/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3507381

oh hell yes! You should be able to put one together in 4 or 5 months, no sweat!

>>3507381
I think the smallest these could go is semi-trailer sized. In fact, that was one of the proposed form factors for the military, for powering forward outposts and disaster areas.

>>3507827
Don't forget aircraft. That was one of the primary goals behind the MSR.

Ridiculous goals aside, I actually know one of the guys from the original MSR experiment at Oak Ridge. Old dude hangs out at the local beer garden. He's semi-retired and does consulting work, hangs out with a local atheist/freethinker group. Good ol' southern guy from Mississippi, tons of crazy stories, but he's a nuclear engineer through and through.

so why aren't we using them right now.

>>3509004
Because the energy corporations make too much money from other sources to change it for the benefit of humanity.
Welcome to capitalism.

>>3509016
.........
what. How fucking retarded are you? If another energy source is superior, you can get into that market quickly and undercut everyone else's margins, and make MORE money by increased market share.

>>3509024
Not if you open it to anyone who can make it work in his house, also, it would be very stupid buying energy as abundant as thorium reactors produce, it would be like buying air.

>>3509016
worship the dick that rapes your ass.
welcome to /sci/

Just fuck all this shit

GET THE DAMN FUSION TECHNOLOGY UP AND RUNNING!!!!

fusion is future... all other craps and giszmo wont do shit!

>>3509044
We will fund the research of stable fusion with Fission energy bills.
Deal with it.

>>3509044
sorry capitalist fag, we are preserving the purity of fusion research by focusing money on projects that have the lowest chance of achieving break even.

>Bill Gates Invests in Thorium Capable Reactor Venture
http://itheo.org/bill-gates-invests-thorium-capable-reactor-venture

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/05/molten-salt-reactor-family-one-fluid.html

>>3509065
wakka wakka

>HUR DUR UN EMPLOYMENT
>NO JOBS

Nope. If LFTR was made a national priority. We'd save money from fossil fuel imports, Kyoto protocol regulations, etc.

Having a college degree would mean something again with the rash of transfering uranium, plutonium, coal, nat gas plants to LFTR.

And the commericial exportation of such technology would make the dot com boom seem like Mickey Mouse bull shit.

>>3509914
WHY THE FUCK ARE WE NOT DOING THIS WHY

>>3509997
The PR team for nuclear energy still has no satisfactorily economic answer for nuclear waste.

>>3509044
Because polywell may work, and if it does, I'm going to be so mad if I have to go through power school AGAIN to learn fusion.

>>3509914
Fusion is a gigantic IF, and it looks like we are hitting fundamental limits of physics to make fusion work.

>>3510171

Actually, its mostly because nobody will invest in one of these because it doesn't fit the current business model for constructing nuclear power plants. LFTRs generate very little nuclear waste comparatively.

>>3510171
Sure we do. Reprocessing, IFRs and LFTRs. The remaining waste is small enough and short lived enough that storing it is almost trivial.

>>3509033
>Not if you open it to anyone who can make it work in his house

Capitalists don't sell solar panel now?

>it would be very stupid buying energy as abundant as thorium reactors produce, it would be like buying air.

except that someone still has to produce it and can sell it, therefore there is a incentive for profit.

Seems you've used the same strawman marx used against the profit motive that has never ever appeared to be true.

The real reason we don't use thorium is probably because it doesn't work or there is some insane engineering hurdle to get passed.

>>3510220
Nope. All the science and engineering has been worked out. The only thing that remains is constructing a commercial scale prototype and running it for 5-10 years. The reason why we don't is entirely OMGNUKULARBAAAAD public opinion combined with politicians who don't give a shit. If you manage to negate either one you'll get your thorium power.

>>3510229
So step 1: Buy out politicians.
Step 2: Bull rush market with cheap thorium power.
Money speaks for itself, in spite of propaganda against it.

>>3510220
> The real reason we don't use thorium is probably because it doesn't work or there is some insane engineering hurdle to get passed.

The thorium fuel cycle is much more complex than uranium or plutonium, which means it costs more and has more commercial risk. Coupled with the fact that the government has no incentive to subsidize it as it can't be used for producing nuclear weapons.

>>3510229
Whens the last time a nuclear plant has been built in America?

>>3510427
New Jersey in the 70s, new ones in South Carolina, and Florida are being constructed.

>>3510358
Ah, but the Thorium life-cycle does produce bomb-grade fissile material, so there is that.

>>3510652
Not in a form thats easy to handle or hide.

>>3510358
HERP GUBBMINTS EBUL.

Believe it or not, electrical power generation IS something that concerns the government. One of the main reasons Nuclear is not used more extensively is simply because dealing with all of the anti-nuclear groups is a headache (Also pretty costly).

Thankfully a lot of high up Greens are coming round to nuclear power now that it's getting safer and cheaper. We might see a resurgence in Nuclear power yet.

>>3507381
I think it would be more viable to have a facility and provide houses with electricity, like the current model.

