No graphite moderator, leveraging existing nuclear qualified building methods/materials, ability to leave the fission products in solution longer and fuel flexibility overcome the drawbacks of required higher fuel loads and fast-spectrum characteristics. This one has my vote. This really makes sense.
Yeah, the absence of a graphite moderator is a biggie. In addition to improving neutronics and making sure you have a negative temperature coefficient, the graphite needs replacing every 4 years. And it becomes radioactive waste. Saving big $$$.
@Stonehawk @gordonmcdowell I'm already a patreon of the Thorium remix. Gordon, could you perhaps make it possible to donate on a monthly basis as well? As I understand it, it is not possible through the Thorium Remix patreon. Perhaps just make a "Gordon McDowell - just awesome stuff in general" patreon?
What is very encouraging is the quality of engineering talent that is being applied to solving the challenge of building high temperature, low pressure, passively safe nuclear power generation. I hope we can get to deployed utility-scale quickly enough to make a meaningful and timely difference to reducing CO2 emissions.
I am a generally competent and technical fellow with a bachelor's degree in computer science. I have what I'd call a moderately advanced layman's knowledge of nuclear power, much of it stemming from my former interest in the LFTR is the savior of nuclear power. I am now convinced that your MCSFR is the best reactor. I'd like to learn more, and perhaps get a degree in nuclear engineering, with the knowledge and skills oriented towards the MCSFR. I am looking for recommendations on papers, books, and university programs (University of Lowell, perhaps?).
Just wanted to point out something in terms that the average person would understand. When Ed ells us that he could use the same reactor vessel for 50MW up to 2000MW, that tells you what you could replace with such a reactor (or two) Right now, the Colorado River is not keeping up with demand in the southwestern USA. Too many people are using too much water. Glen Canyon Dam (which created Lake Powell) is currently not putting out anywhere near its nameplate capacity because of the low water levels, however, it could be replaced entirely with one single fast spectrum MCSR. Hoover Dam, the larger of the two, which is also well below its nameplate capacity, could be replaced by two of these. Glen Canyon Dam could be removed entirely to restore the natural riparian ecosystem. Just take a look at some of the pictures out there before Glen Canyon was flooded, and you'll see what a loss it was. People don't associated nuclear with green movements, but being able to rip out a dam and restore the natural flow of the Colorado (oh, and stop the evaporation loss of 380,000 acre-feet of water a year) sure sounds green to me. Especially when the power plant that replaces it would emit no carbon, NOx, methane, etc AND could run on the waste from the Palo Verde LWRs
@@MrRolnicek Depends on the dam. Being able to store water is a good thing. Flood control is another benefit. However, in my example of Glen canyon Dam vs. Hoover Dam, there are some geological differences. Mainly in the type of rock and the physical volume of the lakes. Lake Mead sits primarily over basalt which is far less porous than the sandstone under Lake Powell. Lake Powell loses considerable water volume to bank seepage. Some estimates place the seepage and evaporation losses high enough to supply Los Angeles. Lake Powell has greater surface area, which leads to greater evaporation losses. Lake Mead physically holds more water (when full) and would lose less of it each year, than both lakes combined. The need for flood control and water storage could be satisfied by one larger lake. The few small communities that rely on Lake Powell, could be served by a smaller dam to create a storage reservoir while still allowing plenty of water past Glen Canyon Dam. And using a couple molten salt fast reactors in place of the Glen Canyon Dam powerplant, would allow Arizona to eliminate the need to store waste at the Palo Verde Nuclear Powerplant while still providing all the electricity its northern cities require.
@@DriveCarToBar I meant it more in a general sense. But more power is always good and frankly Elysium is currently my personal favorite. I do hope we'll go for clean energy soon even if it isn't Elysium that gets us there. Even current generation lightwater is frankly cleaner and safer than anything else out there. (Except hydropower I guess that should be cleaner, right?)
@@MrRolnicek I too like Elysium and their molten salt fast reactor. For me, its a bit of a toss-up as to which I'd like to see developed first. There are some difficulties with fuel salt chemistries, but now that the NRC has made liquid fueled reactors a real possibility, development should proceed more quickly. The Liquid Metal Cooled Fast Breeders like the IFR developed at Argonne have the most actual real-world development and a reprocessing system that is ready to go right now. GE/Hitachi already has the plant designs based on Argonne's research and development. Russia already operates Sodium cooled fast breeders in commercial settings. ANd because both the IFR and MSFR are fast reactors, they can gobble up waste fuel. Which, to me, is the key selling point. It cleans up the mess from 60 years of water reactor operations AND provides enough clean energy to run modern civilization.
Regardless of your opinion on the Fast vs. Thermal debate, we can definitely agree that a molten salt reactor is THE ideal medium for operating at a fast spectrum.
If you can get past the whole Polonium thing, lead is such a superior liquid metal coolant that the only reason why sodium is even still considered is due to inertia and all the prior work done in producing double walled heat exchangers, MOX fuel campaigns that mitigate against positive void and Russian advances in their BN-x00 series.
Lead is harder to pump and has a much poorer heat capacity, but the heat capacity issue is probably counteracted by the lack of a double walled heat exchanger.
MonMalthias Lower Pb operating temperature vs sodium, and higher m.p. (freezing) are the Achilles heal of Pb/ PbBi, not Po, in my book. Of course Na is not that much higher temperature, limited by fuel or clad interaction concerns.
Why use a coolant that is reactive to water and air? Shit happens. Like earthquakes and tsunamis. Also terrorism. Molten salt can handle all these contingencies.
That was extremely interesting to listen to. His reactor design seems very flexible for the number of fuels that can fission in the salt blanket. The proliferation risk is really the only potential opposition left to an MSR as they already are passively safe - his system seems to have this issue completed solved. Will be seeking out more of his videos. Thanks for the compilation 👍🏻
A simple, safe, inexpensive way to turn "spent" (wasted) PWR fuel into new MSR fuel, little or no reprocessing needed to burn pretty much all the actinides in that inexpensive fuel, a 40-year reactor life without having to diddle with moderators every four or seven years, all of the safety advantages of MSRs, easy safe constant refueling, and probably the least expensive fission power possible? Wish I had a billion bucks to invest.
What I liked about David LeBlanc's reactor was the fact that he had carefully looked at bringing down cost and not straying too far from technology that was known to regulators. It seems that Ed Pheil did the same but just better. Still David has come farther in the developement. Gordon, do you know in which phase Ed Pheil is in? And where does he want to build the reactor?
Bringing down cost is very important if there is to be a new reactor generation. But the Chinese are not looking at cost like the west do, They have a massive program and will beat us. But at least someone is trying to give them a good run for their money
I am a fan of the MCSFR concept and have a lot of respect for Ed Pheil. I don't know why Elisium and Exodys have not been more successful. The oil lobbyists and their enablers in our government have sabotaged the SMR industry since the '50s, for one thing. All electrical power could be generated by small nuclear reactors widely distributed through a de-centralized grid (think EMP) throughout the world (thousands), reducing the need for fossil fuels by two-thirds. Could have happened a long time ago. We have had SMRs in active use by the military since the early '60s and could have been deployed them from that time on if wanted. Electrical power (lack of) is another method of CONTROL of the world population. IMO, SMRs should be manufactured in volume for electrical generation throughout the world, conserving fossil fuels for internal combustion engines, chemical processes, and fertilizer. Were this plan to be implemented the world economy would explode overnight. (However, the power of politicians would suffer. Prosperity is the enemy of the political cabal.)
I think the future will have both fast MSRs and thermal MSBRs. Fast spectrum is mostly ignored by MSR community, but Ed Pheil's strategy of a "near term" fast solution makes a lot of sense.
COMponents, I loved it. That guy had a lot of great talking points, and also what an excellent speaker. Thank you for the video Gordon, that was really put together well.
Wish you all the best on your endeavor Ed Pheil. Molten salts have so much potential when it comes to nuclear designs, either for fast, or thermal spectrum, so lets see these developments bare fruit and see a renaissance of new cheap nuclear power.
I especially like the concerns about, in a thermal spectrum, protactinium separation... I'm afraid of this about LFTR. 28:05 to almost 30 minutes into this speech.
Yes that is an issue, if you put Thorium in any reactor you have to protect the Protactinum for a year after discharge. No need to use Thorium for now, we have sooo much LWR "spent fuel" to get rid of anyway.
(28:24) I love Ed, and I think he might have the edge when it comes to being the first to commercialize a working MSR. However, at this point, while he's correct that you can get around the proliferation barrier of U-232 by allowing your Protactinium to decay in batches, this still ignores the fact that the biggest obstacle to nuclear proliferation in thermal spectrum reactors is their absolutely anemic breeding ratios. If you operate your reactor on a continuous process, dumping all Protactinium into a big tank to decay to Uranium, you'd never be able to separate the U-232 from the U-233 as you'd always be adding new protactinium 232, and continuing to produce new U-232. You'd have to operate in batches, say, isolating all the protactinium produced over a given day, allowing all the possible protactinium 232 in that day's batch to decay to U-232, leaving you with pure protactinium 233 after a number of days, which would decay into almost pure U-233. However, because of the piss-poor breeding ratios of thermal spectrum reactors, if you were then to take all of that "pure" U-233 out of the reactor process so that you could make a bomb out of it, you're keeping that fuel from being fed back into the reactor. Doing this reduces the fuel density in the reactor, driving it into a sub-critical state, and effectively kills the reactor, at least until you put almost all of your "bomb material" back into the reactor. It's the low breeding ratios of thermal spectrum reactors, not necessarily the production of U-232, which is the best barrier to proliferation. Still, setting up a thorium breeder so that your protactinium decayed in batches should be a dead give away that you're up to something shady, as there's no "non-shady" reason to do this. Just my 2 cents. Be that as it may, I'd say Ed was still doing God's work, if I wasn't a deist, and he definitely frames a solid argument for his molten chloride fast reactor. He's certainly won a lot of fans based on the comments in various videos.
A stupidly easy way to use this reactor as a breeder for supergrade plutonium would be to flow 238UF6 through an area surrounding the core region where the neutron field is more thermal. The Pu would separate out as a solid and the UF6 left over would recirculate. A similar technique could be used for making tritium. It's not all bad though, especially as plutonium 239 would be the best start up isotope for these reactors.
Moltex Energy says that pumped fuel, while allowing fuel purification (or full reprocessing), raises problems of leaks and of noble metals fission products deposition into pumps, causing them to fail. How can Elysium obviate to these problems?
Add extra chlorine to the mix over time. This would keep the noble metals in solution. Also a continuous filtration mechanism that causes the rhodium and other noble metals to stick to it. Then harvest it periodically. After aging for a decade the rhodium and other noble metals can be chemically separated from the radioactive waste.
What a Great Presentation! The data density is so high! The man has an answer for everything, and in new situations has the capability to provide plans and solutions!
Ooo, I'm liking this approach! Question about chlorine isotope separation though. My understanding was that when Cl-35 absorbs a neutron, it will mostly decay to argon, but a small fraction will decay into sulfur. Cl-37 avoids this, hence I thought isotope separation was necessary in a chloride salt reactor -- to avoid corrosion of the reactor materials. Is sulfur not the issue I thought it was? I think the nickel in hastelloy-N was particularly vulnerable to sulfur corrosion, but perhaps the materials you intend to use aren't so vulnerable?
No, transmution will absolutely be a source of corrosion. This is in addition to the fact that the lewis acid-base balance in chloride salts does not have an analog to the BeF2 (4-) complex ion of fluoride salts. Gettering systems will have to operate at high fidelity to manage transmutation products that can catalyze corrosion continually. Excellent question!
Good info. Material and fabrication costs would be more, but I wonder if molybdenum alloys like TZM would be the ideal material for the reactor and first-loop plumbing. In addition to higher temperature limits with Mo, conceivably any sulfur produced would react with the surface to make MoS2, which is fairly tough and inert. I have no idea if that holds up in a molten chloride environment, though. The titanium and zirconium tended to leach out of TZM in molten fluoride test baths, but I wonder if that remains true with molten chlorides.
