@@michaelpettersson4919You can communicate with anyone instantaneously across thousands of miles, you can travel to any city in the world in a single day, and you can find the answer to almost any question quickly and at any time or place. You don't consider these super powers?
Actually there was a selective breeding technique that was used before genetic engineering really caught on in which you exposed a population of embryos (usually plant embryos) to large but not deadly amounts of radiation, and breeding the ones with desirable traits usually culling the rest. It would be highly unethical, but you could probably do something similar if you had a few billion human embryos to start with selecting for traits like increased intelegence, strength, speed, or durability. Such a process could use a nuclear reactor as a source of radiation and could potentially result in what could be considered superhuman within a couple of centuries.
I think Thorium fans need to emphasize the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) itself rather than just the Thorium fuel. Thorium as a nuclear fuel isn't as good as it could be if it isn't used in a Molten Salt Reactor. It would be nice to get videos that go into detail about the pros and cons of each different type of nuclear reactor. There are plenty of diagrams out there about the Light Water Reactor (LWR), but there are many more types of nuclear reactor other than the LWR.
I agree. Less atomic theory. Especially on Uranium and not Thorium. More current status and configurations of LFTRs. You covered fusion reactors in its variations. Why not LFTRs?
graphite core uranium reactors make great HBO series, create great ecological reserves and give lots of people medals... on the con side, well, just one, Chernobyl.
@@Biomechanoid29ah Chernobyl is only due to the idiots using carbon as a modulator. You cannot stop it when it goes off a cliff as the carbon melts to it and you cannot get that modulator off unlike taking fission rods out of a water modulator / it boiling away it’s own modulator.
im NOT a Thorium fan ...im a fission fan . Theres no such thing as nuclear waste in SPACE. Imagine having an Palladium 107 pile stock near Neptune cooled by hellium . 20 million years of energy independence :) Many things can happen in 20 million years... a super nova blowing off nearby bringing new spicy stuff into the system...Nuclear waste '' its LIFE counted by the killos
@@someoneelse7629 Ah, been awhile since I read the story, shed or detached garage really wasn't a detail I remembered lol. He ended up in the Navy tho I do remember, but like his life went down the gutter afterwards, became a petty criminal trying to steal more components to build another one and I think last I heard he died. Sad waste of someone who probably just needed guidance, and could have been an asset to society.
Yeah, a lot of people miss this point. All elements can be fusioned or fissioned, it's just a question of whether the process consumes energy or yields it.
@@garethbaus5471 ...and yet proton-proton fusion does occur, hence the sun and all the matter in the universe that isn't hydrogen. But the point of my comment above was that a lot of people mistakenly believe fusion/fission reactions can only happen if they yield energy, but that's not correct. If you provide the huge energy necessary, you can fission helium back into nucleons--or tear the nucleons back down into quarks for that matter. It just costs energy instead of yielding it.
I’ve been watching this channel for about 5 years and I still get excited whenever I see a new upload in my inbox 😁 the only content creator to hold that Accolade in my subscriptions!
3:40 -- "What are you playing at Thorium 231? We had a nice clean exponential curve going there. Really impressive. But you just had to be special, didn't you? Couldn't just enjoy being part of the team."
I need another cup of a coffee because I read this as if you were mining on the moon and not the episode lmao. 🤣 I was about to question light lag but thankfully, the more sane explanation is I need more coffee.
Electricity from Thorium is on the brink of becoming a reality. China is set to complete an experimental Thorium Molten Salt Reactor that will generate 2 MW of electrical power later this month.
I'm not sure if his voice really changed, or if we've just gotten used to it. Ive been subscribed for ~5 years and I can barely tell that he's Canadian anymore...
@@sid2112 He mentioned at some point a couple/few years ago that he was doing some sort of practice/training to help with his rhotacism. He has certainly come a long way from his Elmer Fudd warning days.
