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/sci/ - Science & Math

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3176138 No.3176138 [Reply] [Original]

daily nuclear thread.

LFTR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk
pebble bed
fast breeder
traveling wave
light water
CANDU

you name it, we nuke it
i also started a blog for the hell of it, chronicling my adventures of building a LFTR
http://projectfurthr.blogspot.com/

>> No.3176145

so when are you going to establish a church to your precious lftr?

>> No.3176149

>>3176145

Good idea, tax exemption should help.

>> No.3176169

>>3176145
the paperwork is tied up somewhere in Georgia

>> No.3176176
File: 2.46 MB, 938x4167, Thorium Fuck Yeah.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3176176

>> No.3176188

>>3176176
i dun leik dat imag :(
thor is not an orc

>> No.3176275

oh hey, can this be a rage thread?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jYULhPdnII
read the comments

>> No.3176625
File: 231 KB, 750x564, Thorium - LFTR Inherent Advantages - 750.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3176625

bumpage

>> No.3176639

>>3176138
I ask again for links to or citations of articles that discuss with some semblance of thoroughness what would be the expected cost of mining /and refining/ raw thorium ore. Also that cost for mining and refining Uranium for reactors, with comparisons of cost per unit of electricity generated, would be very nice, please.

>> No.3176651

>>3176639
Oh, and with some accounting for long term energy production, so don't just cherrypick the best thorium mining sites if such sites would only last like 10 years of use.

>> No.3176872

>>3176651
> don't just cherrypick the best thorium mining sites

There aren't really any "best" sites. One of the biggest problems with thorium is that there aren't any particularly rich deposits.

The fact that it's more abundant than uranium isn't particularly significant, as we don't just mine random locations for whatever uranium they might contain; we only mine places with high concentrations.

So thorium might be more abundant overall, but the peaks of abundance are actually much worse than for uranium, so you have to mine a lot more earth to get a comparable amount of ore.

>> No.3176883

>>3176872
Yes, so I've heard, but you also have to centrifuge out the useful isotope of uranium, so I hold some hope that it'll work out ok. What percentage of naturally uranium is the useful 235? Like a couple percent. What is the percentage of of thorium in the crust? Like 0.5% I've heard. And we don't need a "rare" isotope of Thorium. We need the most commonly occurring one. Thus, my uneducated guess is that chemical separation of thorium is easier than isotropic separation of uranium, which leads me to think that thorium mining and refining would be cheaper. However, I wish someone more knowledgeable would comment.

>> No.3176912
File: 66 KB, 480x300, 1306513260688JN.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3176912

>be musclehead
>tell friends about LFTR (pronounced lifter)
>Get lold at because i made a weightlifting joke

mfw

>> No.3177723

>>3176625
>100kW units
i'd like to know how someone could pull that off with u233 having a 16kg critical mass

...no really, that's relevant to my interests.

>> No.3177745

>>3176872
it's a waste product of rare earth mineral mining. Since their throium mandate in january, chinese mining operations have started separating the thorium out instead of just leaving it in there. as for numbers on how much they've gotten? i've heard up to 9000 tons so far

>> No.3178076

>>3176912
there's a pun in there somewhere

>> No.3178079

>>3176176

That cartoon is fucking gay. We're not 8 years old, post some real studies and quality technical info or gtfo.

>> No.3178112

>>3176639
i'd like this as well, it's possible there aren't any yet due to lftr being obscure, and not enough commercial interest to launch a study like that.

>> No.3178232

Gotta love those molten salt reactors

>Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Energy's Alternatives for the Removal and Disposition of Molten Salt Reactor Experiment Fluoride Salts
>http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5538&page=R1

A full scale reactor would be much easier to clean up....

>> No.3179115

>>3178232
>it's messy
honestly? what isn't. at least this stuff stays solid and stable during cleanup, get in there with a vacuum

>> No.3179359

>>3179115 solid and stable during cleanup, get in there with a vacuum

Solidified, highly corrosive, radioactive and releases dangerous fumes.

Sureee...