The sulfur would combine with technetium but sulfur plus chlorine would be very aggressive. Also other fission products would combine with sulfur to form extremely insoluble sulfides. It would need some method of filtering these out before hitting the heat exchanger. Strontium and barium sulfides would be extremely problematic.
OKAY! Game Over guys, they just found the PERFECT recipe... I'm sorry people, but this sounds MUCH better than other MSRs. Fluorine's bad, it's a nuclear bomb feedstock. LONG LIVE Beryllium !
Can someone please explain how you control the power of the reaction during shutdown? Is there something special about the geometry of the drain tanks? When the molten salt fuel is in the reactor vessel itself, is the power controlled purely the negative temperature coefficient or is it necessary to use control rods?
Your first "guess" is the correct one. The geometry of the drain tank makes criticality impossible. As to your control rod question, No, no control rods are necessary.
Support the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor Act of 2022. I was introduced into the Senate in early June 2022 by Tommy Tuberville, R Alabama. This is NOT a partisan dream, it is a bipartisan reality that must be seized upon. Bravo Elysium!
I love the "just a can" method. No graphite complications. I hope they make a breeder version. Edit: If the breeding ratio is 99.3% then it can self sustain on natural uranium due to what little fissiles it has. More expensive (and secure) net breeders can make the startup material if we need it.
This IS a breeder concept. It only works as a breeder. Keep in mind that the neutron flux has to be much higher because of reduced cross-section. "Just-a-can" could do better with neutron reflection but that might complicate the can metallurgy.
I thought it needed a breeding blanket, or it would be really difficult to breed net fuel. All the better being a single fluid reactor with simplified chemistry, unlike the single-fluid thermal thorium MSR. Simply by surrounding the core with lead or tungsten will reflect some neutrons.
@@leerman22 Yeah, but reflecting neutrons will also increase the critically of the reactor resulting in flow of some of the core into the drain tank, resulting in less breeding.
Truly confidence inspiring. It only comes from 32 years of experience at the highest level. He provided answers to pretty much most of my questions about minutia of different MSR concepts. I hope, I am not biased because of my own background. But his really seems be the most feasible and suitable option for an application I have been thinking.
Some questions: What happens if... You're running your standard reactor with 1 heat exchanger (1/6 output power) and the circulating pump fails. with 6 heat exchangers (full power) and all circulating pumps fail. What automatic systems are required to contain the situation? What operator intervention is required to contain the situation?
Gordon: Very good Video, Thanks. I like all the technical details. I miss details about safe control of fast reactors and the fissile doubling times Elysium expect. And how does fast molten salt reactors compare to solid fuel fast reactors?
Thomas Jam Pedersen No reprocessing separations, don't need to remove all the fission products to periodically remanufacture the solid fuel, and the associated proliferation concerns, one chemical step to convert SNF/Pu to fuel vs pyro-processing at 7, and PUREX (France, Japan, UK, Russia) with hundreds, so much, much lower cost. We are testing this conversion (not reprocessing, since there is no separations) at INL & with ANL, as we speak.
The top questions I get from the Anti crowd is "what about the waste". I suspect that most of them will never be convinced but for some saying that proposed reactors are intended to reduce waste. may help the popular acceptance battle.
Eukatae The Elysium reactor only removes fission products that decay to background levels in about 300 years. The long lived actinides people worry about remain in the reactor. This is not a solid fueled reactor that requires re processing, separations, and fuel remanufactured every X years. The actinides stay in the reactor. Because we use chloride salts, we can remove fission products only. You can't do that with fluoride salts without doing extensive separations, including actinides. Chlorides and liquid fuel are the key. Also, because we don't remove actinides there are no proliferation concerns and the fusion products coukd be mined for useful medical isotopes, etc. The zirconium cladding we extract the fuel out of is recycled. The chlorine is also recycled. The fission product waste is kept as a salt, so it will decay longer and the higher temperature the easier it is to passively cool and the smaller the waste package. We dont need millennial storage facilities for Elysium waste. Also, we only produce 1 tonne/year of fission products and we don't throw away the other 96+% of the unused fuel, cladding, and transuranics that aren't used.
Radioactivity is a bit more complicated than that. The longer something takes to decay the less radioactive it is. Something that has a half life of 10 minutes is really hot, something that has a half life of 10k years, you could eat it.
I agree, most of the anti crowd will not be convinced. I have observed that they tend to be so entrenched in their beliefs that anything opposing them is considered heresy, and any possible solutions are outright dismissed. Getting the general public on-board is going to be the biggest battle, fear is more powerful than the truth.
Eukatae - It's a bit too much of a generalization to say something with a very long half life could be safely eaten. The radiation likely wouldn't do any serious damage, but metal poisoning from, for example, uranium, would.
Forgot to emphasize that Sulfer-36 will attack Hastelloy-N, which precludes using it in a conventional Molten Salt Reactor, because the NRC will not accept the use of chlorides when this deficiency is not mitigated.
One more point: When Hastelloy-N is attacked by Chlorine-36 atom within a Lithium or Beryllium molecule, there is a slight chance of a chlorine-iron fire erupting inside the tubing at these very high salt temperatures. This fire is very strongly exothermic, and will easily exceed the Hastelloy-N working temperature range of 704 to 871 degrees. The hot working range of the annealing process is 871 to 1177 deg. C, wherein a tubing temperature rise will cause structural failure, spreading liquid core material as far as it can flow. Hastelloy-N is 4% Fe and chlorine-iron fire is a well known danger in chemical plants using flowing chlorides in iron alloys, and are considered a serious risk necessitating special safety designs to preclude these exothermic fires. The NRC will want to see designs to mitigate these fires.
In a major earthquake like disaster, molten salt will likely drain into the drain tank through the freeze plug. What if the drained molten salt come into contact with ground water that could also come into a cracked drain tank? Ground water is still going into the reactor building of Fukushima and comes out contaminated. It was reported that when molten salt (NaCl2) met water, the flash steam of water caused a violent explosion which is a pure physical and not chemical response. It is unclear whether such an explosion has the potential to damage the drain tank further or even the reactor itself, or to spread the radioactive molten salt everywhere. I also assume while some molten salts interact so violently with water, not all molten salts do. High temperature is a factor, but not the only factor. Here is a related second question: Once molten salt flows into the drain tank and reduces its ability to go critical, how long would it take the salt to cool down enough to eliminate the chance of causing an explosion with water?
The presentation makes Chloride salt reaktors much more sensable than the hyped Fluoride salt reaktor in many ways... Best story I heard in years and ofcourse learned some stuff.
This is also the approach taken by TerraPower. As counter-point Kirk argues Fluoride Chemistry is more favourable to a Fluorination approach Flibe Energy received DOE funding to investigate (Flibe's 2nd of 3 DOE grants since 2018): ruclips.net/video/2U9HVIFt2GE/видео.html
It may be that I missed it. When he talked about a blanket separating the two fluids, did he cover the problem of neutron degradation of the blanket? What is the solution for that?
There's a lot of information in this video; I will have to watch it again. I am still a LFTR fan, but I'm kind of leery of arguing the relative merits because we NEED Dr. Pheil's reactor to get rid of nuclear explosives. Notice how the antinuclear people never mention nuclear explosives; it's all "nuclear waste". This is a confusion tactic, but mostly it's because they don't want to take on the Military Industrial Complex. The main problem (as I see it) is separating the neptunium from the uranium of a LFTR so that it can be burned in Dr. Pheil's reactor. I think this can be done. I had a comment exchange with gordonmcdowell on another video and he took an "either/or" approach rather than "both". I feel this is in error. Another point of contention is that he feels that particle accelerators are too expensive; an accelerator for university use costs about $6 million (source: IAEA News). This is not too expensive considering the safety and ease of operation factors in an accelerator driven reactor. I'm for spending whatever it takes to solve problems. If Congress takes the "either/or" approach then Dr. Pheil's reactor wins because it's an emergency to destroy nuclear explosives. The LFTR is the best approach to climate change, in my opinion.
@@gordonmcdowell I found out today that your list of replies to videos on RUclips only goes back a month; that exchange was about Pu-240. So I thought about it. I believe what you are referring to are in the videos themselves rather than your comments, so chalk this up as an error, and for that I apologize.
What radioactive gasses? Fission is atoms splitting into smaller atoms and releasing neutrons as a result. The neutrons are captured by shielding which heats up as a result. The heat is used for industrial processes or converted to electricity. Where are these radioactive gasses you speak of?
They can be stored in cylinders. The main ones are xenon krypton and iodine. The krypton decays to rubidium and the xenon decays to nonradioactive cesium. The iodine would likely remain in the melt as iodide rather than vaporizing off. The xenon half life is short enough that there won't be much of it to accumulate. Krypton 85 is the one that would build up.
Just curious, does anyone of you know why Ed decided to increase reactor outlet-temp from 600-650 °C at this point to 750 °C in more recent talks he gave ?
No, It's not by using new materials. He figured out that just placing very thin shielding on the inside of the can. This shielding itself is not load bearing, so it shouldn't deform at higher temperatures. It's purpose if to divert the "cold" salt returning from the heat exchangers so that only this colder salt contacts the containment vessel. Hope I've explained this semi-coherently.
@@jimtrowbridge3465 is that shielding envisaged to be periodically replaced ? Anyway, very interesting, the more I learn about the technology, the more I realize it' s an excellent, very praticable idea. BTW, any updates about the project (I mean, both this MCSFR and Moltex' s) ?
DU is depleted uranium. Natural uranium has about 0.72% U235. To make fuel at 3.5-5% enriched they take about half of the U235 out of the natural uranium leaving about 0.35% U235. Yes, it is the same thing they used to use in artillery bullets. Both natural and depleted uranium are inert unless put in a very specific configuration in a reactor. All reactors convert some of the U238 to Pu239 and fission it as part of their energy. Fast Reactors convert more, so use more of tghe fuel. The Elysium reactor can consume virtually all of both forms of natural uranium and therefore all of the depleted uranium as well. But, it is more important to burn the stuff that was slightly started to be used in water reactors, spent nuclear fuel.
Ed Pheil thank you, sir, for the response. You and others like you are truly the path forward to energy independence. Unfortunately you have tough hill to climb not only politically/regulatory but with general public. I wish you luck in your project. To the others who responded that you as well. I love the Th community because of responses like these. I have never had anyone speak down to me as I absolutely struggle to understand this. I am a Th, nuclear anything, ww2 50s/60s aviation junkie and enjoy interacting with so many intelligent people. Thanks again.
Yes, he's correct about DU. DU is a problem for a few reasons: 1: It's chemically toxic (worse than lead) and when used as a tank killer, it burns fiercely after penetration, covering everything in uranium dioxide dust. That in turn means that a warzone is a problem for toxic cleanup. Crop fields are bad enough but the bigger issue is when you go to Iraq and see kids and scrap metal merchants climbing all over dead tanks 2: It's a critical component of tactical "hydrogen bombs". The casings are made of the stuff and it's what drives the enhanced yield (U238 isn't as radioactive as U235, but if you feed it radiation from a fusion reaction it gives an enhanced fission reaction) 3: When you enrich natural uranium to 3% for standard PWR/BWR reactors, you're throwing out just shy of 90% of the original metal. Higher enrichment levels (20%, 40%, etc) rapidly start closing on 99%, 99.9%, etc wastage - and that means there's a hell of a lot of chemically toxic DU sitting around looking for a use - and due to #1 and #2 above, you _really_ don't want that as it encourages both military use and nuclear weapons proliferation. The primary reason for using thorium over uranium in a molten salt reactor (either type) is that thorium is at least 10 times more readily available than uranium - it's a nuisance byproduct of rare earth mining and is actually the part which makes rare earth mining so expensive in the USA and Europe, as the slight radioactivity means mine operators have to "safely" dispose of it. Essentially, thorium is currently a worthless waste product of existing processes, whilst uranium is quite expensive to start with and requires insanely expensive processing to become useful for energy purposes. In a Thorium economy, all those rare rarth mines would probably become Thorium mines with rare earths as a side product and that radically changes the economics of things like the costs of high strength magnets, etc. Additionally, because a Thorium reactor of either type will produce _shitloads_ of helium and xenon, the economics of things based around these gasses changes - imagine MRI units being 1% of the cost to build and run that they are now as a for-instance, or airships being economically feasible - and that's just the stuff that's obvious - what happens when products become available is that technology that most of us can't even think of becomes practical. (one example from Star Trek: Communicators were essentially Walkie Talkies even into TNG and Tricorders were pretty chunky limited things. Our modern smartphones would be regarded as unfeasiable science fiction if transported 40 years ago.)
