/sci/ - Science & Math

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oil makes more money

/thread

>>5240915
Never realy said how efficient it is to withdraw the energy from the Thorium, only that it contains more energy and produce less waste.
Would it take 50'000 times longer to produce the same amount of energy or what?

Either way this was fucking awesome and why haven't anyone picked this up after the whole nuclear-weapons-are-old-shit-none-cares-about-anymore?

>>5240958
The man is Kirk Sorensen, I'm new at this myself and that is the name of the man who speaks most about the subject

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY

Apparently China is building one to experiment with, but damnit that's gonn abe like 3-5 years I want this shit now

>>5240958
1) People are irrationally scared of anything nuclear, even though it's provably the safest form of power generation available to us.

2) Our current nuclear reactors are all based off cold-war research which was primarily about creating nuclear weapons with the reactor, than creating power. Power was a bonus, not the goal.

3) Thorium reactors are bluntly; completely new and undeveloped/unresearched.

4) Which means we need to build research reactors to prove the technology, then build the first government reactors, then build commercial reactors

Basically, don't expect the technology to even begin to take off until 20-50 years from now, after the first experimental reactors and the first commercial reactors prove the technology.

>>5240915
Came here to insult you but thought about it and hey its not too far fetched. More people should do this.

>>5240957
So, so incorrect.
http://energyfromthorium.com/cubic-meter/

These advantages are not limited to a LFTR, other generation IV reactors are comparable to a LFTR. I dont mind this cult around thorium, it is based on truth after all, and is a great way to show people how advanced nuclear solves the problems of earlier reactor generations. But why limit yourself to thorium when there are uranium reactor designs just as great an IMHO with a higher chance of being pursued?

>>5240915

I once thought as you did, OP.

Still, we're 20 years and several billion dollars out from having a commercially viable model.

Thorium advocates like to pretend like we have all this information on MSRs, but what we've really got are some 50-60 year old books, and the MSRE experiment notes from Oakridge. To add to that, most of the people who built that original reactor are dead or dying.

It's not as easy as LFTR fanatics would have you believe. It's still worth doing, but there's no real good reason why the world of electrical generation will stand still for two decades while people get this fucking idea off the ground. It may well be that the LFTR answers questions that are no longer pertinent to energy by the time it really becomes possible.

http://thoriumpetition.com/

Check this out, they're eliminating the U-233 needed as the fissile for breeding

Fuck's sake my dream is dying in front of me
>>5240998
I figured saying "free energy" would make people groan at the thought of another cold fusion dreamer, but that is what this essentially is, pitifully cheap and self sustaining compared to the current generations of nuclear LWRs

Sound the fucking alarm man fuck everything for the next 5 years we have an answer to free energy!! Start manufacturing the fuck out of everything and get some robots to do automated verticle farming and use the LFTRs to power the shitty African/Middle Eastern/Asian grids and desalinate the water for them and get to designing machines that can be remote controlled and semi automated to do deep sea mining and I don't know man

WHY AREN'T WE ENTERING A NEW ERA WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO HERE

>>5241031
Oh I was too late in reading you guys' replies

>>5241014
Why aren't there any real coverage on them then? I could've cared less about nuclear anything a day ago, I mean I always knew nuclear power was the future, it's just research on how to eliminate the waste I guess to make it "perfect"

But I saw this and I saw the revelation. Even I'm not dumb enough to not know the purity of the implications. People need to know. Fuck the retards who hate nuclear power, what're they gonna do? Thanks us for improving the standard of living everywhere forever? Might as well be scared of being electrocuted for using anything electrical ever

Yay. LFTR thread!

>>5240915
>Are you telling me we have access to essentially free energy?
No. Cost competitive with coal. Not free.

>>5241014
The other gen IV reactors are cool and all, but thorium has the potential to be that and a lot safer, and potentially cheaper. Which I always like.

>>5240993
>3) Thorium reactors are bluntly; completely new and undeveloped/unresearched.
Not true pedantically, but I see what you're getting at. ORNL did a lot of work, and demonstrated most of the fundamentals. In my very uneducated opinion, it's pretty plausible that it will work in the very near future, far more than fusion. No one's tried to build one at commercial scale, so we don't know.

