Thorcon Just OBLITERATED Nuclear Energy’s Biggest Problem
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
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We talk about Thorcon's Nuclear Reactors that are designed to be mass manufactured in shipyards.
#thorcon #nuclearpower
![THORIUM: World's CHEAPEST Energy! [Science Unveiled]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U434Sy9BGf8/mqdefault.jpg)
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Every single day, it is India this, India that, and all the while India does nothing.
China has been operating a thorium reactor for the past 10+ years, as an experiment, and they have constructed a *REAL* thorium power generator producing electricity and now it is doing just that, contributing to China's vast network of power grid.
Do you see China goes around boasting to the world what they have accomplished ? Do you see the Chinese so proudly proclaim to the world that their thorium power generators are so advanced ? While the Chinese done nothing of that, why the Indians are so fond of boasting things that India has yet to construct ?
What the hell is wrong with India ?
1:07 "Like _p??? plants_ and batteries" - help please
Woman if you're not gonna talk of Stirling we are done forever...
I will never try again to be your first.
Not even one only singular time..
Loving you = )
The biggest fusion reactor in our solar system,1,300,000 Earths fit inside in side it. We need to use more of that energy to make good small fusion energy to become ubiquitous on earth. All the world working together in peace for a greater could make this and other good things happen fast before it's too late.
@@fiftystate1388 Peaker plants are power plants that only run a few hours during peak power demand. In America gas is cheap and gas turbines are cheap so most new peakers are gas turbines. I have no idea what's cheapest in India, but most likely gas or oil since coal generally takes too long to start up.
This is a well-done, clear and technically accurate video that is worth a watch. It doesn’t just talk up a single company or technology but treats the concepts fairly.
Way too optimistic
Doesn't address corrosion
Dismisses the price of the fuel (but then says "unavailable" - flawed economic logic)
MSR safety and Modular construction: Great concepts - Best wishes - hope they're right
The negative temperature coefficient of reactivity was not correct for Thorcon, only for LFTRs or MCSFRs with higher fissile to fertile + fission product cross section ratios.
except for...CO2 is plant food...not a bad thing...the elephant in the room is Carbon Monoxide...the stuff that kills you in your car...why these scholarly elitists cannot utter the term Carbon Monoxide as the bad is really really weird...
@@boondoggle3898 You don't understand the science but you dismiss the scientists. Everyone knows carbon monoxide is poison. Can you sum up why it's dangerous in one sentence? This is a chance for you to turn this into a dialog.
@@boondoggle3898 Too much of anything is a bad thing.
We produce more CO2, now, than the existing biomass can absorb -- and in some places with the most vital biomass (rain forests), the people are destroying it.
We're cooking the planet, and no amount of screaming, crying, whining or denying, will change that reality.
We need to shift away from fossil fuels ASAP. We should've done it, a long time ago.
Thank you for helping to promote the change. Ever since I learned about thorium reactors (20yrs ago) I’ve asked again & again why this is not being used as a stop gap solution till we get over the Fusion hump, since it seems always to be 20 years away since the 80s.
It's unfortunate that Uranium has been so useful in weapons. Without that fact, we might have saw thorium reactors earlier rather than a reactor to use the uranium already being extracted for weapons which is so much more volatile and dangerous.
well.. it would hurt the existing industries profits, and potentially make india , turkey, brazil and australia top economic super powers.
most of the worlds thorium is in those countries, after all.
can't have that, can we. i mean, how dare anyone else get a chunk of the energy fund pie.
@@kenabi
I’d like to see those countries become super powers.
@@kenabi Did you know when Ore is sifted and sorted for Titanium, they discard TONS of Thorium that today sits around in PILES, ready to ship??
Fusion has always seemed to be 20 years away since the 60s, not the 80s. Probably since the late 50s.
Me: **Shows up to my ThorCon interview wearing a blonde wig and an awesome cape, wielding a huge foam hammer**
ThorCon Interviewer: "..."
Me: "Oh..."
xd
Didn't really get the point of the middle earth scene why it is in there at all. Totally breaks the narrative
I love the idea behind (relatively) small and scalable reactors like these or a helium pebble-bed. Thorcon seems to have covered all the bases as far as construction, installation and safety (assuming qualified operators). The choke point for me came when you spoke about using an uninhabited island there in Indonesia to store the "spent" fuel pots. That part of the world is quite active tectonically and it would just plain suck to have a tsunami like the ones in 2004, 2010 or the pair in 2018 sweep over the island. To start gaining public acceptance of fission power, recycling of the "spent" fuel needs to become a top priority.
I totally agree on that choke point assessment. The concept of not being "economically feasible" to deal with hazardous waste is simply a non-starter. If the energy produced is insufficient to convert its waste stream into stable products that can be reintegrated into the natural environment without long term hazards to life, then we are bound for an unsurvivable situation for humans and other species alike.
The idea that one can abandon their waste where it can easily be ignored like NYC did by barging out and dumping theirs in the ocean is already producing the inevitable negative consequences. Anyone who has witness the results of Love Canal, Hanford Wa, and Beruit Lebanon knows how hidden and subsequently ignored hazards DO come back to cause serious problems. Storing these irradiated (steel?) containers full of radioactive waste in an uninhabited area where it will not be observed while casings decompose and or get washed away by all matter of natural phenomena is more than simply being irresponsible and most certainly cannot be viewed as being an "economically feasible" situation to recover from.
@@rabbytca
The "what to do with the waste?" issue has been the *one thing* that has held me back about nuclear power. We are just not disposing of it well anywhere AFAIK.
The US has a *big* waste disposal issue already and we don't have very many plants and aren't really building *new ones* .
Certainly newer plants should have less of this issue built into it, but Thorcon's solution is "put it on an uninhabited island"?! Terrible!
The fact it keeps being brushed off by proponents concerns me. It's like the cryptocurrency people ignoring the miners irl affects on the supply of computer parts and electricity usage, or the rare earth mineral issue for electric cars and their batteries.
I want better solutions and am fine with a stop gap, but covering the very basics of what to do with the waste stream seem important before building and investing in anything new.
the waste produced by nuclear is far less than the waste produced by coal, the difference is definitely what can be done with it. I'm all for nuclear energy.
However, while this was a very informative video it made me ask some questions. Does any heat get transferred into the ocean? That's kinda the same symptom happening from carbon emissions. Air quality might get better, but warming oceans still equates to death.
Also they use the term small and it has to be carried it pieces by the largest tankers in the world... Doesn't sound all that small, so how much area and habitat would we be destroying in leveling the seafloor to place these plants down? A lot of the oceans ecosystems are already in trouble.
And lastly, they are talking about the ocean... The one of the most corrosive things in our planet. How are they going to inhibit corrosion, and physical damage, and after these structures are discarded how are they going to handle the waste? Several of peoples hulking structures and projects exist as skeletons all over, already.
@@vixiannaatheria2555 We very much want to reuse the fuel. It is worth tens of millions of dollars to us (beside being the right thing to do). But that will require negotiation with the US since Indonesia has signed a treaty with the US promising not to reprocess the spent fuel. Those negotiations take FOREVER. Japan and Korea have been working on this with the US for decades. We don't want to hang around and watch coal plants be built in the mean time. The spent fuel won't go anywhere. It won't hurt much to wait 20 or 30 extra years to reprocess it.
Remember that our waste is stored in robust relatively small containers. The alternative dumps 90% of their waste into the atmosphere and the remainder is stored in large "mud" lakes. Even in the US the dams holding those lakes have broken, killing people and killing rivers.
Please let's not keep building coal while we wait for the perfect nuclear solution.
Just to give you the idea of scale - waste to supply enough electricity for your lifetime - including your share of industrial electricity usage - would fit inside a 1 Liter bottle. It is so small that it is no problem to store it very safely.
@@trysin4704 That's a secondary concern of mine too when I saw it placed in the ocean floor. At least these plants can't cause a meltdown or explosion that puts radioactive nonsense circulating into the world's oceans forever, but the destruction of and disruption of sea life with the placement of these modules isn't something to ignore either...
Personally I think nuclear is the way to go
It has been the way to go ever since the advent of the Gen IV reactor.
