ThorCon: Cheap, Reliable, CO2-Free Electricity by Lars Jorgensen @ ThEC2018
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- Опубліковано 7 лип 2024
- thorconpower.com/ ThorCon demonstration plant's safety and economics case are being studied by Indonesia Ministry of Energy in conjunction with Indonesia electric utility PLN. The study began in January of 2019 and is expected to be completed in June of 2019, with recommendations to be presented to the President of Indonesia.
PowerMag also published a feature on ThorCon in May of 2019. www.powermag.com/a-thorium-mo...
"ThorConIsle is an offshore 500-MWe thorium molten salt reactor constructed inside a ship’s hull, ready to provide power from navigable waterways. The ThorCon “pot” operates at a pressure of 3 bar gauge, similar to garden hose pressure, has one moving part-the pump impeller-and uses a four-loop steam cycle, attaining 45% efficiency."
Lars Jorgensen's talks and interviews were recorded in Brussels at Thorium Energy Conference 2018 at the end of October. www.thoriumenergyworld.com/con...
Moments from an additional interview with Lars Jorgensen were captured in 2015 at TEAC7, and are also used in this video edit.
This video capture and edit is a collaboration between iThEO and the "Thorium Remix" project. thoriumremix.com/
Edit by Jonah Chen and Gordon McDowell. v20190513a - Наука та технологія
Bravo ThorCon! I just hope Indonesia can hold things together politically to keep you working forward.
That was an awesome talk! I think the idea of building these self contained units as a ship is nothing short of brilliant!
Rosatom has a floating power plant built as a ship, still a gen III design but the thought was there and because it remains Russian property, they handle the IAEA audits.
Hey Gordon! It would be awesome to get subtitles for the questions at the end. Know it probably is a pain to do but it would help a lot.
After 6 months, The Center for New Energy, Renewable Energy and Electricity (P3Tek) of MEMR Bureau of Research and Development have completed the midterm report of the Thorium Power Plant Development Study which in the midterm report cover regulations, safety and economic. The midterm report concluded that TMSR not only economically competitive with coal but has a higher safety standard with full passive safety system - The full report is expected to be completed by July 2019.
medium.com/@bobsoef/indonesia-validates-thorcon-91764b521d59
Assuming that report comes out favorably, how long do you think it will take them to act on it? What do the politics look like right now?
“We seems to have grown a pessimism about the future. ‘Disaster is coming!’ Blow that off. We got a great future coming. Go out and do something interesting!”
THANK YOU THORCON. someones actually got a pair and gets it done.
Love his pragmatic approach. Wish the Indonesian project the best.
Admitting that the goal is to avoid a translating rod is amazing. In the era in which we live, someone pushing a product and realizing that there's actual bounds on success and failure, and communicating about it is so unusual.
Super impressive. Will these guys be the first to deploy molten salt nuclear in any form? I agree with him 100% about build it NOW, build it cheap, and get molten salt in operation. The fancy stuff will come MUCH faster if this happens as soon as possible. Bravo.
In Ed Pheil's videos (fast spectrum, chloride salt) he mentions a problem with fluoride corrosion (requiring new and/or expensive SS alloys) as one reason for going with fast MSRs. Has this problem been solved, and if not how is this handled in the ThorCon plan?
Can we have a few in South Australia?
Just to look at how much energy there is available in thorium.
The problem is to develop safe processes and there are several to start with.
Even U238 could be used but is not the prime choice .
LWR has a pressure vessel that is big and expensive and has safety issues.
MSR has higher temperature enabling thermochemistry , very important to replace the fossil .
The problems are political, not technological . Big companies and states living on the fossil economi.
Raising taxes on energy or fossil for the common people does not solve problems. It is instead new other problems.
Other serious problems are hysteria i media and miss informing, as a matter of fact the core of many problems.
I love the business model of just using existing tech and building a reactor ASAP and the shipyard construction is genius. Seriously hope Indonesia gets one very soon! At the same time I really hope this doesn't compete with FLIBE energy's LFTR because that's a far superior reactor but with a much longer road map and development cost.
Unfortunately, Flibe is trying to go from the Model T to a formula 1 racecar in one big step. Industries like these don't work like that, they advance through iteration and the ThorCon model fits perfectly in that progression.
Politics will kill FLIBE's attempt to bring LFTR to market because of the small minded morons turned out by the indoctrination centers and the existing nuclear fuel process industry. Congress is still packed full of fools.
@@chapter4travels Yeah Kirk's ambitions probably aren't compatible with today's world unfortunately and Jorgenson's strategy is possibly the best way to go in the short term. It's just such a shame that short term wins because that's the exact reason we're suck with light water reactors today. Would be nice to get a thorcon reactor today and still work on a LFTR for tomorrow
@@warpmine1761 Sadly probably true but maybe, just maybe, one day we'll actually realise the value of the LFTR generating power as a by product of industrial heat and medical isotopes and rare earth's and desalinated water... hopefully before I die
@@doritoification Why would the work on Flibe or Terrestrial energy or Elysium industries or moltex..... stop? They won't stop progressing. The market for future energy is enormous, plenty of room for competition.
Outstanding presentation!
Can the declaration of “ climate emergency “ allow previously hostile national markets to invest in this.? Please consider Tarbert Power Station in Ireland as an opportunity. Can you send me a costing and I will happily put it under the decision makers. Well done again.
Ken Fogarty those who are pushing ‘climate emergency’ aren’t interested in actually doing anything to limit carbon emissions, it’s all about using it as a pretext to pursue other ends.
That’s why they are dead set against nuclear of any kind.
Not that I’m trying to stop you from promoting it to people as best you can, but don’t be too disappointed when call you names instead of consider your proposal.
In Python. . . source code ?
Brilliant.
23:20 the can only last for years then they have to replace all the graphite? That seems pretty short.
Idea is also rest of core materials needn't be approved for long lifetime either. Swap in new core. Evaluate spent core to see how materials performed. Yes, is a downside, but will find out how much of nuclear cost is actually manufacturing when being built regularly in series.
It does float wow !
so the underside of the plant is just supposed to sit wet for fifty years with no maintainance?