>Basically, don't expect the technology to even begin to take off until 20-50 years from now, after the first experimental reactors and the first commercial reactors prove the technology.
Depends. At current rate, we'll never get one. If we had a massive public shift to get this shit done, maybe 10-20 years before we could start mass producing (assuming it works).

>>5241046
IMHO there's two distinct reasons nuclear is not being pursued.

1- An irrational fear of all things nuclear. It's simple ignorance, and lack of a good ability to weigh costs and benefits. No one cares about the thousands that die every year from coal, because it's out of sight, out of mind, and happens regularly so it's not a big story.

2- There are idiots who think Malthus is right, and actually getting cheap energy would further the destruction of the environment. So, these asshats would rather bring us back to a stone age kind of life, which would kill billions as we wouldn't have the energy required for modern agriculture. The way to stop overpopulation is to make everyone materially wealthy (and a few other things), not by making them poor. The current evidence clearly demonstrates this for anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass.

>>5241065

They demonstrated the fundamentals in the 1960s with 1960s parts which are no longer made. Any new MSR will be cut from whole cloth, which means budget overruns.

Now, lots of people say "well they'll simply budget better" and that isn't reassuring, because the United States hasn't built a nuclear reactor on budget...ever, actually. Some of the reactors back in the 50s and 60s nuclear craze ended up costing contractors 100% more than the price on paper.

The market isn't implicitly afraid of nuclear, but they aren't going to build an electric plant that costs maybe twice as much as after accounting for cost overruns.

>>5241150
>The market isn't implicitly afraid of nuclear, but they aren't going to build an electric plant that costs maybe twice as much as after accounting for cost overruns.
And if that 2x is still cheaper then coal, then what? We won't know until we try to build it, and it's promising enough that that is possible.

Teehee.

Usually the last 5 replies are displayed. I only see two. That means my filter works. Have fun with whatever shitposting tripfag is infesting the thread.

>>5242990
>shit posts about shit posts
That's nice.

At least you saged.

>>5242942
The issue isn't the price of coal it is the price of natural gas.

The nuclear industry was about to enter a "Nuclear Renaissance" in the US because it was the cheaper option, but in the time it takes from wanting to build a nuclear plant to actually being able to start natural gas prices dropped like a mofo.

Was at a talk by the head of the American Nuclear Society, he was saying the same thing and that Fukushima didn't really have an effect in the US, it was all economics.

>>5243009
>shit posts about shit posts about shit posts

At least you saged.

>>5242985
All of my everything

Boldly we move forward, into this brave new world

not really free
not perfectly safe
not wasteless

it has hurdles. many hurdles, but the potential end result is way better than where i see fusion being in the next 50 years

gotta start somewhere though

>>5242985
dat filename

>>5240915
untested unproven reactors, talk to me when it can be mass produced and has a proven saftey record.

>>5241065
It wasn't a true system for one thing, and G4 is already absurdly safe as is.

>>5240993
I don't get why this takes 20-50 years or more to research when the first nuclear bomb was developed a year or two after they first decided to make one, even though no predecessor technology existed and they had to make it all from scratch.

>>5245086
uh what, nuclear theory was a 50 year effort at the least if we count Henri Becquerel as the start, so yeah, please try some more.

>>5245006
>is way better than where i see fusion being in the next 50 years
You best not be talking out of your ass here.

>>5245086
- The government wanted a bomb badly, so fed shit tons of money into making one.
- Simply maximizing the energy output of something is easier than maximizing it within the constraints of sustainability and safety.

>>5245116
tokamak isn't really going anywhere
inertial confinement fusion (national ignition facility stuff) actually looks way more promising, but it's still way off
Magnetized target fusion looks really nice actually, that might have some merit
polywell, not so much

LFTR is just more straightforward, more of its required elements already exist

20 years seems like a reasonable timetable for when the first commercial lftr reactors come online

They are planning to use it soon.
Fusion is nice, but it will take a long time. Had you heard about ITER? Probably I will be there when they start that thing...