@@LegoDork I haven't been following his channel, so I don't know how much he's improved; however, I think this goes to show that you can have some flaws -- and even some rather severe flaws -- yet still succeed, if you can produce interesting content! I don't want to say "never change", since we all should seek to improve ourselves, in both small and big ways; however, the lesson here is clearly "don't let perfection be the enemy of doing something!"
Isaac certainly can get that R articulation… but it’s a real effort that requires really good speech and articulation coaching. I’ve had good success with my students using a variation of the “taco roll.” I instruct the student first stick out their tongue and lift up the sides of their tongue to make the “taco shape”. If that’s easy, go to the retraction step. If it’s difficult, the taco shape can be made by first sticking out the tongue and then bring the lips together as you do when when blowing out candles on a birthday cake (but a bit looser and not as tight as you would when actually blowing). Once the taco shape is made correctly with the tongue sticking out, hold the position. Then retract the tongue with awareness for the tongue’s sides against the gums just above the molars. The tip of the tongue should not touch the front teeth or front gums. Only the sides of the tongue should touch the gums as the tip of the tongue points up (but doe not touch) the roof of the mouth. Some speech pathologists emphasize pursing the lips outward, but this is a mistake in my opinion as it over emphasizes the role of the lips in making the R sound (you can still make the wrong sound with lips pushed out). My variation of the “taco role” also emphasizes the action of retracting the tongue, which is absolutely necessary to produce the R sound wherever it occurs in a word. I’m not a speech path, just a teacher. My amazing grandmother was Stanford grad and a speech pathology professor at a CSU Sacramento. I picked up all sorts of great articulation and enunciation exercises from her and refined them in my own teaching and tutoring practice.
Great video. I've been waiting for more details on Thorium and its potential in our near future. Thanks to all involved, your hard work is always appreciated
I loved this episode. I shed some light on the mystery of decay rates and such. One thing I didn't hear you go into was the molten salt reactors ability to recycle spent fuel rods back into usable material. (Yes, handling is still a problem) Thank you for all your work.
Dude I was watching some 5 year old videos of yours, first of all, it's incredible how high your quality ALREADY was so long ago AND that you've maintained it, definitely surpassed in some ways but there's really not much higher to go in my opinion. But the main thing was that you used to point out that you had a speech impediment, likely as a result of people leaving a few mean comments on top of what's likely a lifetime of already existing insecurity. I never would've noticed if you didn't say it, and I think you may have realized that as the reason why you stopped mentioning it at the start of every video. Your diction even then was phenomenal, your audio quality has increased, but you've had so much practice and I'm so proud to know that your insecurity regarding such a minor, almost imperceptible speech impediment has diminished and that you've gained such an amazing amount of confidence in yourself. You are an amazing presenter, these videos are all so long and in depth and it blows my mind how fucking quickly you can come out with them. Absolutely godlike work ethic. I am so happy and so proud to know that your own attitude regarding how others interact with something you had every excuse and to be insecure about in your own mind has improved so drastically in this half decade. It is a massive step, beyond any subscriber count, any quality of content increase. Your own personal confidence in yourself and your craft and your place in the world is the most important thing I can think of. Congratulations man. I'm so happy to have revisited those videos to become aware of how far you've come, something I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
Oak Ridge TN, had a molten salt thorium reactor running for years, 50 years ago. The largest problem then was pipe corrosion, this was before ceramic lined pipes were available.
Howdy Isaac, I'd love to see more stuff on different forms of solar energy combined with different forms of energy storage and implementions. And since you were mentioning different scales of energy use, I've also seen some interesting small scale, modular wind energy systems that can be attached to and access the grid via light and electrical poles along roads. The ones I saw were only about 6' off the ground and about 6' diameter but a single one on a busy street could produce more power than most people would expect. Having a safe nuclear base load would be a ideal, but maximizing the total renewable energy production and finding ways to store is equally important.
I have watched probably over a hundred of your videos and I love them. However, I don't think I've ever learned more concepts and gained understanding than in this episode. Thank you for your work. And yes I was wondering about the script being very hard to narrate.