Never saw this before at all and I've not been paying attention that much...a second round is needed..very interesting idea that, an F-54 or whatever that was....that's a good selling point..essential for anything new...thanks...i'm sharing this for sure
I don't think the results would be the same if they used a 300 ton jet liner instead of that obsolete 1960's F4 Phantom jet fighter bomber that probably weighs in around 8 tons. That is a very old film shot.
Brilliant! Thanks...the idea of prefabs onto ships is perfect....pop them out and then off on reliable transport to all over World. Let's go!
@Tony Chen Russia has it's new shipborn twin reactor it's trying to sell. How does your system compare to their system?
It's walkaway safe.
Russian design is a LWR vs MSR. Russian reactor between 29% to 33% efficient. This is ~ 45% efficient. They are really for two different purposes. Russian model is for remote cities to replace expensive diesel electrical generation as well as desalination. Russian model can also be used for oil rigs in Artic. ThorCon replaces coal plants for electrical generation.
good talk.. however, storage for indonesia in indonesia? that's on a fault line..
search: "Big Gossan"
Did he talk about the U232 problem in the thorium cycle and I missed it?
I don't think he did due to time constraint, but IIRC in previous talk they don't consider it a problem. In a running MSR the U-232 gets burned together with the U-233.
It’s not an issue, unless you were trying to make a bomb out of 233.
I really like what you said at the end, "We have a great future. Go out and do something" When you thing about the possibilities of what thorium MSRs could do for humanity, it's difficult to sleep at night. It will be the event that changes our world like no other. It reminds me of the line from Jean Luc Picard when he is talking to the woman from the 21st century, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”
― Jean-Luc Picard
@Wade Haden I think you are reading too much into this. They can replace coal at or just below that cost, that's not going to change the world. I think replacing coal and all the pollution it produces is a pretty fantastic and achievable goal all by itself. If you want a world changer follow the long shot fusion group called Focus Fusion. If they pull their device it will make electricity at 1/10th of a cent / KWH, now that would change the world and fast.
@@chapter4travels Wtf are you even talking about?!? Are we supposed to sit on our hands and dream about fusion till 2050 - at which time it might still be "30 years away", and LFTRs still 10 or 15 ??? (and who knows in what state the planet will be)
@@red-baitingswine8816 I said replacing coal with MSR's " is a pretty fantastic and achievable goal" That means getting MSR's in mass production, fast. I'm all for that. But the transition away from fossil fuels will take a hundred years even with this technology. He was quoting Star Trek where there was no profit motive in the future, that would take nearly free, limitless energy, (fusion) that was my point.
@@chapter4travels Thanks! (yes - sorry - I misunderstood). I'm pretty ignorant about manufacturing etc., but why would it take 100 yrs. to replace HCs (since fast deployment, not efficiency, is the main goal, and (am I wrong here) doubling investment would more or less halve the time)?
@@red-baitingswine8816 Simply put, scale. Electricity is 25-30% of total fossil fuel use and Asia is building coal plants like crazy, each with a lifespan of 40-60 years. So to just convert electricity production away from fossil fuels is 80-100 years. Even if Thorcon scales up over the next 20 years to 100 reactors a year, there are hundreds of new coal plants being built while that scales up. If you are interested in the scale issue, I suggest Robert Bryce, he has several good books and as many lectures here on youtube.
Was just look through some old notes on theory. Trap a beam of light!
Even the IPCC have said that nuclear energy must be increased to prevent the global warming.
Isn’t it odd that the climate change scaremongers don’t promote nuclear power? 🤔
It’s like they don’t actually care about addressing climatic change, but instead use it as a means to other ends.
We must investigate new Nuclear Energy development.
I'm confused, I thought the big problem this tech was facing was that nothing could be removed from the reactor stream while it was operational. At 13:45 he says they generate 46kg of plutonium per year that "can be put back into the reactor". So this can be weaponised? And Indonesia and the 3rd world are the target market for this?
No, it can't be weaponized. If a country wants a nuclear, there are much easier ways than through a domestic power plant. North Korea didn't get it's nukes that way.
It’s all kept in the can. Putting it back in the reactor means after they get permission to reprocess the used fuel and extract the actinides. Right now they will just keep it in dry casks like they do with the PWR waste.
I've never seen any published data on radioactive 'fall out' from coal (gas, oil) power plants and no one seems to have any answers. I've been asking the question for probably 25 years including various professionals I've met. There is fall out (other than Co, Co2, etc) from coal power plant but it is totally ignored. Do you have any data? I think that would be a much better 'selling point' Seems biggest reason for 'ignoring' Thorium / liquid salt reactors is they are very very difficult to weaponise?
IF you could get that data, and I don't want to sound all 007 or mission impossible about it, but I wouldn't put it up on a billboard if I were you. I would keep it to myself, and probably not talk about it too much either.
It's rather well known. Kind of ignored unless one looks at the data. In college in the seventies I was a student at San Luis Obispo CA. They were building the Diablo Nuclear Power plant at the time. I was involved in environment issues at the time. Yes I saw some negative issues involved with the plant, perticularelly the high pressure operation and the need for cooling after shutdown. Though I was a gad fly envirimentlest in that I insisted on comparing the risks of the new plant and the coal plant 10 miles up the coast. I came up with more radioactive fallout, heave medals, poisonous gasses and massive amounts of coal ash. One other thing that bothered me was the CO2 release. That had implications of starting a runnaway greenhouse effect turning our planet into something like Venus. I was kind of lonely in advacating ignoring the nuclear plant and closing the coal plant.
@@stanleytolle416 dude ... spell checker ;)
@@shawnnoyes4620 severe dyslexic. All looks good to me.
@@stanleytolle416 I was a motorcycle mechanic, technician, Instructor, etc so never had any formal training (4 years of Geology, Geography and Geomorphology in school doesn't really count?) 'We' visited a nuclear power plant and coal mines on various school trips (South Wales UK still had deep pits at the time) I guess I've been asking about coal burning 'fall out' a lot longer than I though as I was 17 when I first asked teachers, etc (I'm 62 now) Yours is probably the closest I've ever come to a direct answer. I can understand your 'loneliness' advocating nuclear power, the 'indoctrination' from 1950's~60's means people are terrified of nuclear especially when people embrace their ignorance .
Indonesia is the best molten salt testbed for now.