If you were to create a small reactor on a house you would have to spend money digging, buying the cement, and manual work.
And most importantly it would take longer to adapt the technology as people would feel intimidated having a complex machine under their houses.

>>3509016
And no, electric companies would benefit even more as there would be about 0 costs for maintaining this and they would still charge you.
the reason it hasn't been implemented is because is a fairly underground technology, and people with money are not /sci/.

Would you like a cup of tea with non secret mind controlling-iluminati sugar with your claims?

>>3510759

>Thankfully a lot of high up Greens are coming round to nuclear power now that it's getting safer and cheaper.

nope the leftist cunts went nuts when fukishima happened.

>>3510880
Actually, they didn't. The retarded population of retards that doesn't make a difference because they'l listen to whatever their masters want went nuts. After a full year or two, vastly greater than their attention span, the "high up Greens" can tell them nuclear power is a-okay with proper regulation.

>>3510880
I didn't notice too much from them around Fukushima, but after a quick google search i raged a little bit.

>>3510895
what pissed off the leftist nuts (me) was the idiocy of building a nuclear plant in a tsunami zone at sea level with no back up power

>it's a myth that scientists aren't supposed to be this retarded

>>3510942
Are you certain is wasn't the engineer's fault?
I'd blame it on the politicians, but really.

>mfw when they're trying to shut down a nuclear planet where I live and they'll just build a thorium reactor over it to troll envirofags

>>3510964
>politicians
I blame politicians, but MITI used to control the japanese economy and that is not a political organization, and I ask what fucking engineer worth his diploma would build an emergency power backup that draws from the main grid when the main grid is the first victim in an emergency????
I blame everybody because it should not have happened the way it did. Period, At all. Nobody gets a pass on this fuck up.

>>3510942

dude it's not the tsunami that fucked shit up, it's the earthquake and it took one of the biggest ones ever recorded.
i'm not making excuses, the government was inept and covered up the faults but at least fault them correctly.

>>3510984

yes i know there was on-site backup power, also sitting out in the open on a flood plain.

>>3510942

err.. they did have backups, and backup to the backups. But everything still went tits-up. Aparently there is a _long_ history of problems with that plant. Its sister plant, further north ultimately came through just fine (got scary for a bit though).

start from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_incidents

and compare the two different Fukushima reactor incidents

Also, given that it was a 100-1000 frequency event, given that it was an obsolete reactor design with serious issues relating to its construction -> on the level of: Were the welders even certified? AND they ended up with a full-fucking meltdown yet how many people have died from the reactor itself: 0 from the tsunami: ~30k

This to me is a 100% vote in the safety of nuclear power. Even if everything goes to shit, and the absolute worst case thing happens, all you are left with is a very expensive cleanup.

>all around fuckup

Earthquake, tsunami, backup power design faulty (sorry, I was so hopping mad I neglected the earthquake)

All around generalized megafuckup
The executives of Fukushima got fired the other day but still, the damage is done

>>3510994
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for nuclear power, in the right place. England and France has a zillion plants, but they also don't have tsunamis and earthquakes.

Let's use some common sense, for god's sake

>>3510975
>mfw when they're trying to shut down a nuclear planet

>>3510994
This. This so hard.

At the end of the day, the damage caused by the Reactor basically having everything go wrong with it was basically negligible. AND it was hit by something an order of magnitude greater than it was designed for. AND it was ten years due for a decomission. AND STILL nobody died.

Nobody has died, nobody is likely to die.

Germany shutting down it's nuclear plants was absurd. They're not in an earthquake zone, it's practically impossible for them to get hit by a Tsunami. The only natural disaster that could hit a German Nuclear plant would be an asteroid strike, in which case I think they'd have greater worries on their minds. I can only hope that their decision is speedily reversed after the next election.

>>3511072
Germany shut down their nuclear plants?
Because of a TSUNAMI ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD?

I guess Germany is to politics what Madagascar is to plague.

>>3507381
>Based on what I've seen, these reactors can be made smaller due to the reduced cooling requirements.
They can be made smaller because they run at atmospheric pressure and do not require massive concrete slabs for safety.

>>3509024
Because it'll cost ~1 billion+ to bring it to market, and no one minus the largest governments have money like that to throw around on a potentially risky investment.

>>3511072
>Nobody has died, nobody is likely to die.
Yet.

After reading this thread, I feel my butthurt magnified, other countries wanna bomb our nuclear energy installations.
We should be commended for not polluting!

>>3511223
>energy
>potentially risky
What risk?
Opposing propaganda scaring away all business is the only thing I can think of.

>>3510652
>>3510703
Not really, no. The inevitable contamination by U 232 means it's a bitch to handle as its byproducts give off massive gamma emissions. You could maybe make a bomb out of it, but it would be harder than just making a bomb from scratch with a conventional uranium pile.

>>3511207
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13592208

Yep. The most hilarious part is that they're hoping to fill the gap with Wind farms in the North sea off Denmark. Most of the Energy is needed in the south of the country and as such they're having to build massive new power infrastructure right down the centre of the country across a national park. The's a massive resistance campaign because it'll "ruin the natural beauty". It's a total clusterfuck.