Nuclear is not just the way, it is the only way.
It's not THE way to go but one of many, for sure. The SUN is the closest fusion reactor Earth has and bombards the earth with more than 8,000 times the energy we consume in a year. Reactors require fuel that will only keep us going for a couple hundred years but the sun can provide us with more than enough energy for at least a billion years.
@@MrMR-hp6ed fusion IS nuclear.
@@orionstark no...fission is nuclear. you're confusing fission with fusion
"negative temperature coefficient of reactivity" - now that's a term I haven't heard talked about for a while. Very important, and often mis-understood.
Jargon os intellectuals, not phrasing of Humans. Can you convert that mess for Humans to comprehend?
@@linyenchin6773 Negative temperature coefficient of reactivity: As the temperature increases, the reaction slows down.
Positive temperature coefficient of reactivity As the temperature increases, the reaction speeds up.
Chernobyl was the result of a positive temp coefficient, it's basically a runaway reaction: more heat = faster reaction = more heat = faster reaction... and so on.
@@andrewmackenzie2638 why can’t you have a runaway reaction the other way? Is it just easier to warm something up with an exogenous source than to cool it down? Hell if I know.
The Nuclear Navy thanks you for your service.
@@vknight7497 because the whole point of a nuke plant is to put out heat that creates pressure that is used to make electricity. With a positive TCoR you're getting a feedback loop that results in ever increasing pressure until the containment fails and adios muchachos.
With a negative TCoR there's a maximum temp/ pressure you can realistically hit. You over engineer to be safe above that and you're golden- no feedback loop exists to ruin everyone's day.
Brilliant video on the topic, it’s time to sell this Safe energi plant to the public, so they really understand the pros and cons. Nicely done, thanks.
Thank you for directly coming to the topic and no obnoxious over the top delivery. Needed a perspective on nuclear energy for my work, this has been extremely helpful.
Huh, Huh, Huh. I got some questions: doesn't the molten salt fuel eat through most reactor and containment methods, because it is SO CORROSIVE. Does it not react with water explosively, so if it were to receive a leak of water drops or worse, if the containment were to break and the fuel were released into the atmosphere, the results would be plumes of vaporized radioactive fuel for the residents of surrounding counties to breathe in deeply? Finally, in computing the cost of nuclear power did you figure in the cost of depopulating areas the size of US states as you nuclear industry folks accomplished in Chernobyl and Fukushima? Are you advocating planting the nuclear power plants in the ocean bottom now, so you can honestly say that you cannot reach or fix or prevent the underground radioactive leaks, when they occur, to limit your expenses? Are you totally nuts?
Go live in Chernobyl's exclusion zone. You can get very close to nuclear stuff there. Reportedly, due to the inadequate clean-up, Fukushima is also another place in which you can get close to your beloved nuclear power. Go play around among their plastic bags of contaminated, radioactive dirt. Those are going to leak soon, what with having been exposed to the sun and wind for close to ten years, so you will soon have nice, radioactive dirt that you can use to grow your own crops. Have fun, fun, fun, until the cancers take your fun away!
Some years ago I had the opportunity to tour Oakridge laboratory in Tennessee. While I was there some of the team that had built the prototype Thorium reactor there and I got to sit and chat with them over coffee. The way they described building it and the hope they had in the design always made me a little sad because others didn't seem to share that enthusiasm. I am truly glad to see that is finally changing.
How is this a Thorium reactor? it's a normal uranium reactor, the name of the company is Thorcon, which is misleading. Please tell me where Thorium is mentioned is this video, I cannot find it
@@dreamtreater Thorium, was mentioned as a secondary fuel additive to extend the life of a can. The primary reason I'm optimistic about this design is how little would need to be adapted to go pure Thorium. In the U.S. where I'm from we use variations on pressurized water. Moving to Thorium requires replacing everything aside from the employees with that design. With the system in the video, you add an in-loop fueling system and that's it.
I'm not a huge fan of the whole " money makes the world go round" mentality, I also know it's a factor of consideration. This unit utilizes an existing financial ecosystem without being dependent.
Very intriguing, especially the part about shipyards being the machine that builds the machine is a very interesting idea!
You hit the nail on the head right at the end. We need to mass produce power plants and nuclear is the way to go. Not sure about the whole sinking it in the harbor or estuary bit but hey, if we can store 24,000 tons of ammonium nitrate in a harbor why not a nuclear power plant.
Ok, bad joke, I'll see myself out.
ahhhhhhaahhhaaaaa
Israeli missiles can reach Mach 8, faster than the human eye can see, also Ammonium Nitrate needs to be mixed at just the right ratio with diesel to combust, and still requires a detonator
*Just saying*
Oh, not to mention the Israeli security company that installed security cameras at Fukushima, which bore a striking resemblance to a mini nuke. Engineers habe said the whole point of an expansion chamber is to make explosive meltdowns impossible, it would mean a serious review of every reactor on earth, which of course never happened. Just weeks before Japan had recognized Palestine as a Nation State
Then there's the USS Liberty, and the Israeli spies caught with plans to the local Nuclear Reactor or the fsst breeder reactor in the Negev, used to provide nukes to Germany, South Africa, France, Italy, India, Pakistan and N Korea, all made from stolen US Nuclear technology, and of course they're not party to the international disarmament treaties. Arbon Milcham, Director of Mr and Mrs Smith still receives awards years after admitting he stole 200 Nuclear triggers and gave then to Israel. Arnon also made "the Lone Gunman" where govt spooks remotely hijack a plane to fly into a building and spark a massive multi generational war in order for military contractors to profit, it aired in June 2001
@@uncannyvalley2350 No it wasn't, it was the Rothchild funded space lasers. Everyone knows that! (/s)
Want to see more videos from you. You are one of the valuable creators in India.
10:24 "Don't say I don't give you knowledge to drop at parties" LOL LOL Hehehe
It's way past time you guys started talking about molten salt reactors. They are our best option. Kirk Sorensen's flibe LFTR molten salt reactor is also top notch.
They Have on this channel
LFTR uses and makes weapons grade fuel, so not commercially viable. Thorcon is one of the good non-weapons thermal alternatives to LFTR.
@George Mann It's a matter of getting the fuel cycle started. LFTR's a thermal spectrum reactor, it can't burn thorium directly like a fast spectrum reactor can. As a result, it has to be primed with highly-enriched uranium to start. Then, because of the fuel reprocessing, it isolates high purity Pa-233, which can be used to make weapons grade U-233 by avoiding neutron contamination that leads to non-fissile U-232 and U-234. It's a wonderful reactor in theory, with a lot of useful non-energy applications like Kirk says, but in practice there's a lot of exploitable features.
@@mattbrody3565 So? Any nation state that wants nukes today, could handily get their hands on them. They're not some super secret super difficult high-tech weapon, just pure enough fissile material and some explosives. The real trick is keeping these materials out of the hands of terrorists, but that's why nuclear power plants have strict security.
Also worth considering, isolating Pa-223 and U-232 as a small organisation is exceptionally difficult, due to their high radioactivity. It's no good if the people making and delivering the bomb keel over and die of radiation sickness before they can even get the weapon to where they want it to be, and any leak or compromisation of where they are and what they're doing is an open invitation to let every elite antiterrorism unit like GIGN or GSG-9 kicking down their front door.
Did you even watch the video? This video is talking about a molten salt reactor . . .
If you do nuclear right, you don’t need to mess with that “renewable” nonsense.
France deployed nuclear power very quickly. They standardized one design and made their power grid reliable and comparatively inexpensive. Definitely cheaper than “renewables”.
“renewable” nonsense.?
just because the carbon goals set by the elites are literally impossible to reach.
that there is literally not enough silver on earth to make all the solar panels needed.
that every wind turbine require 900 lbs of rare earth metals.
there just may be enough rare earth materials to make this delusion come true.
we just have to turn over ever feet of the earths surface until we do.
all the mining for rare earth materials would create a massive amount of carbon byproducts.
you have to believe in the science! and a miracle material may appear to save us all, sent from the heavens.
before this entire fraud is exposed and the world economy collapses under its own weight.
@@brusso456you won’t find me defending wind and solar.
