.
The biggest disadvantage of water is the insane level of pressure needed to keep it liquid at reactor temperatures. Sorensen has done the world a huge favor in recovering the records of the MSRE. In that experiment, Alvin Weinberg, designer of the PWR, addressed and remedied about four weeknesses of that older design.
A friend is a nuke Physicist. I asked him why they never used Thorium as it was far safer and in abundance .he said to me that everyone is his business knows why they went for highly dangerous uranium and fast breeder reactors. It was simply because the military initially wanted the spent fuel for military weapons from the byproduct of making Urunium and plutonium. fact ... The very 1st reactor in the UK was created specifically for weapons grade pludonium only and it was electricity that came as a byproduct. not the other way around.thats why no expense was spared regardless of the danger of them blowing up on occasion. Plus also he said government so called leader could hardly organise a piss up in a brewery. Its big business that drives most of the major policies .
Has the DoE ever produced or enabled the production of a kWh (or equivalent) of energy?
Yes. A megaton is 1.16 Billion kWh. And talk about power! The DOE produces all of that energy in milliseconds!
@@mantisnomo5984 It sounds as though you are talking about a bomb. I was referring to civilian power produced or facilitated by the Department's actions.
@@parrotraiser6541 - I was referring to the fraud of double-speak under which the DoE was founded. It's true they were given power over consumer energy production in the US, but their focus and primary interest has always been to exert control over the nuclear weapons of the US. The 2 responsibilities appear to be unrelated, if not diametrically opposed. It's time for a change in this part of the infrastructure. You're right: Turns out providing energy for the civilian sector is important, too.
That is immensely illuminating because there was a story told in a goggle lecture where the guy who was developing the Thorium reactor got fired and ridiculed for being over concerned with safety. The way that guy tells it the navy could have chosen his reactor instead. His telling of events left me very confident but somehow mislead. Naturally the oldest technology would earn the greatest loyalty and "safety" is what you know.
Molten salt is highly reactive if it is exposed to moisture. It also doesn't have a negative coefficient of reactivity, which makes it inherently unstable.
The main reason MSBRs weren't pursued was primarily because of safety concerns and reliability.
Thorium Breeder Reactors would be great, but it should be cooled by pressurized water, not molten salt.
Gr8 video Kirk have you solved the graphite moderator trouble in the LFTR yet is copper graphite laminates the answer? Or are you moving toward graphite pellets rolling around?
And something called Honey Boo Boo is on The Learning Channel.
I suspect that a LOT of the reason behind why not Thorium and why Uranium... Depleted Uranium can be weaponized...
8 years later.....lol....
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT??? It's Google.
@@BringDHouseDown If somebody pulls of the vision discussed here, that's absolutely what the world needs.
Maybe it's a good thing if china keeps the west on it's toes technologically.
www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/us-department-energy-rushes-build-advanced-new-nuclear-reactors
Doe is building 2.
Seth Bishop ...That’s encouraging to see. I wasn’t aware the DOE was pushing things along. Maybe it’ll gain enough traction to sustain a non-supportive presidency. However, it is well stated: ”The 7-year time frame also strains credulity...”. Overall hopeful, anyway.
9 years later now
An LWR has high resistance at the fueling, defueling, and storage steps - first, low enrichment; second, high radioactivity; last, high burnup meaning contamination of the 239-Pu with 240- and 241-Pu, which have gamma emitters in their decay chains (like 232-U) and a spontaneous fission problem (== premature fizzle).
A LFTR has similarly high resistance, with one exception: the start charge needs to be fairly high enriched fissile uranium - 235 or 233. If 235, it's entirely useful for weapons.
is it possible to produce power though Magneto Hydro Dynamics using the molten salt?
As far as I am aware the molten salt slurry used would have been sufficiently conductive given a strong enough magnetic field.
We should have gone 100% nuclear power decades ago. France is over 80% nuclear power plants. Zero carbon emissions, 4 to 10 times the electricity than coal. Only 3 major accidents, only Chernobyl had fatalities. 3 mile island was a maintenance issue and Fukushima was due to natural disaster.
Fact Check: The “gas crunch” was never about OPEC and the Yom Kippur war. It was about oil refineries saving oil reserves for UNLEADED GASOLINE.
So politics cost the people of the USA 100s of billions of dollars and the people of the world trillions of dollars.