>>3511235
My fucking god.
sage because humans are fucking stupid and have broken any hope I had for man.

>>3511226
>in the last 40 years 20,000 people have died as a result of oil drilling
>chernobyl only killed 31 people

yeah nuclear power is so dangerous

>>3511230
Let's be frank here - thorium reactors might not work. Ok, all I've seen shows that they will, but an investor is looking at something with a sizable risk. Investors don't just invest based on average expected outcome of investment. They also like to ensure minimum risk. Would you rather be 99.9% guaranteed of at least breaking even and making 10%, or 70% of 10x your money and 30% of losing it all? (I hope I set those numbers up right, pulled entirely out of my ass.) Most sane people, especially the rich who are patient and intelligent, can afford a little less money if it means much less risk of investment.

>>3511235
well, as long as it's clean energy why does it fucking mattter.

>>3511229
nobody's afraid of anyone making clean energy. there's legitimate fears of weaponization.

>>3511247
>nobody's afraid of anyone making clean energy. there's legitimate fears of weaponization.
They should read this post then:
>>3511231

Besides, we already have a shitton of nukes. It's part of being a world power. Whats the problem with a few power plants?

I'm serious, what sort of spin are they putting on it all?

>>3511244
Especially when you have to blow all of your moneys on it*. 1 billion is not chump change to /anyone/.

>>3511247
my understanding is it must be enriched to 90% or something to be used in a nuclear weapon.

>>3511226
ooooer, foreboding. Thyroid cancer has a 96% survival rate. This is a Tsunami that killed THIRTY THOUSAND PEOPLE. Yes, any more deaths would be a tragedy, but it's being blown horribly out of proportion.

WIND FARMS kill more people than Nuclear for fuck's sake. Not to mention all of the wildlife they fuck up (They pretty much act like mosquito zappers for bats.)

>>3511258
>1 billion is not chump change to /anyone/.
American here. Sorry, but millions and billions just don't seem so important now ever since that three trillion injection.
Kinda numbs your financial senses.

>>3511258
To continue, capitalism, aka free markets, work well when there are a large number of independent actors in the market. Protip: the "free" in "free markets" is a description of the state of the actors in the market - they are "free" and act independently.

With such a very small number of actors in this market, basically the high end governments and the crazy big corporations and billionaires, you cannot just invoke "if it was profitable capitalism would do it!".

>>3511268
American as well. Despite us being a thousand billion in the hole, a billion is not something one casually pisses away.

>>3511247
My point was that they shut down energy that's already cheap, clean and safe and then complain when the alternative is costly and fucks up a much loved national park. Like I said, it's a clusterfuck.

>>3511207

There have been some Germans on here that got a bit testy when I teased them about their abandoning nuclear power. The core of their rationality seemed to be that man controlling nuclear energy was hubris ?sp? / arrogance of mankind and destined to fail horribly.

I kind of lay that at the feet of their defeat in WWII. They were arrogant as a nation and were basically completely annihilated; that has to lead to some pretty severe navel gazing.

I wonder if Japan is so werd for the same reasons. We (the US) forced them to engage with the world in the late 1800's; they rapidly industrialized, then they were analated/crushed with the most powerful weapons ever deployed; then rebuilt basically in a generation to be a world power again. What a mind job that must be.

>>3511281
>The core of their rationality seemed to be that man controlling nuclear energy was hubris ?sp? / arrogance of mankind and destined to fail horribly.
Abort. Abort. Conversation doomed to failure.

>>3511281
Man I don't get cultures like that.
So what if your nation was crushed? It's not like it was you personally got beat down. Don't take it personally and get back to building with what you got.

>>3511281
>WW2, Arrogance of man etc.
Well, this thread's going to degenerate into a shitstorm. Congratulations on making the perfect /sci/ troll post.

>>3511292
they were collectivist nations. their collective came first, not individuals. they were both isolated, and they were indoctrinated as such, amirite?

i know this is a very superficial analysis.

>>3511294
nah, it's cool. Germans are being campy again, nothin' to see here. Back to the topic at hand.


>>3511244
So How long will it be before thorium reactors will be considered commercially viable?
Also, I have to say I don't know what the result would be of a thorium reactor had a 'meltdown'. Care to enlighten me?

>>3511292

What seems crazy is they do not seem to reject all technology. Their economy is going gang busters and they are exporting like crazy. They are about the one healthy economy of Europe: It is my understanding when they say 'Europe is going to bail out Greece', what they are really saying is 'The German taxpayer is going to subsidize the unsustainable lifestyle of Greece'

But they are deploying _solar power_ all over Germany (spoiler alert -> the climate is cloudy) rather than go nuclear.

Like you, I just don't understand.

>>3511294
'twas not my intention. Anyway Thorium is great!

Thorium
Thorium
Thorium

Yay!

>>3511319
Nah I get why they do the crazy thing they be doing, just not the culture impact, you know?
Right now they are still super-green politically, but after a public panic of course they're gonna do any alternative.
Any port in a storm, and all that jazz.