Thank you for presenting this technology to the public. Thorium reactors may be our salvation when it comes to producing clean, relatively safe and almost limitless power and thorium is one of the most abundant elements on Earth. We should be investing heavily now in development of this technology to meet the increasing energy needs of the U.S. and world in the coming years.
Love your channel! Thanks for another great video!
Thanks! 😃
A very well done video! It sounds like a viable way to produce nuclear reactors more quickly and more cheaply due to using facilities used to this type of manufacture.
“The public has a negative perception of nuclear power” …. Once they sit in the dark and cold for a few days that would change 😳😁
It's only control freaks recking havoc with civilization. I was taught to think for myself. I don't know about you but mythical John Q Public don't exist.
@@dalethomasdewitt But not, apparently, to spell? Perhaps the word you meant was “wreaking”?
our power company has shut down our state only nuke, ahead of schedule. the lights are still on and lots of wind turbines too and lights and my TV works just fine when the wind is calm too. Duh.
@@donaldbarry5074 Rekt
@@jerrymctee5996 yeah, who needs natural habitats, their just animals... right?
I like how she takes complicated ideas and makes them simple and fun. This is a great channel and deserves millions of subs.
The vast majority of the high cost of nuclear reactors has nothing to do with the actual construction cost but is the result of near-impossible regulatory nonsense caused by the public's fear of nuclear.
1:13 the cost of managing intermittency skyrockets. So true, but very few youtubers dare to say it.
cost of nuclear will put power out of the reach of many too.
renewable with storage is still cheaper.
and cheaper than nuclear and cleaner is geothermal.
drilling tech makes it available anywhere.
and you can put it anywhere power is needed, without mining or burning something.
no future fuel needs, no waste.
@@hg60justice I live in Hungary, there is not much sun and wind in the winter, I don't think renewable will be an viable option in the winter.
Geothermal should be good here, the thermal gradient is higher then average, but there is no such powerplant just spas.
Thorcon should do like Natrium and store energy in molten salt. Natrium uses their molten salt fuel to heat large amounts of non-fuel molten salt.
@@hg60justice Entropy always wins. Geothermal is no more inexhaustible than Hydro is. To be practical you need a tremendous amount of underground heat near the surface and you can't get that just anywhere.
@@patrickweaver1105
heat is better in some places.
a test one is going in saskatchewan right now.
they had no problem making it work there.
you just need to drill deep enough.
and lower temp systems could be boosted with heat pumps.
it would easily replace the baseload problem from fossil fuels.
unlike intermittent wind and solar.
finally a tech channels thats not all about just new phones.
Very informative update on Thorium reactors. They were passed over in favour of reactors that create bomb making materials right at the start of nuclear power. Unfortunately the deafening silence that surrounds them continues to impede their development. For the last 10 years this new Thorium reactor has been discussed and nothing has happened. Elon Musk should get involved because he needs them for Mars, and we would see some very quick develoments.
Also needs them to charge up all those cyber trucks.
@@jimgraham6722 Yes, for baseload to go with solar power on earth and for baseload and waste heat generation on Mars colony.
Actually China is developing a Thorium reactor as we watch this...
Nope. Bad idea.
@@jerrymctee5996 nah the US was doing research into it. From what I have seen it's lower risk than current ones producing weapons material. Gets humanity out of that bad loop...
You "Tech for Luddites" folks make great videos. This is another great video. I really wish Thorcon could scrape together some b-roll of SOMETHING lab or industrial looking... or if they could collaborate with you directly. I don't know the camera policies in a shipyard, but nothing would be more impressive than a guided tour of such a manufacturing process while the tour guide explains how things could be adapted to Thorcon's needs.
And you should pin a UA-cam comment with your Skill Share link. I think many people will see a top-comment who will not see UA-cam Description.
They can't. it is just vaporware.
@@jerrymctee5996 You are aware that The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment was a thing, right? An MSR operated at Oak Ridge. And China is completing their TMSR-LF1 right now, likely will be powering it up before the end of 2021.
Wonderful propaganda. Pravda or CGTN would be proud if they had made this propaganda piece.
The deal was made in 2019, but there is no news about it in Indonesia until now. Either they stay low (because the topics is very sensitive), or the project delayed.
Nice to see Gordon getting a shout out. He does have MOUNTAINS of content that's really informative. Don't just stop with Gordon though, as there's other documentaries and plenty of books on the subject. That said, there's still so much content posted on Gordon's two channels, you'll have more than enough information to go through before you even get the opportunity to start digging into other information sources.
Yea but he may be factually correct but economically so wrong.
@@jerrymctee5996 About?
Elysium industries have a MSR design which even runs on existing 'spent' fuel waste from existing reactors. The stockpile of spent fuel can be cleaned up and is essentially free.
Well done. I'm convinced nuclear power is the only currently viable alternative to carbon fuels, so this is a very encouraging project.
A little naive in my opinion.
The USA has been siting on this technology since the 1950s. They built a test reactor in Oakridge Tennessee that ran flawlessly and we ended up selling the used molten salt to India. It makes me sick that no one knows about this as humanity comes to an end because of Global Warming. Mad props to my favorite aerospace engineer Kirk Sorensen formerly from NASA.
"as humanity comes to an end because of Global Warming" and with that you lost all credibility.
We had a good run.....but, all good things must come to an end.
How is this channel not way more popular? Super smart content, delivered in a way that makes it really easy to understand… and she’s really witty and funny. A gifted teacher.
Delivery is questionable. I find her accent hard to understand.
@@69elchupacabra69 her speech is flawless. You should do some self examination of why you think this.
@@richardcharlesworth2020 You know praising flaws as if they weren't there is just as patronizing as it is condescending to mock said flaws.
@@69elchupacabra69 Being "not American" is not a flaw. The vast majority of people in the world are "not American".
@@altrag When tf did I say her being not American is the flaw? I only talked about her accent. I myself am not even an American. Fuck hell stop projecting your bigotry.
Superbly presented.
Gordon has been doing a comprehensive job for a long time now. The abstract observation from which is how the Black Death of Fossil Fuels has all the money to distort perceptions completely in reverse of the facts. "Really old" people remember how Nuclear Power was going to be "too cheap to Meter", except instead there's been no financial return at all on most of the expenditures associated with the second best system, the one used for the embarrassing excess of bomb manufacturing. It is a planet killing absurdity, fast and slow attrition, deception and total poisoning of the the Democratic ideals that made the weaponry possible, and diplomatically unnecessary.
"It is a planet killing absurdity, fast and slow attrition" -- What are you talking about? Stop listening to pseudoscience fearmongers. Even among the atomic bomb survivors, there is zero evidence of heritable genetic damage.
@@hewdelfewijfesupposing you read before going off half cocked, there's not zero evidence of heritable damage, it's generally eliminated short-term, but there is is plenty of suppressed evidence of militaristic policy that the reason why we don't have Nuclear Power is because fossil fuel interests have made threats to destroy it to eliminate competitors, while they fight over markets using conventional weapons, and threaten us with Nukes aimed at "alternative" Power Generation.
It's an actual war of attrition, very evident in the current north east European context, if you stop listening to the sound of your own voice fossil fool.
Thank you for mentioning Elysium Industries and by extension, Ed Pheil. I hope for an episode for this simple - in - concept power + waste cleanup process using already mined and stored energy.
Oof, waste management on an island sounds alot like dumping it to the ocean
its really not. it would be stored in safe facilities for a relatively short time period (probably a few decades) then likely taken and put in a fast reactor. or just taken to a more permanent disposal site later on.
Alarmist! Everyone knows the oceans are uninhabited.
Great presentation!. There are a lot of details to explain and you covered most of them.
Another advantage of not needing pressurized water is that during a major loss of pressure, steam can split into hydrogen & oxygen as I understand by being catalyzed by zirconium in the fuel rod jackets. That leads to a hydrogen explosion such as in Fukushima. No pressurized water so no hydrogen explosion.
Once these and other molten salt reactor designs get established in as many countries as possible, I don't see the point of mixing renewables into the same grid.
Yep!
We thought going too far into the weeds with hot zirconium cladding reacting with steam would defeat the purpose of trying to simplify a somewhat complex process.
