Posted on 06/07/2013 6:27:51 PM PDT by ak267
My last article about thorium as an alternative nuclear reactor fuel drew way more readers than I expected. I intentionally glossed over the complexities of specific reactor designs for the sake of simplicity, but in this article I want to go deeper. This article explains some of the differences between traditional uranium reactors and molten salt thorium reactors (MSRs).
(Excerpt) Read more at rein.pk ...
Bump for the Oak Ridge Boys!
The US nuclear industry, what little remains of it, have all of their money tied up in the Generation III Light Water uranium reactors. AP 1000 .
The NRC has drug their feet on approving licenses for these reactors costing these company millions.
They and the Eurpean nuclear companies also seem to have bet their the future of the High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor. HTGR .
Being among the minority of freepers who think global warming is potentially a long-term problem, I’m fine with government research on viable new sources of energy. This one seems like it has a lot of potential.
Anyway, government research has shown to be the best bang for the buck in reducing emissions. Fracking research got significant funding from the Feds, and the results have been astounding. Decreased emissions, potential American independence,hundreds of thousands of jobs, new economic life for America’s rural areas—it’s been a miracle.
Read a very interesting,if dry, book about thorium recently.
Basically we ended up with uranium reactors because the military wanted to make bombs and thorium reactors aren’t good for bomb-making.
China, on the other hand, is working on LFTR. LWR, is the ATARI 2600 of reactors. IF LFTR works out, they will apply for IP. If it can be done on an assembly line process, and with its inherit benefits, high pressure reactors will become expensive dinosaurs.
Expensive toys with huge infrastructure costs vs LFTR’s simpler design and costs (and side benefits).
Why should the US do research on LFTR...it’s apples to oranges to them. Their history/infrastructure is on Uranium. Thorium is getting noticed in China, Japan, Czech Rep, Canada and others.
HTGR....only time will tell on that. It too has its design challenges.
I’d say, competition of ideas is good.
If it’s done in the US, it won’t be done by the “usual suspects”. I’d predict a consortium of special interests, academics and investors (from multiple countries).
If the world had switched to Thorium 40 years ago countries like Afghanistan wouldn’t have the bomb today.
When the Atoms for Peace initiative was begun it should have begun with Thorium. All of these countries that got their free Research Reactors from Uncle Sam or the USSR they immediately started work on converting them to weapons production. This could have been avoided by only giving thorium reactors to these developing countries.
Even if we wanted to use Uranium in the US we could have had Thorium reactors for export.
I think it is probably the military uses at the beginning maybe in to the late fifties because their was the fear that the USSR was producing more bombs that us. But later I think it was that so much had been invested in Uranium LWRs that it was considered to late to turn to Thorium.
On the commercial side all of the engineers had been working with Uranium recators for a decade or more. In the colleges Uranium had been taught to up and coming reactor engineers. Thorium was barely touched (I have some text books from the 1960s. They are more like pamphlets because I don’t think they had written the text books yet).
Tis needs to be a private investment. Govt will not fund these studies since they would undermine the billions in subsidies to windmills, solar companies, etc that throw donations to the Dems
Thanks ak267.
You make some valid pts.
One of the biggest reasons why US corps aren’t too keen on Thorium is the business plan. With LWRs you have the guaranteed fuel contracts....Thorium....Nope. The fuel is ridiculously cheap (probably close to free and is acquired from Heavy REM mines) and requires no enrichment. Once it’s separated from Heavy Rare Earth materials (Thorium and HREMs go hand in hand) and cleaned up (there will probably be some type of “reactor standards”), it’s good to go.
As a side benefit, if the US Gov’t simply reclassifies Thorium as a “National Resource” instead of low-level nuke waste, allowing it to be used for research and power, it would open up the US’s Rare Earth Mining, breaking China’s artificial monopoly. Several countries are getting ticked off at China’s arrogance on REM and wish to have an alternative supply. This could make the US a new nexus on REM and Thorium research.
Until Thorium is reclassified, the venture capitalists, research groups and designers aren’t going to go forward in the US. At best, they can theorize, plan and write research papers but a working prototype trumps a ton of scientific documents/dusty old books.
Current US nuclear infrastructure (intellect, regulatory and corporate) is Uranium based. There is no Thorium guidelines written. This must be done by the DoE and NRC before any Thorium reactors are built. Someone is gonna have to cattle-prod them....we’ve been waiting for the regulations for 30 years.
As to the US keeping its Uranium reactors and letting the outside world go to LFTR is begging for trouble. Why? Think of the BetaMax vs VCR battles of the 1970’s. Most of the critics viewed BetaMax as the better product but VCRs won due to superior marketing. VCRs were the first to hit the US markets, negotiate Hollywood content contracts, and find vendors in video rental markets. When BetaMax started to be rolled out in the US, VCR’s had cornered the key sectors and had thusly become “the standard”.
The same can be said of the Thorium vs LWR battles. Once a country gets IP (international patent) on LFTRs, and markets this to the third world (and to those countries thinking of alternatives to LWR), LWR will be viewed as a dinosaur....
1. Thorium fuel is cheap and abundant
2. LFTRs are scale-able
3. LFTRs have a much smaller land foot print
4. LFTRs don’t need large bodies of water for coolant
5. LFTRs don’t need a large tech base for support
6. LFTR’s can be built on an assembly line basis
7. LFTR’s can be built for a variety of economic ventures
8. LFTR’s wastes are shorter lived and provide medical isotopes
9. LFTR’s are safer, cheaper to build, and give off cheap energy (less than coal)
Right now in the US, Thoirum is “BetaMax” but if China builds LFTRs, mass produces them, and aggressively markets them, LWR will become the “BetaMax”. For many countries, LWRs are just too expensive, require an army of techs, have waste issues and a public who are weary of them. LFTR may not be sexy enough for some but if its good enough, and is more affordable, then many places will buy them.
The major benefit of LFTR is the promise of cheap energy (at least cheaper than fossil fuels and more reliable than solar/wind). If this is the case than these countries can offer one more incentive for western countries to vacate their industries and go to cheaper locals. China stands to clean up big time if LFTR pays off. It relaxed environmental laws, friendlier labor laws, tax incentives and now cheap energy could be the death blow to western industries.
Meanwhile, the west relies on fossil fuels, bogus solar/wind companies with high subsidies and an aging LWR fleet on the verge of retirement. Simply put, we’ll lose the energy war as China will undercut our energy costs.
Thanks for the ping.
The future of nuclear power is LENR.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/coldfusion/index
Every heat engine needs a heat sink for waste heat. If it isn’t water it must be air. Using air (cooling tower) for a commercial power plant with out a large body of water would be impractical as well.
Yes if you are using salt for reactor coolant you don’t need water for that but it is simply a fact of life that you need a source of water to run a power plant.
my pleasure, k.
I think that’s being worked on via the Closed Cycle Brayton Turbines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brayton_cycle
I also asked around on the water requirements for the turbines and got this from the T.E.A
——John Kutsch
Thorium Energy Alliance
thoriumenergyalliance@gmail.com
You would not need the huge cooling towers and such obviously. And you would not need to collocate with a body of water.
The Brayton Cycle simply means that the power plant will use a gas turbine rather than a steam turbine. Other than that it will not really effect system efficiency much.
The laws of physics require a heat sink to absorb waste heat from any heat engine.
Thermodynamic efficiency of any system is limited to about 40%. Because your salt cooled reactor adds a second heat exchanger between the turbine and the heat sink it will be limited to about 30 percent. The other 70% of the heat generated in the reactor has to go somewhere, thus the large body of water.
I work in a 1300 megawatt nuclear plant. That plant generates 3500 megawatts of thermal energy. That leaves 2200 megawatts of waste heat that has to be rejected to some place. We use a rather large cooling tower that has 540,000 gallons per minute flowing through it to cool the turbine’s condenser.
A similar sized salt cooled thorium reactor would need a similar heat sink with a similar water source. There are no exceptions.
This is something which will have to be addressed on exact water specifics. If you want specifics, I can recommend John Kutsch of the TEA.
thoriumenergyalliance@gmail.com
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