>>3511330
Yes, I completely agree.

>>3511315
>So How long will it be before thorium reactors will be considered commercially viable?
All I know is what I see in the youtube videos and what I read on the forums at
http://energyfromthorium.com/

If we dump /a lot/ of money (won't happen), 5~ years. If we dump a reasonable amount of money, 10~ years.

>Also, I have to say I don't know what the result would be of a thorium reactor had a 'meltdown'. Care to enlighten me?

A meltdown in a conventional light water reactor is when the cooling machines stop, the sold fuel overheats, and melts. When it melts, it breaches the little containing sheets around the fuel rod, and forms a sludge at the bottom of the tank. At that point, you're just fucked. It's "loose", and it is a truly massive pain to clean that up. Also, due to the heat, expect it to start reacting with things, or melting holes through the floor, which can cause it to go up in the air or otherwise escape.

As the molten salt reactor fuel is already a liquid, it cannot melt down. If an accident were to happen, then the salt would no longer be actively cooled, and it would melt a small little piece of salt in a small pipe that they kept frozen by a cooler, and the salt would drain through that pipe into a geometry where passive cooling would handle it. Voila, absolutely no disaster.

>>3511339
>As the molten salt reactor fuel is already a liquid, it cannot melt down. If an accident were to happen, then the salt would no longer be actively cooled, and it would melt a small little piece of salt in a small pipe that they kept frozen by a cooler, and the salt would drain through that pipe into a geometry where passive cooling would handle it. Voila, absolutely no disaster.

That sounds way to good to be true.
Somehow I think business men presented with such proposals think the same way, and are thus hesitant, lacking the personal understanding of a nuclear engineer.

>>3511315
Well, with the LFTR it's a bit of a weird one. A meltdown is actually impossible because the fuel is *already* melted.

The fundemental idea behind the LFTR of course is that you bring the fuel to the moderator, rather than the other way around - thus doing away with complicated rod dropping mechanisms.

What happens when the site loses power, like the opening stages of a high level conventional nucelar incedent, is that a "freeze plug" of the salt compound stops being cooled by it's active cooling. This plug was blocking access to a drain tank, so once the plug melts due to the heat of the fuel salt mix, it all drains out into a passively cooled tank, far away from the moderator to cool and solidify.

I guess you could say the opposite of a meltdown occurs, it solids up.

Another cool feature is that a pipe bursts/is sabotaged, it will only slowly leak out of the pipe and solidify, forming a non-critical freeze plug "scab" over any leaks.

>no disaster

yeah?
what if i grabbed some of the salt and just whipped it right in your face?

>>3511351
>Another cool feature is that a pipe bursts/is sabotaged, it will only slowly leak out of the pipe and solidify, forming a non-critical freeze plug "scab" over any leaks.

This reminds me of the Macguyver episode at rhe nuclear plant, where one guy got blasted with steam and his tag showed him as irradiated.
So you are saying that that can't really happen?

>>3511356
Then I would suffer great burns, and be irradiated to some degree. Then the salt would fall to the floor, and just sit there, containing all of the nasty stuff in solution - as opposed to, you know, escaping into the air.

Though, if it hits my face, then water gets near it, and I remember something bad about the chemistry with water. Correction - maybe a miniscule leak into the air of a negligible quantity except for those with X ft.

>>3511357
The steam is under pressure. The salt would not be under pressure. It has the viscosity of water. Sure, if you like stepped into the leak, then you would get horribly burned, and if you nearby, you may get irradiated.

>>3511357
Not in a LFTR plant. There's no water in contact with radioactive material ergo no radioactive steam.

>>3511356
I'd be more worried about heavy metal poisoning and who the fuck let you near the fuel than radiation.

i derped

Why? That would be incredibly inefficient

>>3511364

come on. you've got water in your secondary loop. Your reactor core is probably going to be below grade. Gravity. Shit happens.

Not saying these problems cannot be engineered around, but there is a tremendous amount of water around, and it tends to get where you don't want it.

thorium?
more like BOREium rite?

>>3511394
The really cool designs do not involve water at all. You have a salt heat exchanger and more molten salt driving the turbines. With the greater heat difference capable with the salts, you can get higher efficiencies too! There was some links around here somewhere about the cool non-steam turbines...

>>3511394
Only if you're retarded about it. You don't stick your arms in farm machinery or take a bath in a chemical plant either, do you?

Nevermind the fact that the secondary loop still isn't under as nearly a high pressure as current plants.

>>3511406
oooh, do link.

While you're at it do you have the /sci/ megadump link to hand? I forgot to bookmark it because i'm stupid and smell bad.

>>3511413
Sorry. Didn't save it. I know Kirk talks about it in one of his talks. Maybe it's somewhere in the forums.

