I do want to extend my gratitude providing this information to the public. Even if, we cannot effectively solve the chemical process of thorium breeders, this research should not be buried. Nuclear research has been way too focused on uranium, and we need to be exploring all facets of nuclear research. Even if the end result comes to making existing nuclear reactors more efficient.
The issue with thorium breeders and MSR's in general isn't really the chemical processing. It's very easy to fluoronate the salt stream and pull out your uranium and thorium based salts. Kirk Sorensen did a very thorough talk on the "kidney" of a Thorium based MSR which explains the basic concepts of how to do it. Floronation is a well known process for nuclear fuels. Molten Salt is even fairly well understood thanks to the newest generation of fuel reprocessing AND solar thermal plants. The biggest issue is getting the regulatory approval to actually proof of concept it. Same with the MSR concept as a whole. Sure, we had the ARE and the MSRE but we need something done in the modern era to pilot the future of the design. Regulatory approval is the biggest hurdle here.
15:17 - Exactly .... totally brilliant. I am so tired of people who don't know what they are talking about raving about "thorium" and "molten salt" and how great it would be. IllinoisEnergyProf gives us facts and context to understand them. Thank you very much Prof. Rusic.
I really appreciate quality presentations like this, thank you. Difficult material explained well about a topic like this can help open minds. I think Thorium reactors are certainly worth exploring as experiments in some level even if we don't end up scaling production. What we could learn may well be worth the cost even if Thorium itself remains a novelty. I would love a video going into more detail about the economics of reactor construction/operation and ways we could improve costs without taking short cuts on safety (maybe producing more, smaller megawatt reactors and thus scaling production?). Nuclear power will be needed more than ever if we are serious about environmental progress (renewables don't strike me as a serious effort).
The thorium breeder cycle in a molten fluoride salt reactor is advantageous because it's the only breeder cycle that can be implemented using thermal neutrons. You can't do this with a U238 -> Pu239 breeder cycle. This allows smaller reactors to be built, as your fissile inventory can be much smaller. From an economic standpoint, this would enable many places in the world to have a reliable, dense energy source.
There's also molten chloride salt reactors, which would operate in the "fast" spectrum, and so be able to do both breeder cycles-including burning transuranics.
Thorium reactors can be used to devour current nuclear reactor waste and convert that to useable energy. Indeed, Thorium reactors will use up over 97% (if memory serves me) of its fuel whereas current Uranium based fuels only utilizes 0.6% and the rest goes into the trash heap. Still, like you said, we'll never run out of Uranium and a lot of the waste may be recycled, but still, Thorium reactors is just the better way to make power, but of course more research has to be done since the work done by Oakridge Labs back in the late 60s/early 70s has to all be be redone, unfortunately (thanks Nixon). :)
They literally have to dissolve the broken down solid fuel waste in flouride salts as part of "reprocessing" them back into new solid fuel. Trying to keep a solid fuel solid while fissioning, with resultant gasses evolving inside them, is Rube Goldberg insanity.
@@JamesR1986 IMO let the market sort itself out. As is, the government crazily regulates nuclear energy. We need to free it up so that it can sort itself out.
@@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406 What we need is a carbon tax which will price in the future costs of CO2 so that businesses have the incentive to plant those trees.
Thank you for these videos. I've been binge-watching them and making notes. I had forgot how much I enjoyed physics back in the 90's. You've actually made me look for enrolling to some university courses just so I can learn more.
If I understand the Thorium reactor correctly, then they are actually able to burn reactor waste from the traditional nuclear reactors. And that might make them an economic viable option for waste management.
They cannot, at least not a thermal spectrum thorium breeder. You can only "burn" actinides in fast spectrum reactors. The problem with fast spectrum reactors, they don't have the inherent safety of a thermal spectrum MSR. It might be possible to engineer fast spectrum reactors to be safe, but safety is inherent to a thermal spectrum MSR. What thermal spectrum MSR's can't do is burn transuranic waste. They're finickey with the fuel you use, really working best with U-233 or U-235 (you can also burn Pu-239 in them, but the Pu-239 fission rate is crap in the thermal spectrum with 2/3 of Pu-239 atoms capturing neutrons instead of fissioning, turning into things the thermal spectrum reactor can't fission). On the flip side, a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder won't produce any long lived transuranic that you have to dispose of. U-233 has a 90% fission rate in the thermal spectrum, with only 10% capturing two neutrons to become U-235. U-235 has an 85% fission rate, so 85% of that remaining 10% will fission, leaving 1.5% of the fuel becoming a transuranic. That 1.5% isn't waste though because it can be used to produce Pu-238, a non-fissile isotope used in atomic batteries used in deep space probes (any satellite sent further out than Mars). The other 98.5% of waste is made up of HIGHLY radioactive fission products. Many people talk about this waste as though it requires 300 years to decay to background radiation levels, but that is mostly false. Only Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, both having a half life of around 30 years, require 300 years to largely decay away, but those two isotopes only make up about 6% of total fission products (don't recall if it's 6% total or 6% each for a combined 12%). The vast majority of fission products will be decayed to background radiation levels within 10 years.
@@williamsmith1741 Is it not also easier to chemically sort those more active isotopes out in the liquid phase? A lot of those very highly active isotopes could potentially be filtered out for other uses Nuclear Medicine in particular uses. If I am not mistaken LFTR's are good sources of Tc-99 which is particularly useful for Nuclear Medicine yet supplies are limited with current production techniques and this combined with the limited shelf life means availability is insufficient in many regions. Also, there is medical research that strongly suggests that Bi-213 would be very useful if production was available at scale which it isn't currently as far as I am aware but LFTR designs can produce the relevant precursors in useful quantities apparently. Many of the most useful isotopes in Nuclear Medicine are very short-lived though so short of the ones that form from longer-lived decay products as I understand it the issues is that the useful isotopes often decay long before solid fuel rods can be reprocessed to recover them. Molten salt reactors I believe can tap the salt stream directly and process the elements through chemical separation without waiting for the fuel to be spent, removed from the reactor, and shipped elsewhere for processing.
@@williamsmith1741 You absolutely can produce a fast spectrum waste burning MSR, for example see the designs of Moltex energy or Elysium Power. These have all the same safety advantages as thermal spectrum MSRs.
@@tomshackell You're correct in that you can make a fast spectrum MSR reactor. Specifically, Elysium uses chloride salts because chlorides are much poorer moderators than fluorides. And you can get similar safety features as a thermal spectrum reactor, but only during operations, in that the working fluid, if it gets too hot it'll expand and the fuel density will drop below the point where it can maintain criticality. The difference is that fast spectrum reactors, because of the MUCH smaller nuclear cross sections at those energy levels, require fuel densities 4-6X that of a thermal spectrum reactor. That's why they don't require moderators to achieve criticality. As such, when you drain a thermal spectrum MSR reactor, draining the fuel to a drain tank, you're separating the fuel from the graphite moderator, and the reaction almost completely stops, other than a few delayed neutrons. When you drain the fuel from a fast spectrum reactor to a drain tank, you haven't done anything to stop the reaction. The fast spectrum reactor didn't rely on a moderated core to maintain criticality, so the fuel can just continue the reaction in the drain tank. What's more, even if you get the fuel in the drain tank to cool down, that will drive up fuel density in the tank, starting up the reaction again. I'm not saying that Elysium's reactor's can't be as safe as a thermal spectrum reactor, but they have to be designed to be so, like having a honey comb drain tank with all surfaces painted with neutron absorbers like boron.
@@tomshackell Believe me, I think that Elysium seems the most promising of the various new nuclear start-ups, in that it seems like it's got the fewest hurdles for commercialization. And it does sound like it'll be really safe. But that doesn't change the fact that it does not have the same intrinsic safety qualities of a thermal spectrum MSR. That just is what it is. On the flip side, Elysium's MSR also wouldn't be subject to some of the draw-backs of a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder, like the anemic breeding ratios and the need to do online fuel reprocessing to filter out fission products. Each type of nuclear reactor has its own strengths and its own weaknesses. There's not "good at everything" reactor. If you want to convince people you're being honest when you talk about nuclear power, you need to be familiar with both the good things and the bad things about different types of nuclear reactors, and then talk about them impartially.
I don’t think you fully appreciate the value of the passive safety of Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs). The costs of todays nuclear power is approximately 10X that of the 1960s (corrected for inflation). Regulatory Compliance is a big reason why. It could be argued that regulatory compliance is the sole reason why. Today’s Light Water Reactors (LWRs) are safe, but that safety comes with huge costs due to systems and testing to ensure that safety (as per the regulations). The big accident worry of an LWR is the “Loss of Coolant Accident” (LOCA). Water does double duty in an LWR. It is the coolant and the moderator. It is also under pressure (about 100+ atmospheres) and heated to relatively high temperatures (~300 C). If there is any breach in the cooling system, the water will escape, flash to steam and the core, which is expected to be under water, will no longer be under water. Fission will stop, but the decay heat will remain. With no water flowing through the core, the core will melt. This is a meltdown. This will release the highly radioactive fission products. This is a bad accident. There are systems in place to make sure this doesn’t happen. Pumps to move water onto the core. Backups to these pumps. A containment building large enough to capture all the steam that would be produce if the cooling system was breached. Diesel Generators to power the pumps if there is a loss of Grid power. Batteries to power the pumps if the Diesel Generators Fail. Instrumentation to monitor all these systems, and paper trails of documentation to record and communicate everything that ever happens to the authorities. All of these systems dominate the costs of the power plant. Now, compare that with an MSR. A “meltdown” cannot happen! The core is already in a molten state. The analog would be a “boil over”. But Molten Salts do not boil until extremely high temperatures (1200 C). There is no water under pressure to flash to steam in the MSR. The pressure of the core is essentially at atmospheric pressure (plus some pump pressure), nothing at 100+ atmospheres. If the reactor core is breached, it will leak salt that will solidify. The system drains into drain tanks where fission stops, but decay heat continues. However the salt can tolerate much higher temperatures than water, particularly at atmospheric pressure. So, the salt will be able to passively cool in the drain tank. No Herculean effort to keep water on the core and circulating is required. A containment building could be made MUCH smaller (and cheaper). The bottom line is that the cost of any Nuclear Power generating system is very much driven by the INHERENT safety aspects of the reactor design. MSRs are MUCH safer by INHERENT design. If we had NRC regulations in place for MSRs that are much easier (lower cost) to comply with (because these regulations efficiently reflect the MSRs inherent safety advantages) MSRs could be constructed and operated at a much lower cost. The 10X cost increase that has occurred over the years for LWRs could be reduced or eliminated with MSRs. MSRs might even be able to compete with $11 per barrel oil! If energy was this low cost to produce, we can produce MUCH more energy! With energy this abundant we can solve many of the worlds resource limitation problems! The potential advantages of MSRs are stunningly HUGE!
I think he does appreciate it but it is his job to present both the future and the obstacles to prepare his students for the reality we live in and not a acidemia hope. Cynicism and conservative outlook are entirely appropriate for a professor teaching future nuclear engineers. We have to remain grounded at all times. I do agree with you that the gains from a more safe system at the regulatory and insurance level is going to have a huge impact on the proliferation of nuclear power.
I'll just avoid the positives by a Longshot and just say it isn't worth it. It's like he did 20 minutes of reading and jammed out a lecture that even he believed
That was informative and complete! it's so hard to find anything on Thorium that doesn't toot the horn of one position and completely ignore the other side. This may be the only video I've watched that explains the pros of Thorium without saying it's *impossible* to get bomb-grade fissile fuel out of it.
Thank you for producing both the original video and this revised version a well. You produced a good presentation the first time and now with the second version clarified the advantages and disadvantages even more. Nourishing food for thought.
well stated and balanced arguments. i also appreciate the economic view. i was unclear about why no full scale thorium reactors in usa, but this helped clear it up. i know now we have an abundance supply of uranium and 60yrs of technical experience working with it. currently we have a world surplus of uranium, unless uranium becomes extremely expensive there is no reason to do this. thanks!
I'd say there are a few more advantages of a MSR (especially the LFTR design). For example, the higher temperature of the molten salt offers safety features beyond just the passive freeze plug capability. Unlike water, you don't need very high pressure to keep it from boiling; it can operate at lower pressure than a LWR. And since the fuel is distributed as a fluid, as temperature rises thermal expansion reduces reactivity (passively). The higher temperature also means high thermal efficiency. With a MSR you also don't have the same concern with hydrogen gas build up and potential hydrogen explosions, when comparing with a LWR. A MSR can also be refueled without shutting down the reactor, and doesn't require (very costly) solid fuel manufacture. And there's no xenon poisoning. That's probably just scratching the surface. I understand the economic argument, but I can't help think it's a huge pity. I think the relative simplicity and especially the obvious safety advantages a MSR/LFTR design offers should justify R&D to overcome remaining obstacles. Public perception could make a difference in the economic sphere (not changing the economic cost, but shifting the willingness to pay those costs). Personally, I'd rather advocate for what I think is the best technology in the hopes of shifting both public and government perceptions about nuclear power, its safety (or potential safety), and the best path forward. Futile? Perhaps. Worth advocating? I think so. I'd say you're probably correct that it's more likely to be a long term goal in the current context, but pushing to shorten that lead time (and maybe adjust some of the variables in the current context) can only help, in my opinion.
