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ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

thorconpower.com

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Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#21

Post by ocrow »

riffic wrote: post #5

this reads like a too good to be true pitch, so I have to ask, what's the catch? edit: these are breeder reactors? aren't there still waste and other concerns here?

On the design page they describe this as a molten salt reactor with dissolved nuclear fuel. One of the principle difficulties designing this type of reactor is the choice of materials used to conduct the liquid fuel, which is very hot, caustic, and radioactive.

Steel and aluminum are out, as they are both chemically reactive at those temperatures. Other materials such as nickel alloys or certain ceramics may be possible, but the radioactivity of the fuel tends to embrittle materials over time as atoms in the containing material are converted by exposure to the fuel's neutron emissions.

The affected components include not just the reactor vessel, but also pipes, and in some MSR designs also pumps and heat exchangers. If those are subject to regular replacement, the used components are also low-grade nuclear waste and must be properly contained indefinitely.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

The other main impediment is regulatory: since we've never had commercial reactors of this type we don't have a legal framework to license these types of reactors to be run (and eventually decommissioned) safely.

At least, these are my novice understandings from some skeptical background reading. If someone with actual nuclear industry and/or research experience has a more detailed understanding, feel free to weigh in and correct me.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#23

Post by spockz »

waynecochran wrote: post #9

The fundamental flaw with wind power. Prosperous economies require reliable energy when needed, so power generation must be dispatchable on demand. Intermittent wind and solar source generators can temporarily supply low-cost electric power to the grid, but with a capacity factor of about 30%. This has created demand for redundant natural gas turbine generators to provide “back up” power when there is no wind or sun.…

With a sufficiently high base load provided by renewables the short demand spikes can be served with plants with quicker reaction times like gas plants. With sufficiently high install base of wind and solar power the base can be high enough and the excess stored or things like aluminium plants retooled to use excess energy.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#24

Post by NumberWangMan »

blunte wrote: post #2

The linked page says little about how they do what they do. Even the Design page doesn’t explain how. This all appears to assume some knowledge of power generation or even their approach. Edit >> sorry! I read the hn linked page, and then I navigated to the design page. I did not also go to “home”. Perhaps the hn link could be for the home page.

Whoops! I accidentally linked to the wrong page. I'd be fine with a moderator updating it to point to the home page.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#26

Post by panick21_ »

riffic wrote: post #5

this reads like a too good to be true pitch, so I have to ask, what's the catch? edit: these are breeder reactors? aren't there still waste and other concerns here?

Its incredibly hard to build a nuclear reactor and its even more hard to get anybody to allow you to build one. And arguably even harder for somebody to give you the money to do either.

Its not a breeder, they are going for the simplest possible design as far as I remember and that means its gone a burner.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#27

Post by NumberWangMan »

philipkglass wrote: post #15
nolroz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be interesting to note that a similar design was built and operated continuously back in 1964 for 4 years successfully. There's some material science that needs to be ironed out for commercialization, but it's a viable technology for sure, IMHO.

You're referring to the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment. That was a promising experiment, but the MSRE had thermal power output of 8 megawatts while the "can" in the Thorcon design is supposed to output 557 MWth -- 70 times more. The MSRE also operated for a total of 11555 hours full-power-output equivalent, about 1.3 years, whereas these reactor cans are supposed to run for 4 years at full power before replacement. T…

I think the neat thing about this is that they're starting with a design that, even if something goes a bit screwy, is still safe. They're obviously doing their best to design it well, but also relying on actual tests to see how well it performs in practice, which is something that you can't really do with the nuclear regulatory environment in the USA, if I understand correctly.

And part of this document[1] says "if it breaks, send it back". The design allows for replacing a faulty "can" entirely rather than trying to repair it.

[1] https://thorconpower.com/docs/domsr20180119.pdf

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#28

Post by panick21_ »

spockz wrote: post #23
waynecochran wrote: post #9

The fundamental flaw with wind power. Prosperous economies require reliable energy when needed, so power generation must be dispatchable on demand. Intermittent wind and solar source generators can temporarily supply low-cost electric power to the grid, but with a capacity factor of about 30%. This has created demand for redundant natural gas turbine generators to provide “back up” power when there is no wind or sun.…

With a sufficiently high base load provided by renewables the short demand spikes can be served with plants with quicker reaction times like gas plants. With sufficiently high install base of wind and solar power the base can be high enough and the excess stored or things like aluminium plants retooled to use excess energy.

So poor countries must massively over-invest in renewables and when renewables are high they have absurdly to much energy they can't do anything with leading to negative prices.

And then the need to build storage to capture some of that energy and also peaker plants to cover that.

Given those countries are barley able to but up coal plants right now, and are massively lacking in the power infrastructure to wildly distribute wind/solar power that seems like an incredibly hard plan.

If you can just get 1 working nuclear reactor design (even if its an old PWR) to the point where you can build and run it. Over then next 10-30 years you can just build them as fast as you can next to every large city and provide reliable power.

> aluminium plants retooled to use excess energy.

The problem with that is that if you are an aluminium plant you want to run at high utility. You don't want to continuously! Not turn it on and off 3 times a day. Those kinds of installations are hard enough to run with reliable power.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#30

Post by p1mrx »

nicoburns wrote: post #13
nolroz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be interesting to note that a similar design was built and operated continuously back in 1964 for 4 years successfully. There's some material science that needs to be ironed out for commercialization, but it's a viable technology for sure, IMHO.

> There's some material science that needs to be ironed out for commercialization Worth noting that this is no small thing. Materials science is the limiting factor of all molten salt reactors, and has yet to be solved satisfactorily.

I like how Moltex asked "wait, why are we pumping all this fuel around in the first place?"

https://youtu.be/7qJpVClxzVM?t=536

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