That’s why we like to give a shoutout to Gordon Mcdowell. His videos are long, detailed, with question answer sessions etc :)
main task: stop people from confusing nuclear power with nuclear bombs
Huh, Huh, Huh. I got some questions: doesn't the molten salt fuel eat through most reactor and containment methods, because it is SO CORROSIVE. Does it not react with water explosively, so if it were to receive a leak of water drops or worse, if the containment were to break and the fuel were released into the atmosphere, the results would be plumes of vaporized radioactive fuel for the residents of surrounding counties to breathe in deeply? Finally, in computing the cost of nuclear power did you figure in the cost of depopulating areas the size of US states as you nuclear industry folks accomplished in Chernobyl and Fukushima? Are you advocating planting the nuclear power plants in the ocean bottom now, so you can honestly say that you cannot reach or fix or prevent the underground radioactive leaks, when they occur, to limit your expenses? Are you totally nuts?
Go live in Chernobyl's exclusion zone. You can get very close to nuclear stuff there. Reportedly, due to the inadequate clean-up, Fukushima is also another place in which you can get close to your beloved nuclear power. Go play around among their plastic bags of contaminated, radioactive dirt. Those are going to leak soon, what with having been exposed to the sun and wind for close to ten years, so you will soon have nice, radioactive dirt that you can use to grow your own crops. Have fun, fun, fun, until the cancers take your fun away!
Main, main task: stop people from strawmanning opponents to have a easy way
Would these modular reactors also make it feasible to replace the coal furnaces in coal power plants, to run the existing turbines and generators with nuclear instead of coal? That would reduce the CO2 output and make use of existing generator parts in the coal plants.
Not really. The steam is at different temperatures and pressures. Coal steam plant would not function adequately.
LOL! "put the steam under the pillow..." That's funny!
Laugh until the cancers from nuclear fuel leaks take your and your family members' fun away! LOL
Been following this company for a while now, and while they appear to be one of the fastest movers in this area, it's still depressingly slow. :(
TerraPower is designing a MCRE prototype Plutonium burner for France, Orano to be built at INL.
300kWe
One pump
Cooled through an RVACs like system through the reactor vessel walls.
NaCl-43PuCl3 fuel salt
I wonder if there is a way to tie a unique Bitcoin to a specific reactor? By doing this one could produce a fungible token currency that is limited further by its specific identity to an energy producing asset. This may raise interests in both technologies. Just thinking. I recognize that It contradicts the indestructibility of Bitcoin.
It is slow because they want the governments to build and take responsibility for this technology. Anyone can build one if you have the money to back it up.
Go live in Chernobyl's exclusion zone. You can get very close to nuclear stuff there. Reportedly, due to the inadequate clean-up, Fukushima is also another place in which you can get close to your beloved nuclear power. Go play around among their plastic bags of contaminated dirt. Have fun, fun, fun, until the cancers take your fun away!
Part of the reason nuclear development is slow is regulation and buraucracy. Nuclear could have started replacing a lot of coal power fifty years ago, but "environmentalists" waged a propaganda war on the technology by confusing power plants with nuclear weapons. This made R&D extremely slow and expensive and investments in new projects very uncertain. Basically, the "environmentalists" managed to almost criminalize the use of nuclear power.
So when "environmentalists" fear monger about climate change and pollution from coal power, remember that they are the ones who prevented nuclear from eliminating much of these negative side effects.
15:00 "that is not proof, but it definitely shifts your priors" that earned a sub; I haven't heard that on a single channel so far.
11:37 Sounded good up to where we dump the waste on uninhabited islands! :(
2 and 3 on one natural gas turbines with HRSG steam turbines are still the way to go imo.. there's been recent developments on using accelerated biodegration of crude oils to rapidly produce natural gas. which burns VERY cleanly, produces tremendous amounts of electricity in combined cycle power plants, is scalable, and doesn't require us to ship nuclear waste to islands in Indonesia..
In a swimming pool too cool off 😁
@@Matthew-zs8nm That sounds a bit "Pollyanna" to me- crude oil, as it comes out of the ground has a whole stew of molecules you are not accounting for- sulfur, sulfur dioxide, heavy metals- a whole bunch of "not good". You would need a burn to achieve virtual 100% energy conversion of all that. Go any place near a refinery- those huge plants are trying to recover as many of those molecules as they can find a market for, for as many as they can produce. The trash has to be got out either before or during the refining process- you still have literal tons of very difficult to dispose of crap. FR
@@Matthew-zs8nm How about reducing the use of natural gas so you do not need oil?
as an australian, we would likely be supplying that uranium (happily) to indonesia, we could probably store the waste too, especially if it turns out we can use the waste as fuel too! as long as the native aboriginals to whichever area used get both a say in it... and a cut $$$!
The lady is absolutely correct. Nuclear electricity is expensive primarily because of the possibility of steam escape which at such pressures (160 atmospheres) is effectively an explosion. Most of the expenditure on a nuclear plant goes into avoiding this possibility, and containing it, should it happen. The pressurised water reactor (PWR) is a giant jack-in-the-box. The terrific expense of of conventional nuclear reactors is trying to design them so that the jack-in-the-box never goes off, and even if it does, there are several schemes to mitigate the ensuing disaster, culminating in these massive, expensive containment buildings.
We saw at Fukushima that the containment measures were ineffective. We also saw at Chernobyl the Socialist foolishness of not even bothering to build a containment.
Another source of expense is in the precision manufacture of fuel rods, necessary for the operation of PWRs. In MSRs, the fuel is simply dissolved in the primary coolant.
MSRs do not need the enormous pressures found in PWRs in order to function.
Congratulations to the Indonesian government for being the first to commission an MSR reactor from Thorcon.
Is this lady Indonesian? I thought she was Indian.
But mention was not made of Moltex, a company with an alternative design of reactor (which can be made in a factory rather than a shipyard, and will fit onto a few lorries, rather than on big ships), Moltex reactors not only generate electricity, but can do so from existing nuclear waste, thus solving two problems at once. Conventionally there is no way to deal with nuclear waste, except possibly to bury it, and hope that the geology will not spew it back up again. Nobody wants the nuclear waste in a hole near them. And storing it safely - perhaps for 000s of years is very expensive. So, consuming it in Moltex reactors and thereby rendering it harmless would be a very useful (and profitable) side-line, in places like the UK, which has a lot of plutonium waste from its existing fleet of Gas cooled reactors and one (soon to be two) PWRs. The French designed PWR is enormously expensive, and similar designs in Finland and France are not yet operational. They are years behind schedule.
Note: Waste is not an issue. Any plausible leak will result in exposures to the public of thousands of times less than background, aka harmless. Also, do you know about the natural nuclear fission reactors underground at Oklo Gabon? A billion years ago, there were natural underground nuclear fission reactors. After a billion years in a water rich environment, the plutonium moved 5 ft.
An interesting fact about the waste from a molten-salt reactor: the radioactive half-life is only around 350 years. That means very cheap waste disposal (e.g., dump them in disused salt mines!), if the nuclear medicine industry doesn't grab it first!
Prove it.
half-life doesn't mean it's not radioactive after 350 years LoL And that's my main critique of nuclear power. You can store it where you want and as safe as you want, the fact is, it will stay with us for thousands of years. Nobody can foresee the future, especially not as far as that. So why not rather use energy that doesn't pollute it's surroundings for thousands of years?
@@Loren1389 Finland has ready figured out the problem: dig a really deep hole in a place that isn't prone to earthquakes. Also, 700 years isn't thousands of years lol
@@Loren1389 that 350 years bring it down under the level of background radiation ie no worse then standing next to slab of any old rock. hate tell you but ALL rock is radioactive and we are in flood of radiation from space every day all day EVEN YOUR OWN BONES are radioactive. dose makes the poison
@@jerrymctee5996 uh just go look at the Thorium fuel cycle... and the decay chains...
One of the biggest costs, depending where you live, is decommissioning. The French government (through EDF Energy) believe that such cost per MW of capacity will be a small fraction of that estimated by British authorities.
Because the French government relies on actual science instead of the hysterical fearmongering of groups like Greenpeace.