Jason Cone isn't it also true that the thorium design is not more efficient, but much more efficient. I've heard final waste material in the 2.5% range, while the LWR design is pretty close to the reverse of that. Also when the professor talks about thorium being 3-4 times as abundant, he doesn't mention that thorium is so abundant it is a common waste product from many mining operations. Whether we take advantage of thorium or just use enriched 235 (a mistake imo), the advantages of MSRs are clear. Molten salts are probably going to prove to be the best grid scale "battery" (thermal storage). The MSR design also allows for some level of load following because of the expansion and contraction of the salt (affected by load). If we had made the right political decisions 20-30 years ago we would be looking at very different energy mix today. Perhaps with no wind, solar, etc. at all.
@@carrdoug99 While the lower atomic weight of Thorium does contribute to the lesser production of long lived transuranics, most of the reduction is a result of the fuel being in a fluid solution. The thing to consider is that what you're referring to as waste isn't waste at all. One of the numerous ways in which legacy reactors suck is that they can only economically extract a few percent of the energy in their fuel. Fission poisons build up in the fuel pellets, as well as physical degradation of the pellets inside the cladding.That's what is sitting in spent fuel pools and dry cask storage, mostly unspent fuel.
A MSR has a few more issues that he mentioned as well. The first is that while the reactor the has a Thorium fuel cycle, initialising the reactor requires a fissile material like Pu-239. So to operate a fleet of reactors that limit your ability to make bombs, you have to be able to generate weapon isotopes. While the nuclear engineering might end up being simpler, the chemical engineering in a MSR is not. Molten fluoride salts are quite reactive and neutron emissions are bad for most materials. Combine the two and there is no material that you can you can build a pipe out of that would become brittle or irradiated. The best idea anyone has come up with was to put a pipe made of zirconium inside a pipe made of boron inside a pipe made of steel. Apply this to each vessel in the reprocessing plant and you are going to end up with a lot of low level nuclear waste.
@@carrdoug99 While I learned those things from a great video lecture years ago, I can't find the presentation for you. I am unsure whether it is online anymore. I doubt a pipe that layout I described has been pursued seriously, it was given as an example of why the reprocessing is a the most difficult part of LFMSRs. LF doesn't emit _that_ many neutrons outside the reactor, so realistically a MSR just needs to replace its reprocessing equipment and pipes as they corrode and accept that they will irradiated enough to be low grade nuclear waste. The issue with fissile material is kind of implicit, thorium needs a butt load of neutrons to start the fuel cycle and adding a different liquid fuel in the beginning was the go to method. I am sorry I can't be of more help, I found a number of papers discussing these details but no good videos.
Please consider adding to your WHY BOTHER the potential benefits of MSR: 1, Safety associated with low pressure salt coolant 2. Much longer thermal response and the potential for dumping the fuel into a safe configuration. I was involved in the TMI accident from the day it happened to cleanup and hope you guys give the safety advantages as serious look. 3. The tremendous potential benefit of higher temperatures- greater efficiency, use of downstream process - desalination desalination, drying processes, bottoming cycles... There are still questions, but I hope you seriously look at what Weinberg and those guys pulled out of the nuclear plane. We used the hanger for LOFT. But I think there's the potential for more than that!!
Seconding the comment below. The compelling economics come from using molten salt. This is done at ATM pressure range (Low pressure, just enough to pump the low viscosity fluid around) which means way less steel and concrete and a dramatically smaller foot print. That is big $. Add up the materials & weights / sizes of the systems and you can realize the major impacts (Thorcon does a god job describing this). Also, the most toxic, short-lived radioactive gases that want to escape from a water pressure system, are kept in the molten salt, so it is way safer from an exposure point of view, even above what you said. There are lots of details, but these are the big practical ones. The high cost of regulations & project delays come from the fears of releases, which just have no way to occur in a molten salt system, there is no motive force to spread things all over & it is passively safe. The economic model is different as there is no expensive fuel prep needed as there is with traditional systems, so you don't make money on the fuel per say. Instead, current models make money on the safe removal and future recovery of the remaining unfissioned fuels. Another important aspect is the degree of utilization. In pellet form, you can't go to high conversion, as the gases build up in the pellets and would fracture & release. In a liquid fuel, you just keep reacting until you reach practical limits on other materials, like the carbon moderator. Current modeling work is working out the details of this, confirming it is safe and controllable with the various byproducts that increase over time. But it is true, there is a high sunken cost to developing a new technology & the existing tech companies have NO incentive to do this, as it doesn't help them extend their current asset base, so only makes sense for a new player. I think we will see some commercial reactors by the 2030s. This seems to be where most all the major players are falling out. But, as you say, with $11 -$20/barrel oil, there is NO incentive to do ANY NUCLEAR, unless you do not have your own fossil fuel resources, then you do have a reason - self sufficiency & political stability. The US was willing to take on cost in order to also have nuclear weapons for security reasons.
Very well presented and said. I was a huge LFTR fanboy for years until I started looking deeper into the details. The pragmatist in me led me to these very same conclusions. Thorium will be an extremely viable and cost-effective fuel for nuclear power. Just not now. We need other GenIV reactors and other bridge technologies to carry the load until we can bring the cost-benefit of thorium into a financially practical option. Until we reach the holy grail of fusion - how many decades away?? - thorium will carry us there, no matter how long that takes. Eventually.
Second thing, he represents what's important for nuclear reactor: Not U238 but U235 It's U235 that's burned up and that's pnly 0.7% of all Uranium available and has only ~700 Mya half-life. Enrichment means that the relation of U238 / U 235 is "enriched" because "Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction.", the PWR/BWR are made to make bombs, that was the idea behind the creation of these reactors and the deployment in the fleet: "run the submarine and create the bomb material", the Nautilus was a proof of concept for this. U238 is being breed to be Pu239 by Neutron capture. Thus the real fuel is not 3 - 4 times less abundant but more like 300 - 400 less abundant. Aside the fact that Thorium is also found in the same mines where rare earth metals - which are e.g. required for semiconductors - are mined in higher concentration and abundance. "The world's present measured resources of uranium (6.1 Mt) in the cost category less than three times present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for about 90 years." - world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occurrence_of_thorium The next is the "tiny amount of waste on comparision", that is 1st of all gas lighting, and 2nd false equivalence falicy: to 1) a) The mining is far more extensive: 100.000's of tons for 1 ton of Uranium, vs. a few 100's tons for Thorium - mining is not CO2 neutral, as well b) The preperation (e.g. making the yellow cake, then making the fuel rods from which requres encasing in highly accurate zirconium alloys - is chemcially and energy wise extremly demading and hence also taxing the CO2 balance. c) the reprocessing treatment of fuel rods - which is what the industry exxentially make all their money with - is extremely elaborate and expensive as one has to handle highly radioactive materials which are essentially disovled into hydrofluoric acid to then be physically separated in those "centrifuges" and then be re-constituted into non liquids to be made into rods again. to 2) The United States has (2021) 93 operating commercial nuclear reactors that produce 2000 Tonnes per year of "spend fuel" - www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/us-nuclear-industry.php - www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel "In LWR, uranium fuel cycle start with 250 tonnes of uranium, 35 tonnes of enriched uranium contain 1.15 tonnes of useful 235U. From this, the waste produced is 35 tonnes of fuel containing 33.4 tonnes of 238U, 0.3 tonnes of 235U, 1 tonne of fission product and 0.3 tonnes of plutonium [Hargraves & Moir 2010]. By contrast, in thorium fuel cycle 1 tonne of thorium [which represents a 1 GW electrical reactor] is used in its entirety and comes out on the end is a tonne of fission products and 0.0001 tonne of plutonium which needs to be stored for a very long time. The fission products produced 83% are stale in only 10 years and 17% in approximately 300 years [Hargraves & Moir 2010; GBCN. Net. 2013]. Figure 1 below showed the comparison between the amounts of raw material needed and waste production for LWR and LFTR [Hargraves & Moir 2010]." - aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4916861 "The volume of waste products from a LFTR is approximately 300 times less than that of a uranium reactor. " - pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es2021318
I'm admittedly the worst student quite possibly of all-time and throughout the history of mankind and probably of anykind. I can't stop watching prof Ruzic, seriously. WTF do I know about reactor this, nuclear that, fissionie stuff etc etc but this dude has me exceeding the speed limit home from work so I have a little bit more time at night to watch videos of him doing his damnedest to explain it in a way even I sort of comprehend.......... There's gotta be some kind prize I can nominate him for, right ? Thank you professor Ruzic, I dig. Advanced Degree School of Life, Bachelor's Degree in dropping out & Summa Louder than Others Greatest Papa of All Time at University of the Hard Headed.
That's right, He's a great speaker. Science is not too complicated, ... Science is usually pretty simple. Some confusing numbers scare people away, ... Whoops, SCIENCE is the study of ...(whichever subject). This is chemistry and nuclear engineering, maybe titled NUCLEAR SCIENCE. I'd keep on watching his lectures; he's a great professor, speaker of science. In college, students fill-up the classes with good professors. I'm sure his classes are filled-up.
Dear Illinois EnergyProf, I was very disappointed after I watched your video on small modular reactors but after watching this video I was so happy that I no longer had to carry that disappointment with me all of the time and now I have a renewed respect for you and your channel. It would seem , however, that this video preceded the modular reactor video, so I neg'd your lecture before I had all of the information that I needed in order to make a reasonable decision. So, I would like to apologize for my rash reaction to your lecture and opinions. I'm so happy that I can watch your videos again without that burning disappointment constantly simmering in the background.. This video was amazing and I rate it as one of the best on youtube!!! Absolutely fantastic and very impressive. Could you get me a pass, (I have no $$ with which to educate myself and other commitments make it an unreachable goal), so I can come and learn everything from you and get a Phd? Thank you!!
@@WadcaWymiaru As mentioned , the problem is development cost. Although i think that with modern technology the analytical and simulation processes should work much faster and more precise thus cutting development cost immensely. But i guess we will see these reactors in the next economy after the people build a new one from the broken plandemic economy.
@@joachimthome8904 The problem lies there: ruclips.net/video/lxwF93wnRQo/видео.html - National Security, Rare Earth Elements & The Thorium Problem China...same about covid-19!
Sir: Thanks for putting out this video. I also note there are some extremely well thought out comments that are well worth reading. There certainly do seem to be a lot of advantages to Thorium coupled with the Molten Salt Reactor. Perhaps a safe prediction would be that we will see one built on this Earth in the next 10 - 15 years?
Absolutely fabulous video, if only our governments were smart enough to realise that molten salt reactors, DC interstate power lines and flow batteries (hydro), are our way forward too green base load power production, solar is sweet and wind is wonderful, but neither are predictable.
Ideally we would use LFTR reactors to convert spent rods into shorter lived byproducts as well as creating useful isotopes. By continuously separating out various elements and adding other ones to these outer tanks all kinds of isotopes can be made. like Plutonium-238, and terbium-161, lutetium-177, Bismuth 213
The type of reactor which would burn up spent fuel from LWR's wouldn't be the type of reactor that you'd use to produce Pu238 and Bi213. The former would be a fast-spectrum type reactor, like Elysium Tech's lithium chloride MSR, while the latter would be a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder, like Sorensen' LFTR.
I enjoy your clear explanations. I am a fan of the MSR reactor theory but for many of the reason you point out they are not a reality. In researching the slow realization of functional MSRs it becomes apparent that one of the real big impediments to actualization is the materials science needed to develop process and reactor materials that can be manufactured and incorporated into these systems that can withstand high temperature salt corrosion. We have been playing with this technology since WWII. There now seems to be some concerted efforts to get a working model. However there are so many “competing designs” globally I question the lack of cooperation and collaboration regardless of politics and political ideology interfering in true efforts to develop the solution rather than a win!
I appreciate the effort to communicate rational information concerning things nuclear as knowledge reduces the inherent fear of the unknown in the general public. I totally disagree with the conclusion of no economic driver for a new fuel cycle. The advantages of moving from a solid fuel machine like reactor to a process like molten reactor have not been fully explored or discovered. This movement will involve solving a new set of technological problems to fully exploit the new paradigm. Design of molten salt breeders (breeders are the only future that makes sense) for both thorium 232 and uranium 238 should be explored and developed (they already are..Elysium.....Flibe....ect.) while we are at it. The one limiting factor is the amount of U235 (or Pu239 in spent fuel) as everything starts with something fissile to start breeding. The energy density of nuclear is the only thing that makes it economical for solid fuel reactors to operate at 4-5% fuel efficiency to heat conversion. Molten salt reactors are closer to 95% conversion of fuel to energy.......what do you think that does to the economics?