>>3507381
U233 minimum critical mass says no. 16kg of raw 233 is your baseline i believe, and that's even WITH graphite moderation.

now, the plant itself would be about the size of an apartment complex (the entire plant, processing substation and all), and put out a damn sightly 500mW, which is like the peak watt of most cities and then some.
just slap one in the suburbs and light the entire metro area. sit back and smoke a cigar

>>3511464
>appartment complex
i meant motel, actually

>>3511406
you're thinking of brayton cycle turbines, usually helium is the working fluid.
they're not used often because your minimum operating temperature needs to be like 600-1000 degrees Celsius above outside temp in order for the efficiency to show, but when it does....god damn son, 45% efficiency easy. steam turbines get like 30-35%

>>3511484
Mmm, thank you sir.

>>3509016
more like; light water reactors are very well known, thorium would need to go through a lot of experimentation and licensing bullshit (thanks NRC!). fluid reactors are so fucking alien to anything running today, you'd have to retrain an entire industry. that doesn't happen easily in the current economy. Risk city.

>>3509157
he's talking about solid thorium breeders, not really efficient.
also
>single fluid LFTR designs
>mfw

>>3511517
taco

>>3511348
nah, part of the inherent safety system, the actual reacting fluid has a very high negative coefficient of reactivity (meaning it WANTS to shut down) any changes in the flow rate of the carrier salt and the entire thing just freezes into a block of UFLiBe, salty salty, but it doesn't heat itself.

you could literally go into the place slicing pipes up, and all you'd have is some uranium glass spill on the floor and the plant shut itself down.

it's basically what fusion wanted to be

nuka, stop killing thorium threads by squashing speculation

>>3511564
:(

>>3511572
Still planning on making that homemade LFTR?

>>3511464
>500 milliwatts
oh gods what

>>3511574
christ no, i'm not dealing with U232 decay bullshit, not now not ever.

now, if i had some really nice remote handling equipment i might poke around with it, but that's like hundreds of thousands of dollars, and i'm probably on the FBI watch list due to my call to the NRC about making a lftr of my own.

i'm making those broad-appeal nuclear chemistry and energy videos with the stick figure character, i'd be overjoyed if i can get them semi-viral and start reversing the anti-nuclear sentiment in the US.

>>3511585
megawatts, MW, sorry

>>3511591
link and i shall dissemenate (provided they don't suck)

Algae farms are the best way to go, many saltwater ponds with different species of algae to convert CO2 in the atmosphere into sugar and biomass and other ponds to convert sugar into alcohol and other commercially viable compounds, waste products are used as fertilizer, it is 300 times more efficient than oil seed rape or sugar cane and it only uses sea water and otherwise useless land in the desert, maintaining the ponds is no more labor intensive than maintaining paddy fields.

>>3511611
not even close to done bro
and i'll probably make a few first passes by /sci/ to spruce them up for primetime (make sure they're entertaining, easy to understand, AND accurate)

>>3511591
How about using accelerator-moderated fission to achieve criticality with a smaller reactor?

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf35.html

If one tech doesn't deliver, mix and match until you get something that does.

>>3511591
stop trying to acquire nuclear material civilian, its literally going to get you arrested for terrorism or get you killed when you fuck up.

>>3511631
This could work quite well with the new generation of linear accellerators which are going to start popping up in places. Will need superconductors and cooling out the ass though.

>>3511631
that sounds kind of overly optimistic, the numbers are kind of flaky. proton bombardment of a single target of Th232 is just asking for parasitic reactions, which means a lot more U232 which doesn't do shit in your reactor except require more containment bullshit.

1500MW thermal from just excess U233 in the thorium soup? uhhhhhhhhhhh

>>3511632
>stop trying
good thing i never started eh?

i'm tempted to get a small 1kg ball of throium and encase it in a polyethylene cube though, use it as a really cool paperweight. all thorium releases is alpha particles anyway

Is there any other power generation method that has higher efficiency or the results greater than LFT reactors?

When can we expect LFTR to be implemented by? Do you think it will even get off the ground and drawn up into plans? (perhaps by PRChina?)

>>3511651
why?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Tube-Uranium-Ore-Geiger-Counter-Test-Source-/320734221734?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&
amp;hash=item4aad3fd5a6

http://cgi.ebay.com/Uranium-Nitrate-Yellowcake-Sample-1-Gram-/320736955321?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&amp
;hash=item4aad698bb9

>>3511681
in terms of fuel efficiency? lftr is to nuclear power as an suv is to a fucking electric smartcar. they're BUILT for efficiency

lftr implementation? if china keeps 2 billion a year funding (started in January of this year), i'd fully expect a commercial plant in china by 2020. which kind of sucks for us since we'll have to start importing foreign oil AND nuclear, sounds like fun right?

>>3511681
India might, but I couldn't trust india because someone will fuck up somewhere and there will be a damn accident, but to be honest, with reprocessing, the conventional cycles produce known energy with known risks, and are a much better (and cheaper) solution than wasting possible fusion investment money on alternate reactor research. Hell, we could use this money to research conventional reactors or to better produce medical reactors.

>>3511693
HAHAHAH we will never use foreign nuclear, as long as half of retired Reactors is NRC staff, I can pretty much make this a promise, because westinghouse et all will still exist even if they just make replacement parts for the fleet or civilian side.

