/sci/ - Science & Math

I've heard it produces a lot less waste, so that's a pretty big advantage right there.

All I can remember is one TED video, though.

Yes, yes, and yes.

Now go convince a bunch of paranoid politicians that nuclear power can be clean, cheap, and abundant, and you'll win a Nobel prize.

>>3410894
second

IIRC, the Chinese are working on a thorium reactor.

Go, our eventual evil overlords, go!

>>3410902
I for one welcome our Chinese overlords.

As for >>3410886, yes, thorium power cycles are pretty good. With LFTRs a meltdown is literally impossible, and if everyone suddenly died or walked away from the plant a freeze plug would melt, dump the fuel salt liquid into a tank, and stop the reaction.

And the reason Thorium produces so much less waste is because it uses in the rage of 90% of the fissile material, which is a lot more the the conventional U238 cycle.

I've heard that 1 ton of Th is equivalent in energy terms to 100 tons or more of fissile uranium.

>>3410950
>the conventional U238 cycle.

Don't you mean 235?

>>3410902
I am seriously starting to think that being annexed by China would be a fucking improvement.

>>3410971
They have no reason to invade. They own almost all of your debt, so they'll dictate from behind the scenes. Eh, I'm okay with this.

>>3410977
>They own almost all of your debt

[citation needed]

>>3410886
It all depends on what you're comparing.
LFTR vs gen III+, its yes, yes, yes.
LFTR vs IFR, its equal, maybe, yes.
(Not that theres anything much wrong with current gen III+ tech.)

Fusion will save the world. . .

>>3411023
>implying this will ever happen.

>>3410986
Do you know I'd not looked at wikipedia in a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Composition_of_U.S._Long-Term_Treasury_Debt_2005-2010.PNG

China and Japan each own a metric fuckton of US debt. That's magic because Japan's own debt is something like 200% of their GDP. Sometimes I wonder if the worldwide debt crisis even exists.

>>3411028

Anybody checked http://ecatnews.com/ lately?

It is still too early to tell, but...

>>3411029
debt = promises. the problem isn't debt, it's lazy faggots, and the idiots who lend to them.

>>3411029
Well considering it's an imaginary thing, I would say it only exist because we allow it. However just saying "hey lets get rid of this imaginary tool" a lot of butthurt would ensue. China being one of them.

>>3411028

>implying cold fusion has'nt been invented many times in the past but has been suppressed by big oil backers.

bumping with thorium propaganda.

>>3410950
>I've heard that 1 ton of Th is equivalent in energy terms to 100 tons or more of fissile uranium.

apples and oranges; the kind of reactor needed to produce energy from thorium would also be able to use u238 or really any of the actinides. it isn't the thorium that is more efficient, but the reactor

>>3411130
Actually, no Pu-239 has a shit neutron economy.
Thermal breeders have pretty much the hardest neutron economy to pull of, and Pu-239 gobbles up half the neutrons that hit it without fission.

>>3411130

So.... we should build the reactor, then.

>>3411143
If you want to compare an LFTR to something that uses uranium/plutonium/whatever, then you compare to an Integral Fast Reactor. Similar advantages, both have had working small scale prototypes, etc.

>>3411153
Yeah, because that's a fast breeder.
Fast Neutrons can pretty much use anything fuel efficiently, but the have different problems associated with them.

>>3410986
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Foreign_holders_of_U.S._Treasury_Securities

yup its wikipedia. but seriously they own 26% of the foreign loans.
thats 1.1 trillion out of a nearly 14.3 trillion total debt.

so... yup

>>3411150

everyone i have ever talked to that understands the basics of how a breeder reactor would work thinks we should build them ASAP

thing is you have to convince the general population, who are too afraid of nuclear power to even build new U235 reactors. shit in my state there are multiple 100% completed light water reactors that have just been sitting for 20 years waiting for fuel rods because no politician wants to be the one to turn them on.

>>3410960
Yes I do lol

Glad to see everyone's onboard with thorium and breeder tech.

Now, everyone understands why pebble bed reactors were a dead end, right? Just so there are no distractions going forward.

>>3410886
>Would thorium nuclear power really be more efficient and cleaner than uranium based power?
No. If it was, then it would be all over the news by now.

>>3411301
>Now, everyone understands why pebble bed reactors were a dead end, right
What, they're awesome, as long as you sue the prismatic core design.

>>3410902
so are the Indians.

I'm actually more hopeful that someone will finally act on Quantum Nucleonic Hafnium reactors. It's been almost a decade since I first heard of them and it's been crickets ever since.

http://www.besslerwheel.com/wwwboard/messages/1149.html

Thorium Reactors:

Back to the Dream Factory

by Gordon Edwards, July 13, 2011


The Nuclear Dream Factory

Every time a nuclear power reactor idea doesn't work out, and ordinary people get down-hearted and start to doubt the magnificence and benificence of nuclear energy, nuclear proponents rush back to their well-stocked dream factory to fetch another idea -- one that is sufficiently unfamiliar and sufficiently untested that ordinary people have no idea whether it is good or bad, safe or dangerous, feasible or foolish, or whether the almost miraculous claims made about it are true or false.