Great video! Thanks y'all
I like the way she mentioned Kirk Sorenson's LIFTR.
Building an offshore reactor off the Indonesian coasts sounds like asking for trouble. It has witnessed cataclysmic earthquakes & tsunamis and will remain that way because of it being on one of the most volatile spots on the Ring of Fire.
The powerplant hull rests on the seafloor, most likely over gravel. This is done to isolate it when the seafloor shakes. Earthquakes should be no more problematic for it as they are for floating structures
@@vipondiu What about Tsunamis? Is it just going to be far out enough out to shore to not be hit?
It will have its own harbor and be able to resist a 15 meter tsunami. Should be safe.
@@lorenwilson8128 No on site civil engineering project?
Was just browsing through your playlists. Where did your unboxing videos go? I loved the puns in those videos!! That's how you started...
We switched content after the pandemic, bit the new audience kept getting recommended smartphone reviews so it was killing engagement.
So we made them all private at the suggestion of a commentor.
That really helped so the videos remain private to this day :)
I was searching the same 😁
@@TechforLudditesSira You definitely made a good choice to move away from unboxing videos, since this line of content creation is your forte.
However, I loved the script of your unboxing videos. :) Just watched for your dialogue delivery :)
Killing the integral fast reactor was a disastrous us policy decision
True! The USA could have been a leader in clean, cheap energy with the IFR taking waste from other reactors and creating fresh startup fuel for a fleet of molten salt fast reactors.
It was intentional... If you already have a no-carbon solution, than you just can not push the "renewables", especially when those are more polluting (at the current tech level) than literally anything else.
If they are not already, these videos should be used in school science classes. They present an overview of the topic in an easy to understand and entertaining manner.
Very nicely presented. Thank you.
While I am skeptical of nuclear energy in general, this technology directly addresses the high capital cost which is one of my major objections.
Not to mention that No reactor has been decommissioned to the point where the site can be used for any other purpose, the ongoing costs to the sites tend to mount up of hundreds if not thousands of years.
If you have any questions about nuclear power, I'd be happy to answer them.
Stunningly clear description! However, I am a former PhD metallurgist who specialized in alloys for high temperature applications (jet engines). There is, I believe, a severe challenge in using molten salt - corrosion. I sense there is considerable hand waving about this potentially intractable problem, which is probably a major reason no molten salt reactor has run since the 1960's. In any case, this is the bit of technology I'd watch carefully before investing in Thorcon.
That has been a _big_ concern for molten salt reactors since they were invented. Corrosion is also a major stumbling block for OTEC, but for obviously very different reasons. Both of those are wonderfully simple ideas which would have some fantastic positive side-effects, so I'm left really hoping we find some 'magic' materials.
@@CyberiusT The situation may be roughly analogous to titanium casting. Titanium is so reactive that there is simply no ceramic that can withstand it for more than a few seconds. It is melted in water-cooled copper crucibles, meaning molten Ti only contacts a "skull" of solid Ti. It can be poured into ceramic molds, but despite using an expensive ceramic to coat them (yttria) and rapid solidification (with attendant complications), reaction still occurs and the outer surface of the casting must be removed. No magic ceramic exists to make this easier; a new element would be required.
Jet engines are possible only because of a somewhat magical material, a class of nickel-base alloys known as 'superalloys'. Discovered around 1950, they've been improved 30° C at a time, and for turbine airfoils are prepared as single crystals with intricate internal cooling passages, and are further protected with elaborate coating systems. This technology development took a long time. But turbine airfoils are laid waste if contaminants enter an engine that form molten salt - hot corrosion.
They're going to do the testing, but with basic chemistry controls, they think that standard stainless steel is going to perform quite fine for the lifetime of the plant.
Instead of these gaint reactors why can we use small ones like ones used in nuclear powered ships subs ,these are cheaper and faster to produce ,by using them in large enough numbers we can achieve the same with less complexitys.
Because of the constraints of size, nuclear submarines use highly enriched Uranium.
Plus they have a massive amount of cooling available on account of being in the sea :)
But it’s not totally unfeasible. Only thing is that there are less expensive ways to get nuclear energy.
@@TechforLudditesSira got it 👍🏼 . Thanks maam for replying ☺️ ,I hope ur channel become one of the best educational channels of Utube .
These are not giant reactors. They are meant to retrofit existing outgoing grids. Modularity is the key to kick start civilization's basic key need.
Sticker price is the least important metric for a power source. It's only become popular in recent years because it helps wind and solar look good. What really matters is ongoing operating costs. In that respect nuclear is extremely cheap and gets cheaper the bigger you go.
@George Mann Wind and Solar would be good in India and China because they have so many people who live off the grid with no power at all. So to them even intermittent power is good compared to what they have now. Small villages could have a big solar array with power only needing to be sent a couple of miles at best. But as the entire country is hooked into one big grid they will become less and less viable except for people who want household solar for their personal use.
Thank you. We won't make progress against global heating until we have safe affordable nuclear fission at large scale.
Huh, Huh, Huh. I got some questions: doesn't the molten salt fuel eat through most reactor and containment methods, because it is SO CORROSIVE. Does it not react with water explosively, so if it were to receive a leak of water drops or worse, if the containment were to break and the fuel were released into the atmosphere, the results would be plumes of vaporized radioactive fuel for the residents of surrounding counties to breathe in deeply? Finally, in computing the cost of nuclear power did you figure in the cost of depopulating areas the size of US states as you nuclear industry folks accomplished in Chernobyl and Fukushima? Are you advocating planting the nuclear power plants in the ocean bottom now, so you can honestly say that you cannot reach or fix or prevent the underground radioactive leaks, when they occur, to limit your expenses? Are you totally nuts?
Go live in Chernobyl's exclusion zone. You can get very close to nuclear stuff there. Reportedly, due to the inadequate clean-up, Fukushima is also another place in which you can get close to your beloved nuclear power. Go play around among their plastic bags of contaminated, radioactive dirt. Those are going to leak soon, what with having been exposed to the sun and wind for close to ten years, so you will soon have nice, radioactive dirt that you can use to grow your own crops. Have fun, fun, fun, until the cancers take your fun away!
Good points. Re corrosion the salty environment sounds troublesome but you need to bear in mind molten salt heat storage is not new. It is widely used for example in the solar thermal power stations as well as other industrial applications. The main issue in a high temperature nuclear reactor is the neutron flux that can slowly alter the crystalline structure of the reactor vessel. However, the molten salt reactors being implemented are designed to safe life principles. The reactor will be decommissioned before it is seriously weakened.
Corrosion still requires oxygen and to the extent there is any gas in the reactor chamber it is inert, such as helium. The reactor vessels themselves are made of high grade high nickel high silicon stainless steel. There has been a lot of research into this and the Chinese say their new MSR that came on line this month is made of a new stainless steel alloy they are confident won't corrode.
With regard to water, yes, MSRs are dry and for good reason, they operate around 650C way above water boiling point. You don't want water to get anywhere near them. The Chinese program is about having these systems in the desert areas of western China.
It is likely MSRs greatest application will be in dry areas of the world without the necessary water supplies to allow conventional power plants that are dependent on substantial water supplies for raising steam and cooling, or in the case of pressurised water reactors the substantial water supplies needed on standby for emergency core cooling.
Molten salt reactors are already molten so there can be no meltdown. They are also not pressurised so there can be no explosive decompression or venting as happened at TMI and Fukushima. They use a basement design, effectively they are below grade, tanks in a pit below the reactor catch spilt fuel salt in the unlikely event the reactor should leak or overheat.
Overall they are built to fail safe principles.
Like a coal furnace they require continual stoking to keep them going. In the event of a problem the reactions subside and they shut themselves down passively without operator involvement.
I love thorium and molten salt reactor design and potential.
Glad to see your video. Thanks
>>> saying "OBLITERATE" in the title = the worst title you could have chosen, IF you seriously want to inform /counteract prejudice, fear, and ignorance and doiubt about this very important new technology.
