These old guys are amazing and could share their knowledge with today's generation. Politics always wastes awesome people like this for personal gain. It was an honor to hear them talk about their work.
If you have the time to set up yet another social media account, I'd appreciate your support on Patreon/ the campaign is called /thorium/ and I'm collecting support yearly (~NOT~ monthly). Promise you won't get much private content, but you'll be kept updated. Asking $1/year for that. You'll find assets for communicating Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear, MSR and Th-MSR. (So all along the conventional to Thorium.)
gordonmcdowell Mr McDowell I am happy to support. I use a different (but similarly nuclear naval naming declassified nonsense) over on Patron but expect to see me there soon. You’ll probably recognize me, hah. Thank you for getting in touch 🙏
gordonmcdowell ok all set! Done! I wanted to message you directly but couldn’t find a way. Commenting here in the hopes you see it. I am just a dude from a Navy family whose Dad worked on early Navy acoustics programs, Artemis and others. Wink. Can’t say no more. Thank you Mr. McDowell.
@@towedarray7217 I think I see you there. There's a mechanism but like most things Patreon it is vaguely confusing. Thanks for your support. Don't know too many Navy guys just Rod Adams and met Jim Vaughn ruclips.net/video/T_Z5hE6U1cM/видео.html
Hey folks as of 2014-08-30 I'm activating monetization for this video. I've been struggling for years to make sense of how some videos with identical content overtake others in popularity, and I'd like to see if RUclips favors monetized videos over non-monetized. So I'll have to let this run for a while, and I'll report on the KickStarter page if there's anything interesting to learn from it. I hate ads too... I don't think they're worth the time it costs people, and I hate to think anyone would skip this video because of lengthy ad. But it is a question I've had for years and it is time to figure it out. -Gord
Kevin Green There were 3 campaigns, if you KS search for THORIUM you'll see them all. I'm not running a campaign at the moment. Not planning on doing so until the doc is done, and I have 1 more chapter I'd like to add. Then tighten it all up.
I think you should have monetised your videos a long time ago, given that there are remixes of your videos which have been monetised with a million hits or more. The monetisation genie is already out of the bottle.
Those of us who are net-savvy know to use AdBlock or NoScript, we don't see ads on monetized videos anyway. Thanks a lot for the upload, fascinating subject matter. I believe India has an MSRE program going? Would be great if competition with India and China got another 'moon race' going in this arena.
Kingsley Zissou The bad news is, that India just signed a contract with Australia to import uranium into India. The other thing is they are not signitaries of the nuclear non proliferation agreement. But I like your thinking. Great video.
Thank you very much, as a chemist amongst other things, I think this is the way forward and using fused fuel is actually easier to handle chemically for processing than pellets. So let's look forward to better funding and more involvement from industry.
I loved this topic! What a great statement at the beginning "if I was going to be waking up each daye for the next 40 years for something, it better be something I believed in". (side issue warning!) CO2 is an Albatros, not a real climate issue. CO2 is low currently compared to our Earth history. This planet as well as other planets have heated & cooled without SUVs & without humans since time immeasurable. The Sun & its cycle lengths are the #1 reason for most planets' climate change including ours.
My father started his career in nuclear energy management at Oak Ridge, then he went to Idaho Falls then Pittsburgh, then he started consulting and finally worked for DOE, he's retired now.
Greed and selfishness, not greed and stupidity. Never assume that the heads of politics and corporations are stupid, assume that they are smart, selfish, sociopathic assholes.
If only it was just America lol. and I agree that politicians aren't dumb. They would not be heads of states, runners of banks and centuries long consolidated institutions. They would be wielding the medias as their weapon and the needs of people as currency if they were not intelligent. They get called stupid because, for the citizen, they appear to champion something then do something else entirely, and this is their shield. After all, what is more aggravating? Doing something awful because you did a stupid, or doing something awful entirely on purpose, knowing full well the consequences of your actions for centuries to come, and doing it while lying to the face of everyone that trusted you? Because people think "oh politicians are stupid", you are NOT realizing the extent of the manipulation and power these guys have. When a media does an absolutely retarded piece of reporting, slandering groundbreaking technologies, or asking people to simply trust blindly in an established national line, they aren't doing it by mistake.
They wanted the ability to kill large numbers of people to keep the Communist pigs in check. Otherwise we would have been trod underfoot by the Communists who own no value in personal freedom, or for the citizen to have a say in how the nation is run. Commie dogs just want mad control, look at Bering of the Stazi who picked out women to rape on the street at night in Moscow till he took a young 17 year old and raped her. She then committed suicide by the apartment leap method but the truth had gotten out. Not so much as to change things right away as he ran against Kruchev in the next election but the die was cast for his demise. He was as horrible as you can imagine a leader to be and as corrupt as Kim Jong Un. Hopefully Kim's excesses will soon kill him off which will help the NKoreans as much as anything if it happens right away while his children are too small to take over madness. Thanks Red China for your pathetic Communist backing you nut case murdering sleaze bags.
Paul Haubenreich reminds me of my father, who was a civil engineer. Even til his last days he always had a shirt pocket filled with various pens, mechanical pencils, and wax pencils. Engineers like to make notes, and dad even loved to mark certain things with wax writing (e.g. the date a light bulb was installed to replace a worn out one). The THTR-300 is not a Liquid Sodium or Molten Salt reactor. The German reactor is a "Pebble Fuel" reactor, featuring solid fuel in the form of smallish "pebbles". The reactor had a mechanical problem with at least one of these pebbles being stuck in one of the channels it had to move through. Some radioactive dust was emitted, signalling a dangerous incident. IT appears that incident was handled properly, but this type of reactor is not a strongly advisable type of reactor to build. Perhaps the German project sought to avoid chemical solution difficulties, or was deemed advisable to research a completely different way to deliver the reactor. But, the two are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but not the SAME fruit. Incidentally, no one I'm seeing claims that the German project is still emitting dangerous levels of radiation. Perhaps someone can link to that if it's out there. The type of Thorium reactor that advocates here in the USA, in China and in India are emphasizing is a liquid salt type (this is important, and those reading this should make it a point to understand this design, it's radically different). This involves the fuel mixture being liquified due to high temperature (which completely changes the design - this high temp allows for the design to be LOW PRESSURE, an important aspect, since high pressure containment is a danger element of huge importance). The high temperature also allows for the usage of this heat for processes that are ordinarily very expensive in terms of commercial electricity usage (e.g. certain chemical manufacturing processes, or desalination processes). Desalination alone, could likely pay for these outlays, because desalination is a very expensive process, which is why it's not used more often. People seem to do two things at once: They avoid studying the reality of the engineering in something like this, and yet place "faith" in unproven, or speculative things like "cold fusion", or "fusion reactors", without also studying or understanding the engineering or science phenomenon. I'd encourage viewers to look at as much of this Thorium stuff on RUclips as they possibly can. It's explained very well. Remember too that monazite mineral mining, and the ability to resurrect our "rare earth minerals" industry to include heavy rare earths is also part of this Thorium matter. Once Thorium is used regularly for electric power generation, we get enormous amounts of it from ongoing mining of rare earth bearing monazite minerals. We have huge deposits here in the USA. The fuel is cheap. The power output is incredible. And we get useful rare earths like Lithium, Dysprosium, Lanthanum, Neodymium, and others. Right now the Chinese have a virtual monopoly on rare earths. So, you will see efforts by them to avoid having the US engage in rare earth mining (Thorium).
People are hysterical about nuclear power. They have no knowledge of science and they don't want to know. They believe the problems can be solved by wind and solar. It just takes a vulcanic eruption to close down such a society. Good luck moorans.
