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A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

thoriumenergyworld.com

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Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#101

Post by Retric »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #91
Sukotto wrote: post #76

I think we're making a serious PR mistake calling these "Thorium Reactors" even though the term is accurate. "Reactor" evokes "Nuclear Reactor". For many people, "nuclear reactor" is a deeply loaded term. Likewise "Thorium" (and other words that end in "-ium") sounds dangerously like "plutonium" and "uranium". It doesn't matter how much better/safer this technology is. Don't expect the public to respond positively wh…

A bunch of people have tried to rebrand our most energy-dense fuels (uranium and thorium). "Terrestrial Energy" comes to mind. And the unofficial Thorium PR lead, Kirk Sorensen, rebranded the Thorium-Molten Salt Reactor (T-MSR) as the LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) because "lifter" sounds better. As an engineer I'm a stickler on accurate naming so this suggestion bothers me, and I think the opposing forces wi…

The problem is they need huge subsides to cover the risks, and even then it costs more than other clean alternatives. How much solar/wind + pumped hydro can you buy just from the costs associated with Fukushima Daiichi cleanup / evacuation etc?

Even coal which has long been the cheapest but dirty option is having trouble competing.

Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#102

Post by j_s »

whimsy wrote: post #60
bduerst wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen an increase in the number of NLP bots that give snippets, but they're far from consistently being accurate. Are there any services that can give you summations like this, kind of like the WSJ's What's News section?

Coverage isn't great, but these two have managed to get in to my bookmarks: http://thecontext.net/ https://legiblenews.com/ I seem to recall a similar weekly service for HN but I can't recall the name of it.

http://n-gate.com/ - just kidding!

Maybe http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ but that's an email.

Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#104

Post by wbl »

ornel wrote: post #73
PaulHoule wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use of thorium in the MSR is perhaps 30x more fuel efficient than the current light water reactor. Large amounts of thorium have been buried in the desert by the U.S. government. Also, sufficient deposits exist in the U.S. to support centuries of use. As for nuclear waste, the real reason why the problem appears intractable is that nuclear waste is not waste. The LWR gets only 2% or so of the energy in uranium, t…

Doesn't reprocessing produce a lot of high level waste as a byproduct, thereby worsening the waste problem? And I understand the Japanese had an experimental breeder reactor for a long time and never achieved actually producing any commercially viable electricity. They did get lots of plutonium, though, which may be turned into bombs any moment.

Reprocessing separates rapidly decaying fission products from slowly decaying transuranics. The transuranics go back in to be burned, the fission products decay comparatively rapidly.

Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#105

Post by mhluongo »

itcrowd wrote: post #66
hexane360 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the downvoters: This is technically correct. #1: (charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light) in water #2: charged particles traveling faster than (the speed of light in water)

Technically, it is technically incorrect. There is no "speed of light", there is only "speed of light in [medium]".* Therefore, interpretation #1 doesn't make sense. Maybe colloquially people refer to the speed of light in vacuum as "the speed of light", but again, that is technically incorrect. *And more technically there's group and phase velocity which may or may not be equal.

It is technically correct in that there are two parsings (syntax). One of them clearly isn't true (semantics)

Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#106

Post by mhluongo »

21 wrote: post #67
hexane360 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the downvoters: This is technically correct. #1: (charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light) in water #2: charged particles traveling faster than (the speed of light in water)

But only one of them makes typical sense. Anyone trying to convey the other parsing is expected to clearly disambiguate it.

Agreed, I was just trying to point out what the sentence meant while being friendly :)

Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#107

Post by jessriedel »

bduerst wrote: post #59
didgeoridoo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this are why I don't bother getting my tech & science news from anywhere but HN.

I've seen an increase in the number of NLP bots that give snippets, but they're far from consistently being accurate. Are there any services that can give you summations like this, kind of like the WSJ's What's News section?

The most important change we could make would be to consistently upvote comments that are explicitly abstracts/tldr's, rather than downvoting them based on the mistaken thinking that this will force people to read the entire article and improve discussion. There is latent desire to supply this service for free if it isn't penalized.

Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#108

Post by acidburnNSA »

Retric wrote: post #101
acidburnNSA wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of people have tried to rebrand our most energy-dense fuels (uranium and thorium). "Terrestrial Energy" comes to mind. And the unofficial Thorium PR lead, Kirk Sorensen, rebranded the Thorium-Molten Salt Reactor (T-MSR) as the LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) because "lifter" sounds better. As an engineer I'm a stickler on accurate naming so this suggestion bothers me, and I think the opposing forces wi…

The problem is they need huge subsides to cover the risks, and even then it costs more than other clean alternatives. How much solar/wind + pumped hydro can you buy just from the costs associated with Fukushima Daiichi cleanup / evacuation etc? Even coal which has long been the cheapest but dirty option is having trouble competing.

> Even coal which has long been the cheapest but dirty option is having trouble competing.

*with $2 Natural Gas

The solar/wind $23/MWh production tax credit is not really something that's easy for anyone to compete with, except natural gas. [1]

You're right that nuclear needs to get its costs down, especially to play in the west. We know it can be done because the French electrified nearly their entire grid with nukes in 10 years for reasonable costs, and the Koreans, bless their hearts, have been building Gen III plants at very reasonable prices. (Alas! their new president is riding an anti-nuclear platform.) With the recent Toshiba/Westinghouse issues regarding the US AP1000 plants, it's pretty unlikely to see any big new nukes anytime soon. But the world moves on and China is building lots of nukes.

Fukushima will be really expensive. Building tornado-hardened designs in tsunami zones does not pay off, so we should not do that. But building appropriately hardened designs is a pretty solid non-emitting solution. Nukes produce 65% of the carbon-free electricity in the USA right now; they're already our climate champions.

[1] https://energy.gov/savings/renewable-electricity-production-...

Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#109

Post by WillPostForFood »

pizza wrote: post #87
WillPostForFood wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We will begin to revive and expand our nuclear energy sector, which I’m so happy about, which produces clean, renewable and emissions-free energy,” Trump said. https://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/2017/Trump...

ah yes the renewable nuclear

Backstory on the debate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_proposed_as_rene...

Regardless, renewable is a less important concept than clean (how do you renew the sun which is a big nuclear reaction?).

Re: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades

#110

Post by WillPostForFood »

FireBeyond wrote: post #30
WillPostForFood wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We will begin to revive and expand our nuclear energy sector, which I’m so happy about, which produces clean, renewable and emissions-free energy,” Trump said. https://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/2017/Trump...

“We’ve already eliminated a devastating, anti-coal regulation, but that was just the beginning,” he said. “My administration is putting an end to the war on coal, going to have clean coal, really clean coal.” “We will produce American coal to power American industry.”

In the speech now known as the "energy dominance" speech, Trump promoted fracking, nuclear, offshore drilling, and coal (including exporting coal).
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