Just a few years ago, nuclear proponents were pushing Generation 3 reactors -- enormous plants that would generate huge amounts of electricity, yet be cheaper and faster to build than earlier models, as well as being safer and longer-lived.
Then Areva ran into a blizzard of problems trying to build one of these behemoths in Finland -- the cost soaring by billions, the construction time stretched by years, and fundamental safety-related design problems surfacing late in the game. Check and mate.

Undaunted, nuclear proponents quickly executed a 180-degree turn and are now promoting small reactors which can be mass-produced by the thousands and sprinkled on the landscape like cinnamon on toast. Pebble-bed reactors, molten-salt reactors, thorium reactors, have been paraded before the public with as many bells and whistles as the nuclear industry can muster, to distract people's gaze away from the construction fiascos, the litany of broken promises from the past, the still-unsolved problems of nuclear waste and nuclear weapons proliferation, and the horror that is Fukushima.

The following paragraphs are written to dispel some of the mystique surrounding the idea of "thorium reactors" -- a very old idea that is now being dressed up in modern clothes and made to seem like a major scientific breakthrough, which it is not.

>>3411111
>implying anything could suppress information from a bunch of nerds with internet access

Thorium is not a nuclear fuel

The fundamental fact about thorium is that it is NOT a nuclear fuel, because thorium is not a fissile material, meaning that it cannot sustain a nuclear fission chain reaction.

In fact the ONLY naturally occurring fissile material is uranium-235, and so -- of necessity -- that is the material that fuels all of the first-generation reactors in the entire world. Thorium cannot replace uranium-235 in this regard. Not at all.

Thorium is a "fertile" material

But thorium-232, which is a naturally occurring radioactive material, is about three times as abundant as uranium-238, which is also a naturally occurring radioactive material. Neither of these materials can be used directly as a nuclear fuel, because they are not "fissile" materials.

However, both uranium-238 and thorium-232 are "fertile" materials, which means that IF they are placed in the core of a nuclear reactor (one that is of necessity fuelled by a fissile material), some fraction of those fertile atoms will be transmuted into man-made fissile atoms.

Some uranium-238 atoms get transmuted into plutonium-239 atoms, and some thorium-232 atoms get transmuted into uranium-233 atoms.
Both plutonium-239 and uranium-233 are fissile materials which are not naturally-occurring. They are both usable as either fuel for nuclear reactors or as nuclear explosive materials for bombs.
(The USA exploded an atomic bomb made from uranium-233 in 1955.)

Reprocessing of irradiated nuclear fuel

In general, to obtain quantities of plutonium-239 or uranium-233, it is necessary to "reprocess" the irradiated material that started out as uranium-238 or thorium-232. This means dissolving that irradiated material in acid and then chemically separating out the fissile plutonium-239 or uranium-233, leaving behind the liquid radioactive wastes which include fission products (broken pieces of split atoms, including such things as iodine-131, cesium-137, strontium-90, etc.) and other radioactive waste materials called "activation products" and "transuranic elements".

Reprocessing is the dirtiest process in the entire nuclear fuel chain, because of the gaseous radioactive releases, liquid radioactive discharges, and large quantities of highly dangerous and easily dispersible radioactive liquids. Reprocessing also poses great proliferation risks because it produces man-made fissile materials which can be incorporated into nuclear weapons of various kinds by anyone who acquires the separated fissile material.

Advanced Fuel Cycles and Breeders

Any nuclear reactor-fuelling regime that requires reprocessing, or that uses plutonium-239 or uranium-233 as a primary reactor fuel, is called an "advanced fuel cycle". These advanced fuel cycles are intimately related with the idea of a "breeder" reactor -- one which creates as much or more fissile material as a byproduct than the amount of fissile material used to fuel the reactor. So it is only in this context that thorium reactors make any sense at all -- like all breeder concepts, they are designed to extend the fuel supply of nuclear reactors and thus prolong the nuclear age by centuries.

The breeder concept is very attractive to those who envisage a virtually limitless future for nuclear reactors, because the naturally occurring uranium-235 supply is not going to outlast the oil supply. Without advanced fuel cycles, nuclear power is doomed to be just a "flash in the pan". Thorium reactors are most enthusiastically promoted by those who see "plutonium breeders" as the only other realistic alternative to bring about a long-lived nuclear future. They think that thorium/uranium-233 is a better fate than uranium/plutonium-239. They do not see a nuclear phaseout as even remotely feasible or attractive.

