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Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

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Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#21

Post by juped »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #6

I'm involved in a public education nuclear website. We get tons of questions about thorium so we made a few pages to handle stuff like this. For instance, we have one on molten salt reactors specifically (which aren't always fueled with thorium) [1]. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html And then we have our most popular, the Thorium Myths page [2]. [2] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html I love that Yang i…

The thing I hate most in nuclear advocacy is the trope of "the new, exciting, safe and economical nuclear reactor based on new, exciting miracle tech!".

We have amazing, safe, economical, etc. nuclear reactors. They're called nuclear reactors, and don't need any miracle tech conjured up in some magazine columnist's imagination.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#23

Post by RivieraKid »

erentz wrote: post #5

Yang is to be credited for stating he is open to all possible solutions to the climate crisis, and rightly pointing out that with a crisis of this magnitude no solutions should be taken off the table at this point. Something other candidates are reluctant to do when it comes to the topic of nuclear energy. He shouldn’t be expected to be an expert in the nuances of the technology or fuels. This should always be left t…

I like that he mentions geo-engineering. To me, the most promising is stratospheric aerosol injection. I don't understand why there's not more talk about it given the cost / value ratio.

If it turns out that there are no serious side effects or risk and governments agree to do it, we have solved climate change.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#24

Post by acidburnNSA »

juped wrote: post #21
acidburnNSA wrote: post #6

I'm involved in a public education nuclear website. We get tons of questions about thorium so we made a few pages to handle stuff like this. For instance, we have one on molten salt reactors specifically (which aren't always fueled with thorium) [1]. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html And then we have our most popular, the Thorium Myths page [2]. [2] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html I love that Yang i…

The thing I hate most in nuclear advocacy is the trope of "the new, exciting, safe and economical nuclear reactor based on new, exciting miracle tech!". We have amazing, safe, economical, etc. nuclear reactors. They're called nuclear reactors, and don't need any miracle tech conjured up in some magazine columnist's imagination.

Today's Thorium "hype" was started by a NASA tech named Kirk Sorensen. He outwardly said nuclear needed a rebrand as early as 2008 and has kind of doubled down on it. Like: "Hey all those problems with nuclear are solved if you split this nucleus instead of that one". I agree with you and don't think this is necessary.

We should just try to help people see context in the things they don't like about nuclear. The reactor accidents we all have heard about are hard for anyone to compare with 8 million air pollution deaths per year from combustion. But few people know about the Banqiao dam failure that killed 100,000.

I read recently that 60% of American's think nuclear reactors contribute to climate change, when in fact they're among the lowest carbon forms of energy known.

It's really mostly a PR issue. Nuclear PR money is tied up in utilities which also all run large fossil assets, so it's rare for them to talk about how low carbon nuclear is.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#25

Post by Gibbon1 »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #15
DennisP wrote: post #9

> similar radioactivity at 100 years to uranium-plutonium fuel cycles, and actually has higher waste radioactivity at 100,000 years At 100 years your radioactivity is still dominated by fission products, which are the same in either reactor. At 100,000 years the radioactivity is minuscule with any reactor. But what you don't have with thorium or fast uranium reactors is a lot of transuranic waste, like plutonium. Tha…

A few points: * Uranium-Plutonium fuel in a closed cycle can burn all the transuranics and have very low radiotoxicity waste as well. * Molten salt fuels are 10x less dense than typical solid fuels, implying an increase in waste volume. They're also water soluble and frequently liquid. This complicates waste disposal and transport. Not terribly, but still. A good summary reference on radiotoxicity vs. reprocessing is…

Something people dislike being pointed out. As far as reprocessing is concerned the best first step in reprocessing spent fuel rods is not fuck with them for a hundred years.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#26

Post by acidburnNSA »

HorstG wrote: post #17
acidburnNSA wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its easy to make bombs from U-233. In fact it is better than plutonium in some rare circumstances. Check out the discussion and cool declassified letter from the Livermore bomb letters here: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth3

Yes, making the bombs themselves seems to be easy. The difficulty comes from U232-contamination which decays into strong gamma emitters, making handling difficult. However, there seem to be paths for the production of pure U233 from chemically separated Pa233, which one might be doing anyways in a thorium reactor. That would mean a significantly higher proliferation risk, because one would get pure bomb fuel form the…

I mean to say that making clean U-233 (with very little U-232 and daughters) is easy. Certainly assembling a bomb given pristene weapons material is particularly easy.

I'm a reactor designer and study this kind of thing. It's really just a question of how fast you move your Th-232 through a neutron cloud. If you move it relatively quickly and then do your Pa separation you can get very nice U-233 from Thorium.

The nice thing here about low-pressure fluid fuel reactors is that you can move material in and out fairly readily.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#28

Post by acidburnNSA »

paulchen wrote: post #19

The fact that we are discussing thorium here and in many other places suddenly, proves the successful mission accomplished by Andrew Yang. Federal bureaucrats and their aides are forced to do their homework to seriously consider the option and answer intelligently.

For sure. I'm really glad this is bringing nuclear discussions to the left.

At least the US DOE is already highly knowledgeable about thorium and molten salt reactors. Advanced reactor people at the national labs and elsewhere have been studying this stuff for decades. There are still plenty of us who know the details.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#29

Post by acidburnNSA »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #25
acidburnNSA wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few points: * Uranium-Plutonium fuel in a closed cycle can burn all the transuranics and have very low radiotoxicity waste as well. * Molten salt fuels are 10x less dense than typical solid fuels, implying an increase in waste volume. They're also water soluble and frequently liquid. This complicates waste disposal and transport. Not terribly, but still. A good summary reference on radiotoxicity vs. reprocessing is…

Something people dislike being pointed out. As far as reprocessing is concerned the best first step in reprocessing spent fuel rods is not fuck with them for a hundred years.

I'd go so far to say we should just dispose of it all. I used to be all in on reprocessing the waste. Nowadays I only want to do it if it's actually cheaper (which I don't think it will be for many decades). Nuclear has economics issues, not uranium sustainability issues. Uranium from seawater with runoff can power the entire planed 10x over for a few hundred million years. It's borderline renewable. We need to be doing things that make nuclear reactors simpler and cheaper to operate, not more complex and expensive.

Disposing of the waste from a once-through fuel cycle is totally doable. We just have to let the world know that the Finns are doing it at the Onkalo Repository, we can do it in WIPP, and Deep Isolation LLC is working on a pretty slick deep borehole option.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#30

Post by acidburnNSA »

RivieraKid wrote: post #23
erentz wrote: post #5

Yang is to be credited for stating he is open to all possible solutions to the climate crisis, and rightly pointing out that with a crisis of this magnitude no solutions should be taken off the table at this point. Something other candidates are reluctant to do when it comes to the topic of nuclear energy. He shouldn’t be expected to be an expert in the nuances of the technology or fuels. This should always be left t…

I like that he mentions geo-engineering. To me, the most promising is stratospheric aerosol injection. I don't understand why there's not more talk about it given the cost / value ratio. If it turns out that there are no serious side effects or risk and governments agree to do it, we have solved climate change.

This pro geologist (James Conca) is talking about it. His favorite option is crushed shells/limestone. The side-effect is that they reduce ocean acidification.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/09/10/solar-geo...

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