Why are people here commenting using the term "Fluorine"? I believe I'm seeing the use of this chemical's name. LFTR technology does not use Flourine, which is chemically unstable and reacts with many different things. LFTR's "F" refers to "Fluoride", a different material, an anion of Fluorine and another molecule altogether. This is vastly less reactive. That is important. The chemistry here is very important, yet many do not seem to care. Fluoride occurs naturally in Black Tea, Russet Potatoes, Raisins, Lamb, and Carrots. Fluoride is found in natural water supplies in trace amounts. Fluoride is not Fluorine.
I'll give you 3 guess.. Hint: If Thorium energy is publicized, everyone will want it built then want to buy it. Thorium energy will replace gasoline/oil as the main source of energy. Oil corporation earn (total of all oil corporations combined) roughly 1 - 5 Trillion dollars annually.
I've noticed on youtube that discussion regarding this has increased significantly - 100 % more videos in a year- appear to be well researched and logically coherent.
Infinite thanks for sharing historic document... I'm wondering who was in charge of its production? So grateful to those who've preserved these views for posterity
I guess me (gordon mcdowell). There's video assets pulled from all over (see RUclips description) but the ORNL Tour and interviews were captured to try educate people about MSR and Thorium as an energy resource. Travel, capture and editing gear funds came from Kickstarter.
Gordon, Do you have any plans to release the whole discussion between Kirk and the other two gentlemen that worked on the original MSRE? I'd like to see the whole discussion.
what energy source heats Th to 400 degrees? coal? oil? ? Is this heating 'perpetual' [like an engine keeps the wheels turning on a vehicle] or is it 'initial' [like one match can light a camp fire that is kept fed with wood]. ? I just want to know if a liquid salt reactor is self perpetuating with Th Fuel, once it is operating.
I really enjoyed this documentary. It was fascinating to hear about this subject. I can’t believe that this has been around since the 1950. I understand that we needed the enriched plutonium and uranium for our nuclear weapons systems but now that we have more than we will ever need it time for us to start thinking of the production of energy not just war time applications. I also think the public as a whole needs to understand the safety aspect involved in this type of reactor. When you say nuclear everyone gets scared, but the sunshine is a type of nuclear energy and you don’t hear people stating we don’t want the sun.
Not only to invest in, but as a university student, I will want to apply one of these days. All I know are Flibe and Transatomic. Both doing terrific work.
the spider arm reactor is a no water design which also does not rely on molten salt and is safe for thorium. But still, until they change the regulations on thorium it will not be possible to build a test reactor.
money isnt the issue he has that the issue is the NRC that has to give the OK to build test units in the US which doesnt have any rules for fluid fuel reactors which makes getting approval almost impossible atm
Tritium is a valuable source of energy, hard to create, so it should something to make a byproduct of, so that problem is pretty much solved, some problems/byproducts can be an opportunity to do even more. Great Documentary, hopefully people will see how much better it is and switch to this source of energy and we can use the waste to do something positive too.
wow so the byproducts of a molten salt reactor, are fissile materials. which in turn can be used to create energy in a solid fuel reactor and produce "nuclear waste" which is actually more fuel for a molten salt reactor. this is a new age solution to our dilemma. recycle your nuclear byproducts.
this is really promising. im glad there are folks out there doing this. i hope that it works out to benefit man kind and the ecosystem. gets me pumped about the possible future!
i really like the concept of LFTR using thorium. i, as a student of maritime engineering, see a lot of potential in the maritime world. commercial shipping companys are looking for an alternative clean and cheap power source and i believe a small (10.000 - 100.000 KW ) LFTR with thorium fuel will be perfect.
So here's a question, with regards to barriers to exploitation and commercialisation: What commercial advantages does the MSR burning Thorium have over the IFR, burning Uranium/breeding Plutonium? In terms of lifecycle costs, development/R&D, that sort of thing. From what I gather, the experience base for fast breeders, especially the French one seems to be greater, and Phenix serves as a compelling case for commercialisation and greater deployment; especially with its credentials in transmuting nuclear waste. Meanwhile MSR have not moved beyond the experimental phase or even into technology demonstrator phase. How does the likes of FLIBE energy (US) or TEG (Australia) or TEA (US) hope to bear these first-adopter risks and prove their worth to investors without prior precedent? In terms of engineering, what engineering gaps remain for commercialisation of MSRs? Wikipedia cites the necessity of containing the salt due to its Beryllium content, which is a deadly poison. Though the reactor itself operates at atmospheric pressure, the conditions under which the reactor operates are extreme by current materials science standards: extreme temperatures, extremely corrosive coolant (at operating temperature). Would the proposed use of Hastelloy-N be sufficient in these conditions over the decades of the reactor's life, and what studies have been done to qualify the alloy? FLIBE states that it is aiming to produce a reactor to take US bases off the local grid. How is that coming along, and how soon could a commercial example be fielded? Finally, what's stopping say FLIBE from producing a technology demonstrator as ORNL did with the MSRE? A proof of concept reactor, even sub-megawatt like something grad students would build, would go a long way towards testing the technologies. People build fusors in their workshop out of old TVs. Surely even a benchtop configuration would be useful to qualify the unknowns of MSRs beyond the work already done.
MonMalthias Ben Heard is making a strong case for an Australian IFR. If you wanted to build a breeder tomorrow you'd go PRISM IFR. The MSR startups are trying to get industries which need high process heat to help fund R&D. Because MSR run much hotter than both PWR and IFR, it could help bring the cost of some industrial processes down. While I know there's some financial success with these startups funding some research, it isn't solve-everything-fast money. Even just building a test salt loop is an expensive enterprise, nevermind one with fuel dissolved in it. So while it is slower to try solve more problems before building test loops, it is a more cautious spend to do so.
A great documentary, very educational! There's a lot of stuff on youtube at the moment that's totally mind expanding and if governments were to take hold of it, humankind as a whole, well the horizon would be long past! but for a start I would like to hope this technology would be utilised in a nations space program.
I have a loose connection to that crazy nuclear plane. The NB-36H flew over my home just south of the Weatherford Circle in Ft. Worth and my father managed the Test Lab at Convair and must have had a hand in it. The plane was not nuclear powered, but carried an active reactor to test crew shielding. LFTR is a great quest. I wish it the best of luck and will invest in any sound endeavor to make it a reality
I am wondering why they don't want to us the molten salt as the conveyor to keep the reaction going and could be stopped by flushing the salt into a holding tank. It takes a lot more time to cool the reactor core down safely and also needs outside cooling to help since it is not in production.
"... very well reduced" means, if my chemistry memory serves me correct, that the oxidising (corrosive) capability of the chemicals is removed by allowing it to react with something else instead. In this case, I think he was talking about adding beryllium to achieve this and stop the salts attacking the reactor structure.
Thank you for educating me. I'd never heard of Thorium reactors and I thought I'd heard it all. I see it being the future of power generation in nuclear power plants (if we can't produce power at the house level). Why is the government so resistant in funding it? Blame the oil/coal/gas company lobbyist and corruption. Their goal is, as you stated about the story of the nuclear phd graduate, is not to let this info out to begin with.
I was curious is it possible to make a molten salt reactor on a very tiny scale? Does it scale down to small enough for say a residential application? Or better yet my bicycle? I'm ready for this!! Thanks Gordon....