I started following the “new nuclear” story when Kirk Sorensen started putting out a lot videos about LFTR ideas around 7 or 8 years ago. I have since lost interest as it seems the investor community has, simply because there are too many hurdles for a totally new nuclear plant design. The NuScale SMR solves most of the problems with current nuclear plants, most important of which is cost.
I believe the most important hurdle for nuclear energy is centralization. Solar, wind and batteries allow more and more decentralization and freedom, which is better. An analogy would be nuclear requiring design and build by a committee while renewables can be designed and built by a dude in a garage. Cost also does not help of course.
@@rushwasaband8842 Kirk Sorensen talks a lot about the “retirement cliff”. Almost 90 active nuclear reactors in the US are due for retirement later this decade. Many are already uneconomical. So there is an easy business case to be made for building a new type of reactor on the same site with a similar power output. I think the NuScale SMR will win the most contracts. GE-Hitachi has a fairly conventional design in the pipeline. But Kirk’s LFTR design is a new technology based on molten salt as a fluid/coolant. There are many challenges to overcome to commercialize something like that. I don’t think the financing is there for what he wants to do.
@@rushwasaband8842 you kinda simplify here Decentralization/freedom =/= equal better in all circumstances. We will likely qlways want some form of centralization as decentralized grids are vulnerable to fluctuations and disasters. This was readily apparent during the cold wave last winter for the mid-south of the United States. Texas is a mostly decentralized grid being fairly independent from the rest of the states. This lead them to suffer more then the western portion of Texas, or their neighboring states, who were able to pull power from the rest of the grid to supplement their failing production to an extent allowable. Given that we are expecting, and already experiencing, an increase in the instances and severity of extreme weather, complete decentralization of power girds would be a poor choice, especially given that wind and solar are extremely vulnerable to severe weather. Not saying decentralization doesnt have its merits, but full decentralization has just as many faults as fully centralized grids do.
Doing a weapons-grade Captain Picard-style double facepalm at the moment. You she entity lifeforces (including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) are an an endless source of exasperation and having to do a weapons-grade Captain Picard-style double facepalm.
@@tlpineapple1 I agree David. Full decentralization is a bad idea. That however does not mean we will need centralized power generation in a few decades from now. We will definitely need connected, relatively decentralized grids and decentralized generation. That way, a remote homestead or business can throw in an extra generator or long duration battery for a rainy day, in addition to regular solar/wind + battery setup they have. Rest of us will use locally generated power most of the time and outsourced power during rare occasions. I am looking forward to seeing new nuclear generation technologies in space tugs or space stations that are too far from any star for utilizing solar panels.
One of those channels where even before watching the video I give it a like then watch the whole video and wish I could give it another like because they are just that good...
Australia has 25% of Thorium reserves. The irony of mining metals here is that Thorium is waiting in the tailings dumps of the extraction process regarding other rare earths. There is a gram of Thorium in every cubic meter of dirt worldwide. Furthermore Molten salt reactors have been around since the 1950's. An added bonus is that we can add the current wasted fuel rods to "burn up" that toxic waste. No pressure vessel is needed.
Another advantage of thorium is reduced decay heat when the reactor is shut down. With thorium will have a lot less actinides in the core and nuclear waste generating decay heat.
Thorium MSR can be run as fast reactor without graphite moderator. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who invented the MSR, also experimented fast breeding reactor based on MSR. Not so promising for fuel breeding purpose but it can be effective waste burner, which is great solution to burn away radioactive spend fuel waste. We need to invest more R&D money in thorium reactor. It can be run like pumped hydraulic power plant by storing heat and will be good mean to complement shortcomings of solar power.
I am a nuclear engineer and at 9:10 I would never use lead to absorb neutrons. The neutron absorption cross sections are just ridiculously low for that. Using lead to shield gammas from inelastic neutron collisions is a different matter.
