THORIUM AND LFTR TOP TEN ATTRIBUTES

[Anonymous No.4007271]

The abundance of the element thorium throughout the Earth’s crust promises widespread energy independence through Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) technology. With LFTR, a small handful of thorium can supply an individual's lifetime energy needs; a small grain silo full could power North America

LFTR is walk-away safe. LFTR operates at low pressure and is chemically and operationally stable. It shuts down passively and removes decay heat without human intervention or mechanical backup cooling systems, eliminating the possibility of overheating accident scenarios like those seen at Fukushima. Low pressures eliminate the need for massive pressure containment vessels and alleviate safety concerns of regulators and the public about high-pressure releases to the atmosphere.

[Anonymous No.4007277]

LFTR can produce not only safe, sustainable, carbon-free electricity, but life-saving medical radioisotopes, desalinated water and ammonia for agriculture, RTG radioisotopes for NASA, and synthesized fuels in the process.

[Anonymous No.4007283]

LFTR is more efficient, extracting significantly more energy from abundant, inexpensive thorium than solid-fuelled reactors can from more scarce and costly uranium. Conventional reactors consume less than one percent of their solid uranium fuel, leaving the rest of the fuel as waste. LFTR consumes 99% of its liquid thorium derived fuel, and the remaining one percent is even useful for space exploration.

[Anonymous No.4007294]

LFTR can fully consume long-lived plutonium and uranium fissile materials remaining in spent solid nuclear fuel stockpiles while bringing many gigawatts of LFTR power generation online, with thorium as the sole input thereafter. Most LFTR byproducts are stable within a decade and have commercial value; the remaining have a half-life of 30 years, decaying to stability within hundreds rather than tens of thousands of years.

[Anonymous No.4007299]

Post this in other places, this is where all that information has propagated.

Also it needs more scaling-up testing before you can surely say
>LFTR is walk-away safe.

The MSRE was walk-away safe, the MSRE was a tiny thing that was a proof-of-concept. Scale up and test.

[Anonymous No.4007326]

LFTR is a demonstrated technology, the physics and operational fundamentals of which were proven at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's pilot plant in the late 1960's. Despite compelling advantages, LFTR development stalled when political and financial capital were concentrated instead on fast-spectrum plutonium breeding reactors.

[Anonymous No.4007354]

LFTR is proliferation resistant. Thorium and its derivative fuel, uranium-233, are highly unsuitable for nuclear weapons due to inherent production of other undesirable isotopes. Thus, none of the thousands of warheads in the world's arsenals are based on the thorium fuel cycle. LFTR is unique in its ability to meet both energy generation and non-proliferation mandates.

[Anonymous No.4007375]

LFTRs can be mass produced in a factory and then delivered and reclaimed from utility sites as modular units. Factory LFTR module production offers reduced capital costs and rapid deployment to sites near the point of need, obviating long transmission lines.

[Anonymous No.4007389]

>LFTR is walk-away safe.

I wouldn't go that far. You need to reprocess the fuel occasionally or you'll end up with a mess like the Oak Ridge MSBR.

On the plus side at least these reactors don't fucking explode after decades of complete neglect.

[Anonymous No.4007410]

>>4007389

>mess like the Oak Ridge MSBR.

The MSRE never had any problems, I believe. They unplugged it, freeze plug melted, fluoride solution drains into cooling tank, no problem.

>On the plus side at least these reactors don't fucking explode after decades of complete neglect.

No reactor does that.

[Anonymous No.4007411]

Liquid fuels cannot fail or meltdown. The liquid fuel form is LFTR's key differentiator from conventional nuclear energy production. LFTR uses liquid FLiBe salts as both a fuel carrier and reactor coolant. The salts are chemically inert and will not react with flood waters, ground water or the atmosphere. Fuel can be added to the liquid salts and byproducts removed at any time, even while the reactor remains online.

[Anonymous No.4007428]

>>4007389

More like it's not something that has to be constantly supervised 100% of the time. You could theoretically let Wheatley take over for GLADOS for a few hours of running a LFTR, and it wouldn't have nearly as big a problem as a LWR would.

LFTR can provide both base power and peak power, following the demand for electricity imparted on it by the grid. LFTR's responsiveness to energy demand makes it highly complementary to alternative energy sources.