>> No.3180252

>>3179115
>corrosive
fluoride salts aren't corrosive. mixed with water they are though
>radioactive
i'll give you that. lots of gamma radiation and some neutrons. but this is what robots are for.
>dangerous fumes
the fluorine is released very very slowly over a period of years, not weeks or months. also robots.

>> No.3180271

>>3178112
That, plus some "minor structural engineering issues", seems to be the only things between my current understanding and being the resolution for our energy problems for millions of years.

>> No.3180301

>>3180252

You ignored solidified.

Molten salt that gets frozen in the middle of a pipe / anywhere = major problem to get loose.

>> No.3180401

>>3176883
> but you also have to centrifuge out the useful isotope of uranium,

Actually, you don't /have/ to; magnox and CANDU reactors can use unenriched uranium.

> What percentage of naturally uranium is the useful 235? Like a couple percent.

0.72%.

Typical reactors use uranium enriched to around 3%, so you need 4 kg of natural uranium for 1 kg of fuel.

U-238 is still useful for breeder reactors (the US has an aversion to breeders, but the rest of the world doesn't).

> What is the percentage of of thorium in the crust? Like 0.5% I've heard.

No; it's about 12ppm, which is roughly the same as lead, and around 4x that of uranium. But unlike uranium, it's quite evenly spread; thorium has no equivalents of Olympic Dam or the Athabasca Basin.

> And we don't need a "rare" isotope of Thorium. We need the most commonly occurring one. Thus, my uneducated guess is that chemical separation of thorium is easier than isotropic separation of uranium, which leads me to think that thorium mining and refining would be cheaper. However, I wish someone more knowledgeable would comment.

Refining an element is certainly simpler than refining an isotope, but fuel-grade uranium doesn't have to be refined all that much. Also, once you've refined fuel-grade uranium, that's the actual fuel. Thorium needs to be converted to U-233 in the reactor using a neutron source such as U-233, U-235 or plutonium.

>> No.3181573

>>3180301
that's actually quite true.
however, you could solve that simply by heating up the pipe section hot enough to make the salt flow again

also keep in mind, you can have fuel salt without the U233 in it, it's called "flush" salt, and they used it a lot at MSRE to keep everything moving smoothly

>> No.3181604

>>3180401
>thorium has no equivalents of Olympic Dam or the Athabasca Basin.
for the first few LFTRs, we have the nevada test site's 3200 tons ready to use. that will last a long time for the first few plants.

>Thorium needs to be converted to U-233 in the reactor using a neutron source such as U-233, U-235 or plutonium.

well, yes, that's the idea. LFTR is an isobreeder reactor in essence

>> No.3181619

Since the earthquake in japan there has been a huge surge in the amount of internet nuclear engineers. Face it, you guys are just as bad as those pseudo-intellectual hipsters talking about philosophy all the time you guys love to hate on.

>> No.3181627

>>3181619
We've been talking about this for years on /sci/.

Welcome to /sci/, enjoy your stay. Also, fuck you.

>> No.3181641

>>3181627
I said "surge." I've been there since the beginning so I know my way around thank you very much.

>> No.3182123

>>3181573 you could solve that simply by heating up the pipe section hot enough to make the salt flow again

Quick! Get this man to Oakridge!

>> No.3182145

>building a nuclear reactor
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh do you think you're a boyscout or something?

>> No.3182149

>>3181573

What effects on the structural integrity of the pipe do you think heating up like that would be?

Wouldn't want to be doing this on a full scale reactor they want to keep active.