The biggest advantages of the thorium fuel cycle is the fact we are already mining it as part of rare earth mining, but right now, it's a waste product of rare earth mining (and also happens to make domestic, US based rare earth mining expensive because the thorium has to be safely stored like nuclear waste). It's quite cheap and has nearly no industrial use. Of course, fuel costs in ALL nuclear power is only a small percentage of the total cost of electricity from a nuclear power plant. I also think the MSRE proved quite a lot of the concepts of MSR's such that we shouldn't be encountering the regulatory headache we presently have to build a new prototype version, maybe even a prototype with the ability to be expanded to a breeder test reactor. The biggest unknowns are life span of the Hastelloy-N steel used in construction and the lifespan of graphite in the core, as well as handling methods for both. The MSRE only operated for four years and about 20,000 reactor hours. That's not enough to determine long term economics of an MSR, which is a problem.
Thank-you for this education. I was really scratching my head about why we didn't go the route of thorium.It's unfortunate that countries went with the pathways that make bombs, and lots of them. But from the other videos, it is clear that nuclear energy, in the U.S. is much safer than I thought. At least for the newer plants.
Very good overview. One thing we need to understand about the economics: Gen 4 nuclear would enable the best chance for civilization to withstand a medium size asteroid or a year 536 super volcano event where we could have darkened skies for a decade. A world superconducting power grid that would enable us to keep the lights on under these conditions may be above the level of economics calculations, if it is of such existential value that it would be a key to survival.
However safe you feel light water reactors are, nuclear power has a bad reputation because of radiation releases from light water reactor accidents. A significant portion of the light water reactor cost is due to safety requirements. The restriction of the light water reactor to low temperatures confine their use to generating electricity without the heat applications available to molten salt reactors.
Separation of the uranium and thorium is a bit of a gonad pain in a production reactor. Doable, but one can use nitric acid at specific molar levels or a few other tricks with the fluoride salt, but either way leaves one with a scalability issue and rather unpleasant acids in something that's radioactively and thermally hotter than a two dollar pistol. Overcome throughput at creation level meeting separation level safely, we're cooking with gas. While you're at it, try to figure out how to do it under microgravity, we'll be cruising the solar system in style! As for nuclear weapons, spot on. The only thing that's really stopped nuclear weapons usage is a surprising burst of sanity in our species, well, that and expense. The rest of your points, I do agree with. And we can add standard fission waste into the mixture and dispose of it safely. Of course, we have fusion power right around the corner. I hear about that, after a bit of rinsing off and repeating every decade. Like a broken record. Whoops, I just dated myself. That's OK, I'll even locate myself somewhat. I miss seeing TMI's cooling plume out of my window, was great for navigation. BTW, any ideas on expended fuel reprocessing?
Thanks for explaining how to get U233 without U232--most videos miss this point! (10:50) In 1998, India's Shakti 2 created a 0.2kt nuclear bomb using U-233. This is small enough to be a fizzle, but large enough to show it can be done. India experimented with Thorium because it has to import Uranium.
When can we expect a lecture on Gen V, VHTR (Very High Temperature gas-cooled Reactor) AKA: Waterless Pebble Bed Reactor. It is my understanding that unlike modern traditional Nuclear power generation schemes, which require a large local water source for cooling, VHTR has all of the benefits of Thorium Molten Salt reactors you mentioned, is small and potentially very cheap, but due to gas cooling, can be located in any location as no water source is needed.
@@ikermunoz6947 Thanks! Just watched that high level overview. Hoping for an update as the EnergyProf elected to estimate some of these Gen IV & V technologies are 30-40 years out. This prediction is puzzling considering X-energy has developed their Xe-100 reactor and specialized uranium-based pebble fuel that could be available in the market as early as the late 2020s. It is the only U.S. company actively producing TRISO fuel today. Utilizing Thorium as the pebble fuel stock, in terms of both economics and public acceptance, it would seem EnergyProf would find this a potentially superior solution?
Thanks, I’ve become a fan of these videos recently. Informative and entertaining. The fact that this particular vid on thorium and MSR is from the not too distant past, I’m wondering if recent events have altered your position on the economic viability. In particular China has leveraged enormous amounts of financial and technical resources to revive the thorium MSR concept first proposed by ORNL. Current US advocates Kirk Sorenson of Flibe Energy and ThorCon CEO Lars Jorgenson would probably agree that without the financial and political advantages of China, the near term market for small companies like theirs will rely on their ability to deliver an economically competitive alternative to fossil fuels. Recently they have both given presentations that targets delivery of small modular reactors at a price point competitive with coal. …and China is supposedly very close to completion of a full scale MSR prototype. Has there been any new discoveries from any of the noted thorium proponents to suggest they are moving the technology towards fruition?
We know very well how to make vacuum tubes, they work well and meet our needs, and we've solved a lot of problems with them. Clearly, while it would be nice to explore this "transistor" thing, it may become interesting some 100s of years in the distant future.
Transistors conquered the market when they got cheap. The same is with thorium reactors. And that's what the professor said. You can sum it up: thorium is great, but we don't have to hurry. It will replace uranium in a future, but comparison uranium with vacuum tubs is not accurate.
@@Kezoman1 his job is to tell you where it is and where it can be, to educate. He accurately summerized the obstacles to these future realities, I don't know where you get a sense he believes we should not pursue it. Cynicism borne of wisdom is hard to distinguish from realisms borne of wisdom. I think you are the one who isn't as wise as you have rationalized yourself to be
@@MichalTerajewicz The message that LFTRnow conveyed was that although we could save money, in the relatively short time, by allowing some other entity to invest in the cost of developing transistors as an economically viable device, it would be a business failure to be so FOOLISH as to complacently squander such a promising opportunity. We can always just sit back and let China invest in and develop LFTR to a point where LFTR Power Plants are economically lucrative, but then China would own the IP and the so-called 'Wiseman' of America would have yet again relegated the the U.S. to increasing its supplicant stature.
I think LFTRnow makes a good point; We spend BILLIONS on fusion research projects, with no viable working commercial solutions (at a reasonble cost) for the foreseeable future.. We spend BILLIONS on GEN3 and Gen3+ reactors, which provide only marginal improvements over the existing 50 year old designs.. We spend NOTHING on LFTR, that was proven viable back in 1965, ran for 5+ years, and had a perfect safety record... It's time for the old nuclear industry dinosaurs to die off, so that younger generation can present their fresh ideas of a better world around Thorium..
Thanks very much Professor Ruzic - I was just thinking as space stations develop and get larger a lifter reactor might be ideal for a space environment.
@@joe-uu5tn The only way we know how to make a non-0G space station is by centripetal force, stopping the rotation and making everything weight nothing is to good of a tool or advantage that builders, remodelers, maintenance worker will not want to give up with out fight. During that time of 0-G the current passive safety for the reactor will be useless.
Dr.Mosfet, I'm thinking much further out than you are like 100 - 300 years, when these space habitats hold 1m-10m people per. These structures will rotate continuously because of their massive size. Stopping the rotation will be very difficult and perhaps not practical for a variety of reasons, not the least of which will be inconvenience for the inhabitants.
I was just about to mention this. Thorium reactors would create a demand. This would mean it could be economically viable to mine rare earths in other places at scale, unlike right now where it costs so much to dispose and handle the Thorium waste that rare earth mining isn't profitable in most of the world. China being the exception to this in large part due to not concering themselves with waste managment.
I suppose it doesn't really go on this topic, but the biggest reason to use thorium is economical. Thorium is always found is deposits of rare earth elements, which makes sense, since thorium is the earliest stable actinide, and rare earth elements are their periodic neighbors, the lanthanides. Currently, thorium, a naturally occurring element, is treated as a nuclear waste, and mining companies that find it have to just bury it over. If we just change the classification of how we can use thorium, we (I mean humans, outside the PRC) could make rare earth mining less rare. Even if we don't wind up using it for fuel, just being permitted to collect the ore and sequester it would easily triple the available worldwide supply of neodymium (ironically making wind turbines and fusion confinement magnets cheaper to make). Since thorium is radioactive as an alpha emitter, its radiation is literally shieldable by a piece of paper. Also, thorium oxide is highly insoluble in water, unlike uranium oxide, so get worries about it getting into ground water. Even better, decaying thorium is not only the source for the Earth's internal heat (along with uranium), but being an alpha emitter means that it's a source of helium. Just being able to treat thorium ore with the nuclear care given to, say, granite, would help global production of rare earth elements, which could pay for the research to get both thorium fuel and MSRs going. Because we have such a long history with regards to uranium research, Kirk Sorensen has already been quoted to say in talks that if you aren't planning to specifically build a thermal neutron breeder reactor, you might as well stick with uranium
The idea of "renewable energy" is past.... It doesn't product enough baseline energy for a growing population, doesn't work at night or when the wind doesn't blow.. Nuclear is the only way to go.... LFTR is the only SAFE way to go...
It can definitely cut it...but only if we find a way to efficiently store the energy produced to use it later (for example at night, or when the wind doesn't blow). Currently, battery technology SUCKS.
@@andreimiga8101 Renewable energy is actually not as green as people say, because they don't last that long (wind turbines 15 years) and that will only add to the trash collection, and all the toxic batteries needed to keep them going.
@@peterg644 Batteries can be recycled, most plant materials also. The CO2 and NOx which are released into the atmosphere are much more dangerous, because you DON'T pile it up into your safe trash collection...
@@peterg644 Hydro/Tidal has immense potential, but it obviously limited by geography, as is geothermal. Aside from the storage/predictability issues, I think each jurisdiction is going to need to be clever in using the resources available to them. I think it's pretty important to highlight that there is no energy option which does not involve some significant sort of toxic waste/pollutant. The truth is there's no silver bullet and the real solution is curbing energy consumption and actually using efficiency gains to use less.
The main reason we should "start over" with thorium for me personally, is because of how the world works, or rather how people work. When we developed uranium reactors we ran into a host of problems, and we solved them one by one until we finally could make a working reactor. Once we got a working reactor development slowed down, now it was new problems which spurred us on. If we start with developing a thorium reactor we will run into new problems that we have to solve, some of those solutions that we find might make reactors safer, more efficient and leave us with less nuclear waste. Which we then could use in normal uranium reactors too. Even better yet now we could use both kinds of reactors depending on what is more economically efficient at that place.
I like the idea of the kidney separating the actinides and then cleaning out the fission products as an inline process, also breading Thorium in an outer blanket from the core. Although burning up the stockpiles of the higher actinide waste would be a better starting place. I don't think the old guys want to learn the chemistry needed to do this, so I understand the bias displayed. I can't bring myself to write my elected officials in favor of PWR/LWR type reactors, not after learning about MSR/LFTR options. Frankly, there is interest. Unfortunately, economic inertia can not read the room, but unlike actual inertia, it can be starved to reduce its effective mass. I want efficient, clean power that does not cause stockpiles that will become targets in the future.
The future of nuclear energy is in serious doubt. It is not cost competitive with gas, coal, oil, or even solar. Conventional light water reactors have significant public opposition. First is safety and second is long term handling of radioactive waste products. Both thorium and U238 breeder reactors offer solutions to these issues. In particular, a molten salt U238 fast breeder, (e.g.Elysium industries) can use existing nuclear waste as its fuel (no mining required), reduce the waste storage time by a factor of 1000 (and the quantity of waste by a fact of 25), and be passively safe. Only with a new system does nuclear energy have a future. Otherwise, the existing plants will be allowed to be shut down, and few new ones will be built. None the less, I agree with the prof, the thorium cycle is not needed at this time. But developing a breeder is the future for nuclear power - if there is going to be one.
The thing is, current nuclear is the safest form of energy in the world, by an order of magnitude over wind power, the next safest. And the waste stream is extremely small and easily managed when the political will power to do so exists. Nuclear power is, by and large, a horribly advertised power source. It has no real public perception beyond what the anti-nukes say because they are the only ones talking loudly about it, and thus, they dominate the "market" for information. Nuclear power needs a very loud PR campaign backed by facts which are presented clearly, both pros and cons. Also, random aside, one of my high school friend's dad was named Rick Kellogg and worked at a nuclear power plant nearby.
ThorCon is making a test Thorium Power Plant that can be made and installed in 2 years instead of the 6 years it takes for a Uranium Power Plant. They will be testing for several years yet, but keep an eye out.
The only complaint I have is that some of the products of these reactors, as I've read, can be useful in medical applications. As public backlash against light water reactors keeps new ones from being built and old ones getting shut down more and more frequently, even before paying themselves off in some cases, additional income streams will become more valuable for those that remain, or what new reactors are brought on to the market. Additionally, it could almost be the case that they could be paid to burn away the (~90+%?) unburned 'waste' from light water reactors, which mitigates an expense on both the locations that need to find long term storage for this waste and mitigates the expense of the MSR's fuel source. More pedal, less brake I say. But let's be savvy about it.
@@tarjei99 Not really, Kirk is indeed very passionate about it, and I really am on his side in wishing that this technology was being utilized on the industrial scale of current Nuclear (this coming from an Ontarian who gets over 50% of his power from Nuclear reactors) but what Kirk doesn't seem to understand is that economic incentive is what drives innovation, not innovation for the sake of it. There's not much money to be made in Thorium, so unless it's mandated by Governments, it's not going to happen. I think it SHOULD happen because I'd very much like even safer Nuclear power and a cheaper electric bill, but unfortunately we live in a democracy where the common fool has the same voting power as the informed.