[Anonymous No.4007431]

>>4007410
>The MSRE never had any problems, I believe.

It didn't while it was being maintained, but they've since let it sit and stew in its own radioactive byproducts for decades.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5538&page=72
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ridgelines/nov12/msre.htm

No maintenance for over twenty years made for an expensive mess.

Moral of the story: Don't just abandon nuclear reactors, not even the safer designs.

[Anonymous No.4007446]

>>4007431

Leaving anything radioactive just sitting there for DECADES is naturally going to be a problem if it's not properly in a long-term containment or at least monitored.

This can't really be considered a flaw the design itself is responsible for.

[Anonymous No.4007449]

>>4007410

It had problems after it was shut down, apparently there was still a heat build-up, and it had a costly De-commissioning.

>>4007431
yep, that's the link, thanks!

[Anonymous No.4007454]

>>4007446
>This can't really be considered a flaw the design itself is responsible for.

Not saying that. It's the safest design we know of to date. Just saying you can't simply walk away from the thing.

[Anonymous No.4007456]

>>4007271
http://38degrees.uservoice.com/forums/78585-campaign-suggestions/suggestions/2017457-uk-manufacture-
of-liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactors?ref=title

VOTE VOTE VOTE
This is a poll to get the UK Govt. to build LFTRs instead of Uranium Reactors. SPREAD THE WORD AND VOTE

[Anonymous No.4007461]

>>4007411

Don't forget it can't cause a runaway scenario.

Even if some utterly bizarre freak accident causes the freeze plug to fail and the moderator itself melts into the fluoride solution, while it would be a messy scenario, it cannot cause an exponential heating runaway. The solution expands with heat, causing nuclear reactions to occur less, causing less heat to be generated, causing it to cool, causing it to contract, causing more reactions to occur.. etc, etc, harmless loop so long as it remains in its tank, which only needs to be big enough, really.

[Anonymous No.4007489]

And to quote the words of Bruce Hoglund on reactors and technology in general-

>>There are over 900 possible nuclear reactors! To put that in perspective, there are just 3 different Internal Combustion engines that power our entire transportation system; gasoline (Otto cycle), diesel (Diesel cycle), and gas turbine ("Jet engine", Brayton cycle).
>>We (the USA) use just 2 primary nuclear reactors; Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) & Boiling Water Reactor (BWR). Canada uses an independently developed CANDU Reactor (CANadian Deuterium Uranium Reactor - because the USA kept its WW II nuclear secrets from Canada due to secrecy worries), which is a pressure tube, heavy water reactor.
>>Britain has some old gas cooled reactors still running. France, Japan, and Russia continue to play with nuclear fire; The Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR). These type of reactors have very poor safety records and availability. Many have suffered core melts (e.g., EBR-I & Fermi) and/or fires (e.g., Monju's recent fire).

>>Nuclear wastes will be valuable in the future. Laugh if you will, but natural gas was once considered a deadly menace to oil drillers and was avoided or vented where ever possible. One of the worst nuclear wastes is Strontium-90 (Sr-90), which constitutes about 5% of the nuclear waste (fission products) produced. Just ~0.5 kilograms (1 pound) of Strontium-90 gives steady, predictable energy at a rate similar to burning ~1000 liters/year (250 gals/year) of gasoline. No control is needed besides containing the strontium (chemically similar to calcium) and its heat. Maybe we will use it in space where there is no biosphere.

[Anonymous No.4007494]

Guys, I may be retarded, I've read these pictures many times, so I've been wondering: since there seems to be next to no drawbacks in using thorium, why aren't we doing it? Please no conspiracy theories, I want an objective answer.

[Anonymous No.4007513]

>Please no conspiracy theories, I want an objective answer.
Well the history, politics, and economic reality of nuclear power aren't exactly "conspiracy theory" stuff, but the most practical answer today is that relatively speaking there aren't a lot of qualified or interested people pursuing it.

Most active nuclear engineers are specialized in the types of reactors that are already in common usage and have no real knowledge or interest in changing.

[Anonymous No.4007524]

>>4007494
I'd assume the standard financial inertia with any change - people who are profitting from the Uranium Energy industry are doing what they can to stop it. Not a conspiracy theory, just basic economics. It always takes time for new ideas to catch on, become widespread, and besides, there is still work to do refining the LFTR technology. All we can do is support it, and try to get companies/governments to take a look.

