Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
economist.com
Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
1–10 of 47 posts
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#2Ah, Thorium articles. Guaranteed views from nerds, a great way to discover a cohort in your audience, and an easy template to follow (e.g. "it'd be so great, but adoption is 10 years away").
(Don't vote me up for this either. Dismissive first posts are another HN trope, so in this regard I'm as guilty as The Economist.)
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#3This article deserves a bunch of credit for reasonably clearly articulating the distinction between thorium-powered molten salt reactors (the kind the Chinese program eventually aims for, and that groups like Flibe in the states want to build) and thorium-powered pressurized water reactors (like what India is going for). Lots of the amateur enthusiasm for thorium power glosses over the distinction, and while some of the benefits of thorium apply equally to both (like proliferation resistance), others (like many of the purported safety benefits) apply only to the MSR configuration, largely because it runs at atmospheric pressure.
The downside of the MSR configuration is that it's way harder to build, and involves some maybe-not-entirely-solved problems around corrosion resistance, since the salts in question tend to be pretty reactive.
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#4Coincidentally, ASGARD is also a horrible backronym for another nuclear related project.
Advanced fuelS for Generation IV reActors: Reprocessing and Dissolution
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#5Ah, Thorium articles. Guaranteed views from nerds, a great way to discover a cohort in your audience, and an easy template to follow (e.g. "it'd be so great, but adoption is 10 years away"). (Don't vote me up for this either. Dismissive first posts are another HN trope, so in this regard I'm as guilty as The Economist.)
Pff. If 'molten salt' reactors are an inch closer in 10 years, I will eat my hat. The idea is only slightly more appealing than having the reactor fly around under it's own power.
What makes you think The Economist is interested in probing the nerdosphere? Would Tesla, Apple, etc., be more effective? For sure, the '... adoption is 10 years away' thing is funny. Makes me reminisce for Popular Science.
If I were to guess; they are advertising where their technological sympathies lie. It is more about managing their brand than probing an audience.
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#6I think thorium MSRs are the most promising of the GenIV designs. However, the biggest engineering challenge with them is with the U-232 being produced. U-232 decays into Thalium-208 and gives off very high energy radiation which would kill anyone near it, as well as damage any electronics in the vicinity (this is also why making bombs out of thorium are not as big a threat). But if this can be overcome I think it'd be a great source of power.
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#7Ah, Thorium articles. Guaranteed views from nerds, a great way to discover a cohort in your audience, and an easy template to follow (e.g. "it'd be so great, but adoption is 10 years away"). (Don't vote me up for this either. Dismissive first posts are another HN trope, so in this regard I'm as guilty as The Economist.)
you may be right but you are wrong
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#8Ah, Thorium articles. Guaranteed views from nerds, a great way to discover a cohort in your audience, and an easy template to follow (e.g. "it'd be so great, but adoption is 10 years away"). (Don't vote me up for this either. Dismissive first posts are another HN trope, so in this regard I'm as guilty as The Economist.)
Pff. If 'molten salt' reactors are an inch closer in 10 years, I will eat my hat. The idea is only slightly more appealing than having the reactor fly around under it's own power. What makes you think The Economist is interested in probing the nerdosphere? Would Tesla, Apple, etc., be more effective? For sure, the '... adoption is 10 years away' thing is funny. Makes me reminisce for Popular Science. If I were to gue…
Ahem... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H
... speaking of flying nuclear reactors
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#9Ah, Thorium articles. Guaranteed views from nerds, a great way to discover a cohort in your audience, and an easy template to follow (e.g. "it'd be so great, but adoption is 10 years away"). (Don't vote me up for this either. Dismissive first posts are another HN trope, so in this regard I'm as guilty as The Economist.)
Pff. If 'molten salt' reactors are an inch closer in 10 years, I will eat my hat. The idea is only slightly more appealing than having the reactor fly around under it's own power. What makes you think The Economist is interested in probing the nerdosphere? Would Tesla, Apple, etc., be more effective? For sure, the '... adoption is 10 years away' thing is funny. Makes me reminisce for Popular Science. If I were to gue…
> The idea is only slightly more appealing than having the reactor fly around under it's own power.
That was a pretty fun one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire
#10What about the radioactive waste? All nuclear reactors produce waste (finally when disassembled after the reactors' end of life). I find it strange to search for more efficient reactor styles, while the waste problem is not solved.