Scales down to semi truck size (1/3-1/2 a semi truck trailer size) but after that....the heat transfer/cooling gets iffy, since there is NO HUGE COOLING TOWERS, also the volume of fuel contained would be sorta small. Engineers would have to develop some kind of while running fuel replacement, continuous spent fuel/reaction poisons removal (think of a paper fire vs wood = thorium vs uranium)
(thanks to rRobert for responding reminded me to look at this question when now at a desktop) ScootOverMan, I think you could power a small community with this, or an energy hungry factory. But to go below that, even if it was possible to maintain fission you'd lose economy of scale. The appeal of small modular reactors is that they can ultimately reach GW output but can reach that point in fractional increments, which makes them easier to finance. And once they're there economy of scale for the plant itself is in full swing. An MSR can be modular in the same way, and the loss of economies of scale can still be attractive if operating in a remote location (remote community) and for financing purposes. But the best efficiencies are when a GW reactors are running, and the fuel reprocessing and security costs can be spread across multiple reactors.
gordonmcdowell I look forward to the day when they are turning these out in batches of 60 a day and sending them to North Dakota or western Montana (and for cheap energy at SUPER Fund (hazmat sites). Put them on a train the same you do refined oil or sulfur.
Chesluk I figured it out - the boxes are floating over the ID badges. Redacting the badges is most likely a condition of them being allowed to film inside the facility.
I am a fan of nuclear energy and think that Thorium is a great idea. But, you guys are either misinformed or just plain ole lying about the nuclear powered bomber idea being a bad idea. First off Enrico Fermi was the man who came up with the idea. Second it is clear as day that this is what is taking place at AREA-51. Yes, it is not ET's there helping us to reverse engineer space craft. We have a manned nuclear powered aerospace program being run from there. It is the American Baiknour Cosmodrome. The evidence for this is the notorious Hanger-18. It has the same foot print as the TAN hanger 629. This was the hanger for the nuclear bomber that was built in Idaho. It is a large hanger with reprocessing facilities built right next to it. The reprocessing facilities have been greatly expanded though at AREA-51.
The Soviets played around with Salt Reactors. Some of their worst disasters were caused by Salt Reactors (not due to the principal but due to shoddy design and cost cutting). Akula Attack Submarines were said to have Salt Reactors, were extremely powerful and fast, but also very leaky. All were decoméd because it was another one of their Widowmaker type subs.
Yes, but they used active salts, chemically reactive salts that react within the reactor and with the surrounding. This uses stable salts that are much less corrosive and the risk of corrosion is simple to counter and today's material sciences are a lot further developed.
I am looking to enlist some help with a fictional book I'm writing. The story centers around a team that travel the world in remote areas. Their goal of being self sufficient will include a 1 cubic meter / 120,000 watt MSR. What I am looking is a basic block diagram and description of operation. I could make it up based on watching a couple of RUclips videos, but I prefer to have something that is believable to people in the field. Thanks
Does a thorium reactor not create highly toxic waste? A safer reaction that can't be weaponized - both great. But the waste problem remains and if scaled, could prove far worse than uranium reactors, no? Someone help me here.
EagleSlightlyBetter The output is fission products. See video "Nuclear Waste: Fission Products & Transuranics from Thorium & Uranium" for details on that. Essentially we're not dealing with nuclear "waste" in any manner other than storage because we're not separating the various fission products out. There's immense value in there, which can be more easily captured if the fuel/waste are dissolved in salts. That's the first step of pyroprocessing, and MSR are already there. . Even if you're not trying to extract value, and only store FP as waste, sorting them by half life lets us move the highly radioactive stuff together, and move the longer-lived stuff (less radioactive) together. Right now, all mixed together, any sample of waste is the worst of both: longer lived and highly radioactive.
EagleSlightlyBetter There is much more radiation coming out of a coal plant than multiple pressurized water fissile reactors. The "wastes" are mostly products we can use. We can recycle waste from old nuclear plants for use in a LFTR, and yes. But it is far easier to create a 800 year quarter-life containment vessel than a couple million year quarter-life with conventional waste. We could save hundreds of thousands of lives with the "waste" products from this reactor.
In a nutshell this sort of nuclear plant design of MSRe/LFTR is different in that the PLANT ITSELF IS the processing/reprocessing/waste extraction/energy generation plant all integrated into one relatively elegant & safe self-regulating system. Can anybody make a better one sentence single statement describing this tech?
Here it comes! Elysium Industries, Ed Pheil, Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor (MCSFR). Look it up on You Tube. Differences to thorium salt reactors? Instead of pebbles, use spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and plutonium. Old style nuclear plants have generated plenty of that. In the US over 700 years reserves.
Although highly interesting, the editing gives this documentary a nice ADD feeling... more confusing than understandable for a layman. Mmm.. Explain this to me like I'm a 5 year old who is desperately searching for ANY "out of the box" technology to save our planets environment on short term notice.... (If we are not behind the 8-ball already)
Don't run it at 700'C, use a suitable alloy. www.haynesintl.com/alloys/alloy-portfolio_/Corrosion-resistant-Alloys/hastelloy-n-alloy/principle-features Molten Salts are used in Solar Power Towers, it isn't like salt chemistry was put on hold when MSRE was shut down.
The self importance of government leaders have cost their people over and over again. Another example is the government of Canada stopping the development of the AVRO Arrow, a 1960's supersonic long range jet fighter that would have been able to compete favorably with today's jet fighters.
Hiding security badges. I could do a somewhat better looking job today (see ORNL MSRW 2019 videos), but is still tedious when lots of people are walking around with exposed badges. My first visit to ORNL so I didn't know how much time it would take to hide them later.
Bill Gates doesn't care about getting cheap and safe nuclear power he's more concerned with population control because he's a eugenicist who thinks only 600 million people should populate this Earth think about that
@@ticklemeandillhurtyou5800 that number only makes sense if you are talking about fossil fuels or renewables for your only source of energy. Nuclear energy grants you a much larger sustainable population.
Problems are bad enough when you have to deal with very hot water and steam ... just think how much fun it will be to try to fix a reactor that has molten salt at 1000 degrees going through it.
Much easier to fix something with the pressure of your house's water pipes than something with over 100 atmospheres of pressure and steel walls over 20cm thick to contain it. You need machines just to lift the freaking pipes. Also, a typical candle has a flame temperature of 1000°C or 1800°F, and considering we can make gloves which are flame resistant that temperature doesn't seem too hard to handle with the proper equippement.
pwww in theory they have it covered, even most you tube commenters who have no background in nuclear science know what will happen. nothing to be worried about :)
Can be addressed by keeping temperatures below 700C and keeping impurities out of the salt. ORNL MSRW 2020. ruclips.net/video/FxlNe83LBU4/видео.html that is from this playlist ruclips.net/p/PLKfir74hxWhPrTeKhywWc9FcBatidPzDM ...I'm not a chemist just relaying what I've heard.
Ask any of the MSR folks at Oak Ridge & elsewhere about the subject of operational experience(s) & virtually none of them bring up the USS Seawolf or Santa Suzanna or Super Phenix re operating difficulties encountered with the molten salt reactors in our relatively recent technological past. They more-or-less skip over the details regarding the technological difficulties of pumping molten salt in a primary reactor loop or anyplace else for that matter. Bill Gates and others would be better off not messing with the rather explosive technology inherent in MSR's & take another half of a technological step forward with the further development of high temperature gas direct cycle (no steam turbine) reactors which will transfer heat using an inert gas instead of what is potentially a rather deadly explosive combination of chemicals. A "direct cycle" system is actually a gas turbine which would have no trouble operating at or above the proposed operating temps of any of the suggested or proposed MSR's. Remember; what did in Fukushima & TMI were "chemical" reactions; not necessarily nuclear ones that wound up doing unrecoverable damage to those plants. The field of experience is wide open to Direct Cycle Gas-Cooled Reactors since all emphasis on the technologies involved were primarily being promoted by General Atomics of San Diego, CA; an organization who encountered financial & other operating difficulties bring their conceptual High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor at Fort St. Vrain into existence back during the 1970's & began producing drone aircraft instead.