Hopefully you're planning a video on Thorium MSR's because, from everything I've heard, the primary and huge advantage is that they operate at high temperature and low pressure (as opposed to Uranium Pressurized water reactors at high pressure and low temperature). High temperature is ideal for thermodynamic efficiency in the generators and low pressure massively simplifies and cheapens the construction costs. Basically current the PWR design is the very worst for cost and efficiency. From a first principles physics and engineering perspective LowT/HighP designs are absurd,.. they're just best for generating fissile materials for bombs and maintaining a construction monopoly (and cost inflation) for the giant firms capable of building them Also the molten salt reactors allow a huge percentage of the fuel load to be consumed compared to solid fuel rods that degrade so fast that they're useless after only a couple of percent of the fuel is used. There's also the whole "fail-safe" nature of the MSR with a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity and safe shutdown by dumping and solidifying the molten fuel.
Actually, a thorium MSR is a long way off but uranium MSRs are less than ten years away. Uranium has all the same advantages as thorium in a MSR except it's much easier and cheaper to do. That's why all the MSR start-ups are using uranium, and not thorium.
Can someone clarify: I thought one of the advantages of thorium, was we are already mining a lot of it without trying, as it is a major waste product of other mining operations. Thus using it for power would reduce this waste. Was this incorrect?
Not wrong, but also applies to uranium. Mining rare earths also gives you uranium, which is thrown away. Given that a lot of this happens in countries with weak environmental laws, that phrase is rather literal
@@mattdombrowski8435 I can't speak for other nations, but if it could be made economically viable it'll happen. The way to do that would be to build the facilities that use it. Big investment right there.
US regulation relating to thorium a and REE mining seem like they are written by the Chinese in order to slow US production and continue to make US dependent on Chinese controlled sources. The Critical Minerals Act is supposed to help fix this, but it hasn't been passed yet.
If we didnt need nukes so fast in ww2, and running by the seat of our pants. We very much could of chose to go with thorium as we built both kinds of reactors but settle on the one that requires less work to make weapons grade material. of course decades later we prove you can make weapons grade material from thorium reactors you just have to install a simple collector at a specific point in the reactor and it will collect what you need before it gets degraded in the cycle. but the safety level of thorium reactors make it quite possible to build massive thorium reactors, as salt plugs and dranage tanks that require no power or human intervention are dame near cheap proof. and that's the problem with current nuclear reactors they're all built with cheapness in mind no mind for where you build it and no mind for skimping on maintenance and what it does for the safety. me look at Japan they're not known for going cheap but they knew that those backup generators were in a high-risk area of flooding damage and they got knocked for it on safety reports multiple times but they never did anything about it because it would have cost money to fix. we need reactors that are idiot government proof and cheap proof and that's where I think thorium comes in and micro nuclear reactors.
Thanks for the thumps up. and another great thing about thorium is the half-life of the gamma radiation is so short compared to nuclear waste. We can store the thorium casings then melt them down and then reuse them in decades not centuries. you just cant do that level of turnaround with standard reactors, the cleanup process is so extensive which just adds to the cost. It's why so many of these old reactors are kept online past their life. Decommissioning a reactor can be a real b****. Not including what it cost to clean up a reactor that's gone critical. An the cost is still going up for Japan and Russia/Ukraine.
Personally, I think the speech impediment was a blessing in disguise. It forced IA to be extremely methodical and clear when writing and narrating scripts. You can tell that he puts a lot more thought into what he says and how he says it. On top of that he still has an extremely distinctive accent. Having a unique voice is a great asset on social media platforms.
Pyrophoric just means it will burn. Even non-powdered Uranium will burn. One of the big reasons that depleted uranium (mostly U238) is used in tank rounds is because it is both dense *AND* will burst into flames due to friction as it goes through metal armor.
@John pyrophoric doesn't mean that. it refers to a material that will spontaneously combust in air & in the context of uranium & thorium it refers to the powdered form of the pure metals
I immediately imagined a bunch of scientists in a damn, under government orders to find a way to weaponize hydro power. Some tiny nation with lots of rivers fearful of being invaded for their water.
