/sci/ - Science & Math

>mfw i thought the thumbnail was a Doom map

I don't know the answer to your question but Shirley LFTR isn't the best choice for a homemade nuclear reactor.

just so you know, the standard notation for isotopes is to put the atomic number to the upper left of the elemental abbreviation

>>2997005
probably not, but it's a proof of concept, and an interesting challenge all in one. perhaps if it works out, it'll get noticed and fast-track LFTR to widespread adoption?

>>2996982
also, disregard the 1.6Kw generator output in the diagram, i wasn't accounting for instantaneous load which could go up to 25k at times, although i could mitigate that with a battery bank

aaaaaaaaaanybody?

reminds me of Mad Scientist. except with radiation and death instead of fuzzy hamsters and plastic bubbles

bampbampbumpbumpba

aged for some more answers
i might be asking too much of /sci/

>>2996982

lrn2chem

Fl reacts with erryfkingthing

Do you know how you will produce fluorine in the first place? It's not something you can buy or store.

>>2998830

Yeah it's /sci/ that's the problem, not you...

taxidimathesis; undertaking a task that you believe may be impossible for the sole purpose of learning from the process.

as an advancementist i heartily approve of this project.

Just out of curiosity, who sells 233pa to private individuals?

Libyan nationalists?

>>3000133

from the last thread i believe he was going into the nevada desert to hunt down nuclear waste with a geiger counter.

>>3000139
Pic: my face before and after I realized that there actually is a possibility that he was serious

Bumping for epicness, but seriously, where are you gonna get the 233pa?

>>3000159
>open pic
>extend finger downward, push button
>nothing happens
>look down, i pushed F12, there is no F13
>look back up

oh god that fucking pic man

>>3000228

>mfw I have an F13 key on my keyboard.

>>3000159

>>3000095
>>3000095

Not words

>>3000394

yet.

no one on /sci/ actualy has a clue

This you OP??
http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3035&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=5
e4d1485fe3cafae6936fbfcd8aef22c

>>2996982
Enjoy getting V& for posession of nuclear materials and for attempting to construct an unlicensed nuclear reactor. I'm sure you'll enjoy your extended stay as a "guest" of Homeland Security.

mfw
dont try this at home

Very interesting, good luck to OP.

I wrote to Neil Degrasse Tyson about MSTRs, I hope he does a bit about them on his radio show...

As for OP, godspeed

email brian cox to help you out. he wont have a fucking clue but he will smoke a blunt with you. partial success.

>>3000159
>>3000139
oh christ no, i'm taking every legal precaution i can. specifically figuring out how much thorium i can own and procuring it. there's a nice place called american elements that sells it in balls, but they haven't answered the phone in a few days, i might just send them an email

like hell i'm breaking into that nevada test site, not worth it.

>>3001019
getting one of those bunnysuits for the actual reactor chamber as well, mostly for the fucking fluorine

>>3001330

Fluorine that you will never have

>>3001330
Fluorine will fuck up any containment vessel you can build, then fuck up your bunny suit, then fuck you up too for good measure. Also thorium and uranium are going to be Really Goddamn Expensive. I know it's probably not indicative of prices everywhere, but I just looked up thorium on ebay and it's $500 for 25 *grams* of oxide.

If you want to mess with radiation/nuclear power, build a fusor; leave fission to the power plants. At least with a fusor there's the possibility of being rich forever if you can manage to make it break even.

Does anyone have a link to that huge compendium of resources /sci/ put together?

>>3001369
>fusor
>break even
that's kind of a problem since there is very strong evidence the fusor cannot break even

>>3001382

I saved it. You should have done the same.

>captain hindsight

aged

update, kind of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So
turns out Pa233 refinement isn't really necessary with a two-fluid reactor design. with a single fluid is absolutely critical since it's sitting right next to the fissling U233 and has a high chance of capturing more neutrons and turning into nasty transuranics, but in a separate blanket the chances of one atom getting hit twice is monstrously low.