To bad it is illegal for the average Joe to invest into his company. Damn you regulation.
It just goes to show, the president of the country should not be its CTO. (What's that? We elected Donald Trump? I rest my case.)
and the earth
Politics gets in the way of everything that could improve lives. Also it has to do with money. Just look at science and medicine, only big money gets the go ahead for projects.
@@suzieseabee Thats 100% true. The reason money is the main factor in most decisions on this scale is of the enormous amount of R&D required. Private capital will expect a return on investment. On the other hand, government energy subsidies are somewhat of a norm in the modern age, but few elected officials will back any energy concepts with the word "nuclear" attached to it
10 years later…. Where we at?
There has been amazing progress in molten salt reactor technology that this talk inspired. Dozens of start-up companies are competing to be first to market. This is just a very slow industry by its nature.
Where is an operating thorium reactor so we can do a Cost Benefit Analysis on it? .. Answer - No where. ..
There was one dumbass, it got shut down for political reasons.
@@hzuiel where is it located?
@@trishgao8950 Oakridge national laboratory. It operated from 1965 to 1969, 7.4 mw reactor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment All of their research was essentially shelved because the military controlled everything to do with nuclear, and they wanted plutonium for bombs. The project was shuttered, but a few years back the chinese started asking around and they literally were let in and allowed to take all the research, or at least make copies of it. That would have included operating notes that you could use to calculate operating cost to benefit analysis, by knowing how much electricity they generated and what was required to maintain it.
'Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.'
31:40 The argument with the data center in Sweden and the solar power plants in Spain is a false one. Facebook build the data center next to the arctic circle, because the hydropower plants had not much customers there and it is costly to transport the power to the Stockholm area. High loads next to remote hydropower is the usual recipe with aluminium smelters in Norway, Iceland and Canada. In case solar power becomes widespread in Northern Africa, consumers will move there. Industry has always followed power sources (first run of river, later coal), not the other way around.
This could reduce the threat of nuclear war. Possibilities are endless
This. Needs. More. Awareness.
"The downside is that they are very expensive and have ”never been commercial”. Superphoenix, a breeder reactor in France, took seven years from 1974 to build, but produced a small fraction of the electricity it promised to produce and was eventually closed in 1998 Diesendorf is unconvinced about thorium particularly: ”The new technology doesn’t exist. It’s all talk, it’s all plans. India has been trying to build an incredibly complicated three-part system for thorium and if it ever works it will be much more expensive than existing reactors and even more dangerous.”
@Blyledge Actually if the salt does leak from the reactor (the worst case scenario) it quickly expands because it's no longer under slightly-higher-than-atmospheric pressure. As it expands, nuclear reactions cease, the salt cools very rapidly and eventually solidifies. The salt is insoluble in water and stays put until you clean it up. Because the salt is reprocessed constantly during operation, there is very little Radioxenon present in it at any time to escape into the environment.
The Xenon/Radium gases simply bubble out of the liquid salt.
Time to go back to university. A masters degree in nuclear engineering here I come.
lightfdar: I would get the Nuclear Engineering degree. I already have one including a PE license in nuclear engineering in the state of Maryland. It is guaranteed job security.
Oh, and yes the MSR is more job security for nuclear engineers for the next 1000 years plus.
20:34 This goes to show why politicians should not make tech decisions..
for real man for real,
tumaru No,neither thorium or its byproducts can be made into a bomb.
That is the other reason why thorium reactors were not funded when they were invented-it was during the cold war.
(nuclear arms race,FTW)
A ten year old talk shows how AGW is bunk. If it AGW wasn’t a joke then it’s now a forest fire, I don’t know how cold of a winter Europeans can tolerate, but we are about to find out.
Trump should talk to this man...and made him rich!
BTW- 33:05 - HOLY CRAP!
Great lecture on an issue that should be much more widely understood. If fusion won't be with us until 2050, the decision to scrap molten salt reactor research could see coal burning go on for decades longer than it needed to. Thanks.
Kirk should be Trump's Energy Secretary when he's elected President...
Trump only cares about obsolete technologies, like coal and oil.
Just goes to show, the president of the country should not be its CTO.
No, it goes to show why an idiot should never be elected president.