@@lefu87williford55 -- i can already think of a bunch of ways to weaponize hydro off the top of my head: Electric fences, surveillance cameras, electric floodlights, systems to selectively flood different sections of different rivers, using rechargable batteries in infantry gear, electric vehicles, and more. More importantly though, a small country with lots of rivers will want lots of river boats and amphibious vehicles to maintain their mobility and DEFEND their hydro-electric dams from air strikes.
China are nearing completion of a trial Thorium reactor. Trials start this year, which if successful will lead to a full size reactor by 2030. Who knows where this will go or if the information is accurate, but given it takes 20 years to build a conventional reactor in the US, this could lead to an interesting shift in global power.
Yes. This has gotten little coverage on the www. Electricity from Thorium molten salt reactors is going to be a reality. This very month it should actually start. Essentially, China is replicating the Molten Salt Reactor experiment from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, while also upgrading it with technologies that produce alloys capable of corrosion and high temperature resistance and additionally connected the MSR to a turbine generator unit for a 2 MW output.
My conscienceness is faster then light. When I go to sleep for 8 hours...it's a few seconds for me. The world and whole universe literally spins until I wake up and stop it. You guys are all time travelers.
You might have mentioned that traditional nuclear reactors are inefficient using only 3% of the energy of fuel. This is not a problem for running out of fuel as much as it is waste problem. Thorium MSRs produce a small fraction of the waste, and the waste is safer with a much shorter life. Also, thorium MSRs can use the nuclear waste we have now for fuel to produce power, reduce waste and make it safer. Add to that MSRs do not need a large source of coolant water, and MSRs can be placed almost anywhere with much more safety due to passively shutting-down on their own. Once the optimum technologies is decided upon, modular MSRs can be mass produced and refurbished in shipyards using their existing manufacturing technology creating economies of scale.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and ideas. Any future videos on LFTR reactors would be appreciated. Some questions I have are, can they work in space possibly using artificial gravity in stead of pumps. Are they all highly responsive to load changes due to the fuel salt density leading to higher or lower reactivity. Could the xenon gas given off and other byproducts be made in sufficient quantities needed to be useful as a propellant in space travel. Would also appreciate if you could riff on the accomplishments and possible development that could have been likely if the Oakridge experiment hadn’t been shuttered. As always, your videos are very interesting, informative and entertaining. Wishing you the best in the New Years to come.
@Isaac Arthur: You are one of my fave channels, specifically bc I enjoy your voice calmly talking about speculative science. Altho idk if you quite beat out Neil drGrasse Tyson's videos, I do love listening to your videos and you're definitely up there... it's relaxing, helps me destress, entertains me, and gives me fun story ideas. Thank you for these continued videos.
I work in the nuclear field and I believe that (LFTR) are worth a try. Vogtle 3 and 4 are now at a price tag of 25 billion with over 10 years of construction. Existing light-water reactors are being decommissioned in Rapid succession. By 2040, most plants will become non existent. We need to do something and do it now! I'm all for light-water reactors, but we've already proven that we can't build them cheaply and quickly. There are no other nuclear reactors being built besides Vogtle right now in the USA. So, hypothetically even if we started breaking ground on new LWR, it would be 2035. I have no proof to back this up but I think that thorium reactors could be built a lot quicker and cheaper. I understand the downside to them as far as power output, but we need something now.
OMG! The most complex and technical episode of SFIA I have ever seen! Wow! I had to *pause* about half way through the video to let my brain "cool off" from the intense Nuclear Physics lesson in the beginning of the episode! I just wonder how many people just completely zoned out and shut it off because it was just overwhelming? Anyway - I stuck in there, because I'm very interested in Thorium powered nuclear, most especially the molten salt and LFTR variants, for our medium-term future power source. Thanks for the fascinating episode Isaac! It's REAL CLEAR your extremely experienced and VERY knowledgeable about the physics of all of this!