>> No.3182158

>>3182149
>What effects on the structural integrity of the pipe do you think heating up like that would be?
.....the same effects it gets from carrying the horrifically hot salt 24/7 normally. that is to say, nothing

>> No.3182169

op is a troll, a tripfag, and a nigger

>> No.3182173

>>3182123
you mean their cleanup problems? that's more to due with the salt in the drain tanks, having been left around for several years, lots of the fluorine escaped, so a lot of the fuel salt isn't really a salt anymore. all those nice salt properties no longer apply. it's just a hot fucking mess all around. Could have been avoided by cleaning it up right after the MSRE ended, but i suspected they either ran out of funding or didn't think it would be a problem

>>3182145
read the updates, it's not quite what you think

>>3182169
that'snice.tiff

>> No.3182189

>>3182158

Hot flowing material != Severe localised heating

>> No.3182195

Turns out there's a big cover up at the MSRE in Oakridge, there was actually an explosion that blew the shielding plug right out.

http://www.doewatch.com/msre/

>> No.3182197

>>3182189
well, it's hastelloy-N anyway. that shit does not give a _fuck_

>> No.3182201

>>3178232

I like how this keeps getting posted but nobody ever mentions that this is after around 50 years of total neglect despite the ease of cleanup had they bothered to do it earlier. Any other type of reactor we use now would have turned into a global disaster long before that point.

>> No.3182200

>>3182195
>conspiracy in the title
not reading. come back when you have more than one source

>> No.3182261

>>3182201

It wasn't after 50 years of neglect, barely 20 before things went totally tits up.

Once you shut a normal reactor down, it stays shut down and the fuel gets taken care of.

ORNL is a nice reminder that unexpected things can go wrong with your perfect LFTR reactors and when they do go wrong it's not a simple as you hoped.

>>3182195
lol
>jews everywhere

>> No.3182269

>>3181604

Given that you need to mine THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE less thorium ore to obtain the same amount of usable energy compared to uranium, it seems a little incongruous to bemoan the lack of denser pockets of it.

>> No.3182270

>>3182197

Hastelloy doesn't like radiation, mixed with the salts in the reactor, it suffers fatigue over time and cracks begin to form in the grain of the material.

Corrosion is a major drawback in these reactors.

>> No.3182274

Hey guys aluminum is the most common metal in the earth's crust. Which means its super available and we could cheaply use it for everything.

>> No.3182277

>>3182269

Maybe at first but with full scale production it's going to get very tedious and expensive moving all of your mining equipment for limited returns.

>> No.3182279

>>3182261
>Once you shut a normal reactor down, it stays shut down and the fuel gets taken care of.

No, the built-up decay byproducts continue generating heat and melt the whole thing into slag in less than a week if you don't maintain constant cooling. We watched this happen recently. You may have heard of it.

>barely 20 years

Barely twenty fucking years? Nothing else would have lasted even one.

>> No.3182285

>>3182274

We do...

>>3182277

If you can get the same energy from 1000th the ore, that's not exactly limited returns. Also where are you moving to if there are no big deposits to go to? You can keep digging right wherever you are. The ore is everywhere.

>> No.3182286

>>3182274

Hohoho, I see what you did there. Now run along champ and play nice.

>> No.3182293

>>3182279

Shut down, as in cold shut down, as in it doesn't count as shut down until this has been achieved and the fuel removed. And reactors don't just 'blow up', any modern reactor will peacefully melt into itself.

>> No.3182301

>>3182285

>implying aluminium is cheap

>> No.3182362

>>3182293
>any modern reactor will peacefully melt into itself.

A LFTR wouldn't, and MSRE didn't despite its sudden shutdown and complete negligence in the following decades. We have a byproduct mess now, but that's far better than we'd be able to say about the reactors we use today had they been subjected to the same.

>as in cold shut down

Cold shutdown for a liquid-fueled reactor involves separating the fuel from the byproducts, and this is an easy chemical process, then storing the byproducts for decay. Net heat won't even be very high as fuel processing is done regularly to ensure byproduct levels are always low. This is much faster to perform, safer and easier to manage than the pond cooling & disposal methods for solid fuel.

From your tone it doesn't sound like you're trying to argue in favor of liquid fueled reactors, but that's what you're succeeding at doing.

>> No.3182380

>>3182293
>reactors don't just 'blow up'

Fukushima begs to differ.

Water is really fucking unsafe to use as nuclear coolant or moderator.

I shouldn't need to tell you why "explosion" will always be a possible failure mode while we use water and high pressures the way we do today.