@@Birdy890 His company (Flibe Energy) is focused on building small-scale MSR reactors for military bases. From what I understand, they are funded and the military is interested. Once they've built the smaller reactors, and worked-out any kinks, they should be able to up-scale for wide-spread commercial use. As for the economics side, this article www.palmislandtraders.com/hsa10/lamthorium.pdf claims that the real cost (adjusted for inflation) of the production of electricity from a thorium-based MSR could be 1.4 cents/kWh, which is less than half of the next least expensive form of electricity generation. That's a huge economic incentive. The base cost of just the extraction of the richest, most ready to be refined, oil is 0.9 cents/kWh. If we can generate electricity at a cost below that 0.9 cents/kWh threshold, electricity will out-compete oil-based fuels in the energy market. That's the holy fucking grail, my friend. Decades of refinement of thorium-based MSR technology might be able to hit that target! You don't get rich stealing from the poor, you get rich selling what the poor demands at the lowest price possible ;)
@@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406 You're right, but if you notice, as I stated earlier, the only people interested are Governments which already operate based off tax flow, rather than a capitalist incentive to produce cheaper electricity. I'm obviously rooting for commercial success of LFTR technology, but if there's no profits to be made from it, there won't be investors besides ideologues that believe in it or governments that need cheaper electricity.
Thought the lecture was very well done. The only real issue I have is that you seem to be talking about a molten salt fast-spectrum breeder reactor. However, the thorium-U233 fuel cycle is more appropriate for a thermal spectrum breeder reactor, while he U238-Pu239 fuel cycle is better for a fast spectrum breeder reactor, as you get more neutron production from Pu239 in the fast spectrum while U233 is the better neutron producer in the thermal spectrum. I know you're talking about a fast spectrum reactor for two reason: 1) Thermal spectrum reactors have abysmally low breeding ratios, 1.05 - 1.07 for a molten salt thorium breeder (depending on whether you have protactinium separation). That means you're consuming almost the exact amount of material that you're producing, with it taking 16-20 something years to double the amount of fuel in the reactor that you had when it went live. That means that you're not going to be able to pull off enough excess fuel from the reactor in order to supply the starting fuel load for another reactor (at least not within the better part of two decades). On the other hand, with a fast spectrum reactor breeding Pu239 from U238, you would be able to do this as they have much higher breeding ratios, which is why they have been historically favored over thermal spectrum reactors. 2) You talk about needing a neutron absorbed in the drain tanks, but this would only be needed for fast-spectrum reactors. Fast spectrum reactors will have a much higher fuel density (~20%+) than thermal spectrum reactors (~4%+). Because of the lower fuel density, thermal spectrum reactors require moderators to facilitate the nuclear reaction, which in this case is graphite rods in the reactor core. Fuel drained into the drain tanks doesn't require a neutron absorber as reactivity largely stops once the fuel is separated from the moderator, excluding some delayed neutrons that also peter out quickly enough as well. Also, the drain tank serves as an emergency drain in case of emergencies like a terrorist attack or some black swan event, not really in case the fluid overheats. That's because liquid fueled thermal spectrum systems have a negative temperature reactivity coefficient, meaning as the fuel gets hotter, the fluid expands which in turns reduces fuel density. As the fuel density drops, the density/amount of fuel in the core similarly declines, which causes reactivity to fall, cooling the fuel. As such, so long as you keep feeding fuel into the reactor, the system is inherently thermally stable.
Sorry, on my second point, I forgot to note that fast spectrum reactors would require a neutron absorber in the drain tank because with the level of fuel density found in a fast spectrum, you will see continued reactivity outside the core, like in the drain tank (or the piping, or the heat exchanger and anywhere else the fuel goes). As such, with a fast reactor, you'll need a neutron absorber to soak up this reactivity when the reactor isn't operating. Point being, you don't need a neutron absorber in the drain tank of a thermal spectrum MSR breeder.
Not all MSR designs are truly negative temperature reactivity coefficient reactors though... MSRE was only slightly negative. LFTR is intended to be negative, but you are talking about using graphite in a reactor design as a neutron moderator and this can cause problems. The ARE was slightly positive though and it was the first MSR in operation. It certainly is intended to be truly negative, but it has to be designed to be that way, and there are compromises.
@@Whiskey11Gaming You are correct on both points. Graphite creates can experience thermal expansion issues and it can absorb fission products, and really only thermal spectrum MSR's truly have a negative reactivity coefficient, but those require the use some kind of moderator (popularly graphite). You're also right that there is no one best type of reactor. There are multiple types of MSR's with different drawbacks and different designs which make them more suitable for different uses. Even within just "Thermal Spectrum MSR Thorium Breeders", there's opposing camps of people, with strong views, arguing about whether we should be focusing on one fluid or two fluid reactors (this argument largely being driven by the issues of graphite, proliferation, and breeding ratios). Sorensen is a two fluid guy while Steven Boyd is a one fluid.
Everyone is always forgetting the back end of that $14/barrel LEASE price. Even at a negative front end lease price, oil consumption will have a big cost at the back end.
Oil had a negative price for literally a few hours, and that was due to a perfect storm of unusual circumstances. Check the price of oil right now - or better yet, check its price in early 2021, when substantial production curtailment is met by a strong rebound in demand. More than a few analysts are predicting a temporary return to $100/bbl crude oil.
What a BEAUTIFUL explanation with the all-important economic context. Perhaps for a different video - one of the aspects that may make this more attractive sooner than later, is the concept championed by Bill Gates et. al, the NATRIUM system, which is paired with a molten salt storage reservoir (only a slight variation on your diagram) and sized to match "retiring" coal plants, such that the reactor can run at its most efficient 100%, while a separate operation will pull heat from the reservoir to produce steam for the existing power infrastructure taken over from the now formerly coal-fired plant. This combination effectively allows the plant to load-follow, thus better matching the grid for the addition of solar and wind with all their inherent variability.
The Natrium system is a sodium cooled fast breeder. But you can use the thermal storage system with a MSR (MoltexEnergy is doing so). Just throw 2 very well insulated tanks into the intermediate molten salt loop. The Moltex design is also a bit different than most Thorium MSRs, albeit it might be what makes thorium viable- its also a fast reactor.
A long half life means slow decay. Hence why uranium 238, with it's 4.2 billion year half life, can be bare handed completely safely. U238 is routinely used as a radiation shield in sensitive radiation measuring instruments. It's also widely used as armour plating for military combat vehicles due to it's density and ductile nature. Presidential and ministerial reinforced limousines are also built with U238 to stop projectiles.
The key challenge with any Th232/U233 breeder is it requires constant reprocessing to keep going. In my view MSRs are the really important improvement rather than Thorium breeding. There's a much simpler design (DMSR) that uses 75% Th232 + 25% Uranium enriched to 20% that gets most of the benefits that using thorium gives but is a burner instead of a breeder. It achieves a much higher conversion ratio than LEU reactors. Its startup fuel can be used for decades by virtue of constant adding of make up fuel (to sustain fissile ratio and enough overall nuclear fuel stockpile). I wish more people realized this and tried to convince the population that MSRs is what matters instead of LFTR/TMSR. Be it the DMSR fuel or regular LEU fueled MSR reactor.
Couldn't we use a MOX of U and Th in a normal water reactor? Like have the usual 3-5% U-235, and the 97-95% be a mixture of U-238 and Th-232? I know that it is possible in HWRs (CANDU-type reactors) to do so, and that's India's plans.
You have not mentioned the association of thorium with rare earth elements. One of the biggest inhibitions to production of lanthanides is that they all have byproduct thorium. Developing technology to handle thorium - and a place to put lanthanide mining "waste" would be a good thing, overall.
One thing he didn't point out, and I can see why, is the weight difference in a thorium reactor and a PWR. Not a high enough power to weight ratio to launch a rocket of of Earth but definitely useful for long term space missions anywhere within twenty light years.
More importantly (as Kirk Sorensen mentions), molten salt reactors don't need to be pressurized to the level that water does. Also, we know that there is thorium on the moon and on Mars, both low- or no-pressure environments. To make a salt reactor, you need refractory (heat resistant) material and maybe half earth pressure (7.4 psi/380mm Hg). To make a water-cooled reactor, you need water (already a rare resource), refractory material, and tens of times earth atmospheric pressure. It's just easier to withstand high temperature than high pressure, especially when weight is an issue.
Another thing to consider is you don't need a large source of water with a molten salt reactor. In fact they're hot enough to operate super critical CO2 turbines. If anything you want to keep them away from water so the radioactive salts don't dissolve into it during a catastrophic failure. Such a failure could only come from external forces that aren't natural like bombs. An intentional blasting of the salt across a wide area. I don't think it was emphasized enough just how stupidly safe these things are compared to current reactors.
Whenever the subject of nuclear comes up there are plenty of the same old same old statements. The anti-nuclear, and the pro-nuclear, and then there are the fusion comments of course, always 20 years off - and more like 100, but there are always these thorium enthusiasts. My question for the Prof would be what is his opinion on ( assuming he believes that nuclear is necessary for energy production and carbon -free energy ) what is the best design to just get nuclear up and running and producing power as quickly, cheaply and simply, and as easily maintainable as possible. Is this thorium the wonder reactor so great as to make it the design the world should look at? With this war in Ukraine and seeing the large number of reactors in Ukraine that supply almost 50% ( I think I've heard around that ) of Ukraine's energy, are any of them Thorium, and how have they and other nuclear reactors in Europe been operating. When I hear people extolling the virtues of Thorium it just sounds like hype to me. Where are there existing Thorium reactors in actual production and for how long?
Although I disagree with your view on whether we should implement the technology based on costs alone, I appreciate your cool-headed approach and explanation. My rationale: 1) We started building Uranium-cycle reactors from day 1, with only a fraction of the research done on Thorium cycle reactors so far. 2) I find it difficult to put a "cost" on polluting someone's ELSE's piece of land for tens of thousands of years AND still have a clear conscience!
Man makes some good points. But there are rare earth minerals mines who have waste piles of thorium that pose storage problems for them so that makes a plentiful supply. Molten salt thorium reactors can generate isotopes for medical uses and plentiful heat too. 2 reactors in south Georgia are nearing completion but they are billions of $$$ over budget ! Think it’s worth the effort to build a pilot plant and explore the design. If they are built as modules in a factory or shipyard and standardized they could supply the base load power along with solar and wind.
0:27 The Basic Idea 💡
4:06 Why Bother Doing This?
11:42 27 Days
12:40 Why Not Bother?
I do want to extend my gratitude providing this information to the public. Even if, we cannot effectively solve the chemical process of thorium breeders, this research should not be buried. Nuclear research has been way too focused on uranium, and we need to be exploring all facets of nuclear research. Even if the end result comes to making existing nuclear reactors more efficient.
And there's just tooooo much money being thrown away into the fusion dream.
@@iroulis It's only another $20 billion away!
@@leerman22 and 30 years!
@@spoddie 30 billion dollars then.
The issue with thorium breeders and MSR's in general isn't really the chemical processing. It's very easy to fluoronate the salt stream and pull out your uranium and thorium based salts. Kirk Sorensen did a very thorough talk on the "kidney" of a Thorium based MSR which explains the basic concepts of how to do it. Floronation is a well known process for nuclear fuels. Molten Salt is even fairly well understood thanks to the newest generation of fuel reprocessing AND solar thermal plants. The biggest issue is getting the regulatory approval to actually proof of concept it. Same with the MSR concept as a whole. Sure, we had the ARE and the MSRE but we need something done in the modern era to pilot the future of the design. Regulatory approval is the biggest hurdle here.
think im addicted to these videos
Me too.
I enjoyed watching it again.
Finally!!!! An information I can trust about thorium!
And very objective. This prof, really shows from all perspectives. I like this alot.
I needed this balanced, well-informed presentation.
My sincere thanks.
15:17 - Exactly .... totally brilliant. I am so tired of people who don't know what they are talking about raving about "thorium" and "molten salt" and how great it would be. IllinoisEnergyProf gives us facts and context to understand them. Thank you very much Prof. Rusic.
Whish I had a lecturer as good as you when I was at uni. Love your videos keep them coming.
I really appreciate quality presentations like this, thank you. Difficult material explained well about a topic like this can help open minds. I think Thorium reactors are certainly worth exploring as experiments in some level even if we don't end up scaling production. What we could learn may well be worth the cost even if Thorium itself remains a novelty. I would love a video going into more detail about the economics of reactor construction/operation and ways we could improve costs without taking short cuts on safety (maybe producing more, smaller megawatt reactors and thus scaling production?). Nuclear power will be needed more than ever if we are serious about environmental progress (renewables don't strike me as a serious effort).
The thorium breeder cycle in a molten fluoride salt reactor is advantageous because it's the only breeder cycle that can be implemented using thermal neutrons. You can't do this with a U238 -> Pu239 breeder cycle. This allows smaller reactors to be built, as your fissile inventory can be much smaller. From an economic standpoint, this would enable many places in the world to have a reliable, dense energy source.
There's also molten chloride salt reactors, which would operate in the "fast" spectrum, and so be able to do both breeder cycles-including burning transuranics.