"Molten Salt" reactors

Molten salt reactors are not a new idea, and they do not in any way require the use of thorium -- although historically the two concepts have often been linked. The basic idea of using molten salt instead of water (light or heavy water) as a coolant has a number of distinct advantages, chief of which is the ability to achieve much higher temperatures (650 deg. C instead of 300 deg. C) than with water cooled reactors, and at a much lower vapour pressure. The higher temperature means greater efficiency in converting the heat into electricity, and the lower pressure means less likelihood of an over-pressure rupture of pipes, and less drastic consequences of such ruptures if and when they do occur.

Molten salt reactors were researched at Oak Ridge Tennessee throughout the 1960s, culminating in the Molten Salt Reactor Experi- ment (MSRE), producing 7.4 megawatts of heat but no electricity. It was an early prototype of a thorium breeder reactor, using uranium and plutonium as fuels but not using the thorium blanket which would have been used to "breed" uranium-233 to be recovered through reprocessing -- the ultimate intention of the design.

This Oak Ridge work culminated in the period from 1970-76 in a design for a Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (MSBR) using thorium as a "fertile material" to breed "fissile" uranium-233, which would be extracted using a reprocessing facility.

Molten Salt Thorium reactors without reprocessing?

Although it is theoretically possible to imagine a molten-salt reactor design where the thorium-produced uranium-233 is immediately used as a reactor fuel without any actual reprocessing, such reactor designs are very inefficient in the "breeding" capacity and pose financial disincentives of a serious nature to any would-be developer. No one has actually built such a reactor or has plans to build such a reactor because it just isn't worth it compared with those designs which have a reprocessing facility.

Here's what Wikipedia says on this matter (it happens to be good info):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

To exploit the molten salt reactor's breeding potential to the fullest, the reactor must be co-located with a reprocessing facility. Nuclear reprocessing does not occur in the U.S. because no commercial provider is willing to undertake it. The regulatory risk and associated costs are very great because the regulatory regime has varied dramatically in different administrations.[20] UK, France, Japan, Russia and India currently operate some form of fuel reprocessing.

Some U.S. Administration departments have feared that fuel reprocessing in any form could pave the way to the plutonium economy with its associated proliferation dangers.[21]

A similar argument led to the shutdown of the Integral Fast Reactor project in 1994.[22] The proliferation risk for a thorium fuel cycle stems from the potential separation of uranium-233, which might be used in nuclear weapons, though only with considerable difficulty.

Currently the Japanese are working on a 100-200 MWe molten salt thorium breeder reactor, using technologies similar to those used at Oak Ridge, but the Japanese project seems to lack funding.

Thorium reactors do not eliminate problems

The bottom line is this. Thorium reactors still produce high-level radioactive waste, they still pose problems and opportunities for the proliferation of nuclear weapons, they still pose catastrophic accident scenarios as potential targets for terrorist or military attack, for example.

Proponents of thorium reactors argue that all of these risks are somewhat reduced in comparison with the conventional plutonium breeder concept. Whether this is true or not, the fundamental problems associated with nuclear power have by no means been eliminated.

Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

>>3411777
cheque los dobles

>>3411743
. . .so light up the world with your cute little windmills and solar panels? we'd need panels and wind farms completely covering the sahara desert and say. .Brazil. . .the fuck else are we supposed to do when the oil party is over? Go back to living in te pees? Hippie tribalist detected.

Oil giants will buy out or assassinate anyone who pitches a viable alternative so its simply not going to happen. We'll burn the last drop of oil and the last lump of coal and have no means to fuel building new infrastructure and go back to the fucking dark ages. And the old rich fucks in charge dont care because they'll be dead. The elevator cable has already been cut and we're zooming to the basement. .Nothing to see here. .

Guiz guiz guiz, the key to safe sustainable nuclear energy is the Americium found in common household smoke detectors! Captcha: dureng toxic
Also bump

>>3411777
>produce high-level radioactive waste,

...which they can burn for fuel as well.

DERPY-DERPY-DOO!

>>3411214
The current stumbling block to LFTR is regulatory. The tech is so different from current reactors, that the government has no means to approve one! Also we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in startup costs. Which means it ought to be a government research project, like it was back in the 60s.

Current nuke industry could care less, because it breaks their "razorblade" business model (build plant at cost, make profit on fuel bundles).

That is why the first US LFTR is likely to be constructed for military purposes. China is likely to build one first.

>>3410977
so why do we have to listen to China?

>>3412388
Because they quite literally own our asses.

>>3411786
>the fuck else are we supposed to do when the oil party is over? Go back to living in te pees? Hippie tribalist detected.

Nope, go back to medieval feudalism. And there is no other choice. At all. Oh well.

>>3412495
but we dont have to obey them.