Hello Ed, I have a couple questions. Since what you propose is a fast-spectrum reactor using molten salt, what sort of precautions will be needed to prevent criticality in the event that the fuel salt comes into contact with a moderator in an accident scenario? I assume this is largely being done because it designed to be operated in a "burner" configuration where fissile composition is far less than a fast-spectrum "breeder" MSR configuration. How does addressing this technical challenge compare to thermal fluoride-based thorium-based designs?
A design such as this needs the fuel inside a reflector and compact. Reflector on just one side of a puddle won't work. I suppose if someone dumped charcoal briquettes on the containment floor, made a dam to prevent the salt from spreading out, and then breached the core they could cause an issue. Depending on the moderator fraction, you can go critical with as little as 1/4 the concentration. But to do that you need a low absorption moderator. Remember, the salt is denser than water, so you can't use water as anything but a fairly absorbent reflector in an accident. It is also denser than carbon.
Ok, so they are going for a very low fissile load to mitigate this issue and are accepting the effects on neutron economy. Making this of comparable risk to thermal MSR designs with similar fissile concentrations.
Elysium does not allow moderator close to the fuel, no water/people, no pump cooling water or oil, no graphite, no concrete. There are at least two barriers to moderator incursion. Dump tanks are multiple long narrow separated, poison & void (leakage) separated cylinders.
Fast chloride salt reactors have a much more clearly negative temperature and void coefficient than a thermal MSR with LEU. MSRE HEU and LEU MSR have more fuel absorber to fissile ratio, so the ratio of pushing fissile out (negative) to pushing fertile U238 "poison/absorber out (positive) is harder to show for all operating conditions, times in life (Fission products, graphite swelling/shrinking), casualties is very hard. EVOL studied this extensively and moved away from graphite moderation to an intermediate spectrum. No one else has published or stated that such studies have been done for LEU Fluoride graphite. Moving away from LiF-2BeF2 is more absorptive and similarly more positive trend.
By efficiency, what do you mean? Fissile use? You can't just "do an experiment" - because the configurations are completely different. The shape and coolant that makes a fast reactor will not make a thermal reactor, and vice versa. Fast breeder reactors have been demonstrated in solid fuel multiple times. Thermal efficiency is mostly determined by choice of coolant and power cycle. If you go water, you really can't take it much higher than 45%.
Interesting. A few years back, I made the same point to Robert Hargraves about the U233 stream in LFTR's fuel processing being a proliferation concern, only to have him try to browbeat me down with bucketloads of smarm and an oblique answer. Heartening to know I'm not the only one who had that thought.
Separated fissiles are always an issue regarding proliferation. The issue is not whether a material is proliferable or whether it is not; but whether the will and means exists to beat a plowshare into sword. So far, every single new atomic weapon nation has done so on the back of clandestine heavy water (or graphite) piles and PUREX, or clandestine diversion of centrifuged U-235. Neither process requires a civilian power reactor, and even high school students can perform the necessary refinement and separation steps needed to separate fissiles. U-233 introduces a new dimension to this but just as, say, the US possesses U-233, it also does not use U-233 for weapons material. The ability to miniaturise weapons with Pu-239 is too great an advantage. Proliferation is not a test of technologies, but of institutions, people, and expertise. To shun the use of a reactor just because it _might_ have a conceivable way from which a reactor could be used to produce weapons material is a failure not of the technology, but of the safeguards and the people in its place. This is not to say that technology does not have a place in combating proliferation. I have a lot of time for that argument. But knowledge of how fission works and graduate degree chemistry along with access to certain, select organic solvents and catalysts, is all that is required for the production of nuclear weapons. Hell, you can find entire books on how to design bomb pits, explosive lenses, and tritium boosters. What keeps everyone and their mother from packing atomic heat is that the chemicals are tightly controlled, there are inspectors in countries acceding to the NPT, and even materials like nuclear grade graphite or heavy water are closely monitored. Again: institutions, treaties. They are only as powerful as the people that accept its tenets. LFTR could potentially produce weapons grade material. So too, could an LWR operating on very short irradiation cycles, a medical isotope production reactor, a graphite pile, and a centrifuge cascade. What stops that from happening is no inherent technology barrier, but people putting their foot down and saying, "not one step back."
FUCK YES. this is probably the most exciting technology in development, and even more exciting than fusion because this fission technology is a done deal. we just need to keep building it. I'm so glad I'll likely live to see the revolution this stuff will cause. Too bad we aren't very smart as a culture, so fission is demonized... pure insanity. Fission needs a global PR campaign, so we can flood the research with money and make these reactors commercial in like 5 years.
I'm convinced that the major funder of the antinuclear movement is the fossil fuel industry. They realize that the whole renewable energy movement won't work. But they are afraid that nukes will displace a lot of fossil fuels.
Sorenson said the U233 is not suitable for bombs. it's too radioactive so fries the bomb controls and any workers getting too close. What do I know - just asking?
U232 contamination in the U233 is the reason for this. Not the U233 itself. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233#232U_impurity ...regardless U233 is still considered a proliferation concern. That's not Ed or Kirks call... that's just the way IAEA classifies these materials. LFTR would need counter-proliferation measures to address this. Not likely anyone would "steal" fissile from an operating nuclear reactor, but such measures will be required so such measures will be designed.
Just as a note, supercritical C02 is being proven on a few solar-molten salt storage facilities. There may also be a push for it from coal in order to get something remotely competitive of natural gas in a combined cycle.
@@robertbrandywine Look up supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle. The CO2 is the working fluid, instead of using water/steam. The turbines used in this are remarkably small compared to the steam/water cycle.
I do not understand how Ed Thiel can claim that CHLORIDES have achieved fuel qualification in the molten salt eutectic mixture. It is true that chlorides melt at lower temperatures in the melt. Ed talks about Chlorine-35 and Chlorine-37, ignoring the fact that the problem is that when chlorides are irradiated, Chlorine-36 is formed, which transmutes to Sulfer-36, a strong corrosive to many types of tubing, and radioactive with a half-life of 100 days; and Argon-36 is also formed, which is stable, but the gas must be extracted with off-gas systems. Chlorine-36 is also a long-lived radioactive waste with a half-life of over 300,000 years. He doesn't seem to address these problems.
After investigating a bit, my educated guess is: The sulfur isotope would not be significantly corrosive in this context since there is no water in the reactor core and no corrosive sulfur compounds like H2S would be produced in sufficient amounts. The long half-life of Cl-36 should also mean that very little of its decay products would be generated over the lifetime of the reactor, which are 98% Ar-36 and only 2% S-36 according to Wikipedia. S-36 may also be transmuted to the stable S-37, though one would have to check how much of this transmutation could occur with the fast neutrons in this design.
I have high hopes for aneutronic fusion. But even if TAE can make proton-boron-11 work, even if Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (or one of another eight (?) outfits around the world working in it) can make the Dense Plasma Focus work as a fusion engine for ten cents per watt capacity, I still think we need to build enough molten salt fast reactors to burn up our 84,000 tons of "spent" reactor fuel, instead of leaving that hot mess, too, for the great-great-greats to deal with.
The ability to make heat would be fantastic. There are so many thousands of applications for heat only. They use enormous quantities of natural gas to make hot water for the oil sands industry. Solution minning in the potash industry requires enormous quantities of hot water.
Gary, the whole idea is to make petroleum and tar sands and all the damage exploiting them does obsolete, anyway. Are you not paying attention, or are you a climate change denier?
Both chloride and fluoride are salts, just with different chemistry. The big difference is this is a fast neutron reactor, not thermal. This allows this reactor to "burn" all fissile and fertile fuels, yes including thorium.
Anybody help me to study valves and instructions used in this plant and also pure lectures on safety systems like digital plant protection or Engineering safety features etc
What happened to Elysium Industries and their chloride salt reactor? Their homepage is dead. So promising and then nothing. Was their project stamped as classified and then shut down or what?
Ed Pheil closed it down and started a new company called EXODYS ENERGY. I don't really know why as he blocked me on twitter when I suggested he should bounce his tweets of someone before posting them.
What sort of materials that are nuclear qualified can even withstand 1300 degrees Celsius? Tungsten carbide? A graphite reactor wall enclosed within an actively cooled steel shell?
I don't think Ed said nuclear qualified materials for 2nd gen at 1300C. Only their current design uses qualified materials, I believe. Did a quick re-watch and just can't find mention of qualified with 2nd gen. (2nd Gen being their 2nd Fast-Spectrum MSBR not 2nd-gen reactors in general for anyone else noticing this thread.) MORE: But I too would be curious to hear more about it.
Fair enough. One criticism I have of the video is that in some of the cut segments the zoom in is alarmingly close. But I suppose it couldn't be helped.
I think chloride salt makes more sense then fluoride. Since it's more common and abundant can be harnessed so easily from the sea. Does anybody agree or disagree?
I've read a bit about this, researching for a book I'm working on called Pumping the Brakes on Climate Change. Chloride salts absorb a few more neutrons than fluoride salts, leaving fewer to maintain criticality, but apparently not enough to matter. The problem with Flibe, apparently, is the lithium; you want pure Li-7, which means you have to concentrate the Li-6 out, and Li-6-deuteride is thermonuclear weapons fuel. The NRC, therefore, regulates the hell out of Li-6--and, I believe, uses it as another excuse to slow the adoption of molten salt reactors, in favor of 3rd gen PWRs that no one is buying anyway. Sodium chloride is table salt is almost dirt cheap, and nobody regulates it, except my MD trying to control my blood pressure.
Ed Pheil tweets a lot ( EdPheil ), maybe too much. So you could certainly find him and pick his brain. If you listen to PodCasts it is Titans Of Nuclear where he participated in a Nuclear Technology Series (4 parts) which started June 23rd 2020. They're between Ep 266 and Ep 267. They're a really good listen.
Liquid sodium burns when exposed to oxygen, explodes when exposed to water. Liquid sodium will absorb 30,000 times more radioactivity than water. Expensive to build, complex to operate, subject to very prolonged shutdowns for even minor malfunctions, difficult, costly and time-consuming breakdowns, and radiation exposure for workers too high. Did I mention expensive, twice as expensive as conventional reactors, which are 2-4 times as expensive as power from solar or wind turbines. Also, can you spell P-R-O-L-I-F-E-R-A-T-I-O-N? Need more? Check out Santa Susana or Fermi I, or Superphenix, or BN-350 or Monju, or Kalpakkam.
@@jackfanning7952 Weak counter-points. All things that you said are true for liquid sodium reactor. But this video is about reactor cooled with liquid sodium _chloride_ and this makes a whole world of difference, so you misunderstood the entire concept. The whole point of using NaCl is to have chemically inert and stable cooling liquid (unlike elemental sodium!) that will not interfere with neutron economics. As for proliferation - this is just silly argument. If you want to make the bomb, you don't buy 4th gen experimental reactor and steal off some fuel. There are much simpler ways. Try googling UK's windscale - much simpler, huh?
@@mrsxg Windscale got shut down by Covid for a while. UK is planning to decommission it, thank God! Windscale and La Hague have made the Atlantic the most contaminated ocean in the world. Proliferation is definitely not a silly argument.
Galen Windsor was right. Plutonium is the future. I guess we will be digging up all that so called waste that we buried in basalt back in the 80s and 90s.🤣🤣
The Eh Team And yes Canada is open minded on technology, vice hostile to MSRs like DOE. NRC only knows water, so is just...scared. But, Canada dies not seem to have interest in New nuclear, so they worry me. CNSC and CNL sell vSMR's, but there seems to be no social or utility/financial interest in them. They are closing and not replacing 8 reactors at Pickering, but replacing with gas. No one, I repeat no one has said they are interested in vSMR's except those that get paid to regulate or develop them. No one is looking at building any kind of capacity whether electrical or industrial or residential process heating. SMR & vSMR are not capacity additions, so have no effect on climate or pollution reduction. Pickering is being shut down, in part BECAUSE they are small. US is similar though, but does have a larger potential market. Both have enormous fuel resources as SNF.