Dr Kirk Sorensen has my vote; he has charisma and can inspire people in politics. Adolf Hitler had charisma and was able to influence a large number of people in Germany. We need more than charisma; we need objective thinking. Thorium LFTR has serious drawbacks also.
@clumma Ft. St. Vrain didn't hit a conversion ratio higher than one, so it wasn't a breeder. The thorium-U233 dioxide final core at Shippingport did have a conversion ratio higher than one, proving that thermal breeding in thorium was truly possible.
#Thoriumisthefuture
Batteries can be made from Paizo material which is salt and the frequency can be adjusted with diodes collecting into a capacitor sale of lithium ion and layers of navy odium
"Sounds great right?! Well, unless you're the environment."
danishfella derp
Correct. Thorium LFTR: hard gamma emissions in operation, corrosive materials, containment vessels (Austenitic stainless steel) becomes very radioactive after prolonged use, containment embrittlement, continuous chemical reprocessing needed concurrently (creating operating hazard and other types of nuclear waste). Dr Kirk Sorensen is naively over-optimistic.
@@tommorris3688 wrong
@@tommorris3688 &,,??..so,all the 2000 plus reactors that exploded,is nothing,??,2000 plus nuclear bombs set of for what,??,we all know they go bang,.fuck.&,on the fuck subject,why dont you go clean up fukashima,,OR DOESNT ANY ONE CARE....its a joke.!!.
transmission is part of it, but the other part is storage. Because renewable like solar and wind are intermittent you need either some storage mechanism or base load plants which can be turned up and down at whim like nuclear, hydro, coal and oil. Anything which has a fuel really.
Kirk Sorensen has a bee in his bonnet for LFTR reactors. In my opinion he is not very objective about it. Much can be said in favour of Thorium as a nuclear fuel but plenty can also be said against it.
.. Mark Jacobson: New nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh. Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated. In addition, it creates risk and cost associated with weapons proliferation, meltdown, mining lung cancer, and waste risks. Clean, renewables avoid all such risks.
The CHINESE are going to be the first to build a series of Molten Salt Reactors, and with that technology they are going to make the U.S. look like a small backwards 3rd-world nation by comparison.
the Chinese are already building their versions of this type of reactor and should be operational by 2018 to 2020.
+Honesty Counts communism has its benefits, as long as no racist paranoid loonies get to the top.
+Honesty Counts But they first have to steal it from us.
+mikeyh0 No, they don't, because the US has almost nothing of note on the topic anyway. Had you watched the presentation you'd know that the only (experimental) American LFTR ever built was closed down more than 30 years
ago.
+Honesty Counts And what kind of reactor will that be? A research reactor or a commercial reactor that actually will be connected to the grid as well? I REALLY doubt that it's the latter (the Chinese are not THAT advanced, nobody is) and if it's the former then that's nothing extraordinary. Also, do you happen to have a source on this bit of information you have too?
+mikeyh0 how come? chinese have their own scientists who have been working on it for over 10 years
From what I have gathered so far Kirk seems to be saying that meltdowns have occurred in the past because of various chemical properties of the system leading to failure. This LFTR seems to have dealt with these issues by using a different fuel and a different fission method to eliminate not only the risk of a meltdown but the possibility of one. Since the fuel mix is already molten it can easily be drained into a containment unit designed to dissipate heat safely.
I wish Dr. Sorensen hadn't invoked "global warming" to promote Thorium.
+hettygreene I agree partly with what you're saying, but it isn't his primary defence, is it? Beginning of the video, he says explicitly that it allows for some solution to carbon fuel, not because of environmental disaster, but because we recognize there's a limited supply of carbon fuels; he is not pretending that oil is indefinitely useful.
+jamespfp
In a word No.
As much as we'd want thorium to succeed, we shouldn't make concessions, however small, to the, basically, mass ignorance of "global warming".
@@hg2. Yeah everyone's wrong but you, including all scientists not funded by fossil fuel energy companies. Idiot.
+Buddy Guy
I'm wondering if we could build LFTRs next to existing nuclear power facilities so the spent fuel pools and maybe the containment vessel and other buildings could be used for part of the LFTR after a shutdown and remodification. The grid network and steam generator set and infrastructure are already there that could make this more feasable. Maybe radioactive contamination would be too much of a problem but, what do you do with a nuclear plant when you're done with it? Recycle, Reuse?