If you'd like to get involved in my project below you can find me on (you know where) and give me a friend request with possible private note. The image you want to fine tune to is an ethereal shot of me with multiple colored lasers lighting up my face that differentiates me from others that share my name. :-) We'll go with the press releases as well to expose the public as much as we can this vital power source.
Why isn't anyone talking about the global economic impact regarding international political affairs? If the United States harnesses this energy source will they feel vulnerable to catastrophic consequences from their enemies who will still have Nuclear weapons? This will flip the economy as we know it, whether its for good or bad.
20:47 Nixon even brags about how uneducated he is. This is despicable. At the bare minimum he should have advisors that explain it to him before he speaks about it. If he can't even grasp the concepts with all the advisors explaining it to him, he has no place near the decision making process.
its sad that something like this was held back This has easily cost us as a WORLD, we could easily be 100 years ahead of where we are now (technology wise) Safer, simple, usable technology that would have let us power cities and vehicles. Eliminate problems with energry requirements for space travel. Not to mention the storage of radio active wastes. And to think this was shelved during the nixon administration.
hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/10/01/060205/rockbox--refurbished-mp3-players--crowdsourced-audio-capture ...they were once super-cheap hardware. Not cheap any more, but they still do run RockBox and capture audio reliably. To this day I keep buying cheap MP3 recorders from China to see how they perform, and they fail to be as useful as these super-old Clip+ devices.
The political establishment of the 1970s favoured funding the Argonne laboratory over the Oak Ridge laboratory. Is this what Americans call: "Pork barrel politics" ? And which politicians were the beneficiaries? And how did they benefit? Given the unproductive results from liquid sodium reactors in the next 40 years, it was a terrible decision.
The big issue here is the control of future energy needs. The fossil fuel community has trillions of dollars invested in continued use of coal, oil and natural gas. And they want their financial interests to stay on the track we are on. On the economic side, reduced cost of energy such as electricity would cause an great increase in economic growth. China and India are right now developing these reactors. Can you imagine the reduced cost of products made in China and India if energy costs were drastically reduced? If things don't change here in the US, we will be buying these reactors from them, and we will be trying to keep our struggling economy going under. Right today, Saudi Arabia has dropped the price of oil in an attempt to put the US oil producers out of business.
China and Indonesia are ahead of the US in Generation 4, Next Generation 4 Reactors. Using US research, technologies and designs. China may have a prototype, MSR, Molten Salt Reactor running next year. China has a Gas-Cooled, Pebble Bed Reactor prototype running now. And they are developing a US Terrapower Traveling Wave Reactor, TWR. China has also run plasma in a research FUSION reactor at twice the temperature of the sun for 100 seconds. The ITER international FUSION reactor in France will be ready by 2025 and has cost over 10 billion so far. Then they plan to build an even larger reactor. for another 10 years. Fusion may be too expensive to build. But fuel is cheap. India has lots of Thorium and wants Sodium Cooled Fast reactors. MSR reactors may be a better option. Sodium Fast Reactors have been very difficult to run. Most countries gave up on Fast Sodium Reactors.
Bronner33 This report is full of unsupported statements, many of these have been answered in the companion video /watch?v=qLk46BZfEMs. U-233 emits more gamma radiation, therefore military guys did not like the idea of using it for the weapons. For that reason they did not want to continue investing in it. Why is it cited as a problem for civilian energy production? None of these so called "problems" are mentioned on the Molten_salt_reactor Wikipedia page.
That is the very direction I'm personally taking it. You need someone like EM who is already headed in this direction who has the resources and the means to make this a reality. You should know that Thorium Canada is currently building LFTR's for none other than... China
the THTR-300 in Hamm-Uetrop Germany was 1988 shut down because of immense agressive radioation the radiation level is so high that it will be dismateled maybe in 2027 - now in Germany are build windmiles and theire are a lot of reasons why not using Thorium reactors !
dumontgo Theire have been 2 Reactors - 1 for making energy and a small one in a research center. The last one has burned down (outside the building) with colored plasma. Wikipedi* pages are often good for cleaning the a** when going to the toilet.
it should be used for flights to other planets - planes and other stuff can be power with tripple oder quad junction solar cells - or hydrogen made with energy from it - for that we already have a huge reactor called the sun ! - for every other (burning) of rare materials future generations will blame us
These old guys are amazing and could share their knowledge with today's generation. Politics always wastes awesome people like this for personal gain. It was an honor to hear them talk about their work.
Beautiful. Oak Ridge has done so much good work, and yet so much of it gets buried by politics.
This is AMAZING. A serious gift to RUclips and fellow nuclear historians. Thank you to everyone involved!
If you have the time to set up yet another social media account, I'd appreciate your support on Patreon/ the campaign is called /thorium/ and I'm collecting support yearly (~NOT~ monthly). Promise you won't get much private content, but you'll be kept updated. Asking $1/year for that. You'll find assets for communicating Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear, MSR and Th-MSR. (So all along the conventional to Thorium.)
gordonmcdowell Mr McDowell I am happy to support. I use a different (but similarly nuclear naval naming declassified nonsense) over on Patron but expect to see me there soon. You’ll probably recognize me, hah. Thank you for getting in touch 🙏
gordonmcdowell ok all set! Done! I wanted to message you directly but couldn’t find a way. Commenting here in the hopes you see it. I am just a dude from a Navy family whose Dad worked on early Navy acoustics programs, Artemis and others. Wink. Can’t say no more. Thank you Mr. McDowell.
@@towedarray7217 I think I see you there. There's a mechanism but like most things Patreon it is vaguely confusing. Thanks for your support. Don't know too many Navy guys just Rod Adams and met Jim Vaughn ruclips.net/video/T_Z5hE6U1cM/видео.html
Hey folks as of 2014-08-30 I'm activating monetization for this video. I've been struggling for years to make sense of how some videos with identical content overtake others in popularity, and I'd like to see if RUclips favors monetized videos over non-monetized. So I'll have to let this run for a while, and I'll report on the KickStarter page if there's anything interesting to learn from it. I hate ads too... I don't think they're worth the time it costs people, and I hate to think anyone would skip this video because of lengthy ad. But it is a question I've had for years and it is time to figure it out. -Gord
What is the link to your kickstarter page gordonmcdowell ?
Kevin Green There were 3 campaigns, if you KS search for THORIUM you'll see them all. I'm not running a campaign at the moment. Not planning on doing so until the doc is done, and I have 1 more chapter I'd like to add. Then tighten it all up.
I think you should have monetised your videos a long time ago, given that there are remixes of your videos which have been monetised with a million hits or more. The monetisation genie is already out of the bottle.
Those of us who are net-savvy know to use AdBlock or NoScript, we don't see ads on monetized videos anyway. Thanks a lot for the upload, fascinating subject matter. I believe India has an MSRE program going? Would be great if competition with India and China got another 'moon race' going in this arena.
Kingsley Zissou The bad news is, that India just signed a contract with Australia to import uranium into India. The other thing is they are not signitaries of the nuclear non proliferation agreement. But I like your thinking. Great video.
Thank you very much, as a chemist amongst other things, I think this is the way forward and using fused fuel is actually easier to handle chemically for processing than pellets. So let's look forward to better funding and more involvement from industry.
I loved this topic! What a great statement at the beginning "if I was going to be waking up each daye for the next 40 years for something, it better be something I believed in". (side issue warning!) CO2 is an Albatros, not a real climate issue. CO2 is low currently compared to our Earth history. This planet as well as other planets have heated & cooled without SUVs & without humans since time immeasurable. The Sun & its cycle lengths are the #1 reason for most planets' climate change including ours.