I want to apologize to Dr. Ed Thiel for being too harsh. I guess I am frustrated by all these design twists, where it seems like everyone wants to put their "stamp" on it, since their investors are looking for patents which will help ensure their ROI. I certainly might have offended Dr. Thiel, which was not my intention. But I remain convinced that chlorides will not work, even though the cross-section is attractive. I also believe the Molten Salt Development Community should collaborate and get a commercial MSR licensed.
i think their both great, but yeah this guy seems to be more in depth than sorenson. their def both amazing though. the truth is we need to switch to nuclear now or were doomed, we cant wait for the perfect thing we just need to do what works, now.
densealloy Design for replacement when needed. We did that when the solid fuel was shorter lived than the vessel. Now that table is turned. The fuel lasts longer than the vessel irradiation damage or creep. So replace the vessel, and design to be able to do so. The vessel is thin, not forged and the core can be drained. The core effectively lasts forever, i.e. self repairs faster than radiation damage by 100,000x times the rate, and no TRU poisoning, like in thermal reactors.
MonMalthias I don't either. In general, I can't understand why everyone worships ANY nickel alloy for nuclear. But, I will use it for the first ~600C Thot reactor because it is qualified. But, high temoerature materials need to be qualified. I talked to one company that uses refractory metals at 1800-2500C, but non-nuclear. And need to look at glasses, ceramics, composites, and/or cladding/liners like water plants.
Moltex proposes to use zirconium clad stainless steel. Neutronics arguments aside, would an MCFR realistically use such an arrangement? Zirconium cladding of 100mm thickness structurally supported by 316 SS? Perhaps go for sacrificial core, reused fuel a la ThorCon and Terrestrial? While the fuel itself could withstand hundreds of thousands of DPA inherent to its ionic bonded nature, the weakness of the design then becomes what makes up the core and piping. One of the things that really surprised me about the Elysium design is how strikingly similar it is to the Euratom MSFR/SAMOFAR project. 8 loops and 8 pumps circulating fuel at high speed to get the power output up to 1GW in a very small core. I suppose the litmus test is now what could hold that fluid in the right configuration.
Hello, a very interesting and well explained video - I have a question about safety: How do you ensure that the reactor can withstand any natural disaster? I completely agree - this is one of the general scenarios where they are specifiaclly needed.
I don't know that you can build anything to withstand any natural disaster. But you can be smart enough to avoid most. Don't build near a geofault, within reach of a storm surge let alone a tsunami, on a flood plain, below a landslide, or within reach of a volcano. Nothing much you can do about an asteroid strike, anyway. Remember that in any reactor breach the salts are going to spread out, go non-critical, and freeze, not be blown far and wide on the winds.
The thermal sounds awesome especially with the massive thermal efficiency but like Sorenson keeps saying it's is just a super harsh environment with salt and heat that they were still looking at engineering a solution. The faster someone can get a Th non PWR on line the better for everyone. There is no US military to eat up the R&D like PWR had. I can't imagine how godawful expensive alloy research and small batch purchase would be. This is much more realistic than the massive step that a thermal would be since this is essentially a COTS solution (as close as one could get in reactors)
Tesla is building a new megafactory in Texas (2021), which showed us last winter that its electric grid is less than reliable. If Elon Musk could be talked into building his own Elysium MCSFR, he'd have uninterruptible, inexpensive power that he could easily scale up at need, or start big and sell his excess to the grid. With that much energy available he could collaborate with MIT spinoff Boston Metals to build his own clean steel mill; Boston Metals is developing Molten Oxide Electrolysis, a technique for making steel (and other metals) with electricity instead of coal, that emits only oxygen as a waste gas, and makes better steel for less energy and less money. Alcoa and Rio Tinto are working to decarbonize aluminum production in much the same way; Tesla must use a lot of aluminum, too. Musk would improve Tesla's bottom line, and do the world a huge favor by helping to demonstrate these technologies. Anybody reading have his ear? His e-mail? Now if we could talk him into building megafactories with Blue World Crete instead of Portland cement. ...
I Would say i´m not so sure of the plant size. The issue is scale of economy. The advantage of low size is high volume and large integration. The advantage of large size is higher efficiency and less material per power. I think he talk of both side. Yea higher efficiency and there for a lower relative core size... but the fuel is pretty much free.
He wants to replace 1 old reactor with 1 new reactor while producing the same energy. Sounds like a good strategy for dealing with the "nuclear cliff" of shutdowns.
That is of cause a interesting idéa... But i really questioning if its cheaper than just building a new plants next to it. Most Reactors that reach end of life does it not because the reactor is to old, but becasue the turbine (or turbin housing) need changing. Because a lot of Nuclear turbines are one of, its just to expensive. A other problem is that it usually takes 10-15 years to totally remove the reactor core and pipes. When its all hone you pretty much have a building, that most of the time got holes in it you don´t want. The turbine and support structure is probobly gone 10 years earlier. Of cause, one way it does make sense, is if you keep using the building, you don´t have to tear it down, that is of cause very expensive. Probably the most expensive part. So that might be the economical grace of it. But you would ned new everything. New transformers, new power-lines, new turbine, new control room. The old cooling might be possible to use. And of cause the old plant infrastructure... That can of cause be used if a compleatly new reactor is built to. But that do save a lot of money
Yes, the economics determine whether you can build a large plant or small plant, and there are many factors. A small plant may be economical if existing power is very expensive like islands, military bases, remote communities, resource recovery. The goal is to drive down costs as much as possible, so it is the economic choice, not jyst the ckean or safe choice. If this is not obtained nuclear wont go forward.
Well... my point is.... while i do relize that you are doing a bit of it anyway. That i high volume product is much cheaper to produce than a low volume one. Of cause. if the plant is semi modular (that is the case for pretty much most of the fluoride concepts, you can of cause build a lager plant of several smaller. But if the fuel is near free... honestly, nuclear fuel is already rather cheap.If the fuel cost is cut down more, the main benefit of higher beneficent turbine, is a smaller reactor (for same power). But if the reactor can be made even cheaper. Of cause, there is nothing to say that one reactor one turbine... and there are already reactors around that have two turbines per reactor. There are also concept.. i think it may be nuscale, here they use 10 reactors on 5 turbines. There is a optimum size for turbines, reactors and what ever component. Of cause, paring a different number of reactors en turbines may be able to make them both optimal. I work in a completely different sector, but we have the exakt same problem. When we hit sizes over 3½ meter in diameter 25-30 meter in length and around 150-200 ton in weight the cost skyrockets. But that limit have increased significant the last 10-15 years. Of cause, our units are probobly a lot cheaper, just around $100k each, transporting and tooling is a rather large part of the cost.
The Eh Team As for replacing one water with one MCSFR, if you figure it out we get 30x as much energy out of the water reactor waste as the water reactor extracted. Almost starts to look a little like the LWR to coal volume comparison, especially when adding another 10x in energy for the depleted uranium consumption. 250-300x the energy for a closed cycle burning water waste.
I want to see the reactor as proposed. Blanket? No blanket? I want to see the fast spectrum neurotics explained better, also. I like your philosophy, though.
Jonathan Schattke We CAN use separated Cl37, we don't have to. It depends on the overall economics, and the end goals desired. Don't forget once the Cl37 is separated it is reused for centuries through recycling. Whether you use it depends on how much fuel value you wish to breed vs the cost of HLEU once the other Pu waste sources are depleted. The first reactors likely wouldn't bother to use enriched Cl37 because it is easier/cheaper. Also don't forget Cl was the first ever enriched isotopes because it is easier. And it is orders of magnitude cheaper to go from 24% to 90% Cl37 than 92% to 99.995% Li7, especially without the level 1 security of dealing with a weapons process with Li enrichment.
Lithium is cheaply extracted from seawater or brine lakes (most of the world's supply comes from a brine lake in Chile but that's just because it's cheap). Flouride salts are similar. Natural lithium needs isotopic separation or 6% of it will be converted to deuterium - but that's not that big a deal to be honest. It essentially means you get a shortlived deuterium outgassing at nuclear startup and as long as something combines with the hydrogen it gets contained.
No graphite moderator, leveraging existing nuclear qualified building methods/materials, ability to leave the fission products in solution longer and fuel flexibility overcome the drawbacks of required higher fuel loads and fast-spectrum characteristics. This one has my vote. This really makes sense.
Yeah, the absence of a graphite moderator is a biggie. In addition to improving neutronics and making sure you have a negative temperature coefficient, the graphite needs replacing every 4 years. And it becomes radioactive waste. Saving big $$$.
Making these videos public is Huge, editing them in this awesome way is huge, thank you!!!
I personally wouldn't mind a lower quality video if it meant getting them out a bit faster.
Please do consider contributing to Gordon's Patreon! Doesn't he maybe deserve a couple bucks? ^_^
@Stonehawk @gordonmcdowell I'm already a patreon of the Thorium remix. Gordon, could you perhaps make it possible to donate on a monthly basis as well? As I understand it, it is not possible through the Thorium Remix patreon.
Perhaps just make a "Gordon McDowell - just awesome stuff in general" patreon?
Erik Sundell I was just thinking that! The remix patreon doesn't cash in often enough!
@@creamofbotulismsoup9900 Conceptual comedy!!!
I was a LFTR fan until I saw these videos. He has so many arguments for this system that he has made a believer out of me. Thanks Ed!
im a fan of both but wow just seen this!
I can agree. As an adult club owner this is stretching my knowledge base.
What is very encouraging is the quality of engineering talent that is being applied to solving the challenge of building high temperature, low pressure, passively safe nuclear power generation. I hope we can get to deployed utility-scale quickly enough to make a meaningful and timely difference to reducing CO2 emissions.
Ed Pheil and colleagues are doing a great service for humanity, this is a good news story.
I am a generally competent and technical fellow with a bachelor's degree in computer science. I have what I'd call a moderately advanced layman's knowledge of nuclear power, much of it stemming from my former interest in the LFTR is the savior of nuclear power. I am now convinced that your MCSFR is the best reactor. I'd like to learn more, and perhaps get a degree in nuclear engineering, with the knowledge and skills oriented towards the MCSFR. I am looking for recommendations on papers, books, and university programs (University of Lowell, perhaps?).
Why isn't development of this technology a national priority?
Ed Pheil makes sense, is all business, as you can tell by his wardrobe. ( Love the tie )
@@jrvasquez A rhetorical question. . . .
This was well edited. This is why I'm a big fan of Ed and his reactor.
Just wanted to point out something in terms that the average person would understand. When Ed ells us that he could use the same reactor vessel for 50MW up to 2000MW, that tells you what you could replace with such a reactor (or two)
Right now, the Colorado River is not keeping up with demand in the southwestern USA. Too many people are using too much water. Glen Canyon Dam (which created Lake Powell) is currently not putting out anywhere near its nameplate capacity because of the low water levels, however, it could be replaced entirely with one single fast spectrum MCSR. Hoover Dam, the larger of the two, which is also well below its nameplate capacity, could be replaced by two of these.
Glen Canyon Dam could be removed entirely to restore the natural riparian ecosystem. Just take a look at some of the pictures out there before Glen Canyon was flooded, and you'll see what a loss it was.
People don't associated nuclear with green movements, but being able to rip out a dam and restore the natural flow of the Colorado (oh, and stop the evaporation loss of 380,000 acre-feet of water a year) sure sounds green to me. Especially when the power plant that replaces it would emit no carbon, NOx, methane, etc AND could run on the waste from the Palo Verde LWRs
Dams are generally too useful to get rid of even if you don't need the electricity.
@@MrRolnicek Depends on the dam. Being able to store water is a good thing. Flood control is another benefit. However, in my example of Glen canyon Dam vs. Hoover Dam, there are some geological differences. Mainly in the type of rock and the physical volume of the lakes. Lake Mead sits primarily over basalt which is far less porous than the sandstone under Lake Powell. Lake Powell loses considerable water volume to bank seepage. Some estimates place the seepage and evaporation losses high enough to supply Los Angeles. Lake Powell has greater surface area, which leads to greater evaporation losses. Lake Mead physically holds more water (when full) and would lose less of it each year, than both lakes combined.