This is a reactor with uranium molten salts, not thorium.
this is not a Thorium reactor
This is about present electricity production, which is fine, but not at all about petrol, diesel (for ships & land vehicles), aircraft fuel, oil & gas for building heating. The total human energy is 18,000 gW and not the 5,000 gW of electricity shown in video, so just multiply the requirements by 4 to get the actual if all carbon burning is to stop and apply whatever uplifting projects are in this video to that upgraded requirement. Still, 10 gW / year is better than nothing at all. It's a start of a start of a start of a start.
Fukushima's construction began in 1967. Today's reactors are designed with 50 additional years' worth of safety research and innovations baked in.
Unfortunately the lessons learnt from Fukushima have meant a redesign of new plants and will now mean upgrading other nuclear plants.
@@bigbadjohn10 I don't think that very many nuclear plants are both located in tsunami zones AND have their backup generators located low enough to be submerged. Not all that much upgrading and redesign to be done.
If it's backup power plant had been water proofed, there would have not been the meltdown. The plant was to be shut down due to age but given a reprieve. Part of that should have been ensuring a reliable power supply to the pumps perhaps with a backup battery pack as well as the DE generators.
The huge cost of current-day fission comes not just from safety and the lengthy period before a reactor can start producing, but also from decommissioning. The decommissioning costs for molten-salt thorium reactors isn't mentioned here
Greenpeace being against nuclear power makes me not take them seriously. It's like that annoying kid that's "against everything".
I agree completely and it is embarrassing being an environmentalist when you have these Green Peace kids or too lazy to research nuclear power properly
I guess when the "let's hide the waste on remote islands" gets replaced by an adult plan the kids are happy to re-consider.
The good news is that the extra power produced during the day will let you crack water to create hydrogen for a cooking fuel or to fuel cars converted to burn hydrogen rather then gas.
love your videos, you really know how to explain the topic, keep on making videos, there great, thanks again hun
It should be mentioned that the visuals in this are not to scale, which is fine for the purposes of this video. In an actual molten salt reactor, the distance between uranium atoms is far greater than you see here. So the expansion of the fuel salt has a very profound effect on reactivity just like she said. Imagine you're shooting targets with a rifle at 200m and as the day heats up, your target automatically moves itself hundreds of meters further downrange until you can no longer effectively hit it.
To scale, it would be like moving your target many Km away from where you're standing.
Good video!
There's hope-finally- for nuclear. What was your reference to "gordon?" Gordon McDowell perhaps?
They did say my full name. And that's not at all expected... very nice of them to do that.
This was a great video. Fantastic job citing Prof. David Ruzic's channel. This man is a UA-cam Jewel. You can watch every single video in his channel. For those wondering, Illinois EnergyProf is the name of his channel.
Let's address the elephant in the room: Water and fuel next to each other. And fuel pumped around like water. NOPE. A primer circuit break is a disaster.
Build a lead circuit, and leave the fuel in the pot, far from any water. In case of break, it's just lead. And in case of overheat, you just use the freeze plug and drain the pot.
I would be surprised if they did not have a secondary salt circuit like sodium cooled reactors have a secondary sodium circuit
@@ValExperimenter
So a break in the heat exchanger will lead a sodium-water explosion with contaminated primer sodium? Lead is the way. Put a bunch of bismuth in it, and it will flow over 130C. In case of disasterous primer break, it will just flow out, and solidify, even even entombing the contamination.
@@bandiras2 I did not suggest using sodium in the secondary circuit even though it has been used successfully in that role for many years. I suggested using a secondary salt circuit. There is extensive experience using molten salt as a heat transfer and energy storage fluid.
@@ValExperimenter
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
A low melting point, with high boiling point non corrosive salt then. I don't see the problem with that. I still prefer lead, because it's shielding properties. Primer liquid will be radioactive, and lead can contain it in case of spill.
I always thought the way to go with a molten salt reactor was a helium brayton cycle using thorium fuel. Thorium is much cheaper and more abundant than uranium. . The constant pressure system can't have a catastrophic steam explosion like you can get with a high-pressure boiling water system, the helium is unreactive so it can't have an explosive chemical reaction with the fuel, and the radioisotopes of helium are very short lived so even if the working fluid is released, there won't be widespread radioactive contamination. as for dealing with a break in the primary circuit, the floor of the containment chamber should drain into safe fuel storage to catch any fuel leaks.
The investment in nuclear power is huge right now.
Seeing multiple companies looking at building Small Molten Salt Reactors for cargo ships. Very interesting.
This is what the world needs to work on. Free, clean, universal energy. Either we evolve, or we collapse.
Then utilize that energy to provide food and shelter for one and all, at no cost, so that we may be finally free to actually do something other than look for jobs to sustain ourselves.
@@vgaportauthority9932 don't forget universal health Care that is paid by the government for free to us
Huh, Huh, Huh. I got some questions: doesn't the molten salt fuel eat through most reactor and containment methods, because it is SO CORROSIVE. Does it not react with water explosively, so if it were to receive a leak of water drops or worse, if the containment were to break and the fuel were released into the atmosphere, the results would be plumes of vaporized radioactive fuel for the residents of surrounding counties to breathe in deeply? Finally, in computing the cost of nuclear power did you figure in the cost of depopulating areas the size of US states as you nuclear industry folks accomplished in Chernobyl and Fukushima? Are you advocating planting the nuclear power plants in the ocean bottom now, so you can honestly say that you cannot reach or fix or prevent the underground radioactive leaks, when they occur, to limit your expenses? Are you totally nuts?
Go live in Chernobyl's exclusion zone. You can get very close to nuclear stuff there. Reportedly, due to the inadequate clean-up, Fukushima is also another place in which you can get close to your beloved nuclear power. Go play around among their plastic bags of contaminated, radioactive dirt. Those are going to leak soon, what with having been exposed to the sun and wind for close to ten years, so you will soon have nice, radioactive dirt that you can use to grow your own crops. Have fun, fun, fun, until the cancers take your fun away!
While his particular thorium reactor is not my favorite so far, and some things like waste disposal should be more along the lines of the Finnish method, it is a good step in the right direction for many talking points about viability. Future development should continue. That said, I live off grid with solar and I can see that much of the hype is faux environmentalism or short term thinking. The energy n word is going to need some further review. The current r&d for energy is exciting, but people don’t seem to grasp just how much energy we will need as cars become electric. We will either all die from climate change in 200 years, or get real with our public funded technology research on high output energy sources and make them safer. Non pressurized, self shut down walk away safety and location. Those are very important indeed.
Ageing reactors rusting away in the ocean sounds like a very bad idea.
All the modules are replaceable. Can is just one of the things they’ll change.
And we have long learned how to deal with rust you know. That’s why oil tankers have a pretty good life span :)
But thanks for the comment! We always have to decide what to include and what to leave out in the videos.
Tsunamis, rust, corrosion, and part replacement have all been a repeating theme in the comments section.
Thorcon has addressed all of these in their videos. It’s a failure on our part that we decided not to cover those particular points.
Watch 28 minute mark on this video for more detail!
ua-cam.com/video/oB1IrzDDI9g/v-deo.html
Great video again! Thanks for your hard work on it. Consider dropping it as an NFT?
"Don't say I never give you knowledge to drop at parties."
In the middle of a very interesting video, this was a surprise bit of hilarity.
Thank you!
I love hearing her speak.
Always a pleasure to hear something sensible. I enjoy your videos.
"solar power is cheap"
"but day turns to night and monsoon clouds cover the country for three months"
Hence it's not actually "cheap". The proper way to describe unreliable power is "useless".
That doesn't makes it useless, just to be managed. There are plenty of off grid sites/buildings/... that rely solely on solar and storage without any problem and which can be cheape overtime (depending on the cost of the batteries).
@@MDP1702 Yes, it's very niche. To power an entire country solely with wind and Solar is fruitless. You're not powering Tokyo with that. The more unreliables you add to the grid, the more expensive and unreliable they become.
Germany and Denmark are just throwing their heads against the wall trying to power everything on solar and wind, and they don't even come close to being clean. It's painful to watch. Meanwhile France is just chilling, always with low emissions. They were sold a complete lie.