Thorium reactors can be used to devour current nuclear reactor waste and convert that to useable energy. Indeed, Thorium reactors will use up over 97% (if memory serves me) of its fuel whereas current Uranium based fuels only utilizes 0.6% and the rest goes into the trash heap. Still, like you said, we'll never run out of Uranium and a lot of the waste may be recycled, but still, Thorium reactors is just the better way to make power, but of course more research has to be done since the work done by Oakridge Labs back in the late 60s/early 70s has to all be be redone, unfortunately (thanks Nixon). :)
There are also medical isotopes that can come from thorium based nuclear reactors that are great for treating cancer.
@@jvanstyn main advantage you can get to them before they decay avay since you dont have to reproces solid fuel.
They literally have to dissolve the broken down solid fuel waste in flouride salts as part of "reprocessing" them back into new solid fuel. Trying to keep a solid fuel solid while fissioning, with resultant gasses evolving inside them, is Rube Goldberg insanity.
I love this chanel. The intro is brief and the information is densely packed.
A civilization is great when old men plant trees they will never sit in the shade of.
i dig your username, fellow human
Yes! Thank you.
That's true, the question is what tree should we plant? I mean who cares about thorium in 100 years if we have mastered fusion tech?
@@JamesR1986 IMO let the market sort itself out. As is, the government crazily regulates nuclear energy. We need to free it up so that it can sort itself out.
@@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406 What we need is a carbon tax which will price in the future costs of CO2 so that businesses have the incentive to plant those trees.
Thank you for these videos. I've been binge-watching them and making notes. I had forgot how much I enjoyed physics back in the 90's. You've actually made me look for enrolling to some university courses just so I can learn more.
Do it!!! School is good. Knowledge makes you powerful.
If I understand the Thorium reactor correctly, then they are actually able to burn reactor waste from the traditional nuclear reactors. And that might make them an economic viable option for waste management.
They cannot, at least not a thermal spectrum thorium breeder.
You can only "burn" actinides in fast spectrum reactors. The problem with fast spectrum reactors, they don't have the inherent safety of a thermal spectrum MSR. It might be possible to engineer fast spectrum reactors to be safe, but safety is inherent to a thermal spectrum MSR. What thermal spectrum MSR's can't do is burn transuranic waste. They're finickey with the fuel you use, really working best with U-233 or U-235 (you can also burn Pu-239 in them, but the Pu-239 fission rate is crap in the thermal spectrum with 2/3 of Pu-239 atoms capturing neutrons instead of fissioning, turning into things the thermal spectrum reactor can't fission).
On the flip side, a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder won't produce any long lived transuranic that you have to dispose of. U-233 has a 90% fission rate in the thermal spectrum, with only 10% capturing two neutrons to become U-235. U-235 has an 85% fission rate, so 85% of that remaining 10% will fission, leaving 1.5% of the fuel becoming a transuranic. That 1.5% isn't waste though because it can be used to produce Pu-238, a non-fissile isotope used in atomic batteries used in deep space probes (any satellite sent further out than Mars).
The other 98.5% of waste is made up of HIGHLY radioactive fission products. Many people talk about this waste as though it requires 300 years to decay to background radiation levels, but that is mostly false. Only Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, both having a half life of around 30 years, require 300 years to largely decay away, but those two isotopes only make up about 6% of total fission products (don't recall if it's 6% total or 6% each for a combined 12%). The vast majority of fission products will be decayed to background radiation levels within 10 years.
@@williamsmith1741 Is it not also easier to chemically sort those more active isotopes out in the liquid phase? A lot of those very highly active isotopes could potentially be filtered out for other uses Nuclear Medicine in particular uses. If I am not mistaken LFTR's are good sources of Tc-99 which is particularly useful for Nuclear Medicine yet supplies are limited with current production techniques and this combined with the limited shelf life means availability is insufficient in many regions. Also, there is medical research that strongly suggests that Bi-213 would be very useful if production was available at scale which it isn't currently as far as I am aware but LFTR designs can produce the relevant precursors in useful quantities apparently. Many of the most useful isotopes in Nuclear Medicine are very short-lived though so short of the ones that form from longer-lived decay products as I understand it the issues is that the useful isotopes often decay long before solid fuel rods can be reprocessed to recover them. Molten salt reactors I believe can tap the salt stream directly and process the elements through chemical separation without waiting for the fuel to be spent, removed from the reactor, and shipped elsewhere for processing.
@@williamsmith1741 You absolutely can produce a fast spectrum waste burning MSR, for example see the designs of Moltex energy or Elysium Power. These have all the same safety advantages as thermal spectrum MSRs.
@@tomshackell You're correct in that you can make a fast spectrum MSR reactor. Specifically, Elysium uses chloride salts because chlorides are much poorer moderators than fluorides.
And you can get similar safety features as a thermal spectrum reactor, but only during operations, in that the working fluid, if it gets too hot it'll expand and the fuel density will drop below the point where it can maintain criticality.
The difference is that fast spectrum reactors, because of the MUCH smaller nuclear cross sections at those energy levels, require fuel densities 4-6X that of a thermal spectrum reactor. That's why they don't require moderators to achieve criticality. As such, when you drain a thermal spectrum MSR reactor, draining the fuel to a drain tank, you're separating the fuel from the graphite moderator, and the reaction almost completely stops, other than a few delayed neutrons. When you drain the fuel from a fast spectrum reactor to a drain tank, you haven't done anything to stop the reaction. The fast spectrum reactor didn't rely on a moderated core to maintain criticality, so the fuel can just continue the reaction in the drain tank. What's more, even if you get the fuel in the drain tank to cool down, that will drive up fuel density in the tank, starting up the reaction again.
I'm not saying that Elysium's reactor's can't be as safe as a thermal spectrum reactor, but they have to be designed to be so, like having a honey comb drain tank with all surfaces painted with neutron absorbers like boron.
@@tomshackell Believe me, I think that Elysium seems the most promising of the various new nuclear start-ups, in that it seems like it's got the fewest hurdles for commercialization. And it does sound like it'll be really safe.
But that doesn't change the fact that it does not have the same intrinsic safety qualities of a thermal spectrum MSR. That just is what it is. On the flip side, Elysium's MSR also wouldn't be subject to some of the draw-backs of a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder, like the anemic breeding ratios and the need to do online fuel reprocessing to filter out fission products.
Each type of nuclear reactor has its own strengths and its own weaknesses. There's not "good at everything" reactor. If you want to convince people you're being honest when you talk about nuclear power, you need to be familiar with both the good things and the bad things about different types of nuclear reactors, and then talk about them impartially.
I don’t think you fully appreciate the value of the passive safety of Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs). The costs of todays nuclear power is approximately 10X that of the 1960s (corrected for inflation). Regulatory Compliance is a big reason why. It could be argued that regulatory compliance is the sole reason why. Today’s Light Water Reactors (LWRs) are safe, but that safety comes with huge costs due to systems and testing to ensure that safety (as per the regulations). The big accident worry of an LWR is the “Loss of Coolant Accident” (LOCA). Water does double duty in an LWR. It is the coolant and the moderator. It is also under pressure (about 100+ atmospheres) and heated to relatively high temperatures (~300 C). If there is any breach in the cooling system, the water will escape, flash to steam and the core, which is expected to be under water, will no longer be under water. Fission will stop, but the decay heat will remain. With no water flowing through the core, the core will melt. This is a meltdown. This will release the highly radioactive fission products. This is a bad accident. There are systems in place to make sure this doesn’t happen. Pumps to move water onto the core. Backups to these pumps. A containment building large enough to capture all the steam that would be produce if the cooling system was breached. Diesel Generators to power the pumps if there is a loss of Grid power. Batteries to power the pumps if the Diesel Generators Fail. Instrumentation to monitor all these systems, and paper trails of documentation to record and communicate everything that ever happens to the authorities. All of these systems dominate the costs of the power plant.
Now, compare that with an MSR. A “meltdown” cannot happen! The core is already in a molten state. The analog would be a “boil over”. But Molten Salts do not boil until extremely high temperatures (1200 C). There is no water under pressure to flash to steam in the MSR. The pressure of the core is essentially at atmospheric pressure (plus some pump pressure), nothing at 100+ atmospheres. If the reactor core is breached, it will leak salt that will solidify. The system drains into drain tanks where fission stops, but decay heat continues. However the salt can tolerate much higher temperatures than water, particularly at atmospheric pressure. So, the salt will be able to passively cool in the drain tank. No Herculean effort to keep water on the core and circulating is required. A containment building could be made MUCH smaller (and cheaper).
The bottom line is that the cost of any Nuclear Power generating system is very much driven by the INHERENT safety aspects of the reactor design. MSRs are MUCH safer by INHERENT design. If we had NRC regulations in place for MSRs that are much easier (lower cost) to comply with (because these regulations efficiently reflect the MSRs inherent safety advantages) MSRs could be constructed and operated at a much lower cost. The 10X cost increase that has occurred over the years for LWRs could be reduced or eliminated with MSRs. MSRs might even be able to compete with $11 per barrel oil! If energy was this low cost to produce, we can produce MUCH more energy! With energy this abundant we can solve many of the worlds resource limitation problems! The potential advantages of MSRs are stunningly HUGE!
I think he does appreciate it but it is his job to present both the future and the obstacles to prepare his students for the reality we live in and not a acidemia hope.
Cynicism and conservative outlook are entirely appropriate for a professor teaching future nuclear engineers.
We have to remain grounded at all times.
I do agree with you that the gains from a more safe system at the regulatory and insurance level is going to have a huge impact on the proliferation of nuclear power.
The huge advantage is we can use airpumps to coold the device.
Recall Fukushima - why it happen?
Because the pressure of cooling water in the core...
Your so full of sxxx
I agree. MSRs have huge potential . they were originally made for a nuclear powered jet airplane by the US navy oddly enough.
I'll just avoid the positives by a Longshot and just say it isn't worth it. It's like he did 20 minutes of reading and jammed out a lecture that even he believed
That was informative and complete! it's so hard to find anything on Thorium that doesn't toot the horn of one position and completely ignore the other side. This may be the only video I've watched that explains the pros of Thorium without saying it's *impossible* to get bomb-grade fissile fuel out of it.
Forget the bomb, there is more than enough Plutonium everywhere.
Thank you for producing both the original video and this revised version a well. You produced a good presentation the first time and now with the second version clarified the advantages and disadvantages even more. Nourishing food for thought.
well stated and balanced arguments. i also appreciate the economic view. i was unclear about why no full scale thorium reactors in usa, but this helped clear it up. i know now we have an abundance supply of uranium and 60yrs of technical experience working with it. currently we have a world surplus of uranium, unless uranium becomes extremely expensive there is no reason to do this. thanks!
Well, I suppose I can like it twice then.
I'd say there are a few more advantages of a MSR (especially the LFTR design). For example, the higher temperature of the molten salt offers safety features beyond just the passive freeze plug capability. Unlike water, you don't need very high pressure to keep it from boiling; it can operate at lower pressure than a LWR. And since the fuel is distributed as a fluid, as temperature rises thermal expansion reduces reactivity (passively). The higher temperature also means high thermal efficiency. With a MSR you also don't have the same concern with hydrogen gas build up and potential hydrogen explosions, when comparing with a LWR. A MSR can also be refueled without shutting down the reactor, and doesn't require (very costly) solid fuel manufacture. And there's no xenon poisoning. That's probably just scratching the surface. I understand the economic argument, but I can't help think it's a huge pity. I think the relative simplicity and especially the obvious safety advantages a MSR/LFTR design offers should justify R&D to overcome remaining obstacles. Public perception could make a difference in the economic sphere (not changing the economic cost, but shifting the willingness to pay those costs). Personally, I'd rather advocate for what I think is the best technology in the hopes of shifting both public and government perceptions about nuclear power, its safety (or potential safety), and the best path forward. Futile? Perhaps. Worth advocating? I think so. I'd say you're probably correct that it's more likely to be a long term goal in the current context, but pushing to shorten that lead time (and maybe adjust some of the variables in the current context) can only help, in my opinion.
Jason Cone isn't it also true that the thorium design is not more efficient, but much more efficient. I've heard final waste material in the 2.5% range, while the LWR design is pretty close to the reverse of that. Also when the professor talks about thorium being 3-4 times as abundant, he doesn't mention that thorium is so abundant it is a common waste product from many mining operations. Whether we take advantage of thorium or just use enriched 235 (a mistake imo), the advantages of MSRs are clear. Molten salts are probably going to prove to be the best grid scale "battery" (thermal storage). The MSR design also allows for some level of load following because of the expansion and contraction of the salt (affected by load). If we had made the right political decisions 20-30 years ago we would be looking at very different energy mix today. Perhaps with no wind, solar, etc. at all.
@@carrdoug99 While the lower atomic weight of Thorium does contribute to the lesser production of long lived transuranics, most of the reduction is a result of the fuel being in a fluid solution. The thing to consider is that what you're referring to as waste isn't waste at all. One of the numerous ways in which legacy reactors suck is that they can only economically extract a few percent of the energy in their fuel. Fission poisons build up in the fuel pellets, as well as physical degradation of the pellets inside the cladding.That's what is sitting in spent fuel pools and dry cask storage, mostly unspent fuel.