So they cannot deliver to countries with unsailable rivers?
bocckoka not initially. Idea is lots of easier customers so target easiest first.
How about process heat? Can hot salt be stored for possible power spikes.
Stanley Tolle Theoretically possible but not planned right now given the intended market (Indonesia specifically and developing countries in general). In the short term developing countries will use gas peaker power plants to meet demand spikes. They already use natural gas power plants, it won't cost them extra to use them that way. If ThorCon (or any company developing MSR) adds an energy storage feature it will add to the cost, thus driving price up and making the proposed MSR less attractive to developing countries. In the long term once orders are coming in, there will be money to add that feature in. But for now that's an undesirable feature creep.
@@tonychen76 Russia has it's new shipborn twin reactor it's trying to sell. How does your system compare to their system?
Yes, the tertiary loop salt is hot enough for various industrial processes.
And it can be stored fairly cheaply, though probably the storage tanks and additional generators wouldn't fit into the floatable part of the plant. Not a problem -- just run a loop of insulated pipe out and back.
@Stanley Tolle First, it's not mine. I am not involved with ThorCon. I am just a nuclear energy advocate who is Indonesian. I wish Thorcon the best of luck, but I also have no objection if we get an EPR or VVER or APR or NuScale's or any of the modern nuclear power plants out there. May the best reactor wins. :)
Back to your question, the Russian floating nuclear power plant is the KLT-40S, two 35 MWe nuclear reactors in a barge. But it's apples and oranges really. Sure they are both floating nuclear power plants, but the scale is different (2x250 MWe vs. 2x35 MWe) and the technology is different (MSR vs. LWR) and even the marketing approach is different (Russia lobbies presidents and ministers and governors, Thorcon lobbies directors of the huge state companies).
So it's hard to compare. While both want to sell in Indonesia, in practice they are selling for two different niches. The islands where KLT-40S's 70 MW is suitable for will make no economic sense for ThorCon's 500 MW. Whereas the major islands who can use 500 MW of clean energy is not very interested in piddly 70 MW.
Russia also tries to market the VVER-1200 here too but it feels half-hearted. My guess is that they don't see us as going for the big 1200 MW plants for now. There is a major resistance for nuclear power in Indonesia too. Not as big as in the US or Germany, but it can't be ignored politically either. Russia perhaps think that overcoming this political opposition is easier by starting with small nuclear power plants first. This may also be why they're lobbying political figures.
@@tonychen76 ua-cam.com/video/Q1Fi3BnwL94/v-deo.html Alternatively, the process heat / surplus electricity can be used directly on rampable industrial processes such as high temp electrolysis, desalination, or synthetic fuel production.
Where can I buy one you are saving the world you should all be getting Nobel prizes
At around 24:06, he mentions, “it boils at 430°C” ... did he mean 1430°C?
That's 806 degrees F
@@info_fox Right, but 430°C is _lower_ than the melting point. How do you boil and THEN melt?
I think he misspoke and meant 1430. FLiBe has a boiling point of 1430°C.
Yes, you are correct.
I want one of these scaled down to produce 8-10kw for one or two houses perhaps in a shipping container in the back yard. Can this be scaled? Then we could really create personal autonomy in our cultures.
Do you treat your own sewage?
@@gordonmcdowell Sure, why not? I am willing to relocate if that is what it requires. Why is sewage a concern, is this not self contained?
@@KellyLCall I'm asking why are you interested in producing your own power. Processing your own sewage is a similar best-done-at-scale process. We have a grid. We have pipes.
While fission can scale down, it isn't practical to do so in most cases. Quite likely Fission Products can be harvested and put to use for small-scale solutions... in the future... after MSR have been running and we have some FP to harvest from the salt. But a Nuclear Reactor? Your own Nuclear Reactor? That is not a good use of resources.
@Kelly L. Call I think this can be scaled down but not to a household scale. Past a certain point it would be highly inefficient to scale it down further. There has been conceptual designs, not Thorcon's, but based on similar principles, that outputs 1-2 MW power. This would be sufficient to power a village. That's about the smallest we can realistically expect, I think. The intention is to power remote villages that currently rely of regular shipment of diesel fuel. So... I guess communal autonomy?
@@tonychen76 I think communal autonomy is a step in the right direction
Whoo, is that 20% enrichment of fissile material !
With a 2-year fuel cycle !
Why do you need the thorium ?
And once the 2-years are up, does the waste get dumped into the emergency 'overflow containment chambers', while the feactor vessel is cut out ? Wouldn't it be more efficient to build a more robust reactor vessel, say the 40-year version you mention and keep using it !
Watching a discussion with Lars Jorgensen among nuclear experts, I believe his reason for using Thorium is not technical but political. One of the interesting things about ThorCon in the debate I watched is that Lars Jorgensen seems to understand the politics of Nuclear power a lot better than a lot of the other SMR startups which tend to geek out more on whatever technology is seen as cool by the experts.
Lars Jorgensen, know what Uranium has a bad reputation and a lot of doors get shut in your face if you say you are making a Uranium reactor. What he is saying is that by going with Thorium a lot more doors will be open and a lot more politicians will listen to you and give you funding.
Just look at the internet. Thorium has a large and vocal fanbase. A lot of people think it is a magic fix for everything. ThorCon is simply exploiting this reality to get shit done. Had people been better informed the strategy would probably have looked different. Personally I think this strategy makes a lot of sense. For an industry with such a bad political image, picking something that gives them a good image is a smart move IMHO.
@@povelvieregg165 , must agree with your first line: that it is political, not technical reasons to push the ThorCon reactor. It would be the reason to test it in the developing world, not the developed world which appears burned by the waste disposal & cost of traditional uranium reactors.
@@weldonyoung1013 Doing this in the developing world does indeed seem like a really smart strategy. I think they know that if they prove success in these markets, they can potentially take this technology back to us in the West.
New Zealand should order at least 10 to get going.....wahooo!
Why just ONE feeze valve?
Is there also another drain valve for maintenance use, whatever?
Can lead-bismuth be used for secondary loop?
How will he made nuclear energy cheaper then fossil ???
The plant itself costs less than a coal plant and the fuel is far cheaper than coal.
TMI is in the retirement stage. It needs a replacement.