>>3002505 uh-huh

What way will you make your blanket? As much detail as possible will be appreciated

>>3002638
a spherical design would be the most efficient, but also the most troublesome in terms of structure and piping. the scale will be small enough that weight probably won't be much of an issue, and the entry/exit pipes for the fluoride reprocessing and primary coolant salt could double as structural members. pretty much everything will need to be hastelloy

modified it more, making the gas cycle turbine workings more obvious, and removing the essentially superfluous step of removing Pa233 from the thorium salt blanket

also, turns out i really do not need that much U233, it's pretty sparsely mixed into the carrier salt

>>3002951
so, wait, you're actually serious?
i don't know whether to post "ohwaityourseriousletmelaughharder.jpg"
or
"ISALUTEYOU"
here, have something halfway

contacted UC berkeley, they're working on a very interesting kind of stepping stone to a true LFTR design, using pebble bed architecture and liquid salt coolant.
it supposedly has a high negative coefficient of reactivity with the control rods inserted, but i don't know... seems like you'd have to keep coolant flowing with all the waste heat from the spent pebbles. (the main problem with any solid fuel system)

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/pb-ahtr/

>>3005067

What did they say when you showed them your diagram?

>>3005130
>show the nuclear engineering department chair of UC Berkley my scribblings
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA
no

>dwightschrute.jpg

apparently its obvious to everyone else but why do we need fluorine in this reactor?

what does F do that nothing else can?

>>3005239
Are we talking about the liquid salt thorium reactor? Florine is awesome because it will gas-ify (is that a word?) the uranium and leave the thorium in solution, making it an incredibly effective way to separate out the two things from solution.

>>3005252
o i see

cant you use something else that reacts with both and adjust the temperature to get one compound to boiling point?

im guessing no but maybe you can explain a bit. thx

>>3005267
i think there are some designs that used chlorine instead of fluorine.
one half of the reason is because, since fluorine is so monstrously stable, it doesn't pop apart easily in the high heat high neutron flux environment of the core. the other reason is as that guy mentioned, it makes U233 separation a very simple one-step process

>>3005357
since fluorine salts* are stable
fluorine gas is incredibly volatile

Bump for OP's progress

>>3005865
what progress?
do you want more scribbles?

I'll take any notes, scribbles, whatever you've got. I might not comprehend some of the finer points yet, but it's all damn interesting, and I'd love to know more.

>>3007386
well after i get my other work done for the day, i'm going to outline some possible designs for the core. spherical, cylindrical, pot, ect. i need to find something that can be very small

Alright, I'll lurk some more.

>going to build

You're not going to build this, and even if you did you wouldn't be able to power your house with it.

>>3007695
if anything i'm more worried about it being TOO powerful. the heat to simply keep the salt molten and flowing is something like 600 degrees Celsius.
If i can get the core up to about that temp, just the act of it maintaining ebuilibrium will be enough to power one hell of a steam turbine

i'm mostly throwing darts right now, as i don't know what limitations i'll have in terms of heat output given certain uranium concentrations and designs.

the IDEAL would be something around 700-800 degrees C, in which case i could use Silicon carbide in the reactor walls and tubing walls, which i think is decently cheap and easy to form into the shapes i need.

the decent backup would be down in the 300-500 degrees C range and then i could switch to good old stainless steels, nice and cheap.

i mean, i don't need it to be that hot anyway

actually, just using the fuel salt as the first stage in heat transfer is probably a better idea than trying to engineer a heat transfer pipe right into the core.

it'd be almost like hot wheels cars with that battery powered spinning wheel that accelerates cars passing through it.

the trick will be keeping the core hot enough to keep the salt molten all the way through it's circuit through the heat exchanger

protip; don't think about materials you're going to use until you can figure out how hot the reactor needs to be from your power demands. work from your requirements backwards

if you do build this it will be the biggest win ever wittnessed on 4chan.

>>3010823
especially when i drill my own well and use this to pump water from it.
then set up an atmospheric CO2 harvesting system to create dimethyl-ether from the reactor's heat (which can be used as a replacement for diesel fuel with some modifications to my truck)

and then sell the excess juice back to the grid

so i wouldn't have water bills, electricity bills, or need to buy gas. win indeed.

>>3010837
uh, DME production is more complex than just "heat up co2"

>>3009116

Thanks for the scribbles OP

>>3005252
>mfw self-appointed "Scientist" uses "gas-ify" instead of EVAPORATE and SUBLIMATE

>>3012148
this is actually true, apparently gasification is a very specific process which refers to heating up fossil fuels in order to convert them into methane or co2.

i'm not quite sure what the uranium extraction process would fall under, evaporation or sublimation.

You can not, in any way shape or form build a nuclear reactor at home.
Similar to why you can't build a skyscraper on your own, or a bridge.
If, though some miraculously event get all the components together, you will still most likely completely fail to get it critical.

>>3013632
it all depends on what comes out of the calculations, very heavy moderation by graphite might get something going. consider that at ORNL the actual fuel salt only contained .16% U233, and yet that thing was chugging along at 70 megawatts thermal and the core wasn't that big.