My father started his career in nuclear energy management at Oak Ridge, then he went to Idaho Falls then Pittsburgh, then he started consulting and finally worked for DOE, he's retired now.
Sad, that the intelligent men who could have advanced cheap energy were pushed aside by the greed and stupidly of our leaders.
Welcome to 'Murka. “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else." --Winston Churchill
Greed and selfishness, not greed and stupidity. Never assume that the heads of politics and corporations are stupid, assume that they are smart, selfish, sociopathic assholes.
If only it was just America lol.
and I agree that politicians aren't dumb. They would not be heads of states, runners of banks and centuries long consolidated institutions. They would be wielding the medias as their weapon and the needs of people as currency if they were not intelligent. They get called stupid because, for the citizen, they appear to champion something then do something else entirely, and this is their shield.
After all, what is more aggravating? Doing something awful because you did a stupid, or doing something awful entirely on purpose, knowing full well the consequences of your actions for centuries to come, and doing it while lying to the face of everyone that trusted you?
Because people think "oh politicians are stupid", you are NOT realizing the extent of the manipulation and power these guys have. When a media does an absolutely retarded piece of reporting, slandering groundbreaking technologies, or asking people to simply trust blindly in an established national line, they aren't doing it by mistake.
They wanted the ability to kill large numbers of people to keep the Communist pigs in check. Otherwise we would have been trod underfoot by the Communists who own no value in personal freedom, or for the citizen to have a say in how the nation is run. Commie dogs just want mad control, look at Bering of the Stazi who picked out women to rape on the street at night in Moscow till he took a young 17 year old and raped her. She then committed suicide by the apartment leap method but the truth had gotten out. Not so much as to change things right away as he ran against Kruchev in the next election but the die was cast for his demise. He was as horrible as you can imagine a leader to be and as corrupt as Kim Jong Un. Hopefully Kim's excesses will soon kill him off which will help the NKoreans as much as anything if it happens right away while his children are too small to take over madness. Thanks Red China for your pathetic Communist backing you nut case murdering sleaze bags.
Paul Haubenreich reminds me of my father, who was a civil engineer. Even til his last days he always had a shirt pocket filled with various pens, mechanical pencils, and wax pencils. Engineers like to make notes, and dad even loved to mark certain things with wax writing (e.g. the date a light bulb was installed to replace a worn out one).
The THTR-300 is not a Liquid Sodium or Molten Salt reactor. The German reactor is a "Pebble Fuel" reactor, featuring solid fuel in the form of smallish "pebbles". The reactor had a mechanical problem with at least one of these pebbles being stuck in one of the channels it had to move through. Some radioactive dust was emitted, signalling a dangerous incident. IT appears that incident was handled properly, but this type of reactor is not a strongly advisable type of reactor to build. Perhaps the German project sought to avoid chemical solution difficulties, or was deemed advisable to research a completely different way to deliver the reactor. But, the two are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but not the SAME fruit.
Incidentally, no one I'm seeing claims that the German project is still emitting dangerous levels of radiation. Perhaps someone can link to that if it's out there.
The type of Thorium reactor that advocates here in the USA, in China and in India are emphasizing is a liquid salt type (this is important, and those reading this should make it a point to understand this design, it's radically different). This involves the fuel mixture being liquified due to high temperature (which completely changes the design - this high temp allows for the design to be LOW PRESSURE, an important aspect, since high pressure containment is a danger element of huge importance). The high temperature also allows for the usage of this heat for processes that are ordinarily very expensive in terms of commercial electricity usage (e.g. certain chemical manufacturing processes, or desalination processes). Desalination alone, could likely pay for these outlays, because desalination is a very expensive process, which is why it's not used more often.
People seem to do two things at once: They avoid studying the reality of the engineering in something like this, and yet place "faith" in unproven, or speculative things like "cold fusion", or "fusion reactors", without also studying or understanding the engineering or science phenomenon. I'd encourage viewers to look at as much of this Thorium stuff on RUclips as they possibly can. It's explained very well.
Remember too that monazite mineral mining, and the ability to resurrect our "rare earth minerals" industry to include heavy rare earths is also part of this Thorium matter. Once Thorium is used regularly for electric power generation, we get enormous amounts of it from ongoing mining of rare earth bearing monazite minerals. We have huge deposits here in the USA. The fuel is cheap. The power output is incredible. And we get useful rare earths like Lithium, Dysprosium, Lanthanum, Neodymium, and others. Right now the Chinese have a virtual monopoly on rare earths. So, you will see efforts by them to avoid having the US engage in rare earth mining (Thorium).
I can't believe there's only 4,400 views for such an important subject. Molten salt reactors is inevitable.
Up around 166,000 views now. Only took 5 years. :(
Fingers crossed
People are hysterical about nuclear power.
They have no knowledge of science and they don't want to know.
They believe the problems can be solved by wind and solar.
It just takes a vulcanic eruption to close down such a society.
Good luck moorans.
Why are people here commenting using the term "Fluorine"? I believe I'm seeing the use of this chemical's name. LFTR technology does not use Flourine, which is chemically unstable and reacts with many different things. LFTR's "F" refers to "Fluoride", a different material, an anion of Fluorine and another molecule altogether. This is vastly less reactive. That is important. The chemistry here is very important, yet many do not seem to care. Fluoride occurs naturally in Black Tea, Russet Potatoes, Raisins, Lamb, and Carrots. Fluoride is found in natural water supplies in trace amounts. Fluoride is not Fluorine.
why are we not hearing more about this ?
I'll give you 3 guess..
Hint: If Thorium energy is publicized, everyone will want it built then want to buy it.
Thorium energy will replace gasoline/oil as the main source of energy.
Oil corporation earn (total of all oil corporations combined) roughly 1 - 5 Trillion dollars annually.
You should be glad the "powers that be" allowed this to be seen on youtube. ...Said the last commenter before this vid was deleted. lol
I've noticed on youtube that discussion regarding this has increased significantly - 100 % more videos in a year- appear to be well researched and logically coherent.
Infinite thanks for sharing historic document...
I'm wondering who was in charge of its production?
So grateful to those who've preserved these views for posterity
I guess me (gordon mcdowell). There's video assets pulled from all over (see RUclips description) but the ORNL Tour and interviews were captured to try educate people about MSR and Thorium as an energy resource. Travel, capture and editing gear funds came from Kickstarter.
gordonmcdowell Keep up the good work (from one of your kick starter fans)
Gordon, Do you have any plans to release the whole discussion between Kirk and the other two gentlemen that worked on the original MSRE?
I'd like to see the whole discussion.
"Ah, this nuclear reactor is too safe. That's boring!" lol
In my opinion that was by design. So to keep nuclear energy as dangerous in the minds of the people...and with that, keep the oil empires going.
Absolutely brilliant.
loving this channel. amazing work
what energy source heats Th to 400 degrees? coal? oil?
? Is this heating 'perpetual' [like an engine keeps the wheels turning on a vehicle] or is it 'initial' [like one match can light a camp fire that is kept fed with wood]. ?
I just want to know if a liquid salt reactor is self perpetuating with Th Fuel, once it is operating.
I really enjoyed this documentary. It was fascinating to hear about this subject. I can’t believe that this has been around since the 1950. I understand that we needed the enriched plutonium and uranium for our nuclear weapons systems but now that we have more than we will ever need it time for us to start thinking of the production of energy not just war time applications. I also think the public as a whole needs to understand the safety aspect involved in this type of reactor. When you say nuclear everyone gets scared, but the sunshine is a type of nuclear energy and you don’t hear people stating we don’t want the sun.