>>3511651
>just alpha particles
why do people joke about radiation, your level of risk tolerance is way too damn high.

>>3511699
well, behind about three inches of solid transparent plastic, alpha particles will not go very far, and there's not risk of flaking (which would be far worse)

nuclear materials aren't all that terrifying if you just know what you're doing. hence why i never want any U233 near me, fuck that gamma from the U323 impurities, fuck it in the ass

>>3511699
>alpha particles
If you know your shit, handling radionuclides isn't any more dangerous than handling flammable or corrosive chemicals.

I have a little bit of lead-encased radioactives from chernobyl about twenty centimeters from my knee, in a desk drawer.

>>3511708
>U323 impurities fuck in the ass
That sounds like an exceptionally bad idea.

>>3511708
>U323
woah, wish i had some of that shit
>meant U232

>>3511715
nuka has a radiation fetish, he cannot cum without 40microseiverts/hour at least

>>3511699
Was going to respond but then i saw this, >>3511708 this is your answer. Alpha doesn't travel far because of the size of the particle. There's too much shit in the way, it'll get stopped well enough by a few inches of air.

Equally, you don't want to ingest it because it'll dump all it's energy in a tiny space around the source. Which is now inside you. You don't want that to happen.

>>3511718
it's true
i need that warm feelin' on my junk, awww yeaaah

>>3511713
I do know, and I'm more terrified of being killed from an exploding transformer or some idiot not folling procedure, but alpha particles are nasty as fuck if you breath them in.

>>3511725
Sex toys that are warm due to spontaneous decay?

I see untapped market potential here...

>>3511699
>why do people joke about radiation, your level of risk tolerance is way too damn high.
You get more radiation from a frigging airplane ride than you ever would from a hung of (natural isotope) thorium.

>>3511734
>dildo
hell no
>plutonium-laced silicone for fleshlights
THERE WE GO

oh god why am i discussing this

>>3511754
not QUITE accurate. alpha particle emitters like thorium can be pretty dangerous just lying around, mostly because of microscopic abrasion and the flakes settling in your lungs, hence the whole "encase it in plastic" thing

>>3511759
>plutonium-laced silicone for RealDolls™
moar betta

...
>nuclear-powered RealDolls™
I just destroyed civilization, didn't I?

>>3511763
>nuclear-powered RealDolls™
>run for centuries
>who needs a girlfriend?
there's that saturday morning breakfast cereal comic about robot girlfriends when you need it

>>3511759
Run the numbers for me, someone, please. 15 billion year half-life, will give me how much radiation, and then compare that to the cosmic rays hitting me during a standard cross American flight.

I'd be more concerned offhand about heavy metal poisoning. (However, I'd definitely triple check the numbers before I play around with the stuff.)

>>3511775
direct exposure isn't really a problem. hold it in your hand whatever
again, the problem is flakes embedding in your lungs and continuously exposing a very specific section of tissue, this increasing the chances of mutation over long periods

>>3511781
>continuously
Even with 15 billion year half-life?

>>3511785
hey man, alpha particles wreck shit in close quarters, even small amounts of them.

that said, again, i'd gladly mess around with a thorium ball for fun, not that much of a problem short term

when did THIS stop being bumped?

Aw Yiss! Motherfucking Thorium! Say what happened to cold fusion?

>>3513667
wasn't repeatable.

>>3513681

you mean you were too lazy to try, don't you?

>>3513701
This image amuses me.
Does anyone have the image where it shows a comparison between ordinary background radiation and nuclear sources?

LFTR are not the golden calf people make it out to be.
They got the same Fission products like a normal reactor, and essentially have Transuranics too (Pa-232 is not, by definition a Transuranics, but it's got all the same problems associated with them)
The Fuel being "already melted" only means that any breach will result in a guarantied massive radiation release, of "fresh" Fission products, all still there, which are insanely radioactive, instead of a breach in a solid fuel reactor, where the fuel rods have to melt for any significant radiation release.
Most importantly, the single greatest engineering challenge of the whole project was never really tried.
We have no idea how to process a fuel salt, especially how to remove the fission product and breed fuel from it.
Of course, there are plenty nice theories how to do it, but the complexity of the whole operation can be horrible.

>>3513855
If you reprocess "online", your fission products will release a lot of heat, which with your distillation column has to deal with. We don't know much about the chemistry of those substance at high temperatures. Fluoride loves to form all kinds of coordination complexes with metal atoms, which could totally fuck up the design of the column if you don't test it rigorously beforehand.
If you don't do it online, fission products will accumulate and make a breach all the more dangerous, and you'll require storage tanks for old salt to cool down and tanks for the new fuel to put in the reactor. If they're outside of the containment, there's a huge danger of spills and radiation releases again, if their inside, your containment building just got way bigger.
Seriously, that's not "in 5 years if we try hard", that's "in 25 years, maybe".
You need pretty big research and testing,including working prototypes of the reprocessing facility, even before you can build your first prototype reactor, and that thing has to run for years without problems before any sane human being would try to build a commercial plant.
We should totally try it, it's a promising technology, but that shit will in no way come easy or fast.