Yes and LFTR would be very suitable replacement. The infrastructure transmission lines are already in place. Curse the uneducated fools in this country not to jump onto a cheaper, more reliable and safer source of power.
@@warpmine1761 I try to spread the word when i can and provide links to talks like these.
@@warpmine1761 In Ed Pheil's videos (fast spectrum, chloride salt) he mentions a problem with fluoride corrosion (requiring new and/or expensive SS alloys) as one reason for going with fast MSRs. Has this problem been solved, and if not how is this handled in the ThorCon plan?
@@red-baitingswine8816 Is it solved? Hell if I know however know this, the country once upon a time made bold moves and tests and now all we do is speculate and theorize without experimentation. At leas in the auto industry, they're willing to take a gamble but only because the fucking government err EPA mandates they do so. I'm sick of this pussyfooting around nonsense....build and test already.
Remember, fusion is just 40 years into the future as that industry tells us. Wake me up when that happens, will ya? Billions spent on something that isn't even close to working/ Why is that? Likely, it's because the same people that are peddling carbon this and carbon that akin to pointing to unicorn farts and fairy dust are the solutions.
Bottom line is, nothing is cheap at first, not flat screen HD TV's and certainly not special alloys. The quicker it gets done, the sooner we'll achieve our goal.
@@warpmine1761 Absolutely! The following, in numerical order:
1) Immediately stop all HC power construction, do all MSRs (competitive bid contracts) instead. Go all out funding basic MSR research - including fast & thermal spectrum, or ?.
2) Advanced countries (including China - part of a new trade deal) subsidize MSRs just enough so that all new power plant construction world wide is MSR.
3) Run existing legacy nucs as long as humanly possible
4) Replace existing HC power, most polluting first.
5) Replace the really dangerous legacy nucs with MSRs, most dangerous first.
6) Subsidize MSRs for poor countries.
I viewed this thinking I had a competitor to cheap energy to the masses but this guy is no competitor to the technology I am getting ready to bring out as his still needs a grid system and the technology I am working with does not.
First test. See the air. If you can see it whatever that is it ain't air.
I wonder where this reactor going to built? I would be happy if my country use nuclear power so our nuclear engineers from Gadjah Mada have a job
Indonesia
Depends what you're asking. Their cost estimates for building it come from a South Korean shipyard so I'm pretty sure that's the shipyard that will be building them and their first customer is Indonesia so that's where it will be running. But the idea is that the plant is transported across the sea anywhere so as long as you have a coast and regulation approval, you should be able to buy one.
we are talking thorium arent we
copying boeing's manufacturing proccess to make a reactor a day? one of humanities greatest hopes right now
And of course someone will demand a fail dangerous overide for the failsafe as part of the basic design.
The failsafe is part of the basic design, nothing needs to be added.
That is exactly why they will change it.
@@shawnnoyes4620 He's mocking US NRC. Fortunately for us all, Thorcon plans to largely ignore USA.
Or we can just insulate and make efficiency savings. Fit solar to all new builds, along motorway and railway track sides, car parks etc. Install wave, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal. Add redox flow Batteries, gravity energy storage and you have a decentralized system without the risks of nuclear or the cleanup costs which are always left to our children or their children.
That's the Rube Goldberg method of producing power, incredible complexity for no gain. Even the older generation II & III reactors are still the safest way to make electricity ever invented and the waste and decommissioning are not actual problems, only political ones.
Are YOU solar-power self sufficient? Solar panels and battery? Tell me all about it, this carbon-free lifestyle you live. Because if YOU (presumably a developed-world citizen posting comments on UA-cam) are NOT doing it, because maybe YOU CAN NOT AFFORD IT, then don't expect 80% of the poor-er-than-you world to do it for you.
@@chapter4travels Hate to tell you Greg but solar, wind etc are already doing a lot of the powering of many countries including the UK. China by the end of 2018, had 174 GW of cumulative installed solar capacity. If as much money had been spent on solar, wind, storage etc as it has on nuclear the world could have been powered by it now.
@@gordonmcdowell Actually my house is behind a hill so solar insn't an option, however for the last 20 years or since npower? did the first eco tariff I have been with an energy company that only uses renewables. Economically check out the prices of solar (which continues to drop). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
@@veronicathecow You are believing the propaganda, wind and solar can not now or ever replace fossil fuels. Germany is a perfect example. They have invested more in wind and solar than any other country and they missed their 2018 emissions goals, scrapped their 2020 goals. They have the highest electricity costs in the EU and 3x the US. Maybe they should just invest more in wind and solar, but no they are choosing to spend that money on a natural gas pipeline from Russia. Wind and solar can only add cost and complexity to a reliable energy system. Battery storage will only make the economics worse not better.
The obstacles to this technology seem to be fear, greed, and politics. A few engineering details as well, but those could be worked out I think if other obstacles were out of the way a bit. Fear may be the biggest obstacle. People think mushroom clouds and melt downs. Question may be what's driving the fear? That's where greed and politics come in. The major opponent for nuclear energy would be the coal, gas, and oil industry. I'd guess they fund the political and public opposition. It's very difficult to overcome fear.
They really beat that Fukushima horse to death don't they. Why don't they just focus on the advantages of thorium and how they address all the the downsides.
Passive safety is a feature. Lack of dispersion force is a feature. As I replied to you elsewhere, I'm an advocate of PWR. But lamenting the MENTION of Fukushima probably isn't the most effective response when it is brought up. The Prime Minister of Japan DID deny TEPCO permission to vent hydrogen, leading to the series of hydrogen explosions and complicating efforts to get cooling water to the reactor. ThorCon's stated goal is to not even allow a situation where a President's poor judgement would allow such an incident to be replicated.
This stuff needs to happen now. Sounds like THORCON have their sh1t together. WAY better than coal power.. lets get on with it.
This thing have some potential too. www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/seaborg-100-mwe-molten-salt-reactor-would-fit-on-a-regular-truck-and-burn-nuclear-waste.html
Solar is well on its way to becoming the cheapest of all forms of electricity. Wind is also very cheap. What they need are storage, and lots of money is going into that. Solar/wind and storage will be much easier to implement and more importantly, be much cheaper than nuclear.
Another important point is that solar/wind and storage can easily be sited close to the consumer, so transmission costs will be low. That's not the case with nuclear.