A MSR has a few more issues that he mentioned as well. The first is that while the reactor the has a Thorium fuel cycle, initialising the reactor requires a fissile material like Pu-239. So to operate a fleet of reactors that limit your ability to make bombs, you have to be able to generate weapon isotopes.
While the nuclear engineering might end up being simpler, the chemical engineering in a MSR is not. Molten fluoride salts are quite reactive and neutron emissions are bad for most materials. Combine the two and there is no material that you can you can build a pipe out of that would become brittle or irradiated. The best idea anyone has come up with was to put a pipe made of zirconium inside a pipe made of boron inside a pipe made of steel. Apply this to each vessel in the reprocessing plant and you are going to end up with a lot of low level nuclear waste.
@@adamdymke8004 this is some good information. Do you have any video recommendations that go into this (pipe material) in more detail?
@@carrdoug99 While I learned those things from a great video lecture years ago, I can't find the presentation for you. I am unsure whether it is online anymore. I doubt a pipe that layout I described has been pursued seriously, it was given as an example of why the reprocessing is a the most difficult part of LFMSRs. LF doesn't emit _that_ many neutrons outside the reactor, so realistically a MSR just needs to replace its reprocessing equipment and pipes as they corrode and accept that they will irradiated enough to be low grade nuclear waste.
The issue with fissile material is kind of implicit, thorium needs a butt load of neutrons to start the fuel cycle and adding a different liquid fuel in the beginning was the go to method.
I am sorry I can't be of more help, I found a number of papers discussing these details but no good videos.
Thanks a lot for the extra effort. This great lecture is worth every second you invest.
I hope other technical video makers will watch your videos and learn how it ought to be done. Keep up the good work.
Please consider adding to your WHY BOTHER the potential benefits of MSR:
1, Safety associated with low pressure salt coolant
2. Much longer thermal response and the potential for dumping the fuel into a safe configuration.
I was involved in the TMI accident from the day it happened to cleanup and hope you guys give the safety advantages as serious look.
3. The tremendous potential benefit of higher temperatures- greater efficiency, use of downstream process - desalination desalination, drying processes, bottoming cycles...
There are still questions, but I hope you seriously look at what Weinberg and those guys pulled out of the nuclear plane. We used the hanger for LOFT. But I think there's the potential for more than that!!
Seconding the comment below. The compelling economics come from using molten salt. This is done at ATM pressure range (Low pressure, just enough to pump the low viscosity fluid around) which means way less steel and concrete and a dramatically smaller foot print. That is big $. Add up the materials & weights / sizes of the systems and you can realize the major impacts (Thorcon does a god job describing this). Also, the most toxic, short-lived radioactive gases that want to escape from a water pressure system, are kept in the molten salt, so it is way safer from an exposure point of view, even above what you said. There are lots of details, but these are the big practical ones. The high cost of regulations & project delays come from the fears of releases, which just have no way to occur in a molten salt system, there is no motive force to spread things all over & it is passively safe. The economic model is different as there is no expensive fuel prep needed as there is with traditional systems, so you don't make money on the fuel per say. Instead, current models make money on the safe removal and future recovery of the remaining unfissioned fuels. Another important aspect is the degree of utilization. In pellet form, you can't go to high conversion, as the gases build up in the pellets and would fracture & release. In a liquid fuel, you just keep reacting until you reach practical limits on other materials, like the carbon moderator. Current modeling work is working out the details of this, confirming it is safe and controllable with the various byproducts that increase over time. But it is true, there is a high sunken cost to developing a new technology & the existing tech companies have NO incentive to do this, as it doesn't help them extend their current asset base, so only makes sense for a new player. I think we will see some commercial reactors by the 2030s. This seems to be where most all the major players are falling out. But, as you say, with $11 -$20/barrel oil, there is NO incentive to do ANY NUCLEAR, unless you do not have your own fossil fuel resources, then you do have a reason - self sufficiency & political stability. The US was willing to take on cost in order to also have nuclear weapons for security reasons.
You are such a great teacher , sir
This channel is HUGELY underrated. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
Glad to see you're back!
Watching again. Amazing prof.
Extremely interesting, as usual. 👍❤️
Very well presented and said. I was a huge LFTR fanboy for years until I started looking deeper into the details. The pragmatist in me led me to these very same conclusions. Thorium will be an extremely viable and cost-effective fuel for nuclear power. Just not now. We need other GenIV reactors and other bridge technologies to carry the load until we can bring the cost-benefit of thorium into a financially practical option. Until we reach the holy grail of fusion - how many decades away?? - thorium will carry us there, no matter how long that takes. Eventually.
My favorite professor!!
Second thing, he represents what's important for nuclear reactor: Not U238 but U235
It's U235 that's burned up and that's pnly 0.7% of all Uranium available and has only ~700 Mya half-life. Enrichment means that the relation of U238 / U 235 is "enriched" because "Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction.", the PWR/BWR are made to make bombs, that was the idea behind the creation of these reactors and the deployment in the fleet: "run the submarine and create the bomb material", the Nautilus was a proof of concept for this. U238 is being breed to be Pu239 by Neutron capture.
Thus the real fuel is not 3 - 4 times less abundant but more like 300 - 400 less abundant.
Aside the fact that Thorium is also found in the same mines where rare earth metals - which are e.g. required for semiconductors - are mined in higher concentration and abundance.
"The world's present measured resources of uranium (6.1 Mt) in the cost category less than three times present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for about 90 years."
- world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occurrence_of_thorium
The next is the "tiny amount of waste on comparision", that is 1st of all gas lighting, and 2nd false equivalence falicy:
to 1)
a) The mining is far more extensive: 100.000's of tons for 1 ton of Uranium, vs. a few 100's tons for Thorium - mining is not CO2 neutral, as well
b) The preperation (e.g. making the yellow cake, then making the fuel rods from which requres encasing in highly accurate zirconium alloys - is chemcially and energy wise extremly demading and hence also taxing the CO2 balance.
c) the reprocessing treatment of fuel rods - which is what the industry exxentially make all their money with - is extremely elaborate and expensive as one has to handle highly radioactive materials which are essentially disovled into hydrofluoric acid to then be physically separated in those "centrifuges" and then be re-constituted into non liquids to be made into rods again.
to 2)
The United States has (2021) 93 operating commercial nuclear reactors that produce 2000 Tonnes per year of "spend fuel"
- www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/us-nuclear-industry.php
- www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel
"In LWR, uranium fuel cycle start with 250 tonnes of uranium, 35 tonnes of enriched uranium contain 1.15 tonnes of useful 235U. From this, the waste produced is 35 tonnes of fuel containing 33.4 tonnes of 238U, 0.3 tonnes of 235U, 1 tonne of fission product and 0.3 tonnes of plutonium [Hargraves & Moir 2010].
By contrast, in thorium fuel cycle 1 tonne of thorium [which represents a 1 GW electrical reactor] is used in its entirety and comes out on the end is a tonne of fission products and 0.0001 tonne of plutonium which needs to be stored for a very long time. The fission products produced 83% are stale in only 10 years and 17% in approximately 300 years [Hargraves & Moir 2010; GBCN. Net. 2013]. Figure 1 below showed the comparison between the amounts of raw material needed and waste production for LWR and LFTR [Hargraves & Moir 2010]." - aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4916861
"The volume of waste products from a LFTR is approximately 300 times less than that of a uranium reactor. "
- pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es2021318
I'm admittedly the worst student quite possibly of all-time and throughout the history of mankind and probably of anykind. I can't stop watching prof Ruzic, seriously. WTF do I know about reactor this, nuclear that, fissionie stuff etc etc but this dude has me exceeding the speed limit home from work so I have a little bit more time at night to watch videos of him doing his damnedest to explain it in a way even I sort of comprehend.......... There's gotta be some kind prize I can nominate him for, right ? Thank you professor Ruzic, I dig.
Advanced Degree School of Life, Bachelor's Degree in dropping out & Summa Louder than Others Greatest Papa of All Time at University of the Hard Headed.
That's right, He's a great speaker. Science is not too complicated, ... Science is usually pretty simple. Some confusing numbers scare people away, ... Whoops, SCIENCE is the study of ...(whichever subject). This is chemistry and nuclear engineering, maybe titled NUCLEAR SCIENCE.
I'd keep on watching his lectures; he's a great professor, speaker of science. In college, students fill-up the classes with good professors. I'm sure his classes are filled-up.
These lectures are great. Easy to understand basics for non-experts to get interested in science and technology. Thanks for sharing. :)
Dear Illinois EnergyProf, I was very disappointed after I watched your video on small modular reactors but after watching this video I was so happy that I no longer had to carry that disappointment with me all of the time and now I have a renewed respect for you and your channel. It would seem , however, that this video preceded the modular reactor video, so I neg'd your lecture before I had all of the information that I needed in order to make a reasonable decision. So, I would like to apologize for my rash reaction to your lecture and opinions. I'm so happy that I can watch your videos again without that burning disappointment constantly simmering in the background.. This video was amazing and I rate it as one of the best on youtube!!! Absolutely fantastic and very impressive. Could you get me a pass, (I have no $$ with which to educate myself and other commitments make it an unreachable goal), so I can come and learn everything from you and get a Phd? Thank you!!
why bother? no pressurization, insane thermal stability.
Cheap fuel and safety.
@@WadcaWymiaru As mentioned , the problem is development cost. Although i think that with modern technology the analytical and simulation processes should work much faster and more precise thus cutting development cost immensely.
But i guess we will see these reactors in the next economy after the people build a new one from the broken plandemic economy.
@@joachimthome8904
The problem lies there:
ruclips.net/video/lxwF93wnRQo/видео.html - National Security, Rare Earth Elements & The Thorium Problem
China...same about covid-19!
Sir: Thanks for putting out this video. I also note there are some extremely well thought out comments that are well worth reading. There certainly do seem to be a lot of advantages to Thorium coupled with the Molten Salt Reactor. Perhaps a safe prediction would be that we will see one built on this Earth in the next 10 - 15 years?
Absolutely fabulous video, if only our governments were smart enough to realise that molten salt reactors, DC interstate power lines and flow batteries (hydro), are our way forward too green base load power production, solar is sweet and wind is wonderful, but neither are predictable.
@DispelTheMyth Because water flows due to gravity. This is something you knew all along.
Ideally we would use LFTR reactors to convert spent rods into shorter lived byproducts as well as creating useful isotopes. By continuously separating out various elements and adding other ones to these outer tanks all kinds of isotopes can be made. like Plutonium-238, and terbium-161, lutetium-177, Bismuth 213
What are the usecases for the isotopes you mentioned?
@@ALZlper Plutonium-238 is useful for powering spacecraft. The others are useful for medical applications.
And LOTS of xenon that is easily extracted. Nowadays it's what destroys the life of fuel rods.
Very interesting. Thank you
The type of reactor which would burn up spent fuel from LWR's wouldn't be the type of reactor that you'd use to produce Pu238 and Bi213. The former would be a fast-spectrum type reactor, like Elysium Tech's lithium chloride MSR, while the latter would be a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder, like Sorensen' LFTR.
Fantastic lecture as always. Very informative!
I enjoy your clear explanations. I am a fan of the MSR reactor theory but for many of the reason you point out they are not a reality. In researching the slow realization of functional MSRs it becomes apparent that one of the real big impediments to actualization is the materials science needed to develop process and reactor materials that can be manufactured and incorporated into these systems that can withstand high temperature salt corrosion. We have been playing with this technology since WWII. There now seems to be some concerted efforts to get a working model. However there are so many “competing designs” globally I question the lack of cooperation and collaboration regardless of politics and political ideology interfering in true efforts to develop the solution rather than a win!
Great to see a balanced view on thorium. So much of it is overhyped.
Not all that balanced.... It has the same arguments I've heard before... "Can't do it, because it's never been done..."
@@davesradiorepairs6344 hearing it again makes it less true...?
Another use for these is emergency power systems at existing nuclear.
Thanks for fixing the audio sync!
I appreciate the effort to communicate rational information concerning things nuclear as knowledge reduces the inherent fear of the unknown in the general public. I totally disagree with the conclusion of no economic driver for a new fuel cycle. The advantages of moving from a solid fuel machine like reactor to a process like molten reactor have not been fully explored or discovered. This movement will involve solving a new set of technological problems to fully exploit the new paradigm. Design of molten salt breeders (breeders are the only future that makes sense) for both thorium 232 and uranium 238 should be explored and developed (they already are..Elysium.....Flibe....ect.) while we are at it. The one limiting factor is the amount of U235 (or Pu239 in spent fuel) as everything starts with something fissile to start breeding. The energy density of nuclear is the only thing that makes it economical for solid fuel reactors to operate at 4-5% fuel efficiency to heat conversion. Molten salt reactors are closer to 95% conversion of fuel to energy.......what do you think that does to the economics?
The biggest advantages of the thorium fuel cycle is the fact we are already mining it as part of rare earth mining, but right now, it's a waste product of rare earth mining (and also happens to make domestic, US based rare earth mining expensive because the thorium has to be safely stored like nuclear waste). It's quite cheap and has nearly no industrial use. Of course, fuel costs in ALL nuclear power is only a small percentage of the total cost of electricity from a nuclear power plant.
I also think the MSRE proved quite a lot of the concepts of MSR's such that we shouldn't be encountering the regulatory headache we presently have to build a new prototype version, maybe even a prototype with the ability to be expanded to a breeder test reactor. The biggest unknowns are life span of the Hastelloy-N steel used in construction and the lifespan of graphite in the core, as well as handling methods for both. The MSRE only operated for four years and about 20,000 reactor hours. That's not enough to determine long term economics of an MSR, which is a problem.
Fuel costs will not affect economics of a NPP as much as the capital cost and operation and maintenance costs.
Absolutely amazing job explaining this. Thanks again for such a wonderful video.
Thank-you for this education. I was really scratching my head about why we didn't go the route of thorium.It's unfortunate that countries went with the pathways that make bombs, and lots of them. But from the other videos, it is clear that nuclear energy, in the U.S. is much safer than I thought. At least for the newer plants.
Very good overview. One thing we need to understand about the economics: Gen 4 nuclear would enable the best chance for civilization to withstand a medium size asteroid or a year 536 super volcano event where we could have darkened skies for a decade. A world superconducting power grid that would enable us to keep the lights on under these conditions may be above the level of economics calculations, if it is of such existential value that it would be a key to survival.
Great video. Thank you!
Excellent points for and against. I would prefer to see more investment personally.
This is my new favorite channel.
However safe you feel light water reactors are, nuclear power has a bad reputation because of radiation releases from light water reactor accidents. A significant portion of the light water reactor cost is due to safety requirements. The restriction of the light water reactor to low temperatures confine their use to generating electricity without the heat applications available to molten salt reactors.
Another excellent presentation, thank you
Separation of the uranium and thorium is a bit of a gonad pain in a production reactor. Doable, but one can use nitric acid at specific molar levels or a few other tricks with the fluoride salt, but either way leaves one with a scalability issue and rather unpleasant acids in something that's radioactively and thermally hotter than a two dollar pistol.
Overcome throughput at creation level meeting separation level safely, we're cooking with gas.
While you're at it, try to figure out how to do it under microgravity, we'll be cruising the solar system in style!
As for nuclear weapons, spot on. The only thing that's really stopped nuclear weapons usage is a surprising burst of sanity in our species, well, that and expense.
The rest of your points, I do agree with. And we can add standard fission waste into the mixture and dispose of it safely.
Of course, we have fusion power right around the corner. I hear about that, after a bit of rinsing off and repeating every decade.
Like a broken record.
Whoops, I just dated myself.
That's OK, I'll even locate myself somewhat. I miss seeing TMI's cooling plume out of my window, was great for navigation.
BTW, any ideas on expended fuel reprocessing?
Thanks for explaining how to get U233 without U232--most videos miss this point! (10:50)
In 1998, India's Shakti 2 created a 0.2kt nuclear bomb using U-233. This is small enough to be a fizzle, but large enough to show it can be done. India experimented with Thorium because it has to import Uranium.
This is a phenomenal video. Thank you for sharing!
When can we expect a lecture on Gen V, VHTR (Very High Temperature gas-cooled Reactor) AKA: Waterless Pebble Bed Reactor. It is my understanding that unlike modern traditional Nuclear power generation schemes, which require a large local water source for cooling, VHTR has all of the benefits of Thorium Molten Salt reactors you mentioned, is small and potentially very cheap, but due to gas cooling, can be located in any location as no water source is needed.
He already has that video, look for a video called Reactor of the future
@@ikermunoz6947 Thanks! Just watched that high level overview. Hoping for an update as the EnergyProf elected to estimate some of these Gen IV & V technologies are 30-40 years out. This prediction is puzzling considering X-energy has developed their Xe-100 reactor and specialized uranium-based pebble fuel that could be available in the market as early as the late 2020s. It is the only U.S. company actively producing TRISO fuel today. Utilizing Thorium as the pebble fuel stock, in terms of both economics and public acceptance, it would seem EnergyProf would find this a potentially superior solution?
Thanks,
I’ve become a fan of these videos recently. Informative and entertaining.
The fact that this particular vid on thorium and MSR is from the not too distant past, I’m wondering if recent events have altered your position on the economic viability.
In particular China has leveraged enormous amounts of financial and technical resources to revive the thorium MSR concept first proposed by ORNL.
Current US advocates Kirk Sorenson of Flibe Energy and ThorCon CEO Lars Jorgenson would probably agree that without the financial and political advantages of China, the near term market for small companies like theirs will rely on their ability to deliver an economically competitive alternative to fossil fuels.
Recently they have both given presentations that targets delivery of small modular reactors at a price point competitive with coal.
…and China is supposedly very close to completion of a full scale MSR prototype.
Has there been any new discoveries from any of the noted thorium proponents to suggest they are moving the technology towards fruition?
Thanks for the presentation!
Thanks for all your videos, I use them in the college chemistry classes I teach.
Wow such an awesome presentation. Such a good solution for humanity on so many levels...
Not really if your primary interest is being able to make bombs.
Thank you for this succinct explanation, very useful.
Thank you for re-uploading.
Thanks for another great video, Professor!
We know very well how to make vacuum tubes, they work well and meet our needs, and we've solved a lot of problems with them. Clearly, while it would be nice to explore this "transistor" thing, it may become interesting some 100s of years in the distant future.
YES!!! I have to wonder WHY you don't have way more likes. That energy professor may be VERY 'rational' but I don't believe he's being all that WISE.
Transistors conquered the market when they got cheap. The same is with thorium reactors. And that's what the professor said. You can sum it up: thorium is great, but we don't have to hurry. It will replace uranium in a future, but comparison uranium with vacuum tubs is not accurate.
@@Kezoman1 his job is to tell you where it is and where it can be, to educate. He accurately summerized the obstacles to these future realities, I don't know where you get a sense he believes we should not pursue it.
Cynicism borne of wisdom is hard to distinguish from realisms borne of wisdom.
I think you are the one who isn't as wise as you have rationalized yourself to be
@@MichalTerajewicz The message that LFTRnow conveyed was that although we could save money, in the relatively short time, by allowing some other entity to invest in the cost of developing transistors as an economically viable device, it would be a business failure to be so FOOLISH as to complacently squander such a promising opportunity.
We can always just sit back and let China invest in and develop LFTR to a point where LFTR Power Plants are economically lucrative, but then China would own the IP and the so-called 'Wiseman' of America would have yet again relegated the the U.S. to increasing its supplicant stature.
I think LFTRnow makes a good point;
We spend BILLIONS on fusion research projects, with no viable working commercial solutions (at a reasonble cost) for the foreseeable future..
We spend BILLIONS on GEN3 and Gen3+ reactors, which provide only marginal improvements over the existing 50 year old designs..
We spend NOTHING on LFTR, that was proven viable back in 1965, ran for 5+ years, and had a perfect safety record...
It's time for the old nuclear industry dinosaurs to die off, so that younger generation can present their fresh ideas of a better world around Thorium..
Once again, I love your calm demeanor and “just the facts” wholistic approach to explaining Thorium based reactors to us mere mortals. :)
I’ve watched every one of your videos. Thank you. Do I get a minor in nuclear physics now?
yeah you do if you can explain it to someone else. If you can explain it you know it.
Thanks very much Professor Ruzic - I was just thinking as space stations develop and get larger a lifter reactor might be ideal for a space environment.
They might have to rethink passive safety measures in 0-G
Dr. Mosfet, what makes you think that space stations will be 0G?
@@joe-uu5tn
The only way we know how to make a non-0G space station is by centripetal force, stopping the rotation and making everything weight nothing is to good of a tool or advantage that builders, remodelers, maintenance worker will not want to give up with out fight. During that time of 0-G the current passive safety for the reactor will be useless.
Dr.Mosfet, I'm thinking much further out than you are like 100 - 300 years, when these space habitats hold 1m-10m people per. These structures will rotate continuously because of their massive size. Stopping the rotation will be very difficult and perhaps not practical for a variety of reasons, not the least of which will be inconvenience for the inhabitants.
@@joe-uu5tn
You mean Elysium size space station .
Yep your right was thinking of something a little closer to our time.
gatewayspaceport.com
Good video, very nicely explained. Thank you,
Thorium is already in a lot of rare earth ores, so we already have it coming up.
And doesn't have to be enriched.
And we're having problems with disposal 😂🤣
"There's just too much Thorium in this Cobalt ore."
"Fuck it, this is West Africa. Chuck it the ocean."
@@rexmann1984 well it is still in its natural state so that ain't too bad. Still, what a waste in exactly the place it might do the most good...
I was just about to mention this. Thorium reactors would create a demand. This would mean it could be economically viable to mine rare earths in other places at scale, unlike right now where it costs so much to dispose and handle the Thorium waste that rare earth mining isn't profitable in most of the world. China being the exception to this in large part due to not concering themselves with waste managment.
Great presentation! Bravo professor! Thank you from humanity! :-)
I was expecting a wild George Lucas to wander into frame when molten salt reactor was mentioned
Great presentation. Thank you.
I suppose it doesn't really go on this topic, but the biggest reason to use thorium is economical. Thorium is always found is deposits of rare earth elements, which makes sense, since thorium is the earliest stable actinide, and rare earth elements are their periodic neighbors, the lanthanides. Currently, thorium, a naturally occurring element, is treated as a nuclear waste, and mining companies that find it have to just bury it over. If we just change the classification of how we can use thorium, we (I mean humans, outside the PRC) could make rare earth mining less rare.
Even if we don't wind up using it for fuel, just being permitted to collect the ore and sequester it would easily triple the available worldwide supply of neodymium (ironically making wind turbines and fusion confinement magnets cheaper to make). Since thorium is radioactive as an alpha emitter, its radiation is literally shieldable by a piece of paper. Also, thorium oxide is highly insoluble in water, unlike uranium oxide, so get worries about it getting into ground water. Even better, decaying thorium is not only the source for the Earth's internal heat (along with uranium), but being an alpha emitter means that it's a source of helium.
Just being able to treat thorium ore with the nuclear care given to, say, granite, would help global production of rare earth elements, which could pay for the research to get both thorium fuel and MSRs going. Because we have such a long history with regards to uranium research, Kirk Sorensen has already been quoted to say in talks that if you aren't planning to specifically build a thermal neutron breeder reactor, you might as well stick with uranium
Renewable energy just WON'T cut it. Not if we're trying to replace oil with it.
The idea of "renewable energy" is past.... It doesn't product enough baseline energy for a growing population, doesn't work at night or when the wind doesn't blow..
Nuclear is the only way to go.... LFTR is the only SAFE way to go...
It can definitely cut it...but only if we find a way to efficiently store the energy produced to use it later (for example at night, or when the wind doesn't blow). Currently, battery technology SUCKS.
@@andreimiga8101 Renewable energy is actually not as green as people say, because they don't last that long (wind turbines 15 years) and that will only add to the trash collection, and all the toxic batteries needed to keep them going.
@@peterg644 Batteries can be recycled, most plant materials also. The CO2 and NOx which are released into the atmosphere are much more dangerous, because you DON'T pile it up into your safe trash collection...
@@peterg644 Hydro/Tidal has immense potential, but it obviously limited by geography, as is geothermal. Aside from the storage/predictability issues, I think each jurisdiction is going to need to be clever in using the resources available to them.
I think it's pretty important to highlight that there is no energy option which does not involve some significant sort of toxic waste/pollutant. The truth is there's no silver bullet and the real solution is curbing energy consumption and actually using efficiency gains to use less.
Great Video, thanks professor
All the genius comments from the last video are gone now 😱
Give it a few more days...
The main reason we should "start over" with thorium for me personally, is because of how the world works, or rather how people work.
When we developed uranium reactors we ran into a host of problems, and we solved them one by one until we finally could make a working reactor. Once we got a working reactor development slowed down, now it was new problems which spurred us on.
If we start with developing a thorium reactor we will run into new problems that we have to solve, some of those solutions that we find might make reactors safer, more efficient and leave us with less nuclear waste. Which we then could use in normal uranium reactors too. Even better yet now we could use both kinds of reactors depending on what is more economically efficient at that place.
Thank you Prof., very beneficial lecture
I like the idea of the kidney separating the actinides and then cleaning out the fission products as an inline process, also breading Thorium in an outer blanket from the core. Although burning up the stockpiles of the higher actinide waste would be a better starting place. I don't think the old guys want to learn the chemistry needed to do this, so I understand the bias displayed. I can't bring myself to write my elected officials in favor of PWR/LWR type reactors, not after learning about MSR/LFTR options. Frankly, there is interest. Unfortunately, economic inertia can not read the room, but unlike actual inertia, it can be starved to reduce its effective mass. I want efficient, clean power that does not cause stockpiles that will become targets in the future.
Thank you for your contribution.
The future of nuclear energy is in serious doubt. It is not cost competitive with gas, coal, oil, or even solar. Conventional light water reactors have significant public opposition. First is safety and second is long term handling of radioactive waste products.
Both thorium and U238 breeder reactors offer solutions to these issues. In particular, a molten salt U238 fast breeder, (e.g.Elysium industries) can use existing nuclear waste as its fuel (no mining required), reduce the waste storage time by a factor of 1000 (and the quantity of waste by a fact of 25), and be passively safe.
Only with a new system does nuclear energy have a future. Otherwise, the existing plants will be allowed to be shut down, and few new ones will be built.
None the less, I agree with the prof, the thorium cycle is not needed at this time. But developing a breeder is the future for nuclear power - if there is going to be one.
The thing is, current nuclear is the safest form of energy in the world, by an order of magnitude over wind power, the next safest. And the waste stream is extremely small and easily managed when the political will power to do so exists.
Nuclear power is, by and large, a horribly advertised power source. It has no real public perception beyond what the anti-nukes say because they are the only ones talking loudly about it, and thus, they dominate the "market" for information. Nuclear power needs a very loud PR campaign backed by facts which are presented clearly, both pros and cons.
Also, random aside, one of my high school friend's dad was named Rick Kellogg and worked at a nuclear power plant nearby.
ThorCon is making a test Thorium Power Plant that can be made and installed in 2 years instead of the 6 years it takes for a Uranium Power Plant. They will be testing for several years yet, but keep an eye out.
The only complaint I have is that some of the products of these reactors, as I've read, can be useful in medical applications. As public backlash against light water reactors keeps new ones from being built and old ones getting shut down more and more frequently, even before paying themselves off in some cases, additional income streams will become more valuable for those that remain, or what new reactors are brought on to the market. Additionally, it could almost be the case that they could be paid to burn away the (~90+%?) unburned 'waste' from light water reactors, which mitigates an expense on both the locations that need to find long term storage for this waste and mitigates the expense of the MSR's fuel source.
More pedal, less brake I say. But let's be savvy about it.
Now imagine that:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Lwrvslftr2.png
I'd love to see him and Kirk Sorensen discuss thorium.
who will be in the red corner, and who will be in the blue corner?
Kirk will slaughter him. He appears to be completely out of touch with what is going on.
@@tarjei99 Not really, Kirk is indeed very passionate about it, and I really am on his side in wishing that this technology was being utilized on the industrial scale of current Nuclear (this coming from an Ontarian who gets over 50% of his power from Nuclear reactors) but what Kirk doesn't seem to understand is that economic incentive is what drives innovation, not innovation for the sake of it. There's not much money to be made in Thorium, so unless it's mandated by Governments, it's not going to happen.
I think it SHOULD happen because I'd very much like even safer Nuclear power and a cheaper electric bill, but unfortunately we live in a democracy where the common fool has the same voting power as the informed.
@@Birdy890 His company (Flibe Energy) is focused on building small-scale MSR reactors for military bases. From what I understand, they are funded and the military is interested. Once they've built the smaller reactors, and worked-out any kinks, they should be able to up-scale for wide-spread commercial use.
As for the economics side, this article www.palmislandtraders.com/hsa10/lamthorium.pdf claims that the real cost (adjusted for inflation) of the production of electricity from a thorium-based MSR could be 1.4 cents/kWh, which is less than half of the next least expensive form of electricity generation. That's a huge economic incentive.
The base cost of just the extraction of the richest, most ready to be refined, oil is 0.9 cents/kWh. If we can generate electricity at a cost below that 0.9 cents/kWh threshold, electricity will out-compete oil-based fuels in the energy market. That's the holy fucking grail, my friend. Decades of refinement of thorium-based MSR technology might be able to hit that target!
You don't get rich stealing from the poor, you get rich selling what the poor demands at the lowest price possible ;)
@@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406 You're right, but if you notice, as I stated earlier, the only people interested are Governments which already operate based off tax flow, rather than a capitalist incentive to produce cheaper electricity. I'm obviously rooting for commercial success of LFTR technology, but if there's no profits to be made from it, there won't be investors besides ideologues that believe in it or governments that need cheaper electricity.
It's like deja vu all over again.
Thought the lecture was very well done. The only real issue I have is that you seem to be talking about a molten salt fast-spectrum breeder reactor. However, the thorium-U233 fuel cycle is more appropriate for a thermal spectrum breeder reactor, while he U238-Pu239 fuel cycle is better for a fast spectrum breeder reactor, as you get more neutron production from Pu239 in the fast spectrum while U233 is the better neutron producer in the thermal spectrum.
I know you're talking about a fast spectrum reactor for two reason:
1) Thermal spectrum reactors have abysmally low breeding ratios, 1.05 - 1.07 for a molten salt thorium breeder (depending on whether you have protactinium separation). That means you're consuming almost the exact amount of material that you're producing, with it taking 16-20 something years to double the amount of fuel in the reactor that you had when it went live. That means that you're not going to be able to pull off enough excess fuel from the reactor in order to supply the starting fuel load for another reactor (at least not within the better part of two decades). On the other hand, with a fast spectrum reactor breeding Pu239 from U238, you would be able to do this as they have much higher breeding ratios, which is why they have been historically favored over thermal spectrum reactors.
2) You talk about needing a neutron absorbed in the drain tanks, but this would only be needed for fast-spectrum reactors. Fast spectrum reactors will have a much higher fuel density (~20%+) than thermal spectrum reactors (~4%+). Because of the lower fuel density, thermal spectrum reactors require moderators to facilitate the nuclear reaction, which in this case is graphite rods in the reactor core. Fuel drained into the drain tanks doesn't require a neutron absorber as reactivity largely stops once the fuel is separated from the moderator, excluding some delayed neutrons that also peter out quickly enough as well.
Also, the drain tank serves as an emergency drain in case of emergencies like a terrorist attack or some black swan event, not really in case the fluid overheats. That's because liquid fueled thermal spectrum systems have a negative temperature reactivity coefficient, meaning as the fuel gets hotter, the fluid expands which in turns reduces fuel density. As the fuel density drops, the density/amount of fuel in the core similarly declines, which causes reactivity to fall, cooling the fuel. As such, so long as you keep feeding fuel into the reactor, the system is inherently thermally stable.
Sorry, on my second point, I forgot to note that fast spectrum reactors would require a neutron absorber in the drain tank because with the level of fuel density found in a fast spectrum, you will see continued reactivity outside the core, like in the drain tank (or the piping, or the heat exchanger and anywhere else the fuel goes). As such, with a fast reactor, you'll need a neutron absorber to soak up this reactivity when the reactor isn't operating. Point being, you don't need a neutron absorber in the drain tank of a thermal spectrum MSR breeder.
Not all MSR designs are truly negative temperature reactivity coefficient reactors though... MSRE was only slightly negative. LFTR is intended to be negative, but you are talking about using graphite in a reactor design as a neutron moderator and this can cause problems. The ARE was slightly positive though and it was the first MSR in operation. It certainly is intended to be truly negative, but it has to be designed to be that way, and there are compromises.
@@Whiskey11Gaming You are correct on both points. Graphite creates can experience thermal expansion issues and it can absorb fission products, and really only thermal spectrum MSR's truly have a negative reactivity coefficient, but those require the use some kind of moderator (popularly graphite).
You're also right that there is no one best type of reactor. There are multiple types of MSR's with different drawbacks and different designs which make them more suitable for different uses.
Even within just "Thermal Spectrum MSR Thorium Breeders", there's opposing camps of people, with strong views, arguing about whether we should be focusing on one fluid or two fluid reactors (this argument largely being driven by the issues of graphite, proliferation, and breeding ratios). Sorensen is a two fluid guy while Steven Boyd is a one fluid.
"when oil is 14 per dollar nothing is competitive" lol now it has a literal negative price.
Everyone is always forgetting the back end of that $14/barrel LEASE price. Even at a negative front end lease price, oil consumption will have a big cost at the back end.
Oil had a negative price for literally a few hours, and that was due to a perfect storm of unusual circumstances. Check the price of oil right now - or better yet, check its price in early 2021, when substantial production curtailment is met by a strong rebound in demand. More than a few analysts are predicting a temporary return to $100/bbl crude oil.
A ONE kg of thorium could give you far more energy than the barrel of the oil...a 30$ per kg.
What a BEAUTIFUL explanation with the all-important economic context. Perhaps for a different video - one of the aspects that may make this more attractive sooner than later, is the concept championed by Bill Gates et. al, the NATRIUM system, which is paired with a molten salt storage reservoir (only a slight variation on your diagram) and sized to match "retiring" coal plants, such that the reactor can run at its most efficient 100%, while a separate operation will pull heat from the reservoir to produce steam for the existing power infrastructure taken over from the now formerly coal-fired plant. This combination effectively allows the plant to load-follow, thus better matching the grid for the addition of solar and wind with all their inherent variability.
The Natrium system is a sodium cooled fast breeder. But you can use the thermal storage system with a MSR (MoltexEnergy is doing so). Just throw 2 very well insulated tanks into the intermediate molten salt loop. The Moltex design is also a bit different than most Thorium MSRs, albeit it might be what makes thorium viable- its also a fast reactor.
A long half life means slow decay. Hence why uranium 238, with it's 4.2 billion year half life, can be bare handed completely safely. U238 is routinely used as a radiation shield in sensitive radiation measuring instruments. It's also widely used as armour plating for military combat vehicles due to it's density and ductile nature. Presidential and ministerial reinforced limousines are also built with U238 to stop projectiles.
The key challenge with any Th232/U233 breeder is it requires constant reprocessing to keep going.
In my view MSRs are the really important improvement rather than Thorium breeding.
There's a much simpler design (DMSR) that uses 75% Th232 + 25% Uranium enriched to 20% that gets most of the benefits that using thorium gives but is a burner instead of a breeder. It achieves a much higher conversion ratio than LEU reactors. Its startup fuel can be used for decades by virtue of constant adding of make up fuel (to sustain fissile ratio and enough overall nuclear fuel stockpile).
I wish more people realized this and tried to convince the population that MSRs is what matters instead of LFTR/TMSR.
Be it the DMSR fuel or regular LEU fueled MSR reactor.
Couldn't we use a MOX of U and Th in a normal water reactor? Like have the usual 3-5% U-235, and the 97-95% be a mixture of U-238 and Th-232? I know that it is possible in HWRs (CANDU-type reactors) to do so, and that's India's plans.
You have not mentioned the association of thorium with rare earth elements. One of the biggest inhibitions to production of lanthanides is that they all have byproduct thorium. Developing technology to handle thorium - and a place to put lanthanide mining "waste" would be a good thing, overall.
The best is just a ONE 100 acre(0.44ha) mine could supply the world!!!
In Missouri state. Single mine. ENTIRE WORLD energy demand!!!
One thing he didn't point out, and I can see why, is the weight difference in a thorium reactor and a PWR. Not a high enough power to weight ratio to launch a rocket of of Earth but definitely useful for long term space missions anywhere within twenty light years.
More importantly (as Kirk Sorensen mentions), molten salt reactors don't need to be pressurized to the level that water does. Also, we know that there is thorium on the moon and on Mars, both low- or no-pressure environments. To make a salt reactor, you need refractory (heat resistant) material and maybe half earth pressure (7.4 psi/380mm Hg). To make a water-cooled reactor, you need water (already a rare resource), refractory material, and tens of times earth atmospheric pressure. It's just easier to withstand high temperature than high pressure, especially when weight is an issue.
Another thing to consider is you don't need a large source of water with a molten salt reactor. In fact they're hot enough to operate super critical CO2 turbines. If anything you want to keep them away from water so the radioactive salts don't dissolve into it during a catastrophic failure. Such a failure could only come from external forces that aren't natural like bombs. An intentional blasting of the salt across a wide area. I don't think it was emphasized enough just how stupidly safe these things are compared to current reactors.
With all this being said thanks for the video. I've enjoyed all of them 😊
Whenever the subject of nuclear comes up there are plenty of the same old same old statements. The anti-nuclear, and the pro-nuclear, and then there are the fusion comments of course, always 20 years off - and more like 100, but there are always these thorium enthusiasts. My question for the Prof would be what is his opinion on ( assuming he believes that nuclear is necessary for energy production and carbon -free energy ) what is the best design to just get nuclear up and running and producing power as quickly, cheaply and simply, and as easily maintainable as possible.
Is this thorium the wonder reactor so great as to make it the design the world should look at?
With this war in Ukraine and seeing the large number of reactors in Ukraine that supply almost 50% ( I think I've heard around that ) of Ukraine's energy, are any of them Thorium, and how have they and other nuclear reactors in Europe been operating. When I hear people extolling the virtues
of Thorium it just sounds like hype to me. Where are there existing Thorium reactors in actual production and for how long?
Although I disagree with your view on whether we should implement the technology based on costs alone, I appreciate your cool-headed approach and explanation.
My rationale:
1) We started building Uranium-cycle reactors from day 1, with only a fraction of the research done on Thorium cycle reactors so far.
2) I find it difficult to put a "cost" on polluting someone's ELSE's piece of land for tens of thousands of years AND still have a clear conscience!
Man makes some good points. But there are rare earth minerals mines who have waste piles of thorium that pose storage problems for them so that makes a plentiful supply. Molten salt thorium reactors can generate isotopes for medical uses and plentiful heat too. 2 reactors in south Georgia are nearing completion but they are billions of $$$ over budget ! Think it’s worth the effort to build a pilot plant and explore the design. If they are built as modules in a factory or shipyard and standardized they could supply the base load power along with solar and wind.
Thank you. Every other video I've seen is either too technical or not technical enough.