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Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

economist.com

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Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

#31

Post by einrealist »

ajuc wrote: post #14
einrealist wrote: post #10

What 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.

It is solved - store it somewhere, or use it as a fuel for other reactors. And the currently used alternatives (coal) produces way more waste (whole mountains of slightly radioactive, and slightly toxic dust leftovers from coal extraction build up near coal mines).

How do you use a used sponge that is radiactive waste as fission material in a reactor, or those pipes from the reactor itself?

Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

#32

Post by einrealist »

dragonshed wrote: post #12
einrealist wrote: post #10

What 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.

Most of the waste from traditional reactors is actually unspent fuel. Solid fuel rods only allow for about 1-2% energy conversion before the amount of transuranics and other contaminants built up and prevent safe operation. The idea of the liquid fueled reactors is that you can easily change the fuel composition, ideally constantly reprocessing the fuel of contaminates, while letting the unburned fuel stay in place.…

Most of the waste is actually not the fission product itself, but everything else that is required to maintain the reactor aswell as the reactor itself.

Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

#33

Post by jonnydark »

spenrose wrote: post #29

Two articles on why nuclear will never* scale up: http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/11/21/why-officia... http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2014/02/20/why-the-... * (again. It did reach real scale in post-WWII France among other places)

In the USA

Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

#34

Post by Consultant32452 »

twic wrote: post #28
archgoon wrote: post #4

Coincidentally, ASGARD is also a horrible backronym for another nuclear related project. A dvanced fuel S for G eneration IV re A ctors: R eprocessing and D issolution http://asgardproject.eu/publications

The new thorium design should be the Mega-Joule Operationally Limited Nuclear Incident Reactor.

MJOLNIR?

Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

#36

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

spenrose wrote: post #29

Two articles on why nuclear will never* scale up: http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/11/21/why-officia... http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2014/02/20/why-the-... * (again. It did reach real scale in post-WWII France among other places)

Komanoff doesn't know it but he is helping make the Thorium MSR case. Proponents of the MSR are also critical of LWR economics.

Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

#37

Post by hga »

eleitl wrote: post #23
nnq wrote: post #20

I see this as the main takeaway from the article instead: > One or two 233U bombs were tested in the Nevada desert during the 1950s and, perhaps ominously, another was detonated by India in the late 1990s. [...] intense gamma radiation 233U produces fries the triggering circuitry ...this only shows that military use is possible! For someone less concerned about safety and more concerned about having a nuclear weapon…

Not just the proliferation resistance is a myth, but there are several others making the round: http://www.whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html

Yeah, chemical separation + gun assembly warheads is a particularly bad path to allow, side steps the two hardest current things required (non-chemical uranium enrichment and implosion based warheads).

Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

#38

Post by apendleton »

nnq wrote: post #20

I see this as the main takeaway from the article instead: > One or two 233U bombs were tested in the Nevada desert during the 1950s and, perhaps ominously, another was detonated by India in the late 1990s. [...] intense gamma radiation 233U produces fries the triggering circuitry ...this only shows that military use is possible! For someone less concerned about safety and more concerned about having a nuclear weapon…

Certainly it's possible, but it's much harder to do without frying either the triggers or the engineers (gamma rays and people don't play well together), so the conventional wisdom is that non-thorium fuel sources would be lower-hanging fruit, and the pool of actors who could potentially make a bomb with it (or the U233 from further down the fuel cycle) is smaller than with plutonium or enriched uranium. "Proliferation-resistant" is the claim, not "proliferation-proof."

Re: Thorium reactors: Asgard’s fire

#39

Post by jmccree »

einrealist wrote: post #10

What 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.

The waste problem has been solved. We store it somewhere safe until we decide something better to do with it.

What hasn't been solved is the effects of of all our coal, gas, and oil usage that could be replaced by nuclear power. It makes all the sense in the world to be finding ways we can widely and safely deploy nuclear power worldwide to replace coal and gas power plants. Generating clean electricity is a requisite for wide spread electric or hydrogen cars to stop burning gasoline.

If you believe that coal and gas burning is bad for the environment, then we need nuclear power urgently and widely, energy needs are only going to go up and the only alternative to nuclear is burning more fossil fuels. I find it absolutely absurd that people worry more about nuclear waste than atmosphere pollution currently happening. I think we could store a few hundred years of nuclear waste on Antarctica til technology figures out what to do with it, even if that's just shooting it into the sun. I choose safely storing nuclear waste for the future to deal with over continuing to burn billions of tons of coal and gas each year which is actively killing about a million people per year. (WHO 2008)

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