Yeah, there's the ticket. Let's continue to slaughter birds by the hundreds of billions. Solar is very expensive environmentally speaking and then there's the issue energy out put decay. Neither are cheap to produce and both need ridiculous amounts of space to occupy. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll take a LWR and the risks and expense over unicorn type energy you advocate for.
Solar and wind are not cheaper than any reliable energy source and storage will only make the economics worse, not better. Germany is proving this right now, they have pumped $billions and $billion into wind and solar and yet they can not meet their emissions goals, in fact, their emissions have gone up for the last 2 years. They have the highest electricity costs in the EU and 3x the US. Now out of desperation, they are investing in a huge natural gas pipeline from Russia. Why didn't they use that money on more wind turbines or solar panels? Wind and solar can only add expense, complexity and huge land use to already reliable fossil fuel or nuclear systems.
@@chapter4travels Germany's leftist government is hell bent on taking the country to hell. Frau Merkel is doing her best to bring the country back under the influence of Russia. Is it a coincidence that the broad was part of the East German political youth groups?
You can never create enough solar and wind farms to provide for human energy requirements. This really is the energy of our future
@@chapter4travels Germany has high electric costs by intention. They tax energy use, which is the best way to drive conservation. They take that revenue and pay for public health care. We have cheaper energy, but MUCH higher health care costs.
Who would bankroll the initial cost? They will have to buy it first.
The government of Indonesia is paying for it.
@@chapter4travels Thorcon's pitch isn't for Indonesia to buy the power plant. Their pitch is for Indonesia to sign a long term power purchase agreement at under 7 cents/kwh (exact number to be negotiated later), at which point they'll take that contract to get a commercial loan. Hence why despite claiming that their cost is 3 cents/kwh they're asking for under 7 cents/kwh. Because they need to account for the financing cost. They'd love it if Indonesia will just buy it outright, but Indonesia is reluctant to do so because, well, from their POV it's unproven. And no, they don't consider the lab-scale demo to be a good enough demo for a full scale operation.
@@tonychen76 It looks like they may have found their backing. finance.yahoo.com/news/floating-nuclear-power-plants-backing-164343795.html
Greg White Well, dang. That's good news. Thanks.
17:29
What happens to all the waste from these Nuclear plants, new or old? It's pastime to free the people and produce FREE energy, it's all around us, gobs of it!
What happens to it would depend on the reactor type. Some segregate the FP so they can be put to medical and industrial use. Some do not. Either way, it is a small quantity compared to any other fuel, due to the fact the fuel does not combust, it fissions. Only the portion of the fuel where the mass is reduced by fission (E=MC^2) becomes waste. That there's any volume to speak of at all is because most of the spent fuel rods are actually natural uranium, it is just mixed together with fission products and actinides. MSR is inherently favourable for recycling of this material because it can be easily chemically segregated, and it isn't a mix trapped inside solid fuel rods.
If you're referring to renewables, a great way to monitor the progress of Germany's attempt to replace nuclear with renewables is with www.electricitymap.org/ you'll notice they've been performing pretty poorly compared to their nuke-assisted neighbors. That is, if you consider "performance" to be the reduction of greenhouse gasses. That's what happens in the real world, everywhere, when people think batteries have solved storage. If you truly think it is doable, then just buy some panels, some batteries, and go off-grid. It is expensive, and ultimately you'll hit a stretch where the batteries are exhausted.
If it was free, it would already have been harnessed.
If you watch the video, you will learn about what their waste material plan is.
Lol... not radiation. Panic, sideeffect..., ..., thats why tsdhernobil is inhabitable...
Design idea to avoid all pipes in reactor: put fisible materials and salts in an egg shaped container that has graphite fins of variable size in side. To adjust fission reaction, tilt egg so that fisible material moves to flatter parts of egg, where internal fins absorb more neutrons.
Harvest heat by submersing egg in water.
Specing out plastic pipe in a nuclear powerplant.
You are an imbecile.
incoherent nonsense from a moron troll -
ingebrecht
works for a natural gas company - look it up
Why Thorcon wants to build a molten-salt reactor near a water body? CSP plants use dry cooling. A high temperature MSR may not need wet cooling. It is cheaper to avoid tsunami instead of designing to withstand one.
Problematic fission products like Iodine and Cesium dissolvable in water. Radioactive salt mixing with water should be avoided at any scenario. So, it will be cheaper to build MSR far away from water bodies.
Ironically as a ship it is better equipped and compartmentalised to handle tsunamis than a civil engineered building.
Not so much with fluorides.
They do that because then they don't need to build it on-site, but can build it in a shipyard full of highly skilled and very experienced people. That way the thing gets built on-time and on-spec and on-budget. Which would be a first for a nuclear power plant as far as i know. besides, it's a double hulled design filled with sand or concrete, a tsunami isn't going to move that thing at all.
and the double hull design is a shipping industry standard already, so it's not very expensive at all.
also, this is a molten salt reactor. unlike a solid fuel reactor you don't need to add months worth of fuel and shut it down every so often to refuel and reshuffle. that also means that even if somewhere were to blow the whole thing up with a ton of TNT the amount of radiation released would still be fairly small.
@@TheCountess666 The chemical containment of Caesium and Iodine only works when salt is exposed to air. These elements are not volatile even at high temperatures. But, like all salts these salts will dissolve in water. Water mixing with radioactive salt and draining to a water body is highly dangerous. Large areas will be contaminated.
Search: Aircraft Reactor accident evaluation reports for more information.
(I have no objection about building molten salt reactor in a shipyard. Please keep MSR far away from water bodies. MSR can do well with dry cooling condensers and large amount of cooling water from ocean is not necessary.)
Very convincing explanation of a passive control philosophy. I am fully aware that nuclear is good if properly controlled. My fear is of the manufacturing process. After building a few of these, the constructors start taking short cuts to save money and hiring cowboys to do the work. How do you guard against this familiar hazard?
The same way they do now in many industries, inspections. A natural gas pipeline has every weld x-rayed by an inspector, same for plane manufacturing.
Set standards of manufacture and adhere to them.
Helium? that itself is a limited resource.
its not burning the stuff... but man... I get pissed off every time I see a balloon.
there's still a very finite amount,@@spooniklespoonikle. much of it stored near Amarillo (yes, the city named 'yellow') in the Texas panhandle.