@@infini_ryu9461 You can definitely power an entire nation with wind and solar, it just might not always be the most practical, a lot depends on position, climate, management, ... It is essentially just different from how we managed powergrids untill now. The main point/problem now is grid storage to become cheap enough, which would be around 2030-35, at that point a renewable grid will actually be cheaper than most grids today. Only cheaper and more flexible new nuclear (like thorium) might be able to challenge such a setup.
As for Germany, it becomes cleaner, the problem is that they phased out nuclear for reasons that had nothing to do with the climate or emissions, just politics. In 2020 44% of Germany's power production was from renewables, or 37% from wind (23.6%), solar (8.9%) and hydro (3.3%). This while solar isn't even close to reaching full potential. And the reason why Germany's transition was so expensive, was because it was a frontrunner, starting when renewables were still much more expensive. This isn't any different for other early adopters (pc's, EV's, smartphones, ...). Their emissions due to power production went down by 42% since 2013 and are around half of what is was in 1990. This while between 1998 and 2013 it remained stable at around 350-400 million tonnes co2eq vs +-220 million tonnes in 2020 (and to be clear 2019 already saw a large reduction too at +-260 million tonnes, so it isn't just covid if you're wondering).
In Denmark 46% of power is produced by wind and 3% by solar. Here we see a similar trend in emissions, more or less stable between 1990 and 2010 at around 17-20 million tonnes of co2eq vs 4 million tonnes of co2eq in 2019 (sharp drop between 2010-2015: 17,6 => 7,4)
There are only around 5-6 countries in the world that have an equal % of nuclear as Denmarks renewables and even equaling Germany's renewables %, you only have around 10 countries that do this with nuclear (and a country like Belgium with 50% nuclear will phase it out completely in the next decade most likely, with no support at all to build new powerplants, so renewables are best to replace it, both politically as well as in terms of public opinion).
France is exporting large amount of power every year, this allows their power to remain cheaper than if they didn't, since it allows them to keep a larger share of nuclear running. However if this wasn't possible (because their neighbours didn't need/want it), France would either have to scale down nuclear (to around 60-65% probably) or allow its price to rise. As more people in France might get solar panels, keeping this high % of nuclear in the mix will be really challenging, since this solar can be cheaper and if it undercuts nuclear, it will reduce the baseload that nuclear can currently monopolise due to its low costs. Also it will be curious how France's new nuclear reactors will impact things as time goes on, considering it will drive up the price, even if they can lower the price than what is now expected.
The next decade will be decisive to determine whether nuclear+renewables, nuclear or renewables will win out mostly. Though as it stands, renewables are the favorite, with a nuclear+renewables mix (close?) behind it and almost no chance for mostly nuclear to win out (due to for now higher expected costs compared to previous generations, low public support, building time and difficulty, ...).
@@MDP1702 It's not only different, it's useless. Just burn fossil fuels, you're going to be doing that anyway or importing clean energy from a neighbour as Denmark does.
@@infini_ryu9461 So you don't actually want an honest conversation, should have said that immediately.
Have a friend who works in nuclear; the costs are mostly political. 3-5x more than it should be.
Nuclear power is starting to get really interesting again. I'm imagining a Thorcon Thorium Reactor and a small Copenhagen Waste Burner on the same ship. :-)
Unless I'm mistaken those waste burners burn transuranics not gonna be many of those with a Thorium reactor.
@@rexmann1984 Still going to have them as you need a certain amount of non fissile Uranium to denature the fissile forms. Add to that the fact that not all of the u233 made from Thorium is going to fission when hit with a neutron and instead will absorb it and transmute into a transuranic.
@@travisbeagle5691 yeah, I had forgotten Thorcons approach to reactors. There will be a decent amount of transuranics. Not the case if it were a LFTR.
@@travisbeagle5691 you're wrong about the U233. Something like 99% fission then U235 fissions 95% and then U237 is 92%. So literally less than lottery odds of transuranics developing to any useful amount.
@@rexmann1984 I agree with you, but Lifters are slightly in the future, and Thorcon could start building their "Oak Ridge Plus" reactor tomorrow morning - at least the ships. Best first "Baby Step", to give us a functioning salt reactor to test/observe and improve every four years..
A better way to achieve load following isn’t to develop a reactor that can change power level rapidly, but instead to build in thermal storage in large vacuum insulated tanks that hold a tertiary molten salt. Then the reactor is sized for average power over 24 -48 hrs and the tertiary tanks and their pumps and associated steam generators and turbines are sized for maximum power. And unlike the primary and secondary salts, the tertiary salts do not have to function inside the reactor in a very high neutron environment. As such they can be cheaper and less corrosive than the primary and secondary salts.
Uff I love this Channel so much. So good.
Tech for Luddites is probably the best advocate for nuclear energy in India. She explains stuffs so easily. It looks so effortless (although I know how pain in the backside it is to research and fact-check this area as a student)
I wrote a paper in college about these types of reactors more than 20 years ago. The information is out there the problem is most people care more about sports than they do about solving global warming
@@davidrolando999 yeah lol. Not everyone is intelligent enough to understand nuclear power which may be why they don't seem to care. On the other hand, solar and wind are much easier to understand. This might be the reason why nuclear is looked down upon. Moreover recent incidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima (which aren't that bad when you compare it with coal, wind, solar or hydro) only give it a negative light
I've always believed nuclear power is the only way to solve our ever increasing energy needs. Perception is the problem.
I'm EXTREAMLY sceptical of any modular reactor, largly because they propose to omit the heavy reinforced concreate containment structure which are one of the main drivers of Nuclear Plant cost and delay. They claim the reactor won't need the containment structure and even if I belived this (which I don't), it neglects that containtment structures not only protect the outside world from the reactor, it protects the reactor from the outside world. A reactor unprotected by what is essentially a bunker it easily targeted for terrorist attack (such as flying a plane into it, and yes a conventional nuclear containment structure will stop an airplane). This is why nuclear regulators won't ever approve designs that lack containment buildings which wipes out all the claimed benifits of the modular reactor.
Good news, Thorcon's ship is designed to survive direct collision by a 747 at speed with aplomb. They have the writeup on their website.
As for the concerns of any kind of 'catastrophic explosion or accident or anything, the claim here isn't hubris. Its based on the particular design property of ambient pressure. In short, if not just something, but EVERYTHING goes wrong, there's no stored up energy to damage the reactor, breech any of the multiple containment layers, or carry any dangerous material out and away from the ship. A catastrphic failure of this design is damaging the reactor and parts of the boat - not releasing radioactive material into the environment.
That is just why this kind of energy has not come to the forefront because of people misunderstanding and not believing in the possible better technology. Why is this? Brainwashing. People think that the kinds of energy produced are the only way to go. Just like they thought that treating sickness with bleeding, cupping, and leeching in the middle ages was the best way. I mean some people still think this is the right way to heal. Just as some people think the world is flat.
The expensive containment structure is needed for conventional reactors because of the highly pressurized water in the reactor core. If that leaks, you need the large expensive containment structure to contain it. ThorCon doesn't have high pressure nor water in the core, and so it doesn't need a conventional containment structure for that reason.
As for terrorist attacks and airplane strikes, it can take a large airplane strike at full speed and barely be dented. The thing is a tank.
I hope I'm not the only one who has to look away from her as she talks. Watching her talking during the video has me constantly rewinding to catch what she is saying... 50 years old and I still manage to be stunned by her beauty.
I'm 68, you'll get over it but still be able to appreciate it.
She is so hot I wish I could meet a girl like that and con her into giving me her eternal love and devotion. I would definitely worship the ground she walked on...jeje
@@davidrolando999 You'd give her the best 45 seconds of her life, too!
the increasing time it takes to build is due to politics, just getting permission, rather than the actual building of a reactor which is relatively simple compared to a coal/gas plant.
Mass producing nuclear plants, it reminds me of the Fallout franchise LOL.
only awful unsafe ones, not the ones being discussed in these videos.
This is how intelligent people form their opinions.
The science and basic tech idea behind Thorcon's proposed reactor are all clearly presented. Thankyou!
Some comments:
1. What was the statement @10:25 (I could not understand the sentence, it was too fast although i listened to it repeatedly).
2. @10:36 II heard "Due the build up of gaseous neutron". I'm sure i misheard it. What is actually being said?