It seems like it's ideal for solar system exploration as well.
Great documentary!
We need listed companies developing this technology we can invest in so this is brought to market faster.
Not only to invest in, but as a university student, I will want to apply one of these days.
All I know are Flibe and Transatomic. Both doing terrific work.
Google also, oil service companies are currently testing ways to extract thorium and uranium from drill cuttings and used frac water
the spider arm reactor is a no water design which also does not rely on molten salt and is safe for thorium. But still, until they change the regulations on thorium it will not be possible to build a test reactor.
Why are you not KickStarting to build a thorium reactor. Wouldn't that make the headlines?
money isnt the issue he has that the issue is the NRC that has to give the OK to build test units in the US which doesnt have any rules for fluid fuel reactors which makes getting approval almost impossible atm
Tritium is a valuable source of energy, hard to create, so it should something to make a byproduct of, so that problem is pretty much solved, some problems/byproducts can be an opportunity to do even more.
Great Documentary, hopefully people will see how much better it is and switch to this source of energy and we can use the waste to do something positive too.
23:53 Greed + Ignorance = Evil...
Thats why are we not hearing more about this...
You forgot arrogance mind...
You forgot arrogance there.
wow so the byproducts of a molten salt reactor, are fissile materials. which in turn can be used to create energy in a solid fuel reactor and produce "nuclear waste" which is actually more fuel for a molten salt reactor. this is a new age solution to our dilemma. recycle your nuclear byproducts.
Wish I could have seen it , these guys are super smart . Nothing like water purification system . It uses salt as we'll
this is really promising. im glad there are folks out there doing this. i hope that it works out to benefit man kind and the ecosystem.
gets me pumped about the possible future!
time to change the rules and go in the direction the technology takes us not the legislation, msr's look amazing
Wow, good information. Thank yiu
i really like the concept of LFTR using thorium. i, as a student of maritime engineering, see a lot of potential in the maritime world. commercial shipping companys are looking for an alternative clean and cheap power source and i believe a small (10.000 - 100.000 KW ) LFTR with thorium fuel will be perfect.
So here's a question, with regards to barriers to exploitation and commercialisation:
What commercial advantages does the MSR burning Thorium have over the IFR, burning Uranium/breeding Plutonium? In terms of lifecycle costs, development/R&D, that sort of thing. From what I gather, the experience base for fast breeders, especially the French one seems to be greater, and Phenix serves as a compelling case for commercialisation and greater deployment; especially with its credentials in transmuting nuclear waste.
Meanwhile MSR have not moved beyond the experimental phase or even into technology demonstrator phase. How does the likes of FLIBE energy (US) or TEG (Australia) or TEA (US) hope to bear these first-adopter risks and prove their worth to investors without prior precedent?
In terms of engineering, what engineering gaps remain for commercialisation of MSRs? Wikipedia cites the necessity of containing the salt due to its Beryllium content, which is a deadly poison. Though the reactor itself operates at atmospheric pressure, the conditions under which the reactor operates are extreme by current materials science standards: extreme temperatures, extremely corrosive coolant (at operating temperature). Would the proposed use of Hastelloy-N be sufficient in these conditions over the decades of the reactor's life, and what studies have been done to qualify the alloy? FLIBE states that it is aiming to produce a reactor to take US bases off the local grid. How is that coming along, and how soon could a commercial example be fielded?
Finally, what's stopping say FLIBE from producing a technology demonstrator as ORNL did with the MSRE? A proof of concept reactor, even sub-megawatt like something grad students would build, would go a long way towards testing the technologies. People build fusors in their workshop out of old TVs. Surely even a benchtop configuration would be useful to qualify the unknowns of MSRs beyond the work already done.
MonMalthias Ben Heard is making a strong case for an Australian IFR. If you wanted to build a breeder tomorrow you'd go PRISM IFR. The MSR startups are trying to get industries which need high process heat to help fund R&D. Because MSR run much hotter than both PWR and IFR, it could help bring the cost of some industrial processes down. While I know there's some financial success with these startups funding some research, it isn't solve-everything-fast money.
Even just building a test salt loop is an expensive enterprise, nevermind one with fuel dissolved in it. So while it is slower to try solve more problems before building test loops, it is a more cautious spend to do so.
Hopefully Bill Gates' billion dollar energy fund will allocate a large chunk to thorium development.
good video man keep it up.
A great documentary, very educational! There's a lot of stuff on youtube at the moment that's totally mind expanding and if governments were to take hold of it, humankind as a whole, well the horizon would be long past! but for a start I would like to hope this technology would be utilised in a nations space program.
I have a loose connection to that crazy nuclear plane. The NB-36H flew over my home just south of the Weatherford Circle in Ft. Worth and my father managed the Test Lab at Convair and must have had a hand in it. The plane was not nuclear powered, but carried an active reactor to test crew shielding. LFTR is a great quest. I wish it the best of luck and will invest in any sound endeavor to make it a reality
I am wondering why they don't want to us the molten salt as the conveyor to keep the reaction going and could be stopped by flushing the salt into a holding tank. It takes a lot more time to cool the reactor core down safely and also needs outside cooling to help since it is not in production.
What does he mean when he says "keep every thing very well reduce so doesn't corrode in first place "?
"... very well reduced" means, if my chemistry memory serves me correct, that the oxidising (corrosive) capability of the chemicals is removed by allowing it to react with something else instead. In this case, I think he was talking about adding beryllium to achieve this and stop the salts attacking the reactor structure.
Thank you for educating me. I'd never heard of Thorium reactors and I thought I'd heard it all.
I see it being the future of power generation in nuclear power plants (if we can't produce power at the house level).
Why is the government so resistant in funding it? Blame the oil/coal/gas company lobbyist and corruption.
Their goal is, as you stated about the story of the nuclear phd graduate, is not to let this info out to begin with.
I am thinking that a carbon coating could reduce the corrosion and friction problem
I was curious is it possible to make a molten salt reactor on a very tiny scale? Does it scale down to small enough for say a residential application? Or better yet my bicycle? I'm ready for this!! Thanks Gordon....
Scales down to semi truck size (1/3-1/2 a semi truck trailer size) but after that....the heat transfer/cooling gets iffy, since there is NO HUGE COOLING TOWERS, also the volume of fuel contained would be sorta small. Engineers would have to develop some kind of while running fuel replacement, continuous spent fuel/reaction poisons removal (think of a paper fire vs wood = thorium vs uranium)
(thanks to rRobert for responding reminded me to look at this question when now at a desktop) ScootOverMan, I think you could power a small community with this, or an energy hungry factory. But to go below that, even if it was possible to maintain fission you'd lose economy of scale. The appeal of small modular reactors is that they can ultimately reach GW output but can reach that point in fractional increments, which makes them easier to finance. And once they're there economy of scale for the plant itself is in full swing. An MSR can be modular in the same way, and the loss of economies of scale can still be attractive if operating in a remote location (remote community) and for financing purposes. But the best efficiencies are when a GW reactors are running, and the fuel reprocessing and security costs can be spread across multiple reactors.
gordonmcdowell I look forward to the day when they are turning these out in batches of 60 a day and sending them to North Dakota or western Montana (and for cheap energy at SUPER Fund (hazmat sites). Put them on a train the same you do refined oil or sulfur.
What is getting blocked out? Their ID's?
Why are their badges blocked out?
1:31 what we can't see what brand of bottled water the guy drinks?
What was happening at 1:03 with the floating grey boxes? That was weird.
Yeah, tell me about it. Curious as well.
Chesluk I figured it out - the boxes are floating over the ID badges. Redacting the badges is most likely a condition of them being allowed to film inside the facility.
what are the blue and yellow lines on the chart
Why are so many people wearing Sansa Clip players in this video?