Isaac. Many thanks for outstanding content. I know you’ve likely worked on R articulation since your early education, so hope you don’t find the following offensive or irritating. I’ve had good success with my students using a variation of the “taco roll.” I instruct the student to first stick out their tongue and lift up the sides of their tongue to make the “taco shape”. If that’s easy, go to the retraction step. If it’s difficult, the taco shape can be made by first sticking out the tongue and then bring the lips together as you do when when blowing out candles on a birthday cake (but a bit looser and not as tight as you would when actually blowing). Once the taco shape is made correctly with the tongue sticking out, hold the position. Then retract the tongue with awareness for the tongue’s sides against the gums just above the molars. The tip of the tongue should not touch the front teeth or front gums. Only the sides of the tongue should touch the gums as the tip of the tongue points up (but doe not touch) the roof of the mouth. Some speech pathologists emphasize pursing the lips outward, but this is a mistake in my opinion as it over emphasizes the role of the lips in making the R sound (you can still make the wrong sound with lips pushed out). My variation of the “taco role” also emphasizes the action of retracting the tongue, which is absolutely necessary to produce the R sound wherever it occurs in a word. I’m not a speech path, just a teacher. My amazing grandmother was Stanford grad and a speech pathology professor at a CSU Sacramento. I picked up all sorts of great articulation and enunciation exercises from her and refined them in my own teaching and tutoring practice.
The primary proliferation resistance feature of an MSR isn't U-232, although that's nice. The thing that makes thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeders super proliferation resistant is their anemic breeding ratios, which are between 1.05 and 1.07, depending on whether you do protactinium separation. That means it's going to take you between 17 and 25 years to double the amount of fissile material in your reactor. So, you CONCEIVABLY could design a reactor from which you could "skim" some excess fissile material which you could eventually make a bomb with, but it's going to take you at least a couple years just to get enough material for one bomb, not great for a weapons program. It's going to take you that long because, in thermal spectrum reactors, they don't have a whole lot of fuel in them to start, 3-4% of the material in the reactor being the fissile fuel, which will be just what you need to maintain criticality. So you're starting with a relatively small amount of fissile material and then growing/breeding/increasing the amount of that material at an EXTREMELY slow rate over a long period of time (this is only the case for thermal spectrum reactors). So, hypothetically, if you could pull out pure U-233 out of your thermal spectrum reactor, and you decided to just start pulling out a ton of pure U-233 to make bombs, you're going to kill your reactor almost immediately, causing your weapons program to go tits up. This happened because if you pull out more than just that tiny sliver of excess U-233 you're producing every year or so, you're reactor will no longer have a sufficient fuel in it in order to maintain criticality.
Of course, the anemic breeding ratio's of thermal spectrum reactors vs. fast spectrum reactors can also be seen as a weakness of thermal spectrum reactors, as it's not really practical to generate the starting fuel load for a new thermal spectrum MSR from an existing thermal spectrum MSR, because it'll take you FOREVER to produce/breed enough material from one reactor to start a second one. Fast spectrum reactors, on the other hand, can do this as they have much higher breeding ratios. But as I said, the flip side of that is that it makes all fast spectrum reactors potential MAJOR proliferation risks while the thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder is about as proliferation resistant as you can conceivably be. You "might" be able to make a weapon from U-233 produced in a LFTR, but that's not actually a certainty. And even if you did want to make weapons from a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder, producing a small amount of U-233 that's free of U-232, EVERYONE is going to know you're doing it as you're going to be doing. That's because you're going to have to do protactinium separation in batches, isolating all the Pa-233 you produced over a day in a single batch, allowing the Pa-232 to decay to U-232 (as it's got a shorter decay period than Pa-233) over a few weeks to months till you have almost pure Pa-233/U-233. That's going to require individual aging tanks for each batch, flanges and valves which will allow you to move the flow of protactinium from one tank to the next, piping sending fluorene gas to EACH individual protactinium aging tank so as to convert the U-232 & U-232 to UF6 till you're sure there's virtually no Pa-232/U-232 left in the tank, and then you'll have to have some kind of method of monitoring the overall chemistry in the reactor, in real time/in 600-800 C temps/with insane levels of electronics frying radiation, so that you always know how much fissile material is in the reactor and EXACTLY how much U-233 you can get away with skimming off of each aging batch without causing fuel density in the reactor to fall below the minimum level required to maintain criticality. Everyone would know that you're trying to use your reactor to make weapons because a weapons program is the ONLY reason to do almost any of that. That's because if you doing protactinium separation (which you don't actually have to do) and weren't trying to make weapons, you wouldn't have multiple batch tanks, you wouldn't have flanges and valves which can hold up in that kind of insane environment, you wouldn't be piping fluorene gas to each tank, you wouldn't be funneling separate streams of UF6 into a single stream which is funneled back into the system to convert the UF6 to UF4 (running increased risk of leaks). Nope, you wouldn't have any of it. You'd just have a single un-valved pipe running a constant stream of chemically separated PF4 to a SINGLE tank into which a constant stream of fluorene gas flowed, from a single pipe, and from which a constant stream of UF6 flowed, through a single pipe. You do still need to track the chemistry inside the reactor, but not in real time, as you only need to monitor the chemistry so as to prevent noble metals from plating out inside the heat exchanger.