165000 tonnes of high level nuclear waste Worldwide - too much to be transmuted using Thorium LFTR, because transmutation rate is too slow.
Reply to Brad not Landa
All the science here, and you swallow the AGW lies about CO2
[thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.'
@Blyledge Isn't that why they build in a drainage system that allows the nuclear fuel to be drained into a passively cooled tank?
fukushima, their were deaths. The area is costing billions to clean up, entire villages had to be evacuated and are still radiated. Not important? Tossed with the remark, "no deaths".
hastelloy n is the alloy (not aluminum) that was planned to combat the corrosion problems. But even if the reactor leaked, the waste would not explode and irradiate a 50 mile radios. It would dribble on the floor to be cleaned up by someone with the proper PPE.
look at all these youtube scientists lol
you people know everything about nuclear power and how to fix all the world's problems huh? funny that you know all the answers but the smartest people in the world that have dedicated their lives to studying these things experimentally and theoretically simply can't figure it out. if only they watched youtube videos all day instead of wasting their time at the most elaborate science experiments in the world.
@FollyAwakened: Your sense of irony is genuinely amusing; I literally laughed out loud! But your mockery of the lay community coalescing in dialogue around what is arguably the most urgently vital topic of our day seems driven by a cynicism that runs counter to one of the noblest facets of the web... a more informed, aware general public! If you are in favor of an informational oligarchy where only those bearing the Imprimatur of the Avout are suffered to listen, speak, learn or debate about such lofty matters as what kind of Yak shit the tribe should burn to heat our huts, then mine some Thorium and Patrician-fist it up your time-hole back to Medieval-1984-Serf-Nazi-Illiterate-Dirt-Farmer-Land. There you shall be unmolested by us irksome internet ignorami. D!ck.
Nathan Duke IDK why I capitalized "Yak".
Nathan Duke Ouch!!!
The guy in the video has two master's degrees and one bachelor's. I'm pretty sure he's more of a scientist than you'll ever dream of being.
Walrus1911 So what. That doesn't make him a good scientist, or a good judge or engineer or anything. Lots of good smart people are putting genetically modified organisms into the world because they know better. There is no proof or even economic argument to say we need them, it's just another way to make money and lock others out of that stream. That is what dictates most of the stuff we see and hear ... educating the public, that's a good one. I supposed in regimentation and indoctrination some amount of education must take place.
Nathan Duke you sound like a D!ck actually.
@kirkfsorensen Thank you for being a champion for this cause. I've been following your work for years, and will be doing so for many more.
@Knepperify1 Actually the plugs are made of FLiBe salt, just like the molten salts in the reactor. The plugs are kept cool enough to remain solid by external fans. If the salt heats up too much, the plugs overheat and melt. The fans can also be manually stopped to purge the molten salts for scheduled shutdowns (they did this every weekend with the ORNL MSR project, before going home). If power is cut off, the fans stop and the plugs also melt then.
Carter worked with Rickover during his time in the Navy. Ford could not ignore Carter's expertise and authority there. TMI and Carter's presence and speach from the grounds was an authoritive effort to settle the outcry and panic.
The DOE studies on thorium reactors state that the main route of fission by thorium reactors produces 1/4 the Plutonium of conventional Uranium fission per joule of power produced. Due to its high burnup capabilities, being re-cyclable maybe 100 times, the amount of plutonium per burnup is maybe 1/400th of conventional reactors per unit mass. The conflationary tactics of the nuclear industry are well in evidence with thorium marketing. Per JOULE, which is the only valid metric, 1/4 as much Plutonium is produced as with conventional plants. That waste, like all the other plutonium waste, is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Other thorium routes exist and they produce some really nasty, high level waste.
A thermal neutron is a free neutron with a kinetic energy of about 0.025 eV (about 4.0×10−21 J or 2.4 MJ/kg, hence a speed of 2.19 km/s), which is the energy corresponding to the most probable speed at a temperature of 290 K (17 °C or 62 °F), the mode of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for this temperature.
Anyone that wants cheap safe and clean energy needs to support Thorium. Society really screwed up when they didnt take this path.
Kirk: After listening to Crosby Lyle I have come to the conclusion that our flibe reactor can be proliferative without solid controls. The key here is praseodymium. In other words the capture of this chemical bypasses the concentration necessary to protect the material from high rad 242. Chemical separation of this chemical can be pure. Or have got this wrong?