>>3513717
Don't you understand the at the republicans just want to allow capitalists to poison our environment and kill us for profits. How can you profit from energy its a basic human necessity it should be free, the profit motive can never do it.

>>3513855
>>3513857
>that's not "in 5 years if we try hard", that's "in 25 years, maybe".
Son, I'm depress

>>3513855
>>3513857
Would someone please tell me what this guy is going on about?

>>3513874
You are a naive and ignorant coward, and I pity you.

>>3513909
>Would someone please tell me what this guy is going on about?
Science, my friend

>>3513934
Looks more like damned lies to me.

>>3514137

because you so desperately want a 'magic bullet' ---in this case Thorium .. to solve our energy problem...

>>3514178
Less that we want a magic bullent, more that we want SOMETHING that we can hold under the politicians and business men's noses that they will decide is 'good enough'.
Thorium might do the trick, so we are lobbying this for all we got.

>>3514178
No, its because I actually have some idea how a LFTR works. Those comments started out with asserting that the thorium fuel cycle was the same as the standard uranium one and went from there.

>so we are lobbying this for all we got.
But it's not honest. Overlooking and playing down huge problems will simply cause people to decide that shit will never work (see fusion), after you fail the first few times to get it right

>>3514221
>Those comments started out with asserting that the thorium fuel cycle was the same as the standard uranium one and went from there.
What the fuck are you even talking about?

>>3514225
Read:
>>3513855
>They got the same Fission products like a normal reactor

I still have my fingers crossed for pollywell fusion :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

>>3514231
>They got the same Fission products like a normal reactor
Which is absolutely true.
When U-235 gets hit by a neutron it fission into two smaller nuclei, releasing energy. Those smaller nuclei are called the Fission products
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product
What the fuck do you think is happening when U-233 is hit by a neutron? It gets turned into fairy dust?
No, it gets split into the same identical fission products, only the ratios of the masses are slightly off, cause you got two less neutrons to start with.
But all the bad shit you hear about in the news, Caesium-137, Caesium-135, Strontium-90, Technetium-99 all that is still produced in almost identical amounts, and all that stuff will be radioactive for decades and millennia to come.
And no, you know jack shit about how a LFTR works, almost nobody constantly blabbering on about them does.
That's the central problem, some "advocates" tell the businessmen that the reactor will shit rainbows and fart happiness, they turn to an actual nuclear scientist who just shakes is head and looks embarrassed.
I'm all for new nuclear powerplants and optimistic about LFTR, but this "movement" is largely supported by people who have literally no idea about how a power plant works, and that is pretty fucking bad.

>>3514240
isn't there some reason why those things can't physically work?

>>3514280
I appear to have accidently lumped in fission products with transuranics. I would cheerfully withdraw this, but you're still being stupid.

Cs-137 and Sr-90 are short lived enough that they become negligible after about 300 years. Cs-135 and Tc-99 are long lived enough that their activity levels aren't of much concern. The claim by LFTR advocates is that the waste will reach ore-level of radiation in approx 300 years. The half lives check out. But you knew that, right?

>>3514455
Again, Pa-231, produced by (n,2n) reactions from thorium essentially acts like a Transuranic, with intermediate half-live, and an ugly decay chain with lots of hard Gamma-Emitters. That shit will be highly dangerous for thousands of years.
Next, Tc-99, which is the dominant source of radiation after about a thousand years, if you got no actinides.
There are ten thousand more decays from that isotope alone in a second than from a similar amount of Uranium.
Tin-126, for example, is a hard gamma-emitter, which is actually produced by U-233 fission four times as often as by U-235 fission. I-129 and Zr-93 are also gamma emitters.
Those things still need deep geological storage, there's absolutely no way around it.
Still, if you're not a hippie, you know that geological storage is absolutely safe anyway, so the waste from a LFTR and from a usual power plant are pretty similar in ultimate removal cost, expect the LFTR will probably produce somewhat less.

>>3514535
What about shoving the waste into canisters and using a railgun/coilgun to launch them on an escape orbit? Be cheaper than rockets.

>>3513855
>>3513857
incoming facts
>They got the same Fission products like a normal reactor
indeed, but the really bad shit like plutonium or the really high atomic number stuff is produced at very low volumes
most of the fission products are either very short term of very long term. the really long term stuff isn't really avoidable, but BECAUSE it's so long term, its radiation risk is mitigated significantly.

>The Fuel being "already melted" only means that any breach will result in a guarantied massive radiation release, of "fresh" Fission products, all still there
yes and no, a breach for the lftr is intensely localized and basically no risk of explosion, and impossible to run away. as opposed to a steam explosion which spreads everything everywhere, you have a glob of solid reactor fuel on the ground, still inside the primary containment wall, and thus no danger to the outside.

>We have no idea how to process a fuel salt, especially how to remove the fission product and breed fuel from it.
yes we do
oakridge did it very well actually.