The need for flood control and water storage could be satisfied by one larger lake. The few small communities that rely on Lake Powell, could be served by a smaller dam to create a storage reservoir while still allowing plenty of water past Glen Canyon Dam. And using a couple molten salt fast reactors in place of the Glen Canyon Dam powerplant, would allow Arizona to eliminate the need to store waste at the Palo Verde Nuclear Powerplant while still providing all the electricity its northern cities require.
@@DriveCarToBar I meant it more in a general sense. But more power is always good and frankly Elysium is currently my personal favorite. I do hope we'll go for clean energy soon even if it isn't Elysium that gets us there. Even current generation lightwater is frankly cleaner and safer than anything else out there. (Except hydropower I guess that should be cleaner, right?)
@@MrRolnicek I too like Elysium and their molten salt fast reactor. For me, its a bit of a toss-up as to which I'd like to see developed first. There are some difficulties with fuel salt chemistries, but now that the NRC has made liquid fueled reactors a real possibility, development should proceed more quickly. The Liquid Metal Cooled Fast Breeders like the IFR developed at Argonne have the most actual real-world development and a reprocessing system that is ready to go right now. GE/Hitachi already has the plant designs based on Argonne's research and development. Russia already operates Sodium cooled fast breeders in commercial settings. ANd because both the IFR and MSFR are fast reactors, they can gobble up waste fuel. Which, to me, is the key selling point. It cleans up the mess from 60 years of water reactor operations AND provides enough clean energy to run modern civilization.
Regardless of your opinion on the Fast vs. Thermal debate, we can definitely agree that a molten salt reactor is THE ideal medium for operating at a fast spectrum.
In all fairness a prompt critical sodium reactor doesn't result in an environmental disaster :P
If you can get past the whole Polonium thing, lead is such a superior liquid metal coolant that the only reason why sodium is even still considered is due to inertia and all the prior work done in producing double walled heat exchangers, MOX fuel campaigns that mitigate against positive void and Russian advances in their BN-x00 series.
Lead is harder to pump and has a much poorer heat capacity, but the heat capacity issue is probably counteracted by the lack of a double walled heat exchanger.
MonMalthias
Lower Pb operating temperature vs sodium, and higher m.p. (freezing) are the Achilles heal of Pb/ PbBi, not Po, in my book.
Of course Na is not that much higher temperature, limited by fuel or clad interaction concerns.
Why use a coolant that is reactive to water and air? Shit happens. Like earthquakes and tsunamis. Also terrorism. Molten salt can handle all these contingencies.
Awesome give this man all the help in the world for the sake of the planet
That was extremely interesting to listen to.
His reactor design seems very flexible for the number of fuels that can fission in the salt blanket.
The proliferation risk is really the only potential opposition left to an MSR as they already are passively safe - his system seems to have this issue completed solved.
Will be seeking out more of his videos.
Thanks for the compilation 👍🏻
A simple, safe, inexpensive way to turn "spent" (wasted) PWR fuel into new MSR fuel, little or no reprocessing needed to burn pretty much all the actinides in that inexpensive fuel, a 40-year reactor life without having to diddle with moderators every four or seven years, all of the safety advantages of MSRs, easy safe constant refueling, and probably the least expensive fission power possible? Wish I had a billion bucks to invest.
What I liked about David LeBlanc's reactor was the fact that he had carefully looked at bringing down cost and not straying too far from technology that was known to regulators. It seems that Ed Pheil did the same but just better. Still David has come farther in the developement. Gordon, do you know in which phase Ed Pheil is in? And where does he want to build the reactor?
Bringing down cost is very important if there is to be a new reactor generation. But the Chinese are not looking at cost like the west do, They have a massive program and will beat us. But at least someone is trying to give them a good run for their money
You can't get nearly as much flow with convection, so the power would be much less. In an off state there could be convection.
There's nothing preventing us from using natural circulation during a power failure and an off state.
That's a tall order for convection; you really need to do the math to understand it. It works easily for 25 MWth, not so good for 3000.
Where are these reactors you speak of?
I am a fan of the MCSFR concept and have a lot of respect for Ed Pheil. I don't know why Elisium and Exodys have not been more successful. The oil lobbyists and their enablers in our government have sabotaged the SMR industry since the '50s, for one thing.
All electrical power could be generated by small nuclear reactors widely distributed through a de-centralized grid (think EMP) throughout the world (thousands), reducing the need for fossil fuels by two-thirds. Could have happened a long time ago. We have had SMRs in active use by the military since the early '60s and could have been deployed them from that time on if wanted. Electrical power (lack of) is another method of CONTROL of the world population.
IMO, SMRs should be manufactured in volume for electrical generation throughout the world, conserving fossil fuels for internal combustion engines, chemical processes, and fertilizer. Were this plan to be implemented the world economy would explode overnight. (However, the power of politicians would suffer. Prosperity is the enemy of the political cabal.)
I think the future will have both fast MSRs and thermal MSBRs. Fast spectrum is mostly ignored by MSR community, but Ed Pheil's strategy of a "near term" fast solution makes a lot of sense.
COMponents, I loved it. That guy had a lot of great talking points, and also what an excellent speaker. Thank you for the video Gordon, that was really put together well.
Wish you all the best on your endeavor Ed Pheil. Molten salts have so much potential when it comes to nuclear designs, either for fast, or thermal spectrum, so lets see these developments bare fruit and see a renaissance of new cheap nuclear power.
cheap nuclear is an oxymoron.
I especially like the concerns about, in a thermal spectrum, protactinium separation... I'm afraid of this about LFTR.
28:05 to almost 30 minutes into this speech.
Yes that is an issue, if you put Thorium in any reactor you have to protect the Protactinum for a year after discharge. No need to use Thorium for now, we have sooo much LWR "spent fuel" to get rid of anyway.
(28:24) I love Ed, and I think he might have the edge when it comes to being the first to commercialize a working MSR. However, at this point, while he's correct that you can get around the proliferation barrier of U-232 by allowing your Protactinium to decay in batches, this still ignores the fact that the biggest obstacle to nuclear proliferation in thermal spectrum reactors is their absolutely anemic breeding ratios.
If you operate your reactor on a continuous process, dumping all Protactinium into a big tank to decay to Uranium, you'd never be able to separate the U-232 from the U-233 as you'd always be adding new protactinium 232, and continuing to produce new U-232. You'd have to operate in batches, say, isolating all the protactinium produced over a given day, allowing all the possible protactinium 232 in that day's batch to decay to U-232, leaving you with pure protactinium 233 after a number of days, which would decay into almost pure U-233. However, because of the piss-poor breeding ratios of thermal spectrum reactors, if you were then to take all of that "pure" U-233 out of the reactor process so that you could make a bomb out of it, you're keeping that fuel from being fed back into the reactor.
Doing this reduces the fuel density in the reactor, driving it into a sub-critical state, and effectively kills the reactor, at least until you put almost all of your "bomb material" back into the reactor. It's the low breeding ratios of thermal spectrum reactors, not necessarily the production of U-232, which is the best barrier to proliferation. Still, setting up a thorium breeder so that your protactinium decayed in batches should be a dead give away that you're up to something shady, as there's no "non-shady" reason to do this. Just my 2 cents.
Be that as it may, I'd say Ed was still doing God's work, if I wasn't a deist, and he definitely frames a solid argument for his molten chloride fast reactor. He's certainly won a lot of fans based on the comments in various videos.
A stupidly easy way to use this reactor as a breeder for supergrade plutonium would be to flow 238UF6 through an area surrounding the core region where the neutron field is more thermal. The Pu would separate out as a solid and the UF6 left over would recirculate. A similar technique could be used for making tritium. It's not all bad though, especially as plutonium 239 would be the best start up isotope for these reactors.
Thx for this gordon, this seems very very promising and very interesting to learn from.
Moltex Energy says that pumped fuel, while allowing fuel purification (or full reprocessing), raises problems of leaks and of noble metals fission products deposition into pumps, causing them to fail.
How can Elysium obviate to these problems?
Add extra chlorine to the mix over time. This would keep the noble metals in solution. Also a continuous filtration mechanism that causes the rhodium and other noble metals to stick to it. Then harvest it periodically. After aging for a decade the rhodium and other noble metals can be chemically separated from the radioactive waste.
What a Great Presentation! The data density is so high! The man has an answer for everything, and in new situations has the capability to provide plans and solutions!
Really appreciate your editing. I don't understand a lick of this stuff, but I really enjoy listening.
Ooo, I'm liking this approach! Question about chlorine isotope separation though. My understanding was that when Cl-35 absorbs a neutron, it will mostly decay to argon, but a small fraction will decay into sulfur. Cl-37 avoids this, hence I thought isotope separation was necessary in a chloride salt reactor -- to avoid corrosion of the reactor materials. Is sulfur not the issue I thought it was? I think the nickel in hastelloy-N was particularly vulnerable to sulfur corrosion, but perhaps the materials you intend to use aren't so vulnerable?
No, transmution will absolutely be a source of corrosion. This is in addition to the fact that the lewis acid-base balance in chloride salts does not have an analog to the BeF2 (4-) complex ion of fluoride salts. Gettering systems will have to operate at high fidelity to manage transmutation products that can catalyze corrosion continually. Excellent question!
Good info. Material and fabrication costs would be more, but I wonder if molybdenum alloys like TZM would be the ideal material for the reactor and first-loop plumbing. In addition to higher temperature limits with Mo, conceivably any sulfur produced would react with the surface to make MoS2, which is fairly tough and inert. I have no idea if that holds up in a molten chloride environment, though.
The titanium and zirconium tended to leach out of TZM in molten fluoride test baths, but I wonder if that remains true with molten chlorides.
This is some crazy shit
The sulfur would combine with technetium but sulfur plus chlorine would be very aggressive. Also other fission products would combine with sulfur to form extremely insoluble sulfides. It would need some method of filtering these out before hitting the heat exchanger. Strontium and barium sulfides would be extremely problematic.
OKAY! Game Over guys, they just found the PERFECT recipe...
I'm sorry people, but this sounds MUCH better than other MSRs.
Fluorine's bad, it's a nuclear bomb feedstock. LONG LIVE Beryllium !
Yes i agree, this is the best reactor design i've seen.
Berillyum ? No Be in this reactor (for very good reasons) !
He said he is NOT using Beryllium in this design.
Can you spell B-E-R-Y-L-L-I-O-S-I-S? You know, the kissing cousin to asbestosis?
Can someone please explain how you control the power of the reaction during shutdown? Is there something special about the geometry of the drain tanks?
When the molten salt fuel is in the reactor vessel itself, is the power controlled purely the negative temperature coefficient or is it necessary to use control rods?
Your first "guess" is the correct one. The geometry of the drain tank makes criticality impossible. As to your control rod question, No, no control rods are necessary.
Support the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor Act of 2022. I was introduced into the Senate in early June 2022 by Tommy Tuberville, R Alabama. This is NOT a partisan dream, it is a bipartisan reality that must be seized upon. Bravo Elysium!
I love the "just a can" method. No graphite complications. I hope they make a breeder version.
Edit: If the breeding ratio is 99.3% then it can self sustain on natural uranium due to what little fissiles it has. More expensive (and secure) net breeders can make the startup material if we need it.
This IS a breeder concept. It only works as a breeder. Keep in mind that the neutron flux has to be much higher because of reduced cross-section. "Just-a-can" could do better with neutron reflection but that might complicate the can metallurgy.
I thought it needed a breeding blanket, or it would be really difficult to breed net fuel. All the better being a single fluid reactor with simplified chemistry, unlike the single-fluid thermal thorium MSR.
Simply by surrounding the core with lead or tungsten will reflect some neutrons.
Or we could take nuclear weapons apart for their fissiles.
@@leerman22 Yeah, but reflecting neutrons will also increase the critically of the reactor resulting in flow of some of the core into the drain tank, resulting in less breeding.
Awesome, been waiting for details on Elysium for a long time.
Truly confidence inspiring. It only comes from 32 years of experience at the highest level. He provided answers to pretty much most of my questions about minutia of different MSR concepts. I hope, I am not biased because of my own background. But his really seems be the most feasible and suitable option for an application I have been thinking.