[Anonymous No.4007526]

>>4007494

It's a lot simpler than a conspiracy.

Uranium LWR is already established and people are both uneducated on MSR and resistant to change.

You meet this sort of resistance any time you want to change something, and in the case of anything nuclear you also have public hysteria and mountains of red tape to overcome.

[Anonymous No.4007527]

>>4007494

LSR won the duel back in 1960, the research just sat around since.

Nowadays the public is terrified of the word "nuclear", so getting support for it is a hassle.

[Anonymous No.4007532]

>>4007494

Um...There's still about a billion dollars of research to be done, between a full sized test reactor and a commercial reactor that could be built with mass production?

More from Bruce Hoglund

>>I enjoy finding, using, and teaching others superior technology. Unfortunately, people often think they use "the best technology", but most of the time they do not fully understand what makes one technology better than another. The technology they usually use is 'what their friends or co-workers are using', or what their company/government forces them to use.
>>The statement is often made, "We use it because everyone else does (or has)." Obviously, this is not an optimum choice based on superiority of one technology over another based upon rational evaluation.

>>Often a superior technology is kept out of the market because there is little motivation for the existing manufacturers to bring an innovation to market. A good example was the United States inventing the Transistor in 1947, but neither General Electric, RCA, Motorola, nor any of the other large American firms, saw a reason to commercialize this amazing innovation.
>>Basically the transistor did what the vacuum tube did, just much smaller, cheaper (ultimately), faster, more reliably, and with much greater energy economy. It took an organization (Sony) outside the dominant (at the time) electronics industry to introduce the innovation of the transistor 10 years later in the form of the World's first pocket radio.

[Anonymous No.4007543]

>>Sometimes technology is rushed to market too quickly and the market (consumers) reject the innovation. For example, the picture telephone. It was too expensive and most people did not want to pay extra for so little value. Both these examples apply to nuclear energy. It was rushed to market because of the amazing advance that occurred due to the Manhattan Project.
>>Imagine Ben Franklin discovering electricity and then 5 years later we have vacuum tube radios (within the industrial capability of the 1700s). This is what happened with nuclear energy; fission was discovered in 1939 and by 1944 the first atomic bomb was exploded! This amazing, yet tragic thust of a new technology because of military needs has tainted nuclear energy ever since.
>>Most people can not separate the military from the commercial, nor do they fully understand the breadth of nuclear technology. Most see it as humankind's most recent Frankenstein; a technology beyond human control. This unfortunate perception is due to a lack of understanding of nuclear technology by most people.

[Anonymous No.4007556]

>>4007527
Which is why you should all contribute to the petition I posted.

http://38degrees.uservoice.com/forums/78585-campaign-suggestions/suggestions/2017457-uk-manufacture-
of-liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactors?ref=title

Going for Number 1 here guys. And spread the word, let's let people know nuclear doesn't have to be scary.

[For anyone that missed it No.4007567]

>>4007489
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-stroke_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle
there are plenty of variations on the theme.

[Anonymous No.4007575]

>>4007556

OP here, I was one of the first to vote on that thing.

At this point, with the way the regulatory atmosphere is in the United States, I'm not looking optimistically at the NRC ever getting around to approving a LFTR, but if the UK or our Ausbros can do it, good for them. Better than China, anyway.

People don't understand that the entire world's coal market is up for grabs after a cost-effective LFTR gets built. Granted it'll be good for humanity, to have a power source that doesn't kill thousands with pollution, but who knows how it'll impact standard of living if all that wealth from US coal changes hands right to China.

[Anonymous No.4007580]

>>4007575

The innovation is going to happen one way or another. It's just an unpleasant reality that it's not going to be the US that reaps the benefits of the technology.

[Anonymous No.4007583]

>>4007567

Right, but those aren't nearly as widespread. Bruce makes the point that by comparison, Nuclear was never given a chance to find out which reactor out of the 900 should be the one to be implemented, the politics behind weapons development have driven things since the start, and tainted public opinion.

[Anonymous No.4007661]

And for those who still haven't seen it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

[Anonymous No.4007683]

>>4007661

And the relatively new Wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

But /sci/ already knows about the LFTR. Its the ignorant anti-nuclear masses and politicians that needs to be educated about this technology.

[Anonymous No.4008923]

>>>/lit/2182928