Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thoriumenergyworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 170 posts

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

#141

Post by mlonkibjuyhv »

adrianN wrote: post #120
aidenn0 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun will burn out at a fixed time regardless of how much or little energy we harvest from it. Assuming energy demand growth of 5% per year, we have enough land-based actinates for less than a century of energy usage in fast breeder reactors (if you prefer 2% annual demand growth, it's enough for about 2 centuries). Seawater uranium buys you more time, depending on how you extract it, but hundreds of years and the…

A hundred years would give us plenty of time to develop alternative energy sources (fusion?). The fossil fuel age also last(s/ed) for about that long.

And how long will it take us to boil of the oceans (as in fusion) assuming 5% year over year increase?

How has energy consumption behaved before around the time of paradigm shifts and plentiful "free" energy?

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

#142

Post by phkahler »

troygoode wrote: post #36
ChuckMcM wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly right. The one that came in conversation waiting for the eclipse was genetic editing of fetuses to eliminate inherited disease. Setting aside the whole 'designer babies' as a distraction imagine a company that give free genetic treatment for couples seeking to avoid passing on known bad genes. When you walk that forward and look at the cost associated with treating, diagnosing, and supporting people that late…

Why would you expect that treatment to be free?

The thing is... Abortion is so much cheaper than gene editing, and it gets all the cells at once. More likely is insurance companies try to deny coverage for people with genetic conditions diagnosed before they were born. While this would not fly in todays environment, it is where the economic incentives point.

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

#143

Post by PaulHoule »

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.

Early on the fission products were stored in acid solutions in tanks. Circa 1980 the technology was developed to evaporate the solution and trap the fission products inside glass.

Plutonium from either a LWR or FBR fuel cycle is heavily contaminated with isotopes that will cause a bomb to predetonate or get really hot. Somebody with advanced technology (say Japan's government) could probably use electromagnetic separation to remove the unwanted isotopes, but you wouldn't expect ISIS to be able to do it.

The real thing terrorists would want to nick from a reprocessing plant is Neptunium 237; it has a large critical mass compared to plutonium, but it can be separated by chemical means and will not predetonate.

In the 1970s people wrote hang-wringing papers wondering if inventory control could be made good enough to detect diversion, a 2000s accident at Sellafield's THORP plant showed that it probably can't. They lost an Olymptic size swimming pool worth of fluid containing upwards of 50kg of Pu and around 1000kg of U and did not notice for months.

To be fair, it drained into a containment area and did not threaten anyone. They were able to clean it up. But obviously the inventory control was nonexistent.

THORP has been successful at producing plutonium oxide powder but the UK was unable to fabricate it into fuel elements and had to ship it to France.

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

#144

Post by mathw »

bonesss wrote: post #134
philipkglass wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any such rebranding would probably last about as long as it takes people to learn that the facilities are built by nuclear contractors, regulated by the NRC, and employing nuclear operators.

More importantly: any such rebranding would ignore how we got into the current predicament to begin with... Oil, gas, and coal companies have known about climate change for decades, and it represents a threat to untold megabillions worth of profits and business. It is no coincidence they have been pushing anti-nuclear FUD, sponsoring hack research, pushing "green" blogs, NIMBY campaigns, and such for decades. Coordin…

It's all quite baffling, because they could instead of invested some of those megabillions in extending their reach into low-carbon energy sources, embracing the new world and continuing to exist.

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

#145

Post by adrianN »

mlonkibjuyhv wrote: post #141
adrianN wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years would give us plenty of time to develop alternative energy sources (fusion?). The fossil fuel age also last(s/ed) for about that long.

And how long will it take us to boil of the oceans (as in fusion) assuming 5% year over year increase? How has energy consumption behaved before around the time of paradigm shifts and plentiful "free" energy?

Currently energy use is about 0.01% of energy that the sun sends us (if my googling is right). If energy use increases 5% per year, it doubles every 15 years or so, so after a hundred years we still use so little energy that it doesn't matter compared to solar heating. I think the oceans are safe.

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

#146

Post by tim333 »

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…

Unfortunately Thorium reactors were/would be full on nuclear reactors with the usual problems that come with those regardless of what you call them. Although the one that was built only operated from 1965-1969, "Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident" and they had to spend many millions sorting that out.

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

#147

Post by rbanffy »

tim333 wrote: post #146
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…

Unfortunately Thorium reactors were/would be full on nuclear reactors with the usual problems that come with those regardless of what you call them. Although the one that was built only operated from 1965-1969, "Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident" and they had to spend many millions sorting that out.

Can you describe what problems these Thorium-burning MSRs have that plague current commercial reactors?

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

#148

Post by tim333 »

rbanffy wrote: post #147
tim333 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Thorium reactors were/would be full on nuclear reactors with the usual problems that come with those regardless of what you call them. Although the one that was built only operated from 1965-1969, "Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident" and they had to spend many millions sorting that out.

Can you describe what problems these Thorium-burning MSRs have that plague current commercial reactors?

There's kind of a list here https://whatisnuclear.com/reactors/msr.html

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

#149

Post by DennisP »

aidenn0 wrote: post #112
WillPostForFood wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?).

The sun will burn out at a fixed time regardless of how much or little energy we harvest from it. Assuming energy demand growth of 5% per year, we have enough land-based actinates for less than a century of energy usage in fast breeder reactors (if you prefer 2% annual demand growth, it's enough for about 2 centuries). Seawater uranium buys you more time, depending on how you extract it, but hundreds of years and the…

Seawater uranium goes well beyond "hundreds of years." The oceans hold four billion tons of uranium, which in fast breeders would last many millions of years. On top of that, it's in equilibrium; as more is removed, more will dissolve from rocks. It really is at a timescale similar to the sun burning out.

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

#150

Post by seiferteric »

atdt wrote: post #118
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…

The OECD periodically studies trends in public opinion regarding the use of nuclear power. Their most recent study is from 2010, and its conclusions largely refute any cynicism you may hold regarding public understanding of nuclear energy. From the executive summary: "In 6 out of 7 of the countries considered, public opinion has been growing more supportive of nuclear energy in the energy mix. The data show that coun…

That was pre Fukushima
Post reply on HN