>>3513857
now you're in the nuts and bolts of it.
Fluoride contamination is a pretty big problem actually, hence why the entire thing probably needs to be lined with hastelloy or better, which is almost fluorine damage proof. i don't think anyone wants a lftr with non online refueling, that almost defeats the purpose.

but yes it's a significant engineering challenge. but 25 years? that's a little cynical

>>3514535
i think the primary driving force is that lftr waste is generally less in the "fuck this stuff is annoying range" of over 1000 year to couple hundred thousand year half lives. still dangerous enough to require storage but incredibly long term in human terms.

and no, it doesn't make fairy dust

>>3513855
>They [LFTRs] got the same Fission products like a normal reactor, and essentially have Transuranics too (Pa-232 is not, by definition a Transuranics, but it's got all the same problems associated with them)
I have done the calculations. I trust that there are those who have, and no one has believably refuted them. The calculations show that while some minor amounts of that stuff get produced, it's produced in such low volumes that it's back down to background radiation levels in ~300 years. That is, while some of the "bad stuff" may get produced, if it's in sufficiently low quantities, it doesn't matter.

If you have the work to refute this assertion, or a link to the work, please post.

>The Fuel being "already melted" only means that any breach will result in a guarantied massive radiation release, of "fresh" Fission products, all still there, which are insanely radioactive, instead of a breach in a solid fuel reactor, where the fuel rods have to melt for any significant radiation release.
Most / all of the fision products are soluable in the salt, which means they are not released in case of a leak. Second, there will be containment over containment, so that a leak in one will not result in an exposure to outside air, just like modern plants. However, as the salt is not under pressure, the containments do not need to be 1000x bigger than the reactor, which means ridiculously cheaper, and as it's not under pressure, there is little risk of explosion or leaks to begin with.

As the fuel is already melted, any accident that causes a full power loss will cause the drain plug to melt, and the liquid to pour out of the reactor, ending fission, and pour into a geometry where passive cooling will suffice.

another thing to keep in mind, the concentration of actual fuel in the salt is .03%, so fission product buildup in the salt isn't going to cause too many problems during a breach scenario, barring the fact that the salt would freeze very quickly in that case.

but concentration of fission products during reprocessing could get very very dangerous, i suspect the entire thing will be done behind a nice solid brick wall and in a highly positive pressure environment.

i'm far more worried about deliberate attacks against a plant. if your containment isn't up to snuff, it's like a dirty bomb in a pretty little bow. yikes

>>3513855
>>3513855
>Most importantly, the single greatest engineering challenge of the whole project was never really tried.
>We have no idea how to process a fuel salt, especially how to remove the fission product and breed fuel from it.
>Of course, there are plenty nice theories how to do it, but the complexity of the whole operation can be horrible.
Lies. See Oakridge. They already did it.

>>3516304
>I have done the calculations. I trust that there are those who have, and no one has believably refuted them
Err, I have /not/ done the calculations.

>>3516310
>solid brick wall
meant steel reinforced concrete, probably a polyethylene layer for good measure

>>3514535
I see what you've done there now. You're talking about a fast reactor while everyone else here is talking about thermal.

>>3517680
oh fuck i didn't catch that

>>3517680
Well, I'm glad there's an actual "expert" in here. Orly? Lols. I assumed that people knew what we were talking about when we salt "molten salt". So surprising how little people who know a thing or two about nuclear reactors in general know so little about molten salt thorium.

Thank you anon.

>>3517680
wait, nope.
for Pa231 he's talking about thermal neutrons. it's a parasitic reaction on Th232
>Two major protactinium isotopes, 231Pa and 233Pa are produced from thorium in nuclear reactors; both are undesirable and are usually removed, thereby adding complexity to the reactor design and operation. In particular, 232Th via (n,2n) reactions produces 231Th which quickly (half-life 25.5 hours) decays to 231Pa. The last isotope, while not a transuranic waste, has a long half-life of 32,760 years and is a major contributor to the long term radiotoxicity of spent nuclear fuel.[22]

however this is a great incentive to make protactinium removal a major focus in lftr design

>>3518182
Well, damn, thank you Nuka-Cola for being so awesome. I'm not sure I could have found that that quickly.

Kirk Sorensen the guy from the TED thorium talk has founded a company to develop commercial thorium reactors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-uxvSVIGtU&feature=player_embedded#at=20

He talks about how even the "waste" products are actually very valuable radioactive materials for use in medicine and space exploration.

His website:
http://energyfromthorium.com/

>>3516311
They had plans on how to build the distillation column, but never run full scale experiment of it.
Absolutely nobody has any idea if it is even feasible, actinide and transition metal chemistry is a bitch to handle, separating some of the metals is already highly challenging in normal operation conditions, much less in a high temperature highly corrosive enviroment

>>3518263
>He talks about how even the "waste" products are actually very valuable radioactive materials for use in medicine and space exploration.
That's usually true for most radioactive waste, Sr-90 is decent for Nuclear batteries and Cs-137 is used in radiation therapy.
Though , the production of those elements vastly outstrips the demand, and most of them are actually supplied by research reactors and not by power plants