Helium is not limited. There are 300 years of known and extractable reserves at _current prices._
This is peak oil flimflam all over again. By that logic there are less than 50 years of oil or gas or copper or uranium or any other commodity all the damn time. Except it always assumes current prices and currently extractable reserves. Every 50 years we are supposed to run out and yet...we do not.
The Helium near Amarillo comes from oil fields which were surrounded by rock rich in radioactive uranium and thorium. The alpha decay of which releases a helium atom. Let us assume that this slow regeneration of helium from radioactive decay is ignorable (it's not). That leaves only trace amounts to be found in the atmosphere. There is already a well established infrastructure for helium recovery from atmosphere; primarily from liquefied nitrogen.
www.engineering-airliquide.com/helium-recovery-and-liquefaction
Liquid nitrogen contains small amounts of helium but this concentration is enhanced by liquefaction. And so, tons per day can be recovered as a bonus from LN2 plants. The only cost is energy. Right now that energy comes from combustion but as most of the work is electrically driven, it is not inconceivable to imagine a liquefied helium plant powered by a ThorCon or other nuclear reactor. This obviates any ceiling of consumption (A few tons per reactor per year at most) and indeed, could stabilise helium prices at some ceiling determined by the price of energy instead of a speculative market.
@@MonMalthias www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a8289/as-shortage-worsens-we-visit-the-federal-helium-reserve-14720528/
more recent: www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/not-just-party-city-why-helium-shortages-worry-scientists-researchers-n1007151
It's not CO2 free but extreme low CO2 Emissions
I do not find his assessment on Chernobyl and Fukushima fair. 'Nobody died from the radiation just does not cover the facts. Both those disasters were solembly caused by and consequence of the nuclear process. Which is all about radio activity. I hence would find it much better if speaker for the sake of arguments, instead of trying to go back on how horrified people in general are with regards to the generations of nuclear plants we have seen so far and try to after all again okay them based on anything that resembles that, would stretch the much more important and valid points, that the new approaches he advocates produce almost incomparably less nuclear waste, and that what still is left over is far less severe in terms of radiation and transportation (requirements and risks). The fact that the processes be proposes are inherently much more secure I think he made clear already!
How many people did die from radiation then? Please give me an actual estimate and source. You seem to have a non-zero number in mind?
Sco2 is cheaper than water
Electricity is industrial candy.
You are a poster child on why we need birth control.
Did this guy used to work for the ENRON nuclear division? Check out the reactor they tried to build in India. They didn't finish it because they figured out nobody could immediately afford the electricity. Then they got caught rigging the game. The only guy that lucked out was the Japanese guy that now owns half the available real estate in colorado. His wife divorced him and his 401 k was split before the company unraveled.
We got by without electricity for millions of years, and now we can't live without it. Bull.
We lived a short and miserable life before we got electricity and other energy from fossil fuels. I don't want to go back to that nor do I want to live in a world that is governed by an authority that has the power to force that on me.
With a population in excess of 7 billion? I don't think so.
mudball47 says the clown talking through his electronic device, sitting on furniture made from electric powered machines, under lights ... oh nevermind.
I am guessing you were joking because it would be a challenge to be that stupid for real!!!
greenpeace's anti nuclear stance was a fatal error, the hieght of stupidity, focused on saving a few trees but not carbon free power.....woops
6:59
I'm afraid I don't really see the sense in this. The shipyard is just as hard to build as a nuclear power plant is.
@sgg
I mean for docking the thing after it's built. They didn't explain that part.
Lord ... Oh Lord ... You do not know what you are talking about ... You obviously have not been in a ship yard or a manufacturing facility as well as construction of a nuclear plant site. I have been on both. Your statement is totally ignorant and without basis.
@@shawnnoyes4620
Explain?
Sounds like a con job. Burner type will be too expensive for general use. Indonesia will regret.
All nuclear reactors perform some breeding. Uranium is not very expensive. Completely efficient breeders do not solve any economic problem today. One day the economic case for them will be stronger, as the easiest Uranium resources are used up. But today, the problem an iso-breeder MSR solves is one of communication. The waste would be of a very different nature than a waste stream containing actinides. If you think the best way to address people's fear of nuclear waste is to change the contents of that waste... then that is a track to pursue. Certainly a waste stream consisting of nothing but Fission Products would turn the "nuclear waste" story on its head.
But most people who support nuclear power, are perfectly OK with dry-cask storage and deep-geological-storage. That's not a problem. And so, perhaps, the reason iso-breeding MSR aren't moving forward the way Thorcon appears to be, is that Thorcon is focused on solving a different problem... lowering the cost of nuclear with an as-simple-as-possible design. There is no way an 2-fluid MSR will be as inexpensive to build as a single-fluid model. No way it would be as simple to operate.
Thorcon can (and have said they would) look at more efficient designs once they have a commercial product they are selling. Why do that first? Why do something harder to build, operate and LICENSE... first?
Moltex is better
Maybe, but will it be cheaper than coal? That's the real question. Oh, and Elysium is better than Moltex.
On boy! Enough plutonium for bombs and Uranium that is Over three quarters of the way to bomb grade. Just what we need.
You are an imbecile and do not know what you are talking about. Try looking at wikipedia and world nuclear news before dispensing non-sense. look at denatured molten salt reactor. Look at what happens when you mix U238 with U233 & Th232.
Listen to the speaker. He uses the word plutonium several times and also mentions that it must be stored until governments decide what to do about the weapons risk. I have checked the decay chain. How close to nuclear weapon have you ever been? I have only been about 40 feet away from about 9.5 megaton yield missile. He slides back forth about a thorium salt system because the 5% Enriched Uranium is cheaper and easier. Sounds like a step back to me. ua-cam.com/video/zVhQOhxb1Mc/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/MnW7DxsJth0/v-deo.html
Those two links are better sources than Wikipedia imho. But Sophists need not view
From what I can tell there are 11 flavors of nuclear kool aid for sale. Corporations cheat. Want to take a ride on a 737 Max? They only killed 356 people before the FBI started poking around and the do nothing congressional commission was assembled. This doesn't even mention the billion dollars the ex-customers are coming after. A little oversight and some real research might still produce benefits Here is where I got my information from.