The biggest reason to pursue thorium reactors is that you never ever want to put all your eggs in one basket. If some kind of Krakatoa event happened then the entire solar panel grid would lose 50% or more of power. Or winds could drastically change because of Climate Change. Or more likely something happens that no one ever thought of. Uranium reactors take way too long to build. 5+ years and with the growing complexity of fusion that could take 10+ years. but a thorium reactor is supposed to take way less time? Or you have island nations like New Zealand where you could never build enough solar panel and battery farms to fill all your needs
Congratulations on a very interesting lecture. I have a question about spaceflight and original technology. Can we send non-noble materials such as iron, silicon, etc. to the vicinity of the sun to transmute them in the rain of the corpuscular radiation from the sun?
suprised you did not mention that when you make u233 the u234 you make is a hard gamma emitter and very easy to trace. so you can see where the bombs would be and the hard gamma kills electronics in bombs and people working on them
The way I see it, thorium will be useful in the future by allowing us to manufacture U233 fuel, instead of having to mine U235. This gets pushed back a bit by fast-neutron reactors being able to burn U238 and many fission products. Still, just as growing food is a vital step up from having to hunt and forage, being able to produce fissile fuel will be a great asset going forward.
ok. so the 2 biggest advantage ive found with thorium vs uranium is first that a thorium -> u-233 fuel cycle produces far few of the transuranic trash products than the u-238 -> pu-239 cycle does. the extra transuranics throw off the neutron cycle and require more effort to deal with or become more high level waste we need to store somewhere. second big advantage. thorium can be used to breed more pure pu-238 for rtg than uranium as uranium tends to produce a bit of pu-238 thru pu-242 all at the same time and its not easy to separate.
You should understand the sun is a very *weak* source of energy per square kilometer, and the storage problem will likely never be solved this side of the 22nd century. Advanced fission is the scaleable, efficient stopgap we need until fusion is actually practical
Thank you Arthur for a well presented talk. I see no current insolveable problems with molten salt thorium breeder reactors. Chemists have found that silicon carbide dissolves in flibe. What I see wrong right now is the graphite moderator. While this unit can burn up most of the current nuclear waste stored in pools at the reactors, I see a huge problem using those transuranics with the graphite moderator because those transuranics will impregnate the graphite making more waste than you had before transmuting the bad isotopes with neutrons. So uranium 233 may be necessary to keep away from transuranic waste streams thus a different moderator would be needed. What moderator would that be?
Gah. Now I need to go listen to the Duke Nukem 3D theme song. Dun dun dun... dun dun dun... "Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shootin up my ride."
Can a black powder engine give us enough cheap energy to : Make a post scarcity economy; Remove salt from sea water cheaply; And terraform a big chunk of the desert ? Thanks a lot Marc-André
Weaponizing U233 is difficult because of the U232 percentage, a heavy gamma emitter. U233 bombs have very short shelf lifes due to radiation damage of the physics package. Explosive yeild is also very deficient, even when cut with Pu during the Teapot nuke test.