Some questions: What happens if...
You're running your standard reactor
with 1 heat exchanger (1/6 output power) and the circulating pump fails.
with 6 heat exchangers (full power) and all circulating pumps fail.
What automatic systems are required to contain the situation?
What operator intervention is required to contain the situation?
I'm sure glad he knows what he's talking about. Yah, what he said. I'm anxious to see a breakthrough. This one sounds very promising.
dam Gordon, this is the best one yet.
Very good presentation. Thank you.
Gordon: Very good Video, Thanks. I like all the technical details. I miss details about safe control of fast reactors and the fissile doubling times Elysium expect. And how does fast molten salt reactors compare to solid fuel fast reactors?
Thomas Jam Pedersen
No reprocessing separations, don't need to remove all the fission products to periodically remanufacture the solid fuel, and the associated proliferation concerns, one chemical step to convert SNF/Pu to fuel vs pyro-processing at 7, and PUREX (France, Japan, UK, Russia) with hundreds, so much, much lower cost. We are testing this conversion (not reprocessing, since there is no separations) at INL & with ANL, as we speak.
I have read shorter prompt neutron life makes control of fast reactor harder. Does this affect passive safety?
@@achalhp In a word, No.
This guy is a huge mega genius and a treasure for humanity ... someone give him a few billion $$ so he can help save us.
Love the kiss approach. How much is it to build one of these larger plants?
The real question is how can it compete economically with the energy future, which is already here - renewables.
I just used this presentation To quash wrong information about corrosion. :) Thank You!
About the issue at circa 2:00 min, what about non moderated fluoride MSRs like the European MSFR (indeed, with no graphite as moderator) ?
The top questions I get from the Anti crowd is "what about the waste". I suspect that most of them will never be convinced but for some saying that proposed reactors are intended to reduce waste. may help the popular acceptance battle.
Eukatae
The Elysium reactor only removes fission products that decay to background levels in about 300 years. The long lived actinides people worry about remain in the reactor. This is not a solid fueled reactor that requires re processing, separations, and fuel remanufactured every X years. The actinides stay in the reactor. Because we use chloride salts, we can remove fission products only. You can't do that with fluoride salts without doing extensive separations, including actinides. Chlorides and liquid fuel are the key. Also, because we don't remove actinides there are no proliferation concerns and the fusion products coukd be mined for useful medical isotopes, etc. The zirconium cladding we extract the fuel out of is recycled. The chlorine is also recycled. The fission product waste is kept as a salt, so it will decay longer and the higher temperature the easier it is to passively cool and the smaller the waste package. We dont need millennial storage facilities for Elysium waste. Also, we only produce 1 tonne/year of fission products and we don't throw away the other 96+% of the unused fuel, cladding, and transuranics that aren't used.
I thought LFTR's waste is less radioactive then current nuclear waste?
Radioactivity is a bit more complicated than that. The longer something takes to decay the less radioactive it is. Something that has a half life of 10 minutes is really hot, something that has a half life of 10k years, you could eat it.
I agree, most of the anti crowd will not be convinced. I have observed that they tend to be so entrenched in their beliefs that anything opposing them is considered heresy, and any possible solutions are outright dismissed. Getting the general public on-board is going to be the biggest battle, fear is more powerful than the truth.
Eukatae - It's a bit too much of a generalization to say something with a very long half life could be safely eaten. The radiation likely wouldn't do any serious damage, but metal poisoning from, for example, uranium, would.
very clear explanation, thanks.
so where can i by stock to help you build now and i can benefit later.
The figure on neutrons per absorption @26:12, does anyone know where this is from? I would like to reference it.
It' s basically in any textbooks about nuclear energy and everywhere on the web, just google eta factor for different isotopes, etc...
Forgot to emphasize that Sulfer-36 will attack Hastelloy-N, which precludes using it in a conventional Molten Salt Reactor, because the NRC will not accept the use of chlorides when this deficiency is not mitigated.
One more point: When Hastelloy-N is attacked by Chlorine-36 atom within a Lithium or Beryllium molecule, there is a slight chance of a chlorine-iron fire erupting inside the tubing at these very high salt temperatures. This fire is very strongly exothermic, and will easily exceed the Hastelloy-N working temperature range of 704 to 871 degrees. The hot working range of the annealing process is 871 to 1177 deg. C, wherein a tubing temperature rise will cause structural failure, spreading liquid core material as far as it can flow. Hastelloy-N is 4% Fe and chlorine-iron fire is a well known danger in chemical plants using flowing chlorides in iron alloys, and are considered a serious risk necessitating special safety designs to preclude these exothermic fires. The NRC will want to see designs to mitigate these fires.
The chlorine is already in the form of its ion. It's already burned.
In the Molten salt reactor setup, how is the fission product - Iodine Vapours containment achieved?
The reactor vessel is continually flushed with CO2 . The gasses it contains are sequestered.
In a major earthquake like disaster, molten salt will likely drain into the drain tank through the freeze plug. What if the drained molten salt come into contact with ground water that could also come into a cracked drain tank? Ground water is still going into the reactor building of Fukushima and comes out contaminated. It was reported that when molten salt (NaCl2) met water, the flash steam of water caused a violent explosion which is a pure physical and not chemical response. It is unclear whether such an explosion has the potential to damage the drain tank further or even the reactor itself, or to spread the radioactive molten salt everywhere. I also assume while some molten salts interact so violently with water, not all molten salts do. High temperature is a factor, but not the only factor.
Here is a related second question: Once molten salt flows into the drain tank and reduces its ability to go critical, how long would it take the salt to cool down enough to eliminate the chance of causing an explosion with water?
That earthquake would probably have to be powerful enough to shatter the entire planet if it had to get fuel salt to enough deep groundwater.
The presentation makes Chloride salt reaktors much more sensable than the hyped Fluoride salt reaktor in many ways... Best story I heard in years and ofcourse learned some stuff.
This is also the approach taken by TerraPower. As counter-point Kirk argues Fluoride Chemistry is more favourable to a Fluorination approach Flibe Energy received DOE funding to investigate (Flibe's 2nd of 3 DOE grants since 2018): ruclips.net/video/2U9HVIFt2GE/видео.html
It may be that I missed it. When he talked about a blanket separating the two fluids, did he cover the problem of neutron degradation of the blanket? What is the solution for that?
Ed truly knows his stuff. When we talk, it's hard to keep up with a guy who's been eating, sleeping, and breathing nuclear for 30 yrs.
There's a lot of information in this video; I will have to watch it again. I am still a LFTR fan, but I'm kind of leery of arguing the relative merits because we NEED Dr. Pheil's reactor to get rid of nuclear explosives. Notice how the antinuclear people never mention nuclear explosives; it's all "nuclear waste". This is a confusion tactic, but mostly it's because they don't want to take on the Military Industrial Complex. The main problem (as I see it) is separating the neptunium from the uranium of a LFTR so that it can be burned in Dr. Pheil's reactor. I think this can be done.
I had a comment exchange with gordonmcdowell on another video and he took an "either/or" approach rather than "both". I feel this is in error. Another point of contention is that he feels that particle accelerators are too expensive; an accelerator for university use costs about $6 million (source: IAEA News). This is not too expensive considering the safety and ease of operation factors in an accelerator driven reactor. I'm for spending whatever it takes to solve problems.
If Congress takes the "either/or" approach then Dr. Pheil's reactor wins because it's an emergency to destroy nuclear explosives. The LFTR is the best approach to climate change, in my opinion.
I don't think I said what you think I said. Could you quote me, exactly, on that?
@@gordonmcdowell I found out today that your list of replies to videos on RUclips only goes back a month; that exchange was about Pu-240. So I thought about it. I believe what you are referring to are in the videos themselves rather than your comments, so chalk this up as an error, and for that I apologize.
People on the bus: *sweating nervously*
When reusing spent fuel like this, what becomes of the radioactive gasses released? Do they have to be stored under pressure?
What radioactive gasses? Fission is atoms splitting into smaller atoms and releasing neutrons as a result. The neutrons are captured by shielding which heats up as a result. The heat is used for industrial processes or converted to electricity. Where are these radioactive gasses you speak of?
Ed mentioned helium and xenon as recoverable and marketable fission products.
They can be stored in cylinders. The main ones are xenon krypton and iodine. The krypton decays to rubidium and the xenon decays to nonradioactive cesium. The iodine would likely remain in the melt as iodide rather than vaporizing off. The xenon half life is short enough that there won't be much of it to accumulate. Krypton 85 is the one that would build up.
Just curious, does anyone of you know why Ed decided to increase reactor outlet-temp from 600-650 °C at this point to 750 °C in more recent talks he gave ?
He probably found certified parts/materials that had a higher temperature rating.
No, It's not by using new materials. He figured out that just placing very thin shielding on the inside of the can. This shielding itself is not load bearing, so it shouldn't deform at higher temperatures. It's purpose if to divert the "cold" salt returning from the heat exchangers so that only this colder salt contacts the containment vessel.
Hope I've explained this semi-coherently.
@@jimtrowbridge3465 is that shielding envisaged to be periodically replaced ?
Anyway, very interesting, the more I learn about the technology, the more I realize it' s an excellent, very praticable idea. BTW, any updates about the project (I mean, both this MCSFR and Moltex' s) ?
I am very interested in this kind of energy, it is a breakthrough in Nuclear reactor technology that our politicians are throwing aside.
Where are they going to follow him to?
The multi-fuel nature of these appeals to me. Flexibility is good.
Why isn't residual heat a problem with this type reactor?
Help... I'm an idiot but trying... when he says DU can be used in fuel...Is he talking about the same DU used in ammo? I thought ammo DU was inert?
Define inert, ,, DU is not fissile but is it fertile ,, get it?
DU is depleted uranium. Natural uranium has about 0.72% U235. To make fuel at 3.5-5% enriched they take about half of the U235 out of the natural uranium leaving about 0.35% U235. Yes, it is the same thing they used to use in artillery bullets. Both natural and depleted uranium are inert unless put in a very specific configuration in a reactor.
All reactors convert some of the U238 to Pu239 and fission it as part of their energy. Fast Reactors convert more, so use more of tghe fuel. The Elysium reactor can consume virtually all of both forms of natural uranium and therefore all of the depleted uranium as well. But, it is more important to burn the stuff that was slightly started to be used in water reactors, spent nuclear fuel.
Thank you for taking the time to chime in.
Ed Pheil thank you, sir, for the response. You and others like you are truly the path forward to energy independence. Unfortunately you have tough hill to climb not only politically/regulatory but with general public. I wish you luck in your project.
To the others who responded that you as well. I love the Th community because of responses like these. I have never had anyone speak down to me as I absolutely struggle to understand this. I am a Th, nuclear anything, ww2 50s/60s aviation junkie and enjoy interacting with so many intelligent people.
Thanks again.
Yes, he's correct about DU.
DU is a problem for a few reasons:
1: It's chemically toxic (worse than lead) and when used as a tank killer, it burns fiercely after penetration, covering everything in uranium dioxide dust. That in turn means that a warzone is a problem for toxic cleanup. Crop fields are bad enough but the bigger issue is when you go to Iraq and see kids and scrap metal merchants climbing all over dead tanks
2: It's a critical component of tactical "hydrogen bombs". The casings are made of the stuff and it's what drives the enhanced yield (U238 isn't as radioactive as U235, but if you feed it radiation from a fusion reaction it gives an enhanced fission reaction)
3: When you enrich natural uranium to 3% for standard PWR/BWR reactors, you're throwing out just shy of 90% of the original metal. Higher enrichment levels (20%, 40%, etc) rapidly start closing on 99%, 99.9%, etc wastage - and that means there's a hell of a lot of chemically toxic DU sitting around looking for a use - and due to #1 and #2 above, you _really_ don't want that as it encourages both military use and nuclear weapons proliferation.
The primary reason for using thorium over uranium in a molten salt reactor (either type) is that thorium is at least 10 times more readily available than uranium - it's a nuisance byproduct of rare earth mining and is actually the part which makes rare earth mining so expensive in the USA and Europe, as the slight radioactivity means mine operators have to "safely" dispose of it.
Essentially, thorium is currently a worthless waste product of existing processes, whilst uranium is quite expensive to start with and requires insanely expensive processing to become useful for energy purposes.
In a Thorium economy, all those rare rarth mines would probably become Thorium mines with rare earths as a side product and that radically changes the economics of things like the costs of high strength magnets, etc.
Additionally, because a Thorium reactor of either type will produce _shitloads_ of helium and xenon, the economics of things based around these gasses changes - imagine MRI units being 1% of the cost to build and run that they are now as a for-instance, or airships being economically feasible - and that's just the stuff that's obvious - what happens when products become available is that technology that most of us can't even think of becomes practical. (one example from Star Trek: Communicators were essentially Walkie Talkies even into TNG and Tricorders were pretty chunky limited things. Our modern smartphones would be regarded as unfeasiable science fiction if transported 40 years ago.)
Hello Ed, I have a couple questions. Since what you propose is a fast-spectrum reactor using molten salt, what sort of precautions will be needed to prevent criticality in the event that the fuel salt comes into contact with a moderator in an accident scenario? I assume this is largely being done because it designed to be operated in a "burner" configuration where fissile composition is far less than a fast-spectrum "breeder" MSR configuration. How does addressing this technical challenge compare to thermal fluoride-based thorium-based designs?
A design such as this needs the fuel inside a reflector and compact. Reflector on just one side of a puddle won't work.
I suppose if someone dumped charcoal briquettes on the containment floor, made a dam to prevent the salt from spreading out, and then breached the core they could cause an issue.
Depending on the moderator fraction, you can go critical with as little as 1/4 the concentration. But to do that you need a low absorption moderator.
Remember, the salt is denser than water, so you can't use water as anything but a fairly absorbent reflector in an accident. It is also denser than carbon.
Ok, so they are going for a very low fissile load to mitigate this issue and are accepting the effects on neutron economy. Making this of comparable risk to thermal MSR designs with similar fissile concentrations.
Elysium does not allow moderator close to the fuel, no water/people, no pump cooling water or oil, no graphite, no concrete. There are at least two barriers to moderator incursion. Dump tanks are multiple long narrow separated, poison & void (leakage) separated cylinders.
Fast chloride salt reactors have a much more clearly negative temperature and void coefficient than a thermal MSR with LEU. MSRE HEU and LEU MSR have more fuel absorber to fissile ratio, so the ratio of pushing fissile out (negative) to pushing fertile U238 "poison/absorber out (positive) is harder to show for all operating conditions, times in life (Fission products, graphite swelling/shrinking), casualties is very hard. EVOL studied this extensively and moved away from graphite moderation to an intermediate spectrum. No one else has published or stated that such studies have been done for LEU Fluoride graphite. Moving away from LiF-2BeF2 is more absorptive and similarly more positive trend.
Randall Waitt
What? I don't follow. Low fissile in a fast reactor? How does that work?
Is there data from an experiment done showing cost/efficiency of thermal v fast?
By efficiency, what do you mean? Fissile use?
You can't just "do an experiment" - because the configurations are completely different. The shape and coolant that makes a fast reactor will not make a thermal reactor, and vice versa.
Fast breeder reactors have been demonstrated in solid fuel multiple times.
Thermal efficiency is mostly determined by choice of coolant and power cycle. If you go water, you really can't take it much higher than 45%.
Thorium is possible all those people saying you cant do it are wrong.
How do they put a blanket around the liquid? is it different chamber?
jim bob
Yes, a pot (core) in a pot (blanket). KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid principle
Please, come and build one in Poland
Interesting. A few years back, I made the same point to Robert Hargraves about the U233 stream in LFTR's fuel processing being a proliferation concern, only to have him try to browbeat me down with bucketloads of smarm and an oblique answer.
Heartening to know I'm not the only one who had that thought.
Separated fissiles are always an issue regarding proliferation. The issue is not whether a material is proliferable or whether it is not; but whether the will and means exists to beat a plowshare into sword. So far, every single new atomic weapon nation has done so on the back of clandestine heavy water (or graphite) piles and PUREX, or clandestine diversion of centrifuged U-235. Neither process requires a civilian power reactor, and even high school students can perform the necessary refinement and separation steps needed to separate fissiles.
U-233 introduces a new dimension to this but just as, say, the US possesses U-233, it also does not use U-233 for weapons material. The ability to miniaturise weapons with Pu-239 is too great an advantage. Proliferation is not a test of technologies, but of institutions, people, and expertise. To shun the use of a reactor just because it _might_ have a conceivable way from which a reactor could be used to produce weapons material is a failure not of the technology, but of the safeguards and the people in its place.
This is not to say that technology does not have a place in combating proliferation. I have a lot of time for that argument. But knowledge of how fission works and graduate degree chemistry along with access to certain, select organic solvents and catalysts, is all that is required for the production of nuclear weapons. Hell, you can find entire books on how to design bomb pits, explosive lenses, and tritium boosters. What keeps everyone and their mother from packing atomic heat is that the chemicals are tightly controlled, there are inspectors in countries acceding to the NPT, and even materials like nuclear grade graphite or heavy water are closely monitored. Again: institutions, treaties. They are only as powerful as the people that accept its tenets.
LFTR could potentially produce weapons grade material. So too, could an LWR operating on very short irradiation cycles, a medical isotope production reactor, a graphite pile, and a centrifuge cascade. What stops that from happening is no inherent technology barrier, but people putting their foot down and saying, "not one step back."
FUCK YES. this is probably the most exciting technology in development, and even more exciting than fusion because this fission technology is a done deal. we just need to keep building it. I'm so glad I'll likely live to see the revolution this stuff will cause. Too bad we aren't very smart as a culture, so fission is demonized... pure insanity. Fission needs a global PR campaign, so we can flood the research with money and make these reactors commercial in like 5 years.
I'm convinced that the major funder of the antinuclear movement is the fossil fuel industry. They realize that the whole renewable energy movement won't work. But they are afraid that nukes will displace a lot of fossil fuels.
Sorenson said the U233 is not suitable for bombs. it's too radioactive so fries the bomb controls and any workers getting too close. What do I know - just asking?
U232 contamination in the U233 is the reason for this. Not the U233 itself. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233#232U_impurity ...regardless U233 is still considered a proliferation concern. That's not Ed or Kirks call... that's just the way IAEA classifies these materials. LFTR would need counter-proliferation measures to address this. Not likely anyone would "steal" fissile from an operating nuclear reactor, but such measures will be required so such measures will be designed.
Just as a note, supercritical C02 is being proven on a few solar-molten salt storage facilities. There may also be a push for it from coal in order to get something remotely competitive of natural gas in a combined cycle.
What is it used for?
@@robertbrandywine Look up supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle. The CO2 is the working fluid, instead of using water/steam. The turbines used in this are remarkably small compared to the steam/water cycle.
I do not understand how Ed Thiel can claim that CHLORIDES have achieved fuel qualification in the molten salt eutectic mixture. It is true that chlorides melt at lower temperatures in the melt. Ed talks about Chlorine-35 and Chlorine-37, ignoring the fact that the problem is that when chlorides are irradiated, Chlorine-36 is formed, which transmutes to Sulfer-36, a strong corrosive to many types of tubing, and radioactive with a half-life of 100 days; and Argon-36 is also formed, which is stable, but the gas must be extracted with off-gas systems. Chlorine-36 is also a long-lived radioactive waste with a half-life of over 300,000 years. He doesn't seem to address these problems.
After investigating a bit, my educated guess is: The sulfur isotope would not be significantly corrosive in this context since there is no water in the reactor core and no corrosive sulfur compounds like H2S would be produced in sufficient amounts. The long half-life of Cl-36 should also mean that very little of its decay products would be generated over the lifetime of the reactor, which are 98% Ar-36 and only 2% S-36 according to Wikipedia. S-36 may also be transmuted to the stable S-37, though one would have to check how much of this transmutation could occur with the fast neutrons in this design.
You are great Ed Pheil you can save the planet through cheap clean energy
I have high hopes for aneutronic fusion. But even if TAE can make proton-boron-11 work, even if Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (or one of another eight (?) outfits around the world working in it) can make the Dense Plasma Focus work as a fusion engine for ten cents per watt capacity, I still think we need to build enough molten salt fast reactors to burn up our 84,000 tons of "spent" reactor fuel, instead of leaving that hot mess, too, for the great-great-greats to deal with.
God's speed Ed.
The ability to make heat would be fantastic. There are so many thousands of applications for heat only. They use enormous quantities of natural gas to make hot water for the oil sands industry. Solution minning in the potash industry requires enormous quantities of hot water.
Gary, the whole idea is to make petroleum and tar sands and all the damage exploiting them does obsolete, anyway. Are you not paying attention, or are you a climate change denier?
I didn’t understand much, so instead of a liquid fluoride thorium reactor he is designing a liquid chloride thorium reactor?
Both chloride and fluoride are salts, just with different chemistry. The big difference is this is a fast neutron reactor, not thermal. This allows this reactor to "burn" all fissile and fertile fuels, yes including thorium.
@@chapter4travels Just to be clear, Thorium is fertile, not fissile.
Anybody help me to study valves and instructions used in this plant and also pure lectures on safety systems like digital plant protection or Engineering safety features etc
>No need for new material R&D
Why haven't we been talking about this already? Should have had this thing prototyped five years ago!
What happened to Elysium Industries and their chloride salt reactor? Their homepage is dead. So promising and then nothing. Was their project stamped as classified and then shut down or what?
Ed Pheil closed it down and started a new company called EXODYS ENERGY. I don't really know why as he blocked me on twitter when I suggested he should bounce his tweets of someone before posting them.
Aha. I will look it up. Thank you :)
Sound like this legitimate gentleman has solved most molten salt issues just by removing the problematic parts. Lol. Excellent design!
Certainly sounds simple, doesn't it. Simple is good.
MSR is very safe, this was the way we should have gone in the 70s
Beautiful techniques. (Burn the Bombs, yea!) Thank you, for defending the combined Actuality of Planet Earth.
Impressed how many commentator below are buying every promise without any doubts whatsoever.
Yeah, the pipes corrode fast because of the molten salt, right?
What sort of materials that are nuclear qualified can even withstand 1300 degrees Celsius? Tungsten carbide? A graphite reactor wall enclosed within an actively cooled steel shell?
I don't think Ed said nuclear qualified materials for 2nd gen at 1300C. Only their current design uses qualified materials, I believe. Did a quick re-watch and just can't find mention of qualified with 2nd gen. (2nd Gen being their 2nd Fast-Spectrum MSBR not 2nd-gen reactors in general for anyone else noticing this thread.)
MORE: But I too would be curious to hear more about it.
Fair enough.
One criticism I have of the video is that in some of the cut segments the zoom in is alarmingly close. But I suppose it couldn't be helped.
I think chloride salt makes more sense then fluoride. Since it's more common and abundant can be harnessed so easily from the sea. Does anybody agree or disagree?
I've read a bit about this, researching for a book I'm working on called Pumping the Brakes on Climate Change. Chloride salts absorb a few more neutrons than fluoride salts, leaving fewer to maintain criticality, but apparently not enough to matter. The problem with Flibe, apparently, is the lithium; you want pure Li-7, which means you have to concentrate the Li-6 out, and Li-6-deuteride is thermonuclear weapons fuel. The NRC, therefore, regulates the hell out of Li-6--and, I believe, uses it as another excuse to slow the adoption of molten salt reactors, in favor of 3rd gen PWRs that no one is buying anyway. Sodium chloride is table salt is almost dirt cheap, and nobody regulates it, except my MD trying to control my blood pressure.
I would really like to see principle arguments against this reactor, because it just sounds too good. This guy looks like he knows his stuff.
Ed Pheil tweets a lot ( EdPheil ), maybe too much. So you could certainly find him and pick his brain. If you listen to PodCasts it is Titans Of Nuclear where he participated in a Nuclear Technology Series (4 parts) which started June 23rd 2020. They're between Ep 266 and Ep 267. They're a really good listen.
@@gordonmcdowell Thanks, I will check that out. Keep up the good work and take care.
Liquid sodium burns when exposed to oxygen, explodes when exposed to water. Liquid sodium will absorb 30,000 times more radioactivity than water. Expensive to build, complex to operate, subject to very prolonged shutdowns for even minor malfunctions, difficult, costly and time-consuming breakdowns, and radiation exposure for workers too high. Did I mention expensive, twice as expensive as conventional reactors, which are 2-4 times as expensive as power from solar or wind turbines. Also, can you spell P-R-O-L-I-F-E-R-A-T-I-O-N? Need more? Check out Santa Susana or Fermi I, or Superphenix, or BN-350 or Monju, or Kalpakkam.
@@jackfanning7952 Weak counter-points. All things that you said are true for liquid sodium reactor. But this video is about reactor cooled with liquid sodium _chloride_ and this makes a whole world of difference, so you misunderstood the entire concept. The whole point of using NaCl is to have chemically inert and stable cooling liquid (unlike elemental sodium!) that will not interfere with neutron economics. As for proliferation - this is just silly argument. If you want to make the bomb, you don't buy 4th gen experimental reactor and steal off some fuel. There are much simpler ways. Try googling UK's windscale - much simpler, huh?
@@mrsxg Windscale got shut down by Covid for a while. UK is planning to decommission it, thank God! Windscale and La Hague have made the Atlantic the most contaminated ocean in the world. Proliferation is definitely not a silly argument.
Galen Windsor was right. Plutonium is the future. I guess we will be digging up all that so called waste that we buried in basalt back in the 80s and 90s.🤣🤣
I see that Elysium is based in Canada, have they started the licensing process with CNSC?
They were out of Boston, now they are in upstate NY
Their website says Canada?
The people are in the US. The corporation is headquartered in Canada, I am guessing due to friendlier regulation with regard to new designs.
Even our nuclear regulator is nicer here.
The Eh Team
And yes Canada is open minded on technology, vice hostile to MSRs like DOE. NRC only knows water, so is just...scared. But, Canada dies not seem to have interest in New nuclear, so they worry me. CNSC and CNL sell vSMR's, but there seems to be no social or utility/financial interest in them. They are closing and not replacing 8 reactors at Pickering, but replacing with gas. No one, I repeat no one has said they are interested in vSMR's except those that get paid to regulate or develop them. No one is looking at building any kind of capacity whether electrical or industrial or residential process heating. SMR & vSMR are not capacity additions, so have no effect on climate or pollution reduction. Pickering is being shut down, in part BECAUSE they are small.
US is similar though, but does have a larger potential market. Both have enormous fuel resources as SNF.
I have been blogging for a number of years about an idea that is spoken about here at 31.0 I called it DUPIC Molten salt
I want to apologize to Dr. Ed Thiel for being too harsh. I guess I am frustrated by all these design twists, where it seems like everyone wants to put their "stamp" on it, since their investors are looking for patents which will help ensure their ROI. I certainly might have offended Dr. Thiel, which was not my intention. But I remain convinced that chlorides will not work, even though the cross-section is attractive. I also believe the Molten Salt Development Community should collaborate and get a commercial MSR licensed.
i think their both great, but yeah this guy seems to be more in depth than sorenson. their def both amazing though. the truth is we need to switch to nuclear now or were doomed, we cant wait for the perfect thing we just need to do what works, now.
Renewables work now. Nuclear has never worked.
3:30 I'm watching skeptically thinking" what's your solution for materials degradation?"
densealloy
Design for replacement when needed. We did that when the solid fuel was shorter lived than the vessel. Now that table is turned. The fuel lasts longer than the vessel irradiation damage or creep. So replace the vessel, and design to be able to do so. The vessel is thin, not forged and the core can be drained. The core effectively lasts forever, i.e. self repairs faster than radiation damage by 100,000x times the rate, and no TRU poisoning, like in thermal reactors.
I don't know of any stainless steels that could withstand 1300 degrees without creep though.
MonMalthias
I don't either. In general, I can't understand why everyone worships ANY nickel alloy for nuclear. But, I will use it for the first ~600C Thot reactor because it is qualified. But, high temoerature materials need to be qualified. I talked to one company that uses refractory metals at 1800-2500C, but non-nuclear. And need to look at glasses, ceramics, composites, and/or cladding/liners like water plants.
Moltex proposes to use zirconium clad stainless steel. Neutronics arguments aside, would an MCFR realistically use such an arrangement? Zirconium cladding of 100mm thickness structurally supported by 316 SS? Perhaps go for sacrificial core, reused fuel a la ThorCon and Terrestrial? While the fuel itself could withstand hundreds of thousands of DPA inherent to its ionic bonded nature, the weakness of the design then becomes what makes up the core and piping. One of the things that really surprised me about the Elysium design is how strikingly similar it is to the Euratom MSFR/SAMOFAR project. 8 loops and 8 pumps circulating fuel at high speed to get the power output up to 1GW in a very small core.
I suppose the litmus test is now what could hold that fluid in the right configuration.
Hello, a very interesting and well explained video - I have a question about safety: How do you ensure that the reactor can withstand any natural disaster? I completely agree - this is one of the general scenarios where they are specifiaclly needed.
I don't know that you can build anything to withstand any natural disaster. But you can be smart enough to avoid most. Don't build near a geofault, within reach of a storm surge let alone a tsunami, on a flood plain, below a landslide, or within reach of a volcano. Nothing much you can do about an asteroid strike, anyway. Remember that in any reactor breach the salts are going to spread out, go non-critical, and freeze, not be blown far and wide on the winds.
@@johnorenick9026 In addition any break in the containment vessel results in immediate loss of critically and the fuel salt solidifying.
This guy is awesome. The first MSRs are probably gonna be this. If I was him I'd go to the UK. They seem to be more inclined to a Fast MSR.
Yeah will be interesting what route they take. AFAIK, they have not decided on what regulatory pathway to take.
The thermal sounds awesome especially with the massive thermal efficiency but like Sorenson keeps saying it's is just a super harsh environment with salt and heat that they were still looking at engineering a solution. The faster someone can get a Th non PWR on line the better for everyone. There is no US military to eat up the R&D like PWR had. I can't imagine how godawful expensive alloy research and small batch purchase would be. This is much more realistic than the massive step that a thermal would be since this is essentially a COTS solution (as close as one could get in reactors)
Hey Gordon, I've noticed that some RUclipsrs have a "sponsor" option next to their subscribe button. Are you thinking about adding a sponsor button?
17,417 subscribers need 100,000. Thanks for suggesting though I hadn't checked into it since it first started.
Tesla is building a new megafactory in Texas (2021), which showed us last winter that its electric grid is less than reliable. If Elon Musk could be talked into building his own Elysium MCSFR, he'd have uninterruptible, inexpensive power that he could easily scale up at need, or start big and sell his excess to the grid. With that much energy available he could collaborate with MIT spinoff Boston Metals to build his own clean steel mill; Boston Metals is developing Molten Oxide Electrolysis, a technique for making steel (and other metals) with electricity instead of coal, that emits only oxygen as a waste gas, and makes better steel for less energy and less money. Alcoa and Rio Tinto are working to decarbonize aluminum production in much the same way; Tesla must use a lot of aluminum, too. Musk would improve Tesla's bottom line, and do the world a huge favor by helping to demonstrate these technologies. Anybody reading have his ear? His e-mail?
Now if we could talk him into building megafactories with Blue World Crete instead of Portland cement. ...
I kinda like this chaotic vibe.
Yes U233 can be used in a weapon - but no one is going to for the same reason you cited your fuel will be safe. Handling it is not an easy process.
The issue is the need to use a blanket to use a pure Th/U233 cycle and that is not very radioactive, and IS easy to handle.
Ok, I’m just gonna say it -
Ed is Kirk Sorensen 2.0 !!
I'm not sure who should be repulsed by this comparison. Ed or Kirk.
I Would say i´m not so sure of the plant size.
The issue is scale of economy.
The advantage of low size is high volume and large integration. The advantage of large size is higher efficiency and less material per power.
I think he talk of both side. Yea higher efficiency and there for a lower relative core size... but the fuel is pretty much free.
He wants to replace 1 old reactor with 1 new reactor while producing the same energy. Sounds like a good strategy for dealing with the "nuclear cliff" of shutdowns.
That is of cause a interesting idéa... But i really questioning if its cheaper than just building a new plants next to it. Most Reactors that reach end of life does it not because the reactor is to old, but becasue the turbine (or turbin housing) need changing. Because a lot of Nuclear turbines are one of, its just to expensive.
A other problem is that it usually takes 10-15 years to totally remove the reactor core and pipes. When its all hone you pretty much have a building, that most of the time got holes in it you don´t want. The turbine and support structure is probobly gone 10 years earlier.
Of cause, one way it does make sense, is if you keep using the building, you don´t have to tear it down, that is of cause very expensive. Probably the most expensive part. So that might be the economical grace of it.
But you would ned new everything. New transformers, new power-lines, new turbine, new control room. The old cooling might be possible to use.
And of cause the old plant infrastructure... That can of cause be used if a compleatly new reactor is built to. But that do save a lot of money
Yes, the economics determine whether you can build a large plant or small plant, and there are many factors. A small plant may be economical if existing power is very expensive like islands, military bases, remote communities, resource recovery.
The goal is to drive down costs as much as possible, so it is the economic choice, not jyst the ckean or safe choice. If this is not obtained nuclear wont go forward.
Well... my point is.... while i do relize that you are doing a bit of it anyway. That i high volume product is much cheaper to produce than a low volume one. Of cause. if the plant is semi modular (that is the case for pretty much most of the fluoride concepts, you can of cause build a lager plant of several smaller.
But if the fuel is near free... honestly, nuclear fuel is already rather cheap.If the fuel cost is cut down more, the main benefit of higher beneficent turbine, is a smaller reactor (for same power). But if the reactor can be made even cheaper.
Of cause, there is nothing to say that one reactor one turbine... and there are already reactors around that have two turbines per reactor. There are also concept.. i think it may be nuscale, here they use 10 reactors on 5 turbines.
There is a optimum size for turbines, reactors and what ever component. Of cause, paring a different number of reactors en turbines may be able to make them both optimal.
I work in a completely different sector, but we have the exakt same problem. When we hit sizes over 3½ meter in diameter 25-30 meter in length and around 150-200 ton in weight the cost skyrockets. But that limit have increased significant the last 10-15 years.
Of cause, our units are probobly a lot cheaper, just around $100k each, transporting and tooling is a rather large part of the cost.
The Eh Team
As for replacing one water with one MCSFR, if you figure it out we get 30x as much energy out of the water reactor waste as the water reactor extracted. Almost starts to look a little like the LWR to coal volume comparison, especially when adding another 10x in energy for the depleted uranium consumption. 250-300x the energy for a closed cycle burning water waste.
I want to see the reactor as proposed. Blanket? No blanket? I want to see the fast spectrum neurotics explained better, also. I like your philosophy, though.
He wants to use isotope separated Chloride... so, no, he's not talking a couple hundred bucks a ton for salt. Think hundreds of dollars a Kilogram.
Yup, Cl-37 is the way to go...
Jonathan Schattke
We CAN use separated Cl37, we don't have to. It depends on the overall economics, and the end goals desired. Don't forget once the Cl37 is separated it is reused for centuries through recycling. Whether you use it depends on how much fuel value you wish to breed vs the cost of HLEU once the other Pu waste sources are depleted. The first reactors likely wouldn't bother to use enriched Cl37 because it is easier/cheaper. Also don't forget Cl was the first ever enriched isotopes because it is easier. And it is orders of magnitude cheaper to go from 24% to 90% Cl37 than 92% to 99.995% Li7, especially without the level 1 security of dealing with a weapons process with Li enrichment.
Ed Pheil Those are some pretty good points.
Lithium is cheaply extracted from seawater or brine lakes (most of the world's supply comes from a brine lake in Chile but that's just because it's cheap). Flouride salts are similar.
Natural lithium needs isotopic separation or 6% of it will be converted to deuterium - but that's not that big a deal to be honest. It essentially means you get a shortlived deuterium outgassing at nuclear startup and as long as something combines with the hydrogen it gets contained.
@@EdPheil What is the problem with CL-35?