These guys want floating reactors. Did you see the video of the enormous toilet bowl the ocean became at Fukushima. That screwup is 200 years to clean up and several trillion dollars.
ua-cam.com/video/cZkj6ZN1Wkc/v-deo.html
@@ingebrecht Ignorant and lazy troll - You DO NOT GET Weapons-grade plutonium from this design. Weapons-grade plutonium is defined as being predominantly Pu-239, typically about 93% Pu-239. ... To reduce the concentration of Pu-240 in the plutonium produced, weapons program plutonium production reactors (e.g. B Reactor) irradiate the uranium for a far shorter time than is normal for a nuclear power reactor.
In defense of nuclear energy being safe, Jorgenson says, "No one got hurt from radiation at the Fukushima melt down, except 1500 people who died during evacuation." He said that as if it were true.
That's because it is true. Not a single person was hurt by radiation.
@@chapter4travels Not true Greg, "Japan’s government has previously given compensation to four other workers who had developed leukemia and thyroid cancers as a result of radiation, but this is the first time a death has been acknowledged." time.com/5388178/japan-first-fukushima-radiation-death/
@@mal6232 I stand corrected. the second worst nuclear accident in the world and 5 people died years after the incident. This illustrates just how safe they are. Nuclear is by far the safest way we generate electricity, safer than wind, solar and hydro as well.
Thanks Greg. Let's see what TEPCO and the honest Japanese government say. Out of 300,000 children screened, the children from Fukushima showed 15x higher rate of thyroid cancer than the national average. But they decided that such statistical deviation was not significant and do not include it in their evaluation. That's for starters.
@@chapter4travels Without a doubt Greg. None of the 'renewables' will ever be in a position to take on the role of primary energy supplier either - too intermittant, too difficult to maintain, too dependent on topology or too intrusive to commerce. Also, the manufacturers and suppliers of these things lie about their capabilities, the true, real world output from solar and wind is nowhere near the claimed output capacities. I have 1.5 kw of solar on a south facing 30 degree roof that has never generated more than 1kw in real life - and that was when it had been raining and then the sun burst through so the panels were cool - normally they are around 700 watts in the sunshine.....half their rated output. Remove all the subsidies and let the free market economy decide on their worth.....
I do not like this design it is wasteful and dangerous. More of the same thinking using seawater on a barge to cool the reactor it is a bad idea. The reactor should be designed to have little to no waste heat. If something goes wrong an environmental nightmare. There are better ways of doing this.
Clement, why don't you walk me through your disaster scenario? Lars has a bunch of them covered here: ua-cam.com/video/oB1IrzDDI9g/v-deo.html (disaster scenarios are indexed in metadata) ...but basically worrying about waste-heat from a high-temperature Gen4 reactor is like worrying about all the precious photons that miss the Earth... there's plenty where that came from.
An environmental nightmare is what happens every day, thanks to coal. In contrast, try come up with a scenario where the contents of a ThorCon-can will pollute the air or water.
You can not cover up irresponsible with blindfold! Without way of handling waste, you will put every poor person endangered! This is an act of racist!
Bwhahaha, nuclear power is the cleanest way to make electricity precisely because it contains and stores all its waste.
Are you seriously?😱
You can build it on the very spot over and over?
@@sywaddr11 Sure, that makes perfect sense, all the transmission infrastructure is right there. Within about 10-15 years the new breeders can be built on those sites and have enough fuel from that waste for thousands of years. A negative waste stream.
@@chapter4travels is that means no site expension only stay on the same location
What about the fish? People eat fish as food……
To me nuclear is NOT the solution and here are just a couple of reasons why. A nuclear reactor in its most basic form is no different than a coal boiler or natural gas plant. All the reactor is doing is creating heat so the heat can boil water to create steam and the steam can turn a turbine which creates electricity. For example, a reactor and generating plant, a coal plant and natural gas plant are all about the same efficiency. They waste about 65% of every BTU's of heat energy they create. So only about 35% of the heat actually does the real work of creating electricity. But it is not just the inefficiency of the reactor or coal boiler or the steam side of a gas plant that are inefficient, it is the balance of plant items needed to create the electricity. Things like pumps, automatic valves, heat exchangers, and then the inefficiency of the turbine generator itself. To this day we have not figured out how to beat the laws of thermodynamic and we most likely never will. So inefficiency is the first reason and part of that reason is that all of that waste heat needs to go somewhere and that somewhere is into our air, our streams and lakes and oceans. Now multiple that waste heat by hundreds of new small modular reactors or even large reactors and what do you get? What you get is more global warming and already the waste heat from some cities has been proven to be affecting weather patterns up to 1000 miles away.
The second reason is that ALL power plants regardless of their type take millions and millions of gallons of water to cool both the power plant and the steam back to a liquid which is then reheated by a reactor into steam to turn the turbine which creates the electricity. Even nuclear power plants like the one near Phoenix, AZ called the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station that uses reclaimed sewer water evaporates about 20,000 gallons of water every MINUTE. Now multiply that number by the number of minutes in a day and then in a year and you can see why water is becoming increasingly important. I certainly can’t be the only person who has heard about water shortages.
So there we have just two reasons why nuclear regardless of its type is not the solution we need. It doesn’t make any difference if it is a big 3000 MW reactor or a 250 MW reactor they are all the same. They are not an efficient uses of our resources and I am just not aware of anything that we can continue to waste 65% of for some long period of time and survive. That waste heat, carbon and water are on top of other considerations like construction costs and the time it takes to actually achieve working nuclear units. When I retired from the nuclear field in 1995 some 25 years ago we were already talking about Molten Salt Reactors and Small Modular Reactors. Can we afford to wait another 5-15 years for solutions?
Now I am not saying that SOME new reactors won’t be needed but rather they are just not the CURE ALL we are looking for. For that we need to turn our attention to renewable energy sources like solar, wind, water, geothermal and biomass systems. And while some of these are certainly intermittent they are also carbon neutral.
So how much time do you believe we can wait for an energy solution? How long will it be before our planet can no longer support 6 to 8 billion people?