3. @10:45 When discussing economies of scale you say ThorCon has a '3000 year head start'. Are you extrapolating civilizations experience with ship building to the construction of this new type of modular fission power plant? Isn't that a bit of a stretch to imply the economies of scale have already been worked out for the power plant to that degree when they haven't even built the non-nuclear test plant?
4. @13:41 20% enriched uranium is weapons grade. How do they propose the distribution and operation of these plants world wide while avoiding further proliferation of nuclear weapons?
5. @14:36 But they've built the reactor in such a way that catastrophic failure is really unlikely even in the case of operator error" No, they have designed the reactor to be really safe but it has never been built and you really can only assess the safety of such a system once you actually have a working plant and can evaluate the safety margins of the actual plant. That entails not only its design, materials and construction but the training/expertise of the personnel operating it.
Generally I am missing a critical examination of the claims of ThorCon. The video comes across as an advertisement for Thorcon's proposal without examining whether this really holds up. Good to generate investors but not so useful to judge whether this is really a good solution or one that the company can actually realize.
20% is not weapons grade. 90% is weapons grade. ThorCon can also run on 5% with only minor end cost increases.
They're going to test it. However, the whole point of the design is that there is remotely reasonable action or inaction that the operator can take to hurt the safety of the plant. That's one of its design criterion.
Are you dangerously trivializing the challenges of molten salt reactors?
The principal sounds great, and I do like the integration modal with renewables you are proposing, but there are a lot of unproven technologies, like extreme corrosion, as an example, that need to be solved.
Your idea of shipping the nuclear waste off to uninhabited islands in Indonesia sounds Extremely negligent and dangerous!
Trivializing the complexity of building such state-of-the-art machines, to the level of a time filler for cut-price shipyards, is also a recipe for a global level disaster!
Floating nuclear power stations, in earthquake-prone regions, with political instability, and active piracy?? Get Real!!
Please be more careful with your research and try to give a more balanced argument.
> but there are a lot of unproven technologies
How do technologies get a chance to prove themselves if they are always summarily dismissed?
> like extreme corrosion, as an example, that need to be solved.
Can you be more specific?
> Your idea of shipping the nuclear waste off to uninhabited islands in Indonesia sounds Extremely negligent and dangerous!
Why? Do you assume the Indonesian government is not competent to handle this responsibly? Note also that this output can be part of a fuel cycle that includes (fast) breeder reactors. The amount of actual waste can eventually be reduced to a minuscule level (IIUC, estimates are that a person using eg 10 kW of power will in 1 year generate ~10ml or 2 tsps of HL waste. This is without recycling transuranics--the bulk of the problematic stuff).
> Trivializing the complexity of building such state-of-the-art machines, to the level of a time filler for cut-price shipyards, is also a recipe for a global level disaster!
A state of the art concept can be conceptually simple to build. Consider graphene can be made with scotch tape or the advanced principles behind polarized filters or fusors and their relative mundanity. The build difficulty for this is not that crazy.
> Floating nuclear power stations
Vehicles which fit this description have existed and indeed still do exist in the Russian military and civilian ice-breakers.
> earthquake-prone regions, with political instability, and active piracy?
This is a general statement whose relevance can only be determined on a case by case basis. In other words, not every country is beset by zombie pirate warlords at earthquake fault lines surrounded by volcanoes :p. Besides, the whole point of this design is how robust it is due to various design principles (liquid, low pressure, solidifies etc).
@@lucidjar Good points. What I was trying to get across in a text comment was that, even in a UA-cam video, to be taken seriously, it is important to try and give a balanced view!
I'm not saying that many if not all the points I made can't be addressed, just that they Must be acknowledged!
So at the bottom of the ocean, when it floods, the fuel rods will heat up and cook all the fish.
There are no fuel rods…
don't worry. the ocean is "uninhabited" like those islands in Indonesia.
Somebody has been letting the engineers out of the closet again! NOt so sure how pleased about the "offshore" positioning, but it has tremendous possibilities. FR
More Chernobyls and Fukushimas? Huh, Huh, Huh. I got some questions: doesn't the molten salt fuel eat through most reactor and containment methods, because it is SO CORROSIVE. Does it not react with water explosively, so if it were to receive a leak of water drops or worse, if the containment were to break and the fuel were released into the atmosphere, the results would be plumes of vaporized radioactive fuel for the residents of surrounding counties to breathe in deeply? Finally, in computing the cost of nuclear power did you figure in the cost of depopulating areas the size of US states as you nuclear industry folks accomplished in Chernobyl and Fukushima? Are you advocating planting the nuclear power plants in the ocean bottom now, so you can honestly say that you cannot reach or fix or prevent the underground radioactive leaks, when they occur, to limit your expenses? Are you totally nuts?
Go live in Chernobyl's exclusion zone. You can get very close to nuclear stuff there. Reportedly, due to the inadequate clean-up, Fukushima is also another place in which you can get close to your beloved nuclear power. Go play around among their plastic bags of contaminated, radioactive dirt. Those are going to leak soon, what with having been exposed to the sun and wind for close to ten years, so you will soon have nice, radioactive dirt that you can use to grow your own crops. Have fun, fun, fun, until the cancers take your fun away!
I am skeptical about placing any nuclear power station near the shore - 2004.12.26 and 2011.03.11
Thermal MSRs without fissile absorptions much higher than other absorptions, like in fission products, the negative temperature does NOT work like that. MSRE &LFTR have a negative temperature corfficients because they use/use Weapons grade fuel and had/habe low fission products.
This is a great plan, if the unit is damaged by a once in a hundred year storm , which seems to happen a lot more frequently, the molten salt will dissolve and be washes away. No longer your problem. Next you will try to convince me we should store all are toxic wast in barges, so we don't pollute the ground water.... I can't see any major problems with the Elysium unit so far, but maybe they are better at side stepping there flaws. I want to believe!
Is Thorcon seeking investors or do they got this in the bag already?
"Do they have this" - don't use valley-girl English - it makes you seem like a total idiot.
They will for sure still need more investments. But I doubt they will be publicly traded anytime soon
@@JohnnyWednesday control freak much?
Seems like these MSRs can be a good solution in the upcoming years of crazy climate, as they would be less prone to flooding than current designs (typically built near a river or sea).
Power from Steam...
It's amazing we haven't moved out of the dark ages
Don't be an idiot - it's the perfect medium. Do you use square wheels because the round ones are so old fashioned?
It doesn't have to be steam. It could be supercritical CO2. In that state, it can expand like a gas and yet still move with the density of a liquid; it can even dissolve things the way a liquid can. Supercritical CO2 can be pumped, compressed, and driven to spin a turbine with an efficiency that steam may never reach. (the CO2 is in a closed-loop, and not released to the atmosphere)
We are moving into the dark ages
@@benthere8051 Sounds pricy compared to steam.
@@bozo5632 Supercritical CO2 is 10% more efficient than steam. That's a huge difference. That's 100 MW in a 1 GW power plant!
Fascinating, and it's really cool to see this technology begin to be explored more.
How will the plants be affected by constant exposure to salt water?
Explosively but they figure, that is for the dolphins and seals to worry about, and they can't vote.
It's basically a ship hull. How well do ships do with constant exposure to salt water? It'll be fine.
Why consider these devices as backups for renewables? Wind and solar are expensively subsidised, unreliable, and a lot less environmentally friendly than propaganda has them. Make the nuclear plants the primary system.
Build nukes as backup. Then, as the turbines and solar panels are retired, shrug and run the nukes more hours per day.
I find you a very interesting speaker, no matter what your subject !! Thank you !!
Please put links to the videos you reference (either below the video or use the 'cards' - which you may have intended to do?)
Woah my per monthly electricity consumption is around 970-1000. Wish technology can improve to lower the electric consumption in gaming rig.
My problem with nuclear power is the waste problem and eventual accidents. There is an ongoing search for longtime storage, where the waste can be stored for several thousand years. Indonesian Islands don't seem safe to me, with earthquakes and tsunamis and rising sea levels. And what happens when the tractor collides with a ship and it breaks open? If water mixes with radioactive parts, like the salt, the problem is worse than on land.