Note to Kirk: fission is pronounced like "gone fishin" (like mission, compression, session, possession).
The single 's' in fusion has the fyü-zhᵊn sound (like confusion, contusion, intrusion, etc.)
Well, it only took 11 years, but China finished completion of their small (2 MW) molten salt reactor and received approval to begin testing it.
Obama through CRADA gave all the technology we had on the MSR and stated that the US had no will to have nuclear power-safe and clean and cheap energy....what a turd.
Sorry, he gave it to China in 2011 or 2012. That's why we will always be behind, our leaders have no will to help citizens.
@@yeahboyoboy Who is "he"?
@@robertbrandywine Barack Obama. China's Shanghai Academy of Science and Technology entered a cooperation agreement with Oakridge national laboratory to develop MSR nuclear reactor. He greenlighted the cooperation. However US folks should not blame everything on Obama. US has no intention to carry on MSR reactor development.
@@catchnkill Why did they need help? I thought China had many, many, scientists and engineers who had superior educations.
Can the containment building safely hold the complete contents of the reactor in the event of a rupture? What is the output level of waste gases like xenon and how are they handled?
The ruptures you are thinking of are all caused by high pressure environments.
Molten salt doesn’t release enough gases to have more than 1 atmosphere of pressure at the 1500 degrees Celsius operating temperature. Meaning that even if the container is 1 mm thick, it wouldn’t rupture because the air presses back on it the same amount that it presses out.
The reason ruptures happen with light water reactors is that water must be compressed several times (on the order of 100 times) the pressure of the atmosphere, leading to the almost inevitability of a stress fracture that leads to the water flashing into steam and destroying everything.
What you need is heat resistant glass combine with metal. Will last longer and you also have to fine a better energy storage system. Thank You Loader.
Very convincing arguments, so why has there been no progress 10 years on from this talk?
There has been amazing progress in molten salt reactor technology that this talk inspired.
I live near the Hanford Atomic Reservation in southeastern Wa. state where the Fast Flux Test Facility was built. Unfortunately it was shut down many years ago. I am also not far from the LIGO Observatory also at Hanford. Hanford is also a major radioactive waste dump that is major problem that never gets cleaned up. We get most of our Electric Power from Grand Coulee Dam's hydro-electric generators. There's plenty of space on the Hanford reservation for Fast Breeder Reactors, Fusion Reactors and even Solar-Thermal Power Plants. We also have the Pacific Northwest Laboratories and Batelle Northwest. The "government" can't find it's way out of a paper bag, it's up to Private Industry to make these things happen, just like the Space Program. Let's Reach for the Stars and get the job done.
Even if you don't care about nuclear energy, you should watch the tech talks by Sorensen (all of them). He explains so much about how nuclear works and the steps involved that it leaves you with the knowledge to understand issues like Iran and their enrichment program, what nuclear waiste is, and how we got into the mess of having waiste stored at all of the plants.
This even goes for the trolls out there. You can do a much better job of trolling if you understand the material.
It should be noted that Molten Salt is not the only way to use Thorium. Thorium is the optimal fuel cycle from a proliferation standpoint and could work using the current PWR and Fast Breeder technology. There are many options, I'm quite a fan of a Thorium fueled traveling wave core.
Robert: you're perfectly correct that Thorium could be used in both cycles. but the big disavantage of both is the issue of "fuel rods" which end up containing an unholy mixture of fissile byproducts (and leave you vulnerable to Xenon poisoning) which are an attractive target for bad people wanting to do bad things as well as requiring that you periodically shut down the system to replace fuel assemblies.
One of the big things that MSRs have going for them is that you can run continual onsite reprocessing (it's a necessary part of the design) and "clean as you go" - which means that the reactor seldom-if-ever needs to be shut down for maintenance.
Thorium is mined from the Earth. Currently it is being buried again (after extracting other rare earths from it's ore) because there is no market for it.
Additionally, since there's very little mas to deal with, relatively speaking, (~1 T/GWy fission products, ~10 kg/GWy 233-U, compared to ~100T/GWy of mixed fission products, XXX-U and XXX-Pu), the overall risk is lower.
So LFTRs offer much more proliferation resistance than LWRs - but that is absolutely not to say LWRs are not resistant, or that they're "weapon-supporting".