I don't think your assessment that something can't be 65% inefficient and succeed makes any sense at all. But allowing that it does, other nuclear companies are pursuing more efficient conversion from heat to electricity via higher delta temperatures. They ditch water coolant and steam turbines. Molten Salt + compressed CO2 Brayton Cycle. And today's harnessing of 5% of the actinide inside fuel pellets can use chemical separation to pull out Fission Products and fission ALL the actinides. Then take the FP, chemically separate them, and harness decay heat (impractical with spent fuel rods except for warming a pool). There's nothing inherently inefficient about fission, we just need reactors to continue to advance the way every other form of energy production has. Since the 60s, reactor design advancments have happened in national labs. Canadian and American governments are very aware of these advancements which are ready to be commercialized.
@@gordonmcdowell Good comment Gordon and I appreciate your thoughtful response. And certainly a CO2 turbine stage is more efficient but not a whole lot more, ha ha. But we haven't even started talking yet about construction costs or operational costs.
So lets take a look at just the operational costs for a moment. Lets assume we use the latest Molten Salt or High Temperature Gas cooled reactors and we achieve and efficiency of lets say 70% efficient which will be a really high bar to reach. How many people is it going to take to operate the plant. Let's try to compare a typical 800-1200 MW Gen III reactor facility with about 200-300 workers to run the plant 24/7/365. This included licensed operators by the USNRC, engineers, maintenance workers to repair stuff, maintenance planners, a contracted labor force during outages to refuel the reactor and on and on. Now multiple that 200 or 300 people by about $40-$50/hour. So being conservative lets assume 200 workers times 24 hours shift = 4800 manhours times an average wage of $45 = $216,000/day or times 4.33 weeks per month about $935,000/mo. Now those are VERY conservative numbers and based on my personal benchmarking of 10 different nuclear plants around the country you can probably double those numbers
But lets even be more generous and say that with advanced safe shutdown designs, you can cut that staff by 75% that still leaves you at $233,800/mo. as an operational cost. Now that of course doesn't include sunk capital costs, benefit/company share programs and all kinds of cost like fuel which sooner or later will need to be replace.
Now lets take a trip about 100 miles from where I live and visit a 1000 MW electric solar power plant. I stopped by there one day and got lucky - there was actually someone working there. The repair person and I talked for a bit and he told me the facility is NORMALLY not manned by anyone. Turning if off and on and varying its output is done remotely from the utilities central office.
So this is just another reason that nuclear will not be successful going forward. It costs too much to operate, refuel, repair and license the operators by the USNRC. Next we could talk about construction costs but we haven't even built one of these small modular safe molten salt reactors yet. But I can assure you that with government involvement it will not be cheap.
Have a great day and stay safe. Good discussion.
What is more efficient solution to generate electricty then? Hydro-electric power? Or what? Electricity is required everywhere in the world especially developing countries. You need something. This not efficient. That not efficient. Nothing is efficient. Then what? Do nothing and sit there?
"Radiation deaths were near zero"
That's because they evacuated people. You might as well say that firemen were too rough getting the people out, and that they would have been perfectly safe if they stayed in the burning building.
What's the timecode for that QUOTE ? You're not thinking 3:22 are you? That would really not be a quote, and nor would it be an accurate statement on your part... hindsight is 20/20, but the Japanese Gov made a mistake by evacuating, just like the Japanese Prime Minister made the mistake of not letting TEPCO vent the hydrogen gas which would later explode. THAT is what Lars is referring to when he says ThorCon want a design that CAN NOT result in fatalities thanks to anyone's poor decisions.
1500 people died in the evacuation when there was no need to evacuate. If they stayed indoors, did not drink milk produced after the accident for 3 months, nor drink water from the river for the same period, they would have been perfectly fine. Actually only the areas immediately surrounding the plant, within 1-2km, had radiation hotspots high enough to pose a minor cancer risk (i.e. annual exposure exceeding 100mSv which has potential to increase cancer risk by 5%.).
This advice is as old as the Civil Defense program informed by American scientists at the height of the Cold War and atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. Hell, the nuclear weapons testing produced at least a thousand times more radioactive releases across far larger areas - and yet there has been no spike in cancer or malformations.
What evacuation has done, is cause large increases in suicides, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and other nihilistic behaviours in the affected populations. This was shown at Chernobyl and repeated at Fukushima. I would even argue that evacuation would not have been necessary at Chernobyl, had the authorities promptly distributed radio-iodine pills, banned or threw out all milk produced for 3 months, and delivered food from 50-100km away. Again, the worst impacts were localised - albeit around a much larger area due to no primary containment - to about a 5km radius around the doomed plant. Proper procedures and shielding can protect people even working in the worst affected places: Chernobyl was just 1 reactor out of a multi-reactor power plant, and the other power plants continued to operate until the Soviet Union fell apart.
Fukushima and Chernobyl ironically demonstrate that evacuation is the worst thing you can do in the event of nuclear disaster. Far from helping people, you wind up killing them, or displacing them and traumatising them.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957582017300782
Natural gas is better than nuclear--because its waste-products are basically edible. Natural gas power generation can also produce food.
Natural gas is rife with radon, radon decays into radioactive lead or polonium. Sure you basically can eat it and breath it in, but do you want to? At least the venting from nuclear power plants only decays into normal nitrogen. Besides newer reactor designs can produce waste that after only 60 years will be indistinguishable radioactively from what you can dig up at a local park or in your backyard.
Nearly everything we take for granted at one time or another was incredibly dangerous when it came out, heating and cooling, electricity, automobiles and the list goes on, it is hubris to judge an entire technology based on its first generation.
The final reason why nuclear is better than everything else put together is we are sitting on enough fuel ( waste ) to power our nation for centuries, and you and I own it- we the people, that is why we the people pay taxes to have it stored.
Also, food grown in elevated CO2 levels, is less nutrient dense. Fine if you are growing tulips but there is really no reason to make our food heavier and less effective.
Oil, coal and gas is half way to killing this planet, you have got to be kidding me.
@@hjembrentkent6181 Your teachers are liars. Stop listening to them. Climate Change is a scam--a psy-op by US military intelligence to get backdoor funding after the Cold War ended. You are a stooge for the "military-industrial complex."
@@EgadsNo Quit grasping at penis. If you add more pigshit to the organic tea, the nutrients will be increased. The elevated CO2 allows MORE nutrients to be absorbed.