@@businessproyects2615 ermmm, the bomb components are still damaged, and now radioactive. The US DoD abandoned the idea because it was just bad. Crappy low yield bombs that can't be handled safely in storage.
What if the people doing the grunt work of making the bombs are willing to die if they can take some of the enemy with them? Suicide bombers on a strategic scale.
I really think the LFTR could use an episode in and of itself. How would would you manage a liquid fueled reactor in the changing gravitational fields the reactor would be in within a spacecraft? Would something like that have to be a u235(other fissile) burner only, due to the complexity the thorium decay cycle adds to a system?
bare in mind an fast evacuation during an fire outbreak or terrorist event...People FREEZE by fear :( They cant process and orderly move on anymore. THE FIRST case of cancer appeared in hospital would be ''THE PROOF '' ! tHE sheer happines of our childrens PLAYING in the backyard...would be FORGOTTEN . Suddenly we will become some very WORRIED parents with HAPPY childrens in their backyards !
At 22:10 you say that solar is the cheapest energy option right now. This is a big fat lie, I would say that you were just incorrect, but you are smart enough to know that's not true. Solar panels are cheap (built with slave labor in China) but everything else needed to make that electricity reliable and dispatchable is wildly expensive. It's destructive to talk about wind and solar even being an option for anything other than residential off-grid options.
First Rule of Warfare: Bring a drink and a snack
I mean... yes actually. An army marches on its stomach.
@Sauron Orcs are possible food for other orcs... just bring more orcs
@@klusimo4543 🤣
The second first rule of warfare is guard your supply of drinks and snacks.
tthe comment section of Isaac Arthur ages like wine :)
Nuclear energy doesn't give an individual super powers, but one could argue it gives humanity itself literal superpowers.
Ok, we just got to do some genetic engineering for the super powers then. 🦸♂️
@@michaelpettersson4919 or cyborging and nannotech
@@constantinethecataphract5949 Yes indeed and it has already begun, I got an artificial lens in my left eye... 😄
@@michaelpettersson4919You can communicate with anyone instantaneously across thousands of miles, you can travel to any city in the world in a single day, and you can find the answer to almost any question quickly and at any time or place. You don't consider these super powers?
Actually there was a selective breeding technique that was used before genetic engineering really caught on in which you exposed a population of embryos (usually plant embryos) to large but not deadly amounts of radiation, and breeding the ones with desirable traits usually culling the rest. It would be highly unethical, but you could probably do something similar if you had a few billion human embryos to start with selecting for traits like increased intelegence, strength, speed, or durability. Such a process could use a nuclear reactor as a source of radiation and could potentially result in what could be considered superhuman within a couple of centuries.
Let me know once we start using "Lokium" as a fuel source. The most mischievous of the Asgardian elements.
Once it looks like gold, next it looks like lead. You cannot even trust its mass.
What could possibly go wro….. 💥
@@businessproyects2615
"What do you expect?"
- President Loki, 'Loki' (2021) S1E5
He's adopted.
lokium is the bestium
I think Thorium fans need to emphasize the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) itself rather than just the Thorium fuel. Thorium as a nuclear fuel isn't as good as it could be if it isn't used in a Molten Salt Reactor.
It would be nice to get videos that go into detail about the pros and cons of each different type of nuclear reactor.
There are plenty of diagrams out there about the Light Water Reactor (LWR), but there are many more types of nuclear reactor other than the LWR.
I agree. Less atomic theory. Especially on Uranium and not Thorium. More current status and configurations of LFTRs. You covered fusion reactors in its variations. Why not LFTRs?
graphite core uranium reactors make great HBO series, create great ecological reserves and give lots of people medals...
on the con side, well, just one, Chernobyl.
@@Biomechanoid29ah Chernobyl is only due to the idiots using carbon as a modulator. You cannot stop it when it goes off a cliff as the carbon melts to it and you cannot get that modulator off unlike taking fission rods out of a water modulator / it boiling away it’s own modulator.
@@Biomechanoