Well worth watching
It’s nearly two hours, but I found it all rather interesting.

Spiny Norman said:

Well worth watching
It’s nearly two hours, but I found it all rather interesting.

You didn’t say ,“Facts about Thorium Molten Salt Reactors – Documentary National Geographic 2015”.

Thorium is uranium’s little brother, almost everything that can be done with 235U can be done with 233Th, and visa versa. Only the details differ.

mollwollfumble said:

Spiny Norman said:

Well worth watching
It’s nearly two hours, but I found it all rather interesting.

You didn’t say ,“Facts about Thorium Molten Salt Reactors – Documentary National Geographic 2015”.

Thorium is uranium’s little brother, almost everything that can be done with 235U can be done with 233Th, and visa versa. Only the details differ.

Best have a look at the video, there’s a lot more to it than that. Thorium has huge advantages.

Spiny Norman said:

mollwollfumble said:

Spiny Norman said:

Well worth watching
It’s nearly two hours, but I found it all rather interesting.

You didn’t say ,“Facts about Thorium Molten Salt Reactors – Documentary National Geographic 2015”.

Thorium is uranium’s little brother, almost everything that can be done with 235U can be done with 233Th, and visa versa. Only the details differ.

Best have a look at the video, there’s a lot more to it than that. Thorium has huge advantages.

i still haven’t had a spare 2 hrs. I first took an interest in thorium molten salt reactors in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and have absorbed a bit since then. Switching from uranium to thorium wouldn’t solve the nuclear weapons proliferation issue, you could still make nuclear bombs from thorium ore even if all the worlds uranium disappeared overnight. To be sure I checked with ANSTO and they confirmed it. So that’s one non-advantage. BTW, the international nuclear weapons watchdog keeps tabs on Thorium in addition to Uranium, Neptunium and Plutonium for that very reason. So that’s one non-advantage.

One advantage of molten salt thorium is a much smaller amount of 241Am and 242Am among the waste products, that reduces the long term high level waste radiation significantly. A disadvantage is corrosion. Molten salt causes more corrosion than pressurised water or boiling water. Molten salt is also less safe than water, by boiling the water removes its moderator effect from the reactor making it safe so a water reactor automatically shuts down if there’s a leak, a molten salt reactor doesn’t.

There are various other factors, such as number of neutrons per fission, that have a significant effect on operations, more delayed neutrons means greater safety.

Many (I can think off hand of three) other reactor designs have been proposed using thorium. Each of these, as well as the molten salt, would work just as well with uranium. (to be continued).

BTW, Australia is believed to have the world’s largest reserves of thorium, so it makes sense for Australia.

Now watching the video:

You don’t compare energy fraction usage of 232Th with that of 235U, that’s stupid. You compare the 232Th/233U cycle with the 238U/239Pu cycle. LFTR directly analogous to plutonium breeder reactor.

PWR reactors are plenty hot enough to run a generator effectively. I suppose that’s why PWR is more popular than BWR.

You need to build a PWR as a pressure vessel. Yes, that’s why it’s safe, loss of pressure immediately shuts down the nuclear reaction, so it’s totally wrong to say: “if you don’t get emergency coolant to the PWR reactor it will overheat and melt.”

Uranium oxide not very good at transferring heat. Correct. But it’s also excellent at containing fission products and other radioactives. That’s a fundamental problem with all nuclear reactors, I’ve found. You want to conduct heat without letting radioactive materials out – it can’t be done.

Series of emergency systems. I FW hope so.

“Is nuclear energy safe?” The only risk is the deliberate diversion of nuclear materials into weapons.

“Could burn up all the thorium”. You wouldn’t though – you’d get deadly leakages of fission products long before that.

“The frozen plug of fluoride melts”. Shudder, you need a lot more safety than that. The drain tank would be deadlier than anything we’ve ever seen in commercial nuclear plants. It would still be heating up due to fission reactions without anything much to cool it down. Very dangerous.

“Thorium is four times more common than uranium”. Yes, that’s why its an essential long-term strategy.

“We can use thorium 200 times more efficiently than we’re using uranium now.” True. But it’s also true that we could use uranium 200 times more efficiently than we’re using uranium now!

“Generate liquid fuels”. Yes. Good way to throw your dollars down the drain. But when costs of fossil fuels increase by a factor of 100, it may become a viable option – for aircraft and rockets. Perhaps.

“we’re burning this extremely rare stuff”. Not rare at all, quite common. A full 25% as common as thorium.

“we’re going to run out of uranium”, see above about using uranium 200 times more efficiently than we do now.

OK, that’s the first 4 minutes of the 2 hour presentation. There’s a hell of a lot of selective reporting, not lies so much as leaving the listener to draw false conclusions from what is said. Do I need to watch more?

mollwollfumble said:

OK, that’s the first 4 minutes of the 2 hour presentation. There’s a hell of a lot of selective reporting, not lies so much as leaving the listener to draw false conclusions from what is said. Do I need to watch more?

If you have the time, yes as I’d like to hear more of what you think about it all.

> If you have the time, yes

OK, I’ll have another look tomorrow.,

> “Every time mankind … new source of energy … profound societal implications”

Thorium isn’t a new source, it’s almost as old as uranium. The reactor described here (molten salt thorium) was already in operation at Oak Ridge in the 1950s. It was shut down (too prematurely in my opinion) because uranium was better in terms of safety, avoiding weapons proliferation, and start-up cost. The difference between thorium fuel and 238U fuel is much less than that between anthracite coal and lignite coal. The difference between anthracite and lignite didn’t cause many “profound societal implications”.

> “Thorium has a million times the energy density of a carbon-hydrogen bond”

So does uranium. 232Th\233U has an energy density within a few percent of 238U\239Pu.

> “What could that mean for human civilization?”

Greater likelihood of nuclear war for any switch from our present low efficiency 235U reactors to high efficiency “breeder” reactors based on either 232Th\233U or 238U\239Pu, because of the possibility of diverting nuclear material from the reprocessing plants needed to extract nuclear fuel from nuclear waste. The switch will have to happen, and I’d prefer ir to happen sooner (in a period of world peace) rather than later.

> “We will never run out.”

Back in the 1980s I calculated when we would run out of thorium. It won’t last forever, but long term predictions are notoriously unreliable.

>> OK, that’s up to 5 minutes. Then 1 minute of intro. Then interview with general public.

> Danger to roofers for solar power.

Yes.

> Going to a lower energy lifestyle will almost certainly correlate to lower quality of life.

I agree, though not for the reason shown of the graph correlating “quality of life” to “energy usage” in countries. More for the reasons of overpopulation and subsequent disintegration.

> Energy efficient lifestyles.

“Efficiency” is such an incredibly misunderstood concept. Any new technology always has to start low efficiency, then improve efficiency over time – that’s not an excuse for being a luddite.

> Reduce greenhouse gases.

Non-issue. Release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere and water supply IS an issue.

> 60% energy loss in transport and buildings.

Negligible compared to factor of thousands to millions.

> “Not reliable”, “expensive capital costs”, “few jobs created”, “only produces electricity”, “long lead times”, “famous for cost overruns”, “risk of accidents”, “nuclear waste”, “risk of proliferation”

Well, “not reliable” and “risk of accidents” are both false. The others are all true so far, but don’t have to be true in the future. Did you note that “risk of proliferation” was deliberately left off the “hold that thought” list? IMHO that’s the most important of all. This list was about nuclear power in general, not about thorium molten salt in particular.

That’s enough watching for me. Up to 9 and a half minutes.

You should make a documentary refuting the claims, moll.

Divine Angel said:

You should make a documentary refuting the claims, moll.

Call it Thorium: The Dark World.

Divine Angel said:

You should make a documentary refuting the claims, moll.

There are many documentaries I should make, but that’s not one of them. I actually like thorium reactors, it’s only the way that the facts are cherry-picked to add “spin” that is wrong.

PS. I’ve been assuming you already know that a so-called “thorium reactor” doesn’t actually fission thorium. The only way to fission thorium is to put it in an atomic bomb. No, a “thorium reactor” converts thorium into uranium, which is then separated from the raw thorium in a reprocessing plant. The resulting uranium is then fissioned in a nuclear reactor of any type. I didn’t see that mentioned in the first 9 minutes of the documentary.