I am a fan of nuclear energy and think that Thorium is a great idea. But, you guys are either misinformed or just plain ole lying about the nuclear powered bomber idea being a bad idea. First off Enrico Fermi was the man who came up with the idea. Second it is clear as day that this is what is taking place at AREA-51. Yes, it is not ET's there helping us to reverse engineer space craft. We have a manned nuclear powered aerospace program being run from there. It is the American Baiknour Cosmodrome. The evidence for this is the notorious Hanger-18. It has the same foot print as the TAN hanger 629. This was the hanger for the nuclear bomber that was built in Idaho. It is a large hanger with reprocessing facilities built right next to it. The reprocessing facilities have been greatly expanded though at AREA-51.
The Soviets played around with Salt Reactors. Some of their worst disasters were caused by Salt Reactors (not due to the principal but due to shoddy design and cost cutting). Akula Attack Submarines were said to have Salt Reactors, were extremely powerful and fast, but also very leaky. All were decoméd because it was another one of their Widowmaker type subs.
Yes, but they used active salts, chemically reactive salts that react within the reactor and with the surrounding. This uses stable salts that are much less corrosive and the risk of corrosion is simple to counter and today's material sciences are a lot further developed.
Quit talking about this and go to President Trump and fight to get this started already !!!
I'm on board. What do you need?
9 yes ago ,total madness this has been ignored
Cubic zirconia jewlery came out when? I wonder how much of that was repurposed from possibly going into fuel rods?
I am looking to enlist some help with a fictional book I'm writing. The story centers around a team that travel the world in remote areas. Their goal of being self sufficient will include a 1 cubic meter / 120,000 watt MSR. What I am looking is a basic block diagram and description of operation. I could make it up based on watching a couple of RUclips videos, but I prefer to have something that is believable to people in the field. Thanks
Does a thorium reactor not create highly toxic waste? A safer reaction that can't be weaponized - both great. But the waste problem remains and if scaled, could prove far worse than uranium reactors, no? Someone help me here.
EagleSlightlyBetter The output is fission products. See video "Nuclear Waste: Fission Products & Transuranics from Thorium & Uranium" for details on that. Essentially we're not dealing with nuclear "waste" in any manner other than storage because we're not separating the various fission products out. There's immense value in there, which can be more easily captured if the fuel/waste are dissolved in salts. That's the first step of pyroprocessing, and MSR are already there. . Even if you're not trying to extract value, and only store FP as waste, sorting them by half life lets us move the highly radioactive stuff together, and move the longer-lived stuff (less radioactive) together. Right now, all mixed together, any sample of waste is the worst of both: longer lived and highly radioactive.
EagleSlightlyBetter There is much more radiation coming out of a coal plant than multiple pressurized water fissile reactors.
The "wastes" are mostly products we can use. We can recycle waste from old nuclear plants for use in a LFTR, and yes. But it is far easier to create a 800 year quarter-life containment vessel than a couple million year quarter-life with conventional waste.
We could save hundreds of thousands of lives with the "waste" products from this reactor.
Indeed, the amazing medical isotopes coupled with certain proteins can be a smart bomb for disbursed cancers like leukemia
CO2 is not a problem, not even close and never will be, but this is still a good idea.
The United Nations Climate Panel disagrees.
Ceramic Coated tubes prevents rust and corrosion
In a nutshell this sort of nuclear plant design of MSRe/LFTR is different in that the PLANT ITSELF IS the processing/reprocessing/waste extraction/energy generation plant all integrated into one relatively elegant & safe self-regulating system. Can anybody make a better one sentence single statement describing this tech?
Captain kirk fought sorensen in the movie when kirk died , this guy is a star trek trekie ..
I wonder if they could use tempered glass as the tubing in the reactor
Forget about this, nobody wants to know about it, not cool enough. Folks are mesmerized by the new iWatch.
Here it comes! Elysium Industries, Ed Pheil, Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor (MCSFR). Look it up on You Tube. Differences to thorium salt reactors? Instead of pebbles, use spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and plutonium. Old style nuclear plants have generated plenty of that. In the US over 700 years reserves.
The real reason the atomic energy did not want this was for ONE reason only, you can not make weapons grade material from Thorium.
25' Wow, to think the little stick in my pants pocket could easily hold everything that was on that pallet.
There are a lot of retired or nearly retired Engineers who would work on this for free, me included. Let's get on with it!
Although highly interesting, the editing gives this documentary a nice ADD feeling... more confusing than understandable for a layman. Mmm.. Explain this to me like I'm a 5 year old who is desperately searching for ANY "out of the box" technology to save our planets environment on short term notice.... (If we are not behind the 8-ball already)
Has there ever been evidence of a individual or clandestine group that created a functioning reactor? (please don't bring up the boyscout)
Shouts out Dick Engel and Syd Ball
When you hear a lot of Crap FUD, you know you are on to something!
Have they overcome the problem of rapid corrosion of the piping? That seems to me to be the tipping point to making it viable-profitable.
Don't run it at 700'C, use a suitable alloy. www.haynesintl.com/alloys/alloy-portfolio_/Corrosion-resistant-Alloys/hastelloy-n-alloy/principle-features Molten Salts are used in Solar Power Towers, it isn't like salt chemistry was put on hold when MSRE was shut down.
The self importance of government leaders have cost their people over and over again. Another example is the government of Canada stopping the development of the AVRO Arrow, a 1960's supersonic long range jet fighter that would have been able to compete favorably with today's jet fighters.
What would happen when they store nucleair waste into empty??? salt mines as they once planned to do in Holland? Do you call it wise, to continue?
Whats up with black boxes that keep appearing on people
Hiding security badges. I could do a somewhat better looking job today (see ORNL MSRW 2019 videos), but is still tedious when lots of people are walking around with exposed badges. My first visit to ORNL so I didn't know how much time it would take to hide them later.
@@gordonmcdowell whats the point of hiding badges when you are interviewing and showing there faces to begin with.
@@bkparque Badge design is not to be shared. Is not the identification of people that's an issue.
@@gordonmcdowell oh ok.. now i get it
bill gates could probably fund a msr all by himself. then he could power microsoft cheaply and safely.
Heck yes
Bill Gates doesn't care about getting cheap and safe nuclear power he's more concerned with population control because he's a eugenicist who thinks only 600 million people should populate this Earth think about that
@@ticklemeandillhurtyou5800 that number only makes sense if you are talking about fossil fuels or renewables for your only source of energy. Nuclear energy grants you a much larger sustainable population.
@@sethapex9670 okay if it's about Resources why is Bill Gates pushing vaccines in Africa that also sterilize people think about that
@@sethapex9670 how much money and power does Bill Gates need?
Problems are bad enough when you have to deal with very hot water and steam ... just think how much fun it will be to try to fix a reactor that has molten salt at 1000 degrees going through it.
it freezes and inert at 440 F.
Much easier to fix something with the pressure of your house's water pipes than something with over 100 atmospheres of pressure and steel walls over 20cm thick to contain it. You need machines just to lift the freaking pipes.
Also, a typical candle has a flame temperature of 1000°C or 1800°F, and considering we can make gloves which are flame resistant that temperature doesn't seem too hard to handle with the proper equippement.
pwww in theory they have it covered, even most you tube commenters who have no background in nuclear science know what will happen. nothing to be worried about :)
ouzomitsos You will never know if you don't try. But they are not even allowed to try.
What's with all the randomly censored bits on people's collars and jackets?
Won't the salts corrode the pipes?
Can be addressed by keeping temperatures below 700C and keeping impurities out of the salt. ORNL MSRW 2020. ruclips.net/video/FxlNe83LBU4/видео.html that is from this playlist ruclips.net/p/PLKfir74hxWhPrTeKhywWc9FcBatidPzDM ...I'm not a chemist just relaying what I've heard.
Ask any of the MSR folks at Oak Ridge & elsewhere about the subject of operational experience(s) & virtually none of them bring up the USS Seawolf or Santa Suzanna or Super Phenix re operating difficulties encountered with the molten salt reactors in our relatively recent technological past. They more-or-less skip over the details regarding the technological difficulties of pumping molten salt in a primary reactor loop or anyplace else for that matter. Bill Gates and others would be better off not messing with the rather explosive technology inherent in MSR's & take another half of a technological step forward with the further development of high temperature gas direct cycle (no steam turbine) reactors which will transfer heat using an inert gas instead of what is potentially a rather deadly explosive combination of chemicals. A "direct cycle" system is actually a gas turbine which would have no trouble operating at or above the proposed operating temps of any of the suggested or proposed MSR's. Remember; what did in Fukushima & TMI were "chemical" reactions; not necessarily nuclear ones that wound up doing unrecoverable damage to those plants. The field of experience is wide open to Direct Cycle Gas-Cooled Reactors since all emphasis on the technologies involved were primarily being promoted by General Atomics of San Diego, CA; an organization who encountered financial & other operating difficulties bring their conceptual High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor at Fort St. Vrain into existence back during the 1970's & began producing drone aircraft instead.
If you'd like to get involved in my project below you can find me on (you know where) and give me a friend request with possible private note. The image you want to fine tune to is an ethereal shot of me with multiple colored lasers lighting up my face that differentiates me from others that share my name. :-)
We'll go with the press releases as well to expose the public as much as we can this vital power source.
Why isn't anyone talking about the global economic impact regarding international political affairs?
If the United States harnesses this energy source will they feel vulnerable to catastrophic consequences from their enemies who will still have Nuclear weapons?
This will flip the economy as we know it, whether its for good or bad.
You can always put more money on it and speed it up. Everything is for sale in America.
This is the answer to our energy/environmental problems. The only country with an emission-free energy grid is France and they did it with nuclear!
Didn't one of the worst reactor failures happen in a liquid sodium reactor in Texas? The sodium clogged the cooling system
It makes me pretty angry that we've just sat on this technology for 70yrs.
20:47 Nixon even brags about how uneducated he is. This is despicable.
At the bare minimum he should have advisors that explain it to him before he speaks about it.
If he can't even grasp the concepts with all the advisors explaining it to him, he has no place near the decision making process.
its sad that something like this was held back
This has easily cost us as a WORLD, we could easily be 100 years ahead of where we are now (technology wise)
Safer, simple, usable technology that would have let us power cities and vehicles. Eliminate problems with energry requirements for space travel. Not to mention the storage of radio active wastes.
And to think this was shelved during the nixon administration.
Why is everyone wearing SanDisk sansa clips?
hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/10/01/060205/rockbox--refurbished-mp3-players--crowdsourced-audio-capture ...they were once super-cheap hardware. Not cheap any more, but they still do run RockBox and capture audio reliably. To this day I keep buying cheap MP3 recorders from China to see how they perform, and they fail to be as useful as these super-old Clip+ devices.
The political establishment of the 1970s favoured funding the Argonne laboratory over the Oak Ridge laboratory. Is this what Americans call: "Pork barrel politics" ? And which politicians were the beneficiaries? And how did they benefit?
Given the unproductive results from liquid sodium reactors in the next 40 years, it was a terrible decision.
The big issue here is the control of future energy needs. The fossil fuel community has trillions of dollars invested in continued use of coal, oil and natural gas. And they want their financial interests to stay on the track we are on. On the economic side, reduced cost of energy such as electricity would cause an great increase in economic growth. China and India are right now developing these reactors. Can you imagine the reduced cost of products made in China and India if energy costs were drastically reduced? If things don't change here in the US, we will be buying these reactors from them, and we will be trying to keep our struggling economy going under. Right today, Saudi Arabia has dropped the price of oil in an attempt to put the US oil producers out of business.
China and Indonesia are ahead of the US in Generation 4, Next Generation 4 Reactors. Using US research, technologies and designs. China may have a prototype, MSR, Molten Salt Reactor running next year. China has a Gas-Cooled, Pebble Bed Reactor prototype running now. And they are developing a US Terrapower Traveling Wave Reactor, TWR. China has also run plasma in a research FUSION reactor at twice the temperature of the sun for 100 seconds. The ITER international FUSION reactor in France will be ready by 2025 and has cost over 10 billion so far. Then they plan to build an even larger reactor. for another 10 years. Fusion may be too expensive to build. But fuel is cheap. India has lots of Thorium and wants Sodium Cooled Fast reactors. MSR reactors may be a better option. Sodium Fast Reactors have been very difficult to run. Most countries gave up on Fast Sodium Reactors.
25:38 That lady sounds passionately disinterested in what he's talking about
Oh the wise governments in their eternal wisdom always fuck shit up
Why the fuck isn't Elon Musk getting in on this shit if it's this feasible?
sinephase The Movie has been KickStarted, how about KickStarting the entire reactor design?! Love this shit.
www.nirs.org/factsheets/thoriumbackersoverstatefacesheet.pdf Thorium Reactors: Their Backers Overstate the Benefits
Bronner33 This report is full of unsupported statements, many of these have been answered in the companion video /watch?v=qLk46BZfEMs. U-233 emits more gamma radiation, therefore military guys did not like the idea of using it for the weapons. For that reason they did not want to continue investing in it. Why is it cited as a problem for civilian energy production? None of these so called "problems" are mentioned on the Molten_salt_reactor Wikipedia page.
Thanks for your interest, sir.
Elon Musk can't do everything.
Elon Musk should spear head this. with extremely cheap electricity, everyone will want a Tesla.
That is the very direction I'm personally taking it. You need someone like EM who is already headed in this direction who has the resources and the means to make this a reality. You should know that Thorium Canada is currently building LFTR's for none other than... China
😮😮😢😢😢😢😢😢😅😮😅😮😅😮😅😮😅😮😮😢😮😅😮😅😮😮😅😮😅😮😅😮😮😅😮😅😮😅😮😅😮😮😮😅😮😮😅😮😅@@seanbond8075
I recently found out hot melted salts turn stainless steel into rubbish. so best o luck with MSR.
Extra chromium and silicon in stainless steel pipes can extend their life vastly.
the THTR-300 in Hamm-Uetrop Germany was 1988 shut down because of immense agressive radioation the radiation level is so high that it will be dismateled maybe in 2027 - now in Germany are build windmiles and theire are a lot of reasons why not using Thorium reactors !
was it a MSR?
WookieeMonster i know what a MSR is. i'm asking xparade0de if the THTR-300 was a MSR. according to wiki, it appears not.
dumontgo Theire have been 2 Reactors - 1 for making energy and a small one in a research center. The last one has burned down (outside the building) with colored plasma. Wikipedi* pages are often good for cleaning the a** when going to the toilet.
xparade0de i noticed you still didn't answer my question. did the THTR-300 use molten salt?
dumontgo maybe - good luck at searching for more informations
Ok guys you got all the science right, but what's lacking is political will.
I'm not going to say it, but you know what I want to say...
it should be used for flights to other planets - planes and other stuff can be power with tripple oder quad junction solar cells - or hydrogen made with energy from it - for that we already have a huge reactor called the sun ! - for every other (burning) of rare materials future generations will blame us
We have enough damn nuclear weapons.
This is the real reason for the fast breeder in the first place. Plutonium.