>> No.3182411
File: 23 KB, 429x516, sciduck.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3182411

>>3182301
>implying aluminium is prohibitively expensive

>> No.3182451

>>3182380
8/10, you almost made me want to punch a wall.

Water is the perfect coolant and moderator. It has ideal scattering and low absorption cross-sections and is therefore very useful as a moderator. In terms of coolant, find me something more effective.

Also, the only reason the shit blew up was because there was a lack of convective heat transfer in the core and extreme departure from nucleate boiling, which is an absolute worse case scenario considering that multiple back up generators are to keep the process going until the unit can be hooked back up to AC power. THREE back ups failed in Fukushima. Under these conditions Zirconium Oxide (the clad material) undergoes chemical reaction with water creating hydrogen gas. This reaction only occurs at temperatures WAY beyond those expected in a worst case scenario.

Read a little before you make random assumptions about nuclear plant engineering, dolt.

>> No.3182456

>>3182362
Devils advocate etc

>>3182380
Modern reactors can't.

>> No.3182515

>>3182451
Sorry, quick correction to be made. Fuel cladding is usually a Zirconium alloy that undergoes reaction at high temperature with water to become Zirconium oxide and produce hydrogen gas. Either way, it's not supposed to happen.

>> No.3182593
File: 34 KB, 214x216, 1288291352098.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3182593

>>3182451
>If everything works and nothing bad happens they're fail-safe!

dangerous design with tons of safety features =/= safe design

>> No.3182616

>>3182593
Last time I checked, bud, it's the safest design we have and statistically speaking, it releases less radiation than coal fired plants. Let's not forgot the passive features that are due to the natural properties of nuclear fuel, like, idk, negative reactivity feedback? LWRs and HWRs are the most effective and by and far one of the safest forms of power generation.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

>> No.3182695

you can suck the cock of the nuclear lobby till you die of dehydration but you're never gonna get that fabled thorium liquid reactors cause one of the first necessities of modern advanced societies is a reliable source of uranium to produce kinetic penetrators, much needed for the defense of democratic, scientific free societies against his disheveled, feral enemies

>> No.3182700

>>3182593
You're being redundant.
>dangerous design .... =/= safe design

>> No.3182733
File: 137 KB, 463x462, 1271045540471.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3182733

>>3182616
Why slum with solid-fuel uranium?

Thorium is cheaper to build, vastly cheaper to operate, proliferation resistant AND, to top if off, completely and totally meltdown-proof.

>> No.3182788

>>3182733

O rly?


I never realised it was so cheap and easy to abandon current technology and its experts to replace it with something that's barely tested and already abandoned once.

Gee, I don't know what I was thinking.

>> No.3182847

>>3182788

Oh really? And why do you think it was abandoned? Do you think it had anything to do with its safety, or effectiveness?

>> No.3182893

>>3182847
Technical difficulties is why it was abandoned completely instead of having a parallel program with good reactors.

inb4 they wanted lolonium

>> No.3182918

>>3182893
It wasn't technical difficulties

It was the height of the cold war, the US government wanted nukes, and LFTR couldn't provide them easily, so they dropped it

>> No.3182923

>>3182918

lol

>> No.3183558

>>3182270
they actually solved that problem at MSRE by adding a little more titanium to it

>> No.3183583

>>3182451
water is nice for a LWR indeed, but it's a little impractical in the grand scheme of things due to low efficiency and very large requirements for turbines and such.

too bad anything gas cycle only really kicks into gear at temps way higher than what a reactor can safely operate at

>> No.3183589

>>3182616
best CURRENT production design, probably because it's almost the only production design. Barring the occasional test reactor and some CANDUs

>> No.3183596

>>3182893
it was abandoned because funding was slowly removed.
it indeed had technical problems, but each was surmounted in succession, and it actually ran very smoothly most of the time.

>> No.3184999

>>3183596

Funding was slowly removed beecauussee?

If the benefits were as great as you say I'm suprised they didn't recognise this at the time and run parallel research.