This is one of the BEST Google-tech talks ever presented. Tight editing for concise content and Sorensen's masterful command of the subject shine here. This is THE MOST IMPORTANT topic for humankind and the future of Earth. We need LIFTRs NOW!
+Learner-Learns LFTRs? Now? It's a tad bit too late (50 years too late) for that I'm afraid. We missed out on so much R&D on LFTR that it'll be a blessing if the technology will become viable in the upcoming decades.
+darthvader5300 So, after you find the caps lock key on your keyboard, turn it off, then take all your meds, check this out: I'm not an American. Before you start ranting about conspiracies and scientists' powerful enemies, let me tell you that many other countries built MUCH bigger breeder reactors too, some with a power capacity of 1000MW (electrical) even and yet all of them have been scrapped. You wanna know why? Because it's still far too unfeasible to everyone who has access to U235. While U235 is around (and it WILL be around for quite some time in fact), building ANY kind of breeder reactor is simply not economically viable enough. The Americans had to spend billions of dollars to realize this and probably many other countries have also invested an ungodly amount of money in it too. And until no feasible FBR (let alone a LFTR) design is found (patents are pretty much irrelevant anyway, because the designs patented by Americans are useless anyway, otherwise they'd already be using at least some of them), no private company will take a risk of building a power plant utilizing that technology either (they rarely build nuclear power plants anyway, because they're so expensive).
+darthvader5300 Even if I take the position that I agree with you, which I don't, let me ask.... has *your* government ever done anything wrong? Let he who is not sinless throw the first stone...And then after you throw that stone, throw your caps lock key, ok?
Probably not. Dr Kirk Sorenson's assertions are wildly optimistic. If the molten salt configuration were so much better, they would have been used long ago. Thorium IV has certain drawbacks as well. Do not be caught up by Dr Kirk Sorensen's charisma. You need to consider the issues objectively.
Kirk, your relentless advocacy for this technology has been heroic, and there are a ton of people who appreciate it, and want you to succeed in realizing this sane re-definition of a practical standard for safely utilizing the 'king of all fossil fuels'.
Neither thorium nor uranium is in any way a fossil fuel. That stuff existed before the syn ignited. They are the remains of gigantic stellar gravitational collapses, such as supernovae
@@mantisnomo5984 Mining coal to make rods for a few power stations or mining coal to just burn endlessly away producing a faction of the power a Thorium reactor could. Priorities as always
@@AlanDeRossett What? The lithium in the salt is ionised. When the lithium metal reacts with water, it becomes Li+ that bonds with OH-. In fact, LiOH is the intermediate step in producing the salt. It's no longer reactive anymore. Do your research.
J D - That's right, while picking his nose with a pencil it occurred to him that the nib was sharp and hurt a lot. Thinking on his feet, he grabbed some Cellotape, slapped it on the end of his pencil then continued with rooting through his snot filled nostrils... After removing and subtly tasting the goods, he took the cellotape off and discovered graphite was stuck to it. Thus solving a life-long puzzle, securing him a Nobel Peace Prize and many bodacious babes.
Advantages of thorium: Much safer than uranium-no pressure vesel, no fuel rods to melt down Much simpler reactor-Thorium salt liquid is pumped from the reactor tank through a heat exchanger and back into the tank Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium--in fact so plentiful it is considered a waste product from rare earth mining Thorium doesn't need expensive enriching to make it usable Thorium is of little use for weapons If power goes off liquid fuel simply drains into a pit which stops reaction. No fuel rods to cool or melt down if power fails This technology has been around for years. Why was it not developed long ago? Politics, methinks.
Why were thorium reactors not developed? I think the main reason is thorium is of little use for weapons. Governments would rather build bombs than safe, inexpensive power plants, and thorium just doesn't fit that bill.
You forgot 2 other real benefits: 1. conventional Uranium & Plutonium reactors convert only around 0.5% of the available energy compared to 99% with LFTR reactors. 2. And this is the most important, the waste products fall to background radiation levels within 350 years compared to 100,000 or more with conventional reactors
Some misleading points in your comment: Thorium is only more plentiful than Uranium if you only consider earth's crust. Uranium is much more plentiful then Thorium in sea water. (However, extracting U from sea water is more expensive as of now). Thorium does need enriching to start the reaction (some Uranium is needed for that), but once it started, there is no need for further enrichment. So it's a bit misleading. It doesn't need expensive enriching, but it needs some enriching. As for weapons, it can be used, but as you stated, there are other more usable materials. But otherwise your points are valid. Here's a list with some Thorium myths: whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
Interesting history behind the decision for fast breeder reactors. I also suspect the decision was military, as the nuclear arms race needed plutonium, which required FBRs.
Thanks, just reading his bio. I am so amazed of this Thorium reactors and it could be beginning of the new era. As for now Chinese government seems to be really interested in that and I think once they develop this reactor they will be selling more electricity to foreign countries and make them even more powerful.
It happened because making bombs was more important to the politicians and corporations so thorium reactors were not favored, now the nuclear energy business is so firmly entrenched they are standing in the way of a boundless energy future for short term goals. in other words greed is the culprit as usual
Really it was much simpler that that. Reactors were built for US subs first. What was known, was how to build reactors for making bomb material so this is what was used in the subs. Of course boiling water was what was also known how to make a boat go. These designs were simply scaled up for power reactors. Most likely if the issue was first build a power reactor something else may have been built. A lot of industrial development works this was. Like the key board I am typing with. It is the way it is because the first typewriters had swinging keys that would get tangled if one typed to fast. To ovoid this the letters on the key board were placed to slow the typist down. We still use this keyboard even though there are much better keyboards for less strain and faster typing out there.
My father briefly worked for the DOE back in the 70s-80s before going to the DOT and he said it was a shit show... Hard to press new tech while there is so much money spent on current reactors.. just may be a small part of it
+DrGJames Baxter Interesting that you've identified that there is potential for using tech like this in space, but tell me -- how to make use of that energy, in space? Have you any ideas for direct applications for it? "Desalinating water" in space.... if we also boost a huge tank of salt water up with the reactor and the spaceship that holds it...
+jamespfp The thing is with everything there is the positive and negative, we would have to take salt water to space to begin with , but then once we have a source there established it would solve the issue . In space it would be safer for long term power supply , for research stations, colonies, and exploration. all in due time things can be solved . The issue is why are we not doing this faster?
This is by far, the best approach to not only solving the need for energy in a modern world but can also alleviate global warming. It would behoove the U.S. to invest in LFTR's much like it did for the Manhattan project. The sooner these come online the better.
The problems are in the Uranium reactors mostly, the 1940's - 1950's design... think of a 1950 car... still running but not in any way safe the way modern cars are. The Oak Ridge MSR is also from that era, but they are studying Molten Salt there right now, with all new parts.
The biggest disadvantage of water is the insane level of pressure needed to keep it liquid at reactor temperatures. Sorensen has done the world a huge favor in recovering the records of the MSRE. In that experiment, Alvin Weinberg, designer of the PWR, addressed and remedied about four weeknesses of that older design.
@DrakeDorosh "Plutonium for the cold war" means relatively high-purity Pu239; for that the military had special weapons-optimized reactors like the "B Reactor" at Hanford. Civilian (power-optimized) reactors (fast breeders included) that are operated normally will produce plutonium with significant quantities of contaminant isotopes like Pu238, Pu240 and Pu242 that render it fairly useless for weaponization.
As a machinist in the 1980's, I machined tungsten honeycomb devices for a liquid sodium reactor being built by Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Rumor was their reactor was tested in Hanover ID and allowed to go super-critical and the design theory was proven as it shut itself down properly. Is this Thorium reactor similar?
Liquid sodium systems are still uranium-based - and anyone who thought that sodium is "safe" is from a different planet to me. No matter now many precautions you take there will be leaks and molten sodium burns pretty hot when exposed to air (the japanese have found this out the hard way) There are a lot of online resources about LFTRs and to be honest I think they're the best design available, with pebblebeds coming in close behind - the really big advantage of LFTR is that they're thorium-cycle based and that means you have a readily available supply of safe, cheap fuel which is extremely hard to weaponise.
The same reason for using molten salt as your fuel, is the same reason they cool fast reactors with liquid metal. You don't need to pressurize the reactor vessel to keep the fuel or coolant from boiling. PWRs need to be pressurized to something like 150 bar (more than 2000psi) and despite the name, Boiling Water Reactors are still pressurized to well over 70 bar or 1000psi. Sodium is very stable when irradiated though, which is why it is preferred in LMFBRs. The worst Sodium isotope you're likely to find in an LMFBR is Na-24 which only has a half-life of 15 days. This means storing the used coolant isn't really a problem, and if you have a leak and a sodium fire, you're not releasing harmful contaminants. And most of the time, the best bet for extinguishing a sodium fire is to just let it burn itself out. As it oxidizes, it forms an airtight crust and extinguishes itself. That Japanese incident at the Monju reactor was in a secondary loop which meant no irradiated sodium was released and the fire put itself out in less than an hour.
wasnt a reactor built in the 50,s,??,ran for over a yr,then shut down as useless to the military.tesla was poisoned for same,other inventors dissapeared,or bought out,made to look stupid.this has been going on with advancement for thousands of yrs,.this is why we still have piston engines,batteries,ect,after 130 yrs.NOTHING NEW....thorium,graphine,tesla,free power,.not happening.
@@alanbrown397 I remember engine basics class, don't pull the valves from a head and toss in the hot tank until you have made certain they weren't from a leaded gas burning engine, they contained sodium, a cracked one would go boom.
That is immensely illuminating because there was a story told in a goggle lecture where the guy who was developing the Thorium reactor got fired and ridiculed for being over concerned with safety. The way that guy tells it the navy could have chosen his reactor instead. His telling of events left me very confident but somehow mislead. Naturally the oldest technology would earn the greatest loyalty and "safety" is what you know.
Terrorists cannot get plutonium to build bombs without either building a nuclear reactor, and reprocessing plant OR a nation state furnished it to them. It cannot be obtained simply by separating it from used nuclear fuel, the reactor must be designed to produce plutonium-239 primarily. That is how one goes from irradiated nuclear fuel to a bomb.
We should have gone 100% nuclear power decades ago. France is over 80% nuclear power plants. Zero carbon emissions, 4 to 10 times the electricity than coal. Only 3 major accidents, only Chernobyl had fatalities. 3 mile island was a maintenance issue and Fukushima was due to natural disaster. Fact Check: The “gas crunch” was never about OPEC and the Yom Kippur war. It was about oil refineries saving oil reserves for UNLEADED GASOLINE.
Its diversion, however, is easily noted (hey, where's my start charge!?), and it's basically the same stuff we use in research reactors around the country. We've already got security protocols surrounding that. At the fueling phase, there's literally no proliferation risk. In the periodic defueling phase (i.e., removal of excess U-233 produced), proliferation is limited by the production of 232-U. In the spent fuel removal and storage, there is no risk, since there are no fissiles.
Why isn't this transmitted or featured on youtube? Come on Google... it takes little effort to place it within the feed of the crowd to share the knowledge and initiate the moment across the planet.
I'm convinced the future of nuclear energy is in the thorium cycle and the LFTR. I wonder what advancements have been achieved since this video was made.
Carter worked with Rickover during his time in the Navy. Ford could not ignore Carter's expertise and authority there. TMI and Carter's presence and speach from the grounds was an authoritive effort to settle the outcry and panic.
Molten salt is highly reactive if it is exposed to moisture. It also doesn't have a negative coefficient of reactivity, which makes it inherently unstable. The main reason MSBRs weren't pursued was primarily because of safety concerns and reliability. Thorium Breeder Reactors would be great, but it should be cooled by pressurized water, not molten salt.
An LWR has high resistance at the fueling, defueling, and storage steps - first, low enrichment; second, high radioactivity; last, high burnup meaning contamination of the 239-Pu with 240- and 241-Pu, which have gamma emitters in their decay chains (like 232-U) and a spontaneous fission problem (== premature fizzle). A LFTR has similarly high resistance, with one exception: the start charge needs to be fairly high enriched fissile uranium - 235 or 233. If 235, it's entirely useful for weapons.
@@BringDHouseDown If somebody pulls of the vision discussed here, that's absolutely what the world needs. Maybe it's a good thing if china keeps the west on it's toes technologically.
Seth Bishop ...That’s encouraging to see. I wasn’t aware the DOE was pushing things along. Maybe it’ll gain enough traction to sustain a non-supportive presidency. However, it is well stated: ”The 7-year time frame also strains credulity...”. Overall hopeful, anyway.
Great lecture on an issue that should be much more widely understood. If fusion won't be with us until 2050, the decision to scrap molten salt reactor research could see coal burning go on for decades longer than it needed to. Thanks.
transmission is part of it, but the other part is storage. Because renewable like solar and wind are intermittent you need either some storage mechanism or base load plants which can be turned up and down at whim like nuclear, hydro, coal and oil. Anything which has a fuel really.
Thank God we have the ability to learn and understand these very important issues by means like this, on-line . Educated members of society can thus assist in advancing and understanding ways to further help all people arrive at the conclusions needed for the human race to get to the next step of a greater world for EVERYONE !!!
@@mantisnomo5984 It sounds as though you are talking about a bomb. I was referring to civilian power produced or facilitated by the Department's actions.
@@parrotraiser6541 - I was referring to the fraud of double-speak under which the DoE was founded. It's true they were given power over consumer energy production in the US, but their focus and primary interest has always been to exert control over the nuclear weapons of the US. The 2 responsibilities appear to be unrelated, if not diametrically opposed. It's time for a change in this part of the infrastructure. You're right: Turns out providing energy for the civilian sector is important, too.
lightfdar: I would get the Nuclear Engineering degree. I already have one including a PE license in nuclear engineering in the state of Maryland. It is guaranteed job security. Oh, and yes the MSR is more job security for nuclear engineers for the next 1000 years plus.
I live near the Hanford Atomic Reservation in southeastern Wa. state where the Fast Flux Test Facility was built. Unfortunately it was shut down many years ago. I am also not far from the LIGO Observatory also at Hanford. Hanford is also a major radioactive waste dump that is major problem that never gets cleaned up. We get most of our Electric Power from Grand Coulee Dam's hydro-electric generators. There's plenty of space on the Hanford reservation for Fast Breeder Reactors, Fusion Reactors and even Solar-Thermal Power Plants. We also have the Pacific Northwest Laboratories and Batelle Northwest. The "government" can't find it's way out of a paper bag, it's up to Private Industry to make these things happen, just like the Space Program. Let's Reach for the Stars and get the job done.
From what I have gathered so far Kirk seems to be saying that meltdowns have occurred in the past because of various chemical properties of the system leading to failure. This LFTR seems to have dealt with these issues by using a different fuel and a different fission method to eliminate not only the risk of a meltdown but the possibility of one. Since the fuel mix is already molten it can easily be drained into a containment unit designed to dissipate heat safely.
I'm wondering if we could build LFTRs next to existing nuclear power facilities so the spent fuel pools and maybe the containment vessel and other buildings could be used for part of the LFTR after a shutdown and remodification. The grid network and steam generator set and infrastructure are already there that could make this more feasable. Maybe radioactive contamination would be too much of a problem but, what do you do with a nuclear plant when you're done with it? Recycle, Reuse?
@@trishgao8950 Oakridge national laboratory. It operated from 1965 to 1969, 7.4 mw reactor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment All of their research was essentially shelved because the military controlled everything to do with nuclear, and they wanted plutonium for bombs. The project was shuttered, but a few years back the chinese started asking around and they literally were let in and allowed to take all the research, or at least make copies of it. That would have included operating notes that you could use to calculate operating cost to benefit analysis, by knowing how much electricity they generated and what was required to maintain it.
'Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.'
A thermal neutron is a free neutron with a kinetic energy of about 0.025 eV (about 4.0×10−21 J or 2.4 MJ/kg, hence a speed of 2.19 km/s), which is the energy corresponding to the most probable speed at a temperature of 290 K (17 °C or 62 °F), the mode of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for this temperature.
Let us hope the politicians can keep the costs down rather than the big investors failing to consider the poorer people of our World. I am fed up with big Nuclear power companies and others putting their profits before those who need a cheaper energy source like Thorium 232 and 233 and similar breeder reactors described by Kirk Sorensen and his discoveries in small Thorium 232 and 233 nuclear green power plants. John Eric Hoare. British Brexiteer, and international deep-seaman, retired.
I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a big Nuclear power company. There are huge amounts of anti-nuclear propaganda, even from NGOs that were once genuinely Environmentalist. "Renewable Energy" is expensive rubbish.
Politics gets in the way of everything that could improve lives. Also it has to do with money. Just look at science and medicine, only big money gets the go ahead for projects.
@@suzieseabee Thats 100% true. The reason money is the main factor in most decisions on this scale is of the enormous amount of R&D required. Private capital will expect a return on investment. On the other hand, government energy subsidies are somewhat of a norm in the modern age, but few elected officials will back any energy concepts with the word "nuclear" attached to it
tumaru No,neither thorium or its byproducts can be made into a bomb. That is the other reason why thorium reactors were not funded when they were invented-it was during the cold war. (nuclear arms race,FTW)
@Knepperify1 Actually the plugs are made of FLiBe salt, just like the molten salts in the reactor. The plugs are kept cool enough to remain solid by external fans. If the salt heats up too much, the plugs overheat and melt. The fans can also be manually stopped to purge the molten salts for scheduled shutdowns (they did this every weekend with the ORNL MSR project, before going home). If power is cut off, the fans stop and the plugs also melt then.
Gr8 video Kirk have you solved the graphite moderator trouble in the LFTR yet is copper graphite laminates the answer? Or are you moving toward graphite pellets rolling around?
Consider for a moment the chronology of nuclear reactors; the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched in 1954 and AFAIK was based on pellets and pressurized water; its basic design was scaled up and used for the first US civilian power reactor, at Shippingport, in 1957- its first core was retired (after producing ~2 GWh electric) before the molten salt reactor experiment even began in 1965. (1/2)
Correct. Thorium LFTR: hard gamma emissions in operation, corrosive materials, containment vessels (Austenitic stainless steel) becomes very radioactive after prolonged use, containment embrittlement, continuous chemical reprocessing needed concurrently (creating operating hazard and other types of nuclear waste). Dr Kirk Sorensen is naively over-optimistic.
@@tommorris3688 &,,??..so,all the 2000 plus reactors that exploded,is nothing,??,2000 plus nuclear bombs set of for what,??,we all know they go bang,.fuck.&,on the fuck subject,why dont you go clean up fukashima,,OR DOESNT ANY ONE CARE....its a joke.!!.
Kirk Sorensen has a bee in his bonnet for LFTR reactors. In my opinion he is not very objective about it. Much can be said in favour of Thorium as a nuclear fuel but plenty can also be said against it.
Kirk: After listening to Crosby Lyle I have come to the conclusion that our flibe reactor can be proliferative without solid controls. The key here is praseodymium. In other words the capture of this chemical bypasses the concentration necessary to protect the material from high rad 242. Chemical separation of this chemical can be pure. Or have got this wrong?
I'm not talking about earthquakes I'm talking about containment after meltdown. Chernobyl gave the entire world, more than enough data for better design and containment proceedures. There is absolutely no excuse for non containment. If they can't afford it, they shouldn't go into the business to begin with. Absolutely NOTHING will change my mind unless the backup plan is the complete containment of a molten core.
The CHINESE are going to be the first to build a series of Molten Salt Reactors, and with that technology they are going to make the U.S. look like a small backwards 3rd-world nation by comparison. the Chinese are already building their versions of this type of reactor and should be operational by 2018 to 2020.
+mikeyh0 No, they don't, because the US has almost nothing of note on the topic anyway. Had you watched the presentation you'd know that the only (experimental) American LFTR ever built was closed down more than 30 years ago.
+Honesty Counts And what kind of reactor will that be? A research reactor or a commercial reactor that actually will be connected to the grid as well? I REALLY doubt that it's the latter (the Chinese are not THAT advanced, nobody is) and if it's the former then that's nothing extraordinary. Also, do you happen to have a source on this bit of information you have too?
It should be noted that Molten Salt is not the only way to use Thorium. Thorium is the optimal fuel cycle from a proliferation standpoint and could work using the current PWR and Fast Breeder technology. There are many options, I'm quite a fan of a Thorium fueled traveling wave core.
Robert: you're perfectly correct that Thorium could be used in both cycles. but the big disavantage of both is the issue of "fuel rods" which end up containing an unholy mixture of fissile byproducts (and leave you vulnerable to Xenon poisoning) which are an attractive target for bad people wanting to do bad things as well as requiring that you periodically shut down the system to replace fuel assemblies. One of the big things that MSRs have going for them is that you can run continual onsite reprocessing (it's a necessary part of the design) and "clean as you go" - which means that the reactor seldom-if-ever needs to be shut down for maintenance.
look at all these youtube scientists lol you people know everything about nuclear power and how to fix all the world's problems huh? funny that you know all the answers but the smartest people in the world that have dedicated their lives to studying these things experimentally and theoretically simply can't figure it out. if only they watched youtube videos all day instead of wasting their time at the most elaborate science experiments in the world.
@FollyAwakened: Your sense of irony is genuinely amusing; I literally laughed out loud! But your mockery of the lay community coalescing in dialogue around what is arguably the most urgently vital topic of our day seems driven by a cynicism that runs counter to one of the noblest facets of the web... a more informed, aware general public! If you are in favor of an informational oligarchy where only those bearing the Imprimatur of the Avout are suffered to listen, speak, learn or debate about such lofty matters as what kind of Yak shit the tribe should burn to heat our huts, then mine some Thorium and Patrician-fist it up your time-hole back to Medieval-1984-Serf-Nazi-Illiterate-Dirt-Farmer-Land. There you shall be unmolested by us irksome internet ignorami. D!ck.
Walrus1911 So what. That doesn't make him a good scientist, or a good judge or engineer or anything. Lots of good smart people are putting genetically modified organisms into the world because they know better. There is no proof or even economic argument to say we need them, it's just another way to make money and lock others out of that stream. That is what dictates most of the stuff we see and hear ... educating the public, that's a good one. I supposed in regimentation and indoctrination some amount of education must take place. Nathan Duke you sound like a D!ck actually.
*As interesting as this is historically, for those few people who are still pushing a molten salt reactor for it's "safety characteristics" should look up what happened at the shut down MSRE, and the protracted and potentially deadly cleanup that required Superfund financing to effect! MSRE was a great leap of knowledge for it's day, but in the final analysis, we made the right decision - MSREs turn out to be incredibly dangerous!*
Even if you don't care about nuclear energy, you should watch the tech talks by Sorensen (all of them). He explains so much about how nuclear works and the steps involved that it leaves you with the knowledge to understand issues like Iran and their enrichment program, what nuclear waiste is, and how we got into the mess of having waiste stored at all of the plants. This even goes for the trolls out there. You can do a much better job of trolling if you understand the material.
.. Mark Jacobson: New nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh. Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated. In addition, it creates risk and cost associated with weapons proliferation, meltdown, mining lung cancer, and waste risks. Clean, renewables avoid all such risks.
The point of a bomb is to make all of your fuel fission as quickly as possible. For that you need to be producing a lot of neutrons very quickly. Th-232 absorbs neutrons, meaning it will "poison" any sort of chain reaction you're trying to initiate. If U-233 produces more neutrons than Th-232 absorbs, then you come out with just enough neutrons to propagate the reaction. But, it doesn't mean you're making a LOT of neutrons. In reactor fuel, you simply can't make enough neutrons for an explosion
They had an eye on rare earth materials from the beginning and wanted to control the supply. This is what in their minds would cement their power and wealth for Generations to come. Safety would be secondary concerns for later engineering.
Thorium is mined from the Earth. Currently it is being buried again (after extracting other rare earths from it's ore) because there is no market for it.
Anything that requires a particle accelerator can never be a scalable energy solution because you are using several atoms worth of energy to make one atom work.
It's not cost per kg that matters it's fuel use efficiency - Uranium use efficiency is < 1%, Thorium liquid fuel efficiency could approach 99% in theory, more likely it will be low 90's, but still more than 100-to-1 improvement in terms of how much fuel you need to generate power.
Calculating the costs of options is necessary. But when I see some large array of mirrors pointed at a boiling water tank on a tower as an example of solar energy the cost calculation will be way off. Solar cells are getting better and cheaper and I, as a customer of electricity would love to see the utility get involved in installing solar cells in the logical place -- the roofs of our houses. We do not use the electricity we produce, we share the grid and it all goes to the common grid and I have power 24 hours a day because it is not the only source -- but we do use less at night. It will mean less profit for the utility company but it is -- a public utility. Much of the cost of the panels can be paid for by the savings in electric cost from free solar -- I just need the costs to be spread out over time with a loan. The utility needs to negotiate loans (like mortgages) that banks indeed do like to write -- to make solar ownership something like home ownership. All the roofs of houses need to be (a part of) the generation of electricity. Efficient end use products will help - like efficient light bulbs. They need to be promoted by the utility also. Same service for less electric use. Lower bills. That is what will make solar so popular soon -- it will lower the electric bill, not raise it. Solar means decentralization and that does not maximize profit - that is the fight. Admit it --- all you trying for profit in the energy field.
@kirkfsorensen American politics are influential in the rest of the world but other countries have enough resources to pursue nuclear energy. The problem is that, after all the bad publicity from the media, what Joe Public demands to reconsider nuclear energy is a breakthrough. Not just a better reactor, but an awesome new reactor that's so good that not even the stupidest and most corrupt politician and/or Hollywood star can deny. That, in my opinion, should be the focus.
@SuppenHahnBier I think the history lesson was required as a preface to the point he was trying to make. It gave substance to the last 6 minutes that, without, would have lacked a real "punch" if you will. I think it's kind of nice to hear WHY he feels its not being used today (in a discussion style) and not just a cut and dry bullet format list of reasons. But to each their own I suppose.
This is a world changing paradigm shifting alternative. I would take a world with this in my back yard though I don't think I would want one in my basement or my car. This would make for a good world. Something I might safely put in my basement or car would make a better world. This is not entirely an off grid solution to free or cheap maintenance free energy but it sure would make a better grid, that is, if they would stop the smart meters. But if energy were this cheap then we might pay a little more for a dumb meter without a lot of difference.
Actually the design is far simpler than current nuclear power plants. Why do you say it is not robust? Also, FLiBe salt is relatively insoluble in water and unreactive with water or air; it is not prone to the same type of "Monju accident"; the liquid metal in Monju was specifically chosen for its low melting point and lack of neutron moderation.
Where is David Adair when it comes to thorium reactors he was a very big proponent on the use of salt liquid and it was supposed to be a much safer reactor than any of the ones that we have
Curious how you relate LISP. "Lisp Machines ran tests in parallel with the more conventional single instruction" I've concluded those who have ran tests and developed electromagnetic power are still profiting from combustion models. Perhaps battery technology has also been slowed to favor this older engine.
Military Industrial Complex . If Thorium had a nice byproduct that we could produce more bombs from then it would have literally BLEW UP. How could you control a Thorium market considering how common of an element it is?
Of course, if you build a massive construct with renewables, you can reach blazing temperatures as well, and at no fuel cost (but at a steep construction and maintenance cost!). Nuclear can just do it more easily. A reactor the size of your dinner table can generate as much power as 3 offshore wind turbines. That's a lot of power in such a tiny space, which is vital for high-temperature operation. And with cheap fuel like unenriched uranium or thorium, it rivals the "free" aspect of renewables.
One of the reasons why "alternative" energy sources aren't "competitive" with conventional is the unconscionable levels of subsidies that the fossil-fuel industry receives. Economists estimate that these subsidies total more than 1 *trillion* dollars worldwide and roughly 500 *billion* dollars in the U.S. alone. Consider that almost the entirety of the U.S. military's Central Command is focused on securing the oil flows from the Persian Gulf. Wind and solar receive only a tiny fraction of this level of government support. The nuclear power industry exists because of the Price-Anderson(?) act, which caps damages from nuclear accidents at 560 *million* dollars and has not, to my knowledge, been updated to account for inflation. If the nuclear power industry were required to be responsible for the total damages resulting from a nuclear accident it would not exist. And, of course, the lack of long-term storage for spent fuels is a major subsidy to the industry as well. Also of note is that in the late '70s and early '80s, the oil companies were buying out patent-holders of solar and wind technology and, rather than refining and deploying these technologies, actively suppressed alternative energy technologies. "Alternative" energy technology, unlike nuclear and fossil fuels, has the potential to be truly democratic. Personal wind and personal solar are available now. Nuclear power will never achieve this level of decentralization and, IMHO, that is a bad thing. Finally, I'm old enough to remember when the nuclear power industry was chanting the "too cheap to meter" mantra in support of their pursuit of centralized power plants whose rates were based on capital costs. Concentrated wealth is concentrated power; concentrated power is tyranny. Will thorium reactors concentrate power further? Yes.
Woah there. I wouldn't go so far as to call LWRs "weapon-supporting". A nuclear reactor runs on fissile stuff - the same stuff any bomb runs on. This doesn't suggest - as anti-nukes insist - that a reactor is a bomb, but it does mean that every reactor type has a level of proliferation resistance at different points in its fuel stream.
Obama through CRADA gave all the technology we had on the MSR and stated that the US had no will to have nuclear power-safe and clean and cheap energy....what a turd.
@@robertbrandywine Barack Obama. China's Shanghai Academy of Science and Technology entered a cooperation agreement with Oakridge national laboratory to develop MSR nuclear reactor. He greenlighted the cooperation. However US folks should not blame everything on Obama. US has no intention to carry on MSR reactor development.
it is simply not financially viable to rebuild the vessels every 10 years or so, the cost does work out, but not compared to natural gas for heating water, not even close.
Great! Someone talking about neutron energy and cross section, usually this is omitted. Sad that he was apologetic about complexety. The trend to make things easy has gone to far in the US.
Well yours is an avenue to take, and it will be effective for some. But at some point this will need support of the public for policy makers to give the go-ahead. The vote will inevitably be given to people who don't know anything about it, and I'm not sure policy makers calling the voter a moron will help.
![Yailin La Mas Viral, @kreizyk.official - Dale 2 (Remix) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JaYHBzgqz94/mqdefault.jpg)
This is one of the BEST Google-tech talks ever presented. Tight editing for concise content and Sorensen's masterful command of the subject shine here.
This is THE MOST IMPORTANT topic for humankind and the future of Earth.
We need LIFTRs NOW!
+Learner-Learns LFTRs? Now? It's a tad bit too late (50 years too late) for that I'm afraid. We missed out on so much R&D on LFTR that it'll be a blessing if the technology will become viable in the upcoming decades.
+darthvader5300 So, after you find the caps lock key on your keyboard, turn it off, then take all your meds, check this out: I'm not an American. Before you start ranting about conspiracies and scientists' powerful enemies, let me tell you that many other countries built MUCH bigger breeder reactors too, some with a power capacity of 1000MW (electrical) even and yet all of them have been scrapped. You wanna know why? Because it's still far too unfeasible to everyone who has access to U235. While U235 is around (and it WILL be around for quite some time in fact), building ANY kind of breeder reactor is simply not economically viable enough. The Americans had to spend billions of dollars to realize this and probably many other countries have also invested an ungodly amount of money in it too. And until no feasible FBR (let alone a LFTR) design is found (patents are pretty much irrelevant anyway, because the designs patented by Americans are useless anyway, otherwise they'd already be using at least some of them), no private company will take a risk of building a power plant utilizing that technology either (they rarely build nuclear power plants anyway, because they're so expensive).
+darthvader5300 Even if I take the position that I agree with you, which I don't, let me ask.... has *your* government ever done anything wrong? Let he who is not sinless throw the first stone...And then after you throw that stone, throw your caps lock key, ok?
Probably not. Dr Kirk Sorenson's assertions are wildly optimistic. If the molten salt configuration were so much better, they would have been used long ago. Thorium IV has certain drawbacks as well. Do not be caught up by Dr Kirk Sorensen's charisma. You need to consider the issues objectively.
Rather incorrect, when studied in greater detail. Thorium LFTR is an obsolete relic from Oak Ridge from the1950's.
Kirk, your relentless advocacy for this technology has been heroic, and there are a ton of people who appreciate it, and want you to succeed in realizing this sane re-definition of a practical standard for safely utilizing the 'king of all fossil fuels'.
Neither thorium nor uranium is in any way a fossil fuel. That stuff existed before the syn ignited. They are the remains of gigantic stellar gravitational collapses, such as supernovae
Kirk Sorenson is the Carl Sagan of Liquid Salt Molten Salt Reactors. He explains complex things to basic elements so it is more reliably understand.
very compressed,dense , fast speaking, no blabla , a very good presentation.
Excellently presented! This man should be a professor! Best of luck to all of us!
Quoting: "This man should be a professor!"
Commenting: He is well on his way to that status!
A very good presentation on the history of nuclear engineering in the US.
Since this video was produced we have been mining graphite in order to make graphine which eliminates the corrosion/oxidization problems noted here.
Mining coal for the graphene market? How many cups per year do you need?
@@mantisnomo5984 Mining coal to make rods for a few power stations or mining coal to just burn endlessly away producing a faction of the power a Thorium reactor could. Priorities as always
yes and any water still causes thorium salt to explode and leak out
@@AlanDeRossett What? The lithium in the salt is ionised. When the lithium metal reacts with water, it becomes Li+ that bonds with OH-. In fact, LiOH is the intermediate step in producing the salt. It's no longer reactive anymore. Do your research.
J D - That's right, while picking his nose with a pencil it occurred to him that the nib was sharp and hurt a lot. Thinking on his feet, he grabbed some Cellotape, slapped it on the end of his pencil then continued with rooting through his snot filled nostrils... After removing and subtly tasting the goods, he took the cellotape off and discovered graphite was stuck to it. Thus solving a life-long puzzle, securing him a Nobel Peace Prize and many bodacious babes.
Goddamn great presenter. If i ever had the chance to watch a speech from this guy in person I'd gladly take it. Two honors
science degrees later lol
Advantages of thorium:
Much safer than uranium-no pressure vesel, no fuel rods to melt down
Much simpler reactor-Thorium salt liquid is pumped from the reactor tank through a heat exchanger and back into the tank
Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium--in fact so plentiful it is considered a waste product from rare earth mining
Thorium doesn't need expensive enriching to make it usable
Thorium is of little use for weapons
If power goes off liquid fuel simply drains into a pit which stops reaction. No fuel rods to cool or melt down if power fails
This technology has been around for years. Why was it not developed long ago? Politics, methinks.
Why were thorium reactors not developed? I think the main reason is thorium is of little use for weapons. Governments would rather build bombs than safe, inexpensive power plants, and thorium just doesn't fit that bill.
+wvhillbilly That is pretty much the reason right there.
You forgot 2 other real benefits:
1. conventional Uranium & Plutonium reactors convert only around 0.5% of the available energy compared to 99% with LFTR reactors.
2. And this is the most important, the waste products fall to background radiation levels within 350 years compared to 100,000 or more with conventional reactors
Wvhillbilly most of the advantages you stated only apply to the LFTR.There are multiple reactors that can use Thorium as fuels and are very different.
Some misleading points in your comment:
Thorium is only more plentiful than Uranium if you only consider earth's crust. Uranium is much more plentiful then Thorium in sea water. (However, extracting U from sea water is more expensive as of now).
Thorium does need enriching to start the reaction (some Uranium is needed for that), but once it started, there is no need for further enrichment. So it's a bit misleading. It doesn't need expensive enriching, but it needs some enriching.
As for weapons, it can be used, but as you stated, there are other more usable materials.
But otherwise your points are valid. Here's a list with some Thorium myths: whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
Interesting history behind the decision for fast breeder reactors. I also suspect the decision was military, as the nuclear arms race needed plutonium, which required FBRs.
No, fast breeder reactors are as unsuitable for bomb-making as retired fuel rods from the old kind.
Thanks, just reading his bio. I am so amazed of this Thorium reactors and it could be beginning of the new era. As for now Chinese government seems to be really interested in that and I think once they develop this reactor they will be selling more electricity to foreign countries and make them even more powerful.
It happened because making bombs was more important to the politicians and corporations so thorium reactors were not favored, now the nuclear energy business is so firmly entrenched they are standing in the way of a boundless energy future for short term goals. in other words greed is the culprit as usual
Really it was much simpler that that. Reactors were built for US subs first. What was known, was how to build reactors for making bomb material so this is what was used in the subs. Of course boiling water was what was also known how to make a boat go. These designs were simply scaled up for power reactors. Most likely if the issue was first build a power reactor something else may have been built. A lot of industrial development works this was. Like the key board I am typing with. It is the way it is because the first typewriters had swinging keys that would get tangled if one typed to fast. To ovoid this the letters on the key board were placed to slow the typist down. We still use this keyboard even though there are much better keyboards for less strain and faster typing out there.
you can get bomb material from thorium reactors
kenbrah but its very difficult and expensive
@@stanleytolle416 I read about that in the book "After the car" by John Urry, its a phenomenon in industrial development known as "locked in"
Only problem with this is the WGW / CC claim at 30:34.
The most important reason to move forward with LFTR is *public safety* .
how many years do you want to pay for safety? after its life get ready for $10 billion charges off to be paid by ratepayer to Guard from Terrorist
Start talking to US DOE and US NRC now. The time is right to bring back MSR technology now.
My father briefly worked for the DOE back in the 70s-80s before going to the DOT and he said it was a shit show... Hard to press new tech while there is so much money spent on current reactors.. just may be a small part of it
We need to do this , this could also be used for space travel, and space exploration,this opens a lot of benefits for mankind, and the ecosystems
+DrGJames Baxter Interesting that you've identified that there is potential for using tech like this in space, but tell me -- how to make use of that energy, in space? Have you any ideas for direct applications for it? "Desalinating water" in space.... if we also boost a huge tank of salt water up with the reactor and the spaceship that holds it...
+jamespfp The thing is with everything there is the positive and negative, we would have to take salt water to space to begin with , but then once we have a source there established it would solve the issue . In space it would be safer for long term power supply , for research stations, colonies, and exploration. all in due time things can be solved . The issue is why are we not doing this faster?
+jamespfp The biggest benefit of this is safety and cheaper energy. Safer for everything and protecting life.
@@drgjamesbaxter7933 the materials are already in space...
This is by far, the best approach to not only solving the need for energy in a modern world but can also alleviate global warming. It would behoove the U.S. to invest in LFTR's much like it did for the Manhattan project. The sooner these come online the better.
The problems are in the Uranium reactors mostly, the 1940's - 1950's design... think of a 1950 car... still running but not in any way safe the way modern cars are. The Oak Ridge MSR is also from that era, but they are studying Molten Salt there right now, with all new parts.
The biggest disadvantage of water is the insane level of pressure needed to keep it liquid at reactor temperatures. Sorensen has done the world a huge favor in recovering the records of the MSRE. In that experiment, Alvin Weinberg, designer of the PWR, addressed and remedied about four weeknesses of that older design.
@DrakeDorosh "Plutonium for the cold war" means relatively high-purity Pu239; for that the military had special weapons-optimized reactors like the "B Reactor" at Hanford. Civilian (power-optimized) reactors (fast breeders included) that are operated normally will produce plutonium with significant quantities of contaminant isotopes like Pu238, Pu240 and Pu242 that render it fairly useless for weaponization.
As a machinist in the 1980's, I machined tungsten honeycomb devices for a liquid sodium reactor being built by Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Rumor was their reactor was tested in Hanover ID and allowed to go super-critical and the design theory was proven as it shut itself down properly. Is this Thorium reactor similar?
Liquid sodium systems are still uranium-based - and anyone who thought that sodium is "safe" is from a different planet to me. No matter now many precautions you take there will be leaks and molten sodium burns pretty hot when exposed to air (the japanese have found this out the hard way)
There are a lot of online resources about LFTRs and to be honest I think they're the best design available, with pebblebeds coming in close behind - the really big advantage of LFTR is that they're thorium-cycle based and that means you have a readily available supply of safe, cheap fuel which is extremely hard to weaponise.
The same reason for using molten salt as your fuel, is the same reason they cool fast reactors with liquid metal. You don't need to pressurize the reactor vessel to keep the fuel or coolant from boiling. PWRs need to be pressurized to something like 150 bar (more than 2000psi) and despite the name, Boiling Water Reactors are still pressurized to well over 70 bar or 1000psi. Sodium is very stable when irradiated though, which is why it is preferred in LMFBRs. The worst Sodium isotope you're likely to find in an LMFBR is Na-24 which only has a half-life of 15 days. This means storing the used coolant isn't really a problem, and if you have a leak and a sodium fire, you're not releasing harmful contaminants. And most of the time, the best bet for extinguishing a sodium fire is to just let it burn itself out. As it oxidizes, it forms an airtight crust and extinguishes itself. That Japanese incident at the Monju reactor was in a secondary loop which meant no irradiated sodium was released and the fire put itself out in less than an hour.
@@DriveCarToBar I wonder why gallium was never considered as a coolant instead of sodium and lead ?
wasnt a reactor built in the 50,s,??,ran for over a yr,then shut down as useless to the military.tesla was poisoned for same,other inventors dissapeared,or bought out,made to look stupid.this has been going on with advancement for thousands of yrs,.this is why we still have piston engines,batteries,ect,after 130 yrs.NOTHING NEW....thorium,graphine,tesla,free power,.not happening.
@@alanbrown397 I remember engine basics class, don't pull the valves from a head and toss in the hot tank until you have made certain they weren't from a leaded gas burning engine, they contained sodium, a cracked one would go boom.
That is immensely illuminating because there was a story told in a goggle lecture where the guy who was developing the Thorium reactor got fired and ridiculed for being over concerned with safety. The way that guy tells it the navy could have chosen his reactor instead. His telling of events left me very confident but somehow mislead. Naturally the oldest technology would earn the greatest loyalty and "safety" is what you know.
The dangers of fast breeder reactors are very scary and a scared public is more easily controlled (terrorism).
Terrorists cannot get plutonium to build bombs without either building a nuclear reactor, and reprocessing plant OR a nation state furnished it to them. It cannot be obtained simply by separating it from used nuclear fuel, the reactor must be designed to produce plutonium-239 primarily. That is how one goes from irradiated nuclear fuel to a bomb.
We should have gone 100% nuclear power decades ago. France is over 80% nuclear power plants. Zero carbon emissions, 4 to 10 times the electricity than coal. Only 3 major accidents, only Chernobyl had fatalities. 3 mile island was a maintenance issue and Fukushima was due to natural disaster.
Fact Check: The “gas crunch” was never about OPEC and the Yom Kippur war. It was about oil refineries saving oil reserves for UNLEADED GASOLINE.
So basically Nixon, Milton and chet are all crips?
Its diversion, however, is easily noted (hey, where's my start charge!?), and it's basically the same stuff we use in research reactors around the country. We've already got security protocols surrounding that.
At the fueling phase, there's literally no proliferation risk. In the periodic defueling phase (i.e., removal of excess U-233 produced), proliferation is limited by the production of 232-U. In the spent fuel removal and storage, there is no risk, since there are no fissiles.
Why isn't this transmitted or featured on youtube?
Come on Google... it takes little effort to place it within the feed of the crowd to share the knowledge and initiate the moment across the planet.
+Rod Landaeta Especially when they own both formats... It couldn't have anything to do with outside influences could it?? No, impossible...
+Rod Landaeta Because most of the people are too dumb or too ignorant to care. And if they aren't, they would a hard time comprehending it as well.
It's really poorly shot
very nice sir
@kirkfsorensen Thank you for being a champion for this cause. I've been following your work for years, and will be doing so for many more.
I'm convinced the future of nuclear energy is in the thorium cycle and the LFTR. I wonder what advancements have been achieved since this video was made.
I'm convinced the future of nuclear energy is on the moon, and powering nuclear rockets launched from a lunar spaceport.
Carter worked with Rickover during his time in the Navy. Ford could not ignore Carter's expertise and authority there. TMI and Carter's presence and speach from the grounds was an authoritive effort to settle the outcry and panic.
Molten salt is highly reactive if it is exposed to moisture. It also doesn't have a negative coefficient of reactivity, which makes it inherently unstable.
The main reason MSBRs weren't pursued was primarily because of safety concerns and reliability.
Thorium Breeder Reactors would be great, but it should be cooled by pressurized water, not molten salt.
An LWR has high resistance at the fueling, defueling, and storage steps - first, low enrichment; second, high radioactivity; last, high burnup meaning contamination of the 239-Pu with 240- and 241-Pu, which have gamma emitters in their decay chains (like 232-U) and a spontaneous fission problem (== premature fizzle).
A LFTR has similarly high resistance, with one exception: the start charge needs to be fairly high enriched fissile uranium - 235 or 233. If 235, it's entirely useful for weapons.
8 years later.....lol....
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT??? It's Google.
@@BringDHouseDown If somebody pulls of the vision discussed here, that's absolutely what the world needs.
Maybe it's a good thing if china keeps the west on it's toes technologically.
www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/us-department-energy-rushes-build-advanced-new-nuclear-reactors
Doe is building 2.
Seth Bishop ...That’s encouraging to see. I wasn’t aware the DOE was pushing things along. Maybe it’ll gain enough traction to sustain a non-supportive presidency. However, it is well stated: ”The 7-year time frame also strains credulity...”. Overall hopeful, anyway.
9 years later now
Great lecture on an issue that should be much more widely understood. If fusion won't be with us until 2050, the decision to scrap molten salt reactor research could see coal burning go on for decades longer than it needed to. Thanks.
transmission is part of it, but the other part is storage. Because renewable like solar and wind are intermittent you need either some storage mechanism or base load plants which can be turned up and down at whim like nuclear, hydro, coal and oil. Anything which has a fuel really.
This could reduce the threat of nuclear war. Possibilities are endless
Thank God we have the ability to learn and understand these very important issues by means like this, on-line . Educated members of society can thus assist in advancing and understanding ways to further help
all people arrive at the conclusions needed for the human race to get to the next step of a greater world for EVERYONE !!!
This guy is pretty good at informing on this technology
Has the DoE ever produced or enabled the production of a kWh (or equivalent) of energy?
Yes. A megaton is 1.16 Billion kWh. And talk about power! The DOE produces all of that energy in milliseconds!
@@mantisnomo5984 It sounds as though you are talking about a bomb. I was referring to civilian power produced or facilitated by the Department's actions.
@@parrotraiser6541 - I was referring to the fraud of double-speak under which the DoE was founded. It's true they were given power over consumer energy production in the US, but their focus and primary interest has always been to exert control over the nuclear weapons of the US. The 2 responsibilities appear to be unrelated, if not diametrically opposed. It's time for a change in this part of the infrastructure. You're right: Turns out providing energy for the civilian sector is important, too.
Anyone that wants cheap safe and clean energy needs to support Thorium. Society really screwed up when they didnt take this path.
Time to go back to university. A masters degree in nuclear engineering here I come.
lightfdar: I would get the Nuclear Engineering degree. I already have one including a PE license in nuclear engineering in the state of Maryland. It is guaranteed job security.
Oh, and yes the MSR is more job security for nuclear engineers for the next 1000 years plus.
Energy will be even more valuable in the future.
I live near the Hanford Atomic Reservation in southeastern Wa. state where the Fast Flux Test Facility was built. Unfortunately it was shut down many years ago. I am also not far from the LIGO Observatory also at Hanford. Hanford is also a major radioactive waste dump that is major problem that never gets cleaned up. We get most of our Electric Power from Grand Coulee Dam's hydro-electric generators. There's plenty of space on the Hanford reservation for Fast Breeder Reactors, Fusion Reactors and even Solar-Thermal Power Plants. We also have the Pacific Northwest Laboratories and Batelle Northwest. The "government" can't find it's way out of a paper bag, it's up to Private Industry to make these things happen, just like the Space Program. Let's Reach for the Stars and get the job done.
From what I have gathered so far Kirk seems to be saying that meltdowns have occurred in the past because of various chemical properties of the system leading to failure. This LFTR seems to have dealt with these issues by using a different fuel and a different fission method to eliminate not only the risk of a meltdown but the possibility of one. Since the fuel mix is already molten it can easily be drained into a containment unit designed to dissipate heat safely.
I'm wondering if we could build LFTRs next to existing nuclear power facilities so the spent fuel pools and maybe the containment vessel and other buildings could be used for part of the LFTR after a shutdown and remodification. The grid network and steam generator set and infrastructure are already there that could make this more feasable. Maybe radioactive contamination would be too much of a problem but, what do you do with a nuclear plant when you're done with it? Recycle, Reuse?
165000 tonnes of high level nuclear waste Worldwide - too much to be transmuted using Thorium LFTR, because transmutation rate is too slow.
Where is an operating thorium reactor so we can do a Cost Benefit Analysis on it? .. Answer - No where. ..
There was one dumbass, it got shut down for political reasons.
@@hzuiel where is it located?
@@trishgao8950 Oakridge national laboratory. It operated from 1965 to 1969, 7.4 mw reactor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment All of their research was essentially shelved because the military controlled everything to do with nuclear, and they wanted plutonium for bombs. The project was shuttered, but a few years back the chinese started asking around and they literally were let in and allowed to take all the research, or at least make copies of it. That would have included operating notes that you could use to calculate operating cost to benefit analysis, by knowing how much electricity they generated and what was required to maintain it.
'Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.'
A thermal neutron is a free neutron with a kinetic energy of about 0.025 eV (about 4.0×10−21 J or 2.4 MJ/kg, hence a speed of 2.19 km/s), which is the energy corresponding to the most probable speed at a temperature of 290 K (17 °C or 62 °F), the mode of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for this temperature.
Thank you for your contribution.
Let us hope the politicians can keep the costs down rather than the big investors failing to consider the poorer people of our World. I am fed up with big Nuclear power companies and others putting their profits before those who need a cheaper energy source like Thorium 232 and 233 and similar breeder reactors described by Kirk Sorensen and his discoveries in small Thorium 232 and 233 nuclear green power plants. John Eric Hoare. British Brexiteer, and international deep-seaman, retired.
I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a big Nuclear power company. There are huge amounts of anti-nuclear propaganda, even from NGOs that were once genuinely Environmentalist.
"Renewable Energy" is expensive rubbish.
@Blyledge Isn't that why they build in a drainage system that allows the nuclear fuel to be drained into a passively cooled tank?
So politics cost the people of the USA 100s of billions of dollars and the people of the world trillions of dollars.
To bad it is illegal for the average Joe to invest into his company. Damn you regulation.
It just goes to show, the president of the country should not be its CTO. (What's that? We elected Donald Trump? I rest my case.)
and the earth
Politics gets in the way of everything that could improve lives. Also it has to do with money. Just look at science and medicine, only big money gets the go ahead for projects.
@@suzieseabee Thats 100% true. The reason money is the main factor in most decisions on this scale is of the enormous amount of R&D required. Private capital will expect a return on investment. On the other hand, government energy subsidies are somewhat of a norm in the modern age, but few elected officials will back any energy concepts with the word "nuclear" attached to it
He needs to describe the difference between thermal and fast techologies.
tumaru No,neither thorium or its byproducts can be made into a bomb.
That is the other reason why thorium reactors were not funded when they were invented-it was during the cold war.
(nuclear arms race,FTW)
wonder what nixon would think if he walked through Socal right now..
@Knepperify1 Actually the plugs are made of FLiBe salt, just like the molten salts in the reactor. The plugs are kept cool enough to remain solid by external fans. If the salt heats up too much, the plugs overheat and melt. The fans can also be manually stopped to purge the molten salts for scheduled shutdowns (they did this every weekend with the ORNL MSR project, before going home). If power is cut off, the fans stop and the plugs also melt then.
I suspect that a LOT of the reason behind why not Thorium and why Uranium... Depleted Uranium can be weaponized...
Gr8 video Kirk have you solved the graphite moderator trouble in the LFTR yet is copper graphite laminates the answer? Or are you moving toward graphite pellets rolling around?
Trump should talk to this man...and made him rich!
BTW- 33:05 - HOLY CRAP!
Consider for a moment the chronology of nuclear reactors; the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched in 1954 and AFAIK was based on pellets and pressurized water; its basic design was scaled up and used for the first US civilian power reactor, at Shippingport, in 1957- its first core was retired (after producing ~2 GWh electric) before the molten salt reactor experiment even began in 1965. (1/2)
Thanks for the insight, when it comes to the Politics, remember Watergate?
"Sounds great right?! Well, unless you're the environment."
danishfella derp
Correct. Thorium LFTR: hard gamma emissions in operation, corrosive materials, containment vessels (Austenitic stainless steel) becomes very radioactive after prolonged use, containment embrittlement, continuous chemical reprocessing needed concurrently (creating operating hazard and other types of nuclear waste). Dr Kirk Sorensen is naively over-optimistic.
@@tommorris3688 wrong
@@tommorris3688 &,,??..so,all the 2000 plus reactors that exploded,is nothing,??,2000 plus nuclear bombs set of for what,??,we all know they go bang,.fuck.&,on the fuck subject,why dont you go clean up fukashima,,OR DOESNT ANY ONE CARE....its a joke.!!.
What you need is heat resistant glass combine with metal. Will last longer and you also have to fine a better energy storage system. Thank You Loader.
Kirk Sorensen has a bee in his bonnet for LFTR reactors. In my opinion he is not very objective about it. Much can be said in favour of Thorium as a nuclear fuel but plenty can also be said against it.
Kirk: After listening to Crosby Lyle I have come to the conclusion that our flibe reactor can be proliferative without solid controls. The key here is praseodymium. In other words the capture of this chemical bypasses the concentration necessary to protect the material from high rad 242. Chemical separation of this chemical can be pure. Or have got this wrong?
I'm not talking about earthquakes I'm talking about containment after meltdown. Chernobyl gave the entire world, more than enough data for better design and containment proceedures. There is absolutely no excuse for non containment. If they can't afford it, they shouldn't go into the business to begin with. Absolutely NOTHING will change my mind unless the backup plan is the complete containment of a molten core.
The CHINESE are going to be the first to build a series of Molten Salt Reactors, and with that technology they are going to make the U.S. look like a small backwards 3rd-world nation by comparison.
the Chinese are already building their versions of this type of reactor and should be operational by 2018 to 2020.
+Honesty Counts communism has its benefits, as long as no racist paranoid loonies get to the top.
+Honesty Counts But they first have to steal it from us.
+mikeyh0 No, they don't, because the US has almost nothing of note on the topic anyway. Had you watched the presentation you'd know that the only (experimental) American LFTR ever built was closed down more than 30 years
ago.
+Honesty Counts And what kind of reactor will that be? A research reactor or a commercial reactor that actually will be connected to the grid as well? I REALLY doubt that it's the latter (the Chinese are not THAT advanced, nobody is) and if it's the former then that's nothing extraordinary. Also, do you happen to have a source on this bit of information you have too?
+mikeyh0 how come? chinese have their own scientists who have been working on it for over 10 years
It should be noted that Molten Salt is not the only way to use Thorium. Thorium is the optimal fuel cycle from a proliferation standpoint and could work using the current PWR and Fast Breeder technology. There are many options, I'm quite a fan of a Thorium fueled traveling wave core.
Robert: you're perfectly correct that Thorium could be used in both cycles. but the big disavantage of both is the issue of "fuel rods" which end up containing an unholy mixture of fissile byproducts (and leave you vulnerable to Xenon poisoning) which are an attractive target for bad people wanting to do bad things as well as requiring that you periodically shut down the system to replace fuel assemblies.
One of the big things that MSRs have going for them is that you can run continual onsite reprocessing (it's a necessary part of the design) and "clean as you go" - which means that the reactor seldom-if-ever needs to be shut down for maintenance.
look at all these youtube scientists lol
you people know everything about nuclear power and how to fix all the world's problems huh? funny that you know all the answers but the smartest people in the world that have dedicated their lives to studying these things experimentally and theoretically simply can't figure it out. if only they watched youtube videos all day instead of wasting their time at the most elaborate science experiments in the world.
@FollyAwakened: Your sense of irony is genuinely amusing; I literally laughed out loud! But your mockery of the lay community coalescing in dialogue around what is arguably the most urgently vital topic of our day seems driven by a cynicism that runs counter to one of the noblest facets of the web... a more informed, aware general public! If you are in favor of an informational oligarchy where only those bearing the Imprimatur of the Avout are suffered to listen, speak, learn or debate about such lofty matters as what kind of Yak shit the tribe should burn to heat our huts, then mine some Thorium and Patrician-fist it up your time-hole back to Medieval-1984-Serf-Nazi-Illiterate-Dirt-Farmer-Land. There you shall be unmolested by us irksome internet ignorami. D!ck.
Nathan Duke IDK why I capitalized "Yak".
Nathan Duke Ouch!!!
The guy in the video has two master's degrees and one bachelor's. I'm pretty sure he's more of a scientist than you'll ever dream of being.
Walrus1911 So what. That doesn't make him a good scientist, or a good judge or engineer or anything. Lots of good smart people are putting genetically modified organisms into the world because they know better. There is no proof or even economic argument to say we need them, it's just another way to make money and lock others out of that stream. That is what dictates most of the stuff we see and hear ... educating the public, that's a good one. I supposed in regimentation and indoctrination some amount of education must take place.
Nathan Duke you sound like a D!ck actually.
*As interesting as this is historically, for those few people who are still pushing a molten salt reactor for it's "safety characteristics" should look up what happened at the shut down MSRE, and the protracted and potentially deadly cleanup that required Superfund financing to effect! MSRE was a great leap of knowledge for it's day, but in the final analysis, we made the right decision - MSREs turn out to be incredibly dangerous!*
Even if you don't care about nuclear energy, you should watch the tech talks by Sorensen (all of them). He explains so much about how nuclear works and the steps involved that it leaves you with the knowledge to understand issues like Iran and their enrichment program, what nuclear waiste is, and how we got into the mess of having waiste stored at all of the plants.
This even goes for the trolls out there. You can do a much better job of trolling if you understand the material.
.. Mark Jacobson: New nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh. Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated. In addition, it creates risk and cost associated with weapons proliferation, meltdown, mining lung cancer, and waste risks. Clean, renewables avoid all such risks.
this will really help support my research paper.
What happened since..?
Bravo Tom! BRAVO!
The point of a bomb is to make all of your fuel fission as quickly as possible. For that you need to be producing a lot of neutrons very quickly. Th-232 absorbs neutrons, meaning it will "poison" any sort of chain reaction you're trying to initiate. If U-233 produces more neutrons than Th-232 absorbs, then you come out with just enough neutrons to propagate the reaction. But, it doesn't mean you're making a LOT of neutrons.
In reactor fuel, you simply can't make enough neutrons for an explosion
20:34 This goes to show why politicians should not make tech decisions..
for real man for real,
They had an eye on rare earth materials from the beginning and wanted to control the supply. This is what in their minds would cement their power and wealth for Generations to come. Safety would be secondary concerns for later engineering.
Thorium is mined from the Earth. Currently it is being buried again (after extracting other rare earths from it's ore) because there is no market for it.
Bismuth 213 can also be made by bombarding radium in a particle accelerator.
Anything that requires a particle accelerator can never be a scalable energy solution because you are using several atoms worth of energy to make one atom work.
It's not cost per kg that matters it's fuel use efficiency - Uranium use efficiency is < 1%, Thorium liquid fuel efficiency could approach 99% in theory, more likely it will be low 90's, but still more than 100-to-1 improvement in terms of how much fuel you need to generate power.
Calculating the costs of options is necessary. But when I see some large array of mirrors pointed at a boiling water tank on a tower as an example of solar energy the cost calculation will be way off. Solar cells are getting better and cheaper and I, as a customer of electricity would love to see the utility get involved in installing solar cells in the logical place -- the roofs of our houses. We do not use the electricity we produce, we share the grid and it all goes to the common grid and I have power 24 hours a day
because it is not the only source -- but we do use less at night. It will mean less profit for the utility company but it is -- a public utility. Much of the cost of the panels can be paid for by the savings in electric cost from free solar -- I just need the costs to be spread out over time with a loan. The utility needs to negotiate loans (like mortgages) that banks indeed do like to write -- to make solar ownership something like home ownership. All the roofs of houses need to be (a part of) the generation of electricity.
Efficient end use products will help - like efficient light bulbs. They need to be promoted by the utility also. Same service for less electric use. Lower bills.
That is what will make solar so popular soon -- it will lower the electric bill, not raise it.
Solar means decentralization and that does not maximize profit - that is the fight.
Admit it --- all you trying for profit in the energy field.
@kirkfsorensen American politics are influential in the rest of the world but other countries have enough resources to pursue nuclear energy. The problem is that, after all the bad publicity from the media, what Joe Public demands to reconsider nuclear energy is a breakthrough. Not just a better reactor, but an awesome new reactor that's so good that not even the stupidest and most corrupt politician and/or Hollywood star can deny. That, in my opinion, should be the focus.
@SuppenHahnBier I think the history lesson was required as a preface to the point he was trying to make. It gave substance to the last 6 minutes that, without, would have lacked a real "punch" if you will. I think it's kind of nice to hear WHY he feels its not being used today (in a discussion style) and not just a cut and dry bullet format list of reasons. But to each their own I suppose.
This is a world changing paradigm shifting alternative. I would take a world with this in my back yard though I don't think I would want one in my basement or my car. This would make for a good world. Something I might safely put in my basement or car would make a better world. This is not entirely an off grid solution to free or cheap maintenance free energy but it sure would make a better grid, that is, if they would stop the smart meters. But if energy were this cheap then we might pay a little more for a dumb meter without a lot of difference.
Actually the design is far simpler than current nuclear power plants. Why do you say it is not robust? Also, FLiBe salt is relatively insoluble in water and unreactive with water or air; it is not prone to the same type of "Monju accident"; the liquid metal in Monju was specifically chosen for its low melting point and lack of neutron moderation.
Where is David Adair when it comes to thorium reactors he was a very big proponent on the use of salt liquid and it was supposed to be a much safer reactor than any of the ones that we have
Is it safe enough to waive Price-Anderson?
Why was this not done in the first place?
They wanted to make nukes, as well as generate power.
they have alloys since the 1960s that could easily withstand the corrsive flouride salts
Curious how you relate LISP. "Lisp Machines ran tests in parallel with the more conventional single instruction" I've concluded those who have ran tests and developed electromagnetic power are still profiting from combustion models. Perhaps battery technology has also been slowed to favor this older engine.
Military Industrial Complex . If Thorium had a nice byproduct that we could produce more bombs from then it would have literally BLEW UP. How could you control a Thorium market considering how common of an element it is?
Of course, if you build a massive construct with renewables, you can reach blazing temperatures as well, and at no fuel cost (but at a steep construction and maintenance cost!). Nuclear can just do it more easily. A reactor the size of your dinner table can generate as much power as 3 offshore wind turbines. That's a lot of power in such a tiny space, which is vital for high-temperature operation. And with cheap fuel like unenriched uranium or thorium, it rivals the "free" aspect of renewables.
One of the reasons why "alternative" energy sources aren't "competitive" with conventional is the unconscionable levels of subsidies that the fossil-fuel industry receives. Economists estimate that these subsidies total more than 1 *trillion* dollars worldwide and roughly 500 *billion* dollars in the U.S. alone. Consider that almost the entirety of the U.S. military's Central Command is focused on securing the oil flows from the Persian Gulf. Wind and solar receive only a tiny fraction of this level of government support.
The nuclear power industry exists because of the Price-Anderson(?) act, which caps damages from nuclear accidents at 560 *million* dollars and has not, to my knowledge, been updated to account for inflation. If the nuclear power industry were required to be responsible for the total damages resulting from a nuclear accident it would not exist. And, of course, the lack of long-term storage for spent fuels is a major subsidy to the industry as well.
Also of note is that in the late '70s and early '80s, the oil companies were buying out patent-holders of solar and wind technology and, rather than refining and deploying these technologies, actively suppressed alternative energy technologies.
"Alternative" energy technology, unlike nuclear and fossil fuels, has the potential to be truly democratic. Personal wind and personal solar are available now. Nuclear power will never achieve this level of decentralization and, IMHO, that is a bad thing.
Finally, I'm old enough to remember when the nuclear power industry was chanting the "too cheap to meter" mantra in support of their pursuit of centralized power plants whose rates were based on capital costs. Concentrated wealth is concentrated power; concentrated power is tyranny. Will thorium reactors concentrate power further? Yes.
Woah there.
I wouldn't go so far as to call LWRs "weapon-supporting". A nuclear reactor runs on fissile stuff - the same stuff any bomb runs on. This doesn't suggest - as anti-nukes insist - that a reactor is a bomb, but it does mean that every reactor type has a level of proliferation resistance at different points in its fuel stream.
It did happen around 1966 and it operated succesfully for a while. After that it was discarded. There were no obvious advantages to LTRs at the time.
Well, it only took 11 years, but China finished completion of their small (2 MW) molten salt reactor and received approval to begin testing it.
Obama through CRADA gave all the technology we had on the MSR and stated that the US had no will to have nuclear power-safe and clean and cheap energy....what a turd.
Sorry, he gave it to China in 2011 or 2012. That's why we will always be behind, our leaders have no will to help citizens.
@@yeahboyoboy Who is "he"?
@@robertbrandywine Barack Obama. China's Shanghai Academy of Science and Technology entered a cooperation agreement with Oakridge national laboratory to develop MSR nuclear reactor. He greenlighted the cooperation. However US folks should not blame everything on Obama. US has no intention to carry on MSR reactor development.
@@catchnkill Why did they need help? I thought China had many, many, scientists and engineers who had superior educations.
it is simply not financially viable to rebuild the vessels every 10 years or so, the cost does work out, but not compared to natural gas for heating water, not even close.
Great! Someone talking about neutron energy and cross section, usually this is omitted. Sad that he was apologetic about complexety. The trend to make things easy has gone to far in the US.
Nuclear power was doomed when the AEC Chair said, "Too Cheap to Meter".
Well yours is an avenue to take, and it will be effective for some. But at some point this will need support of the public for policy makers to give the go-ahead. The vote will inevitably be given to people who don't know anything about it, and I'm not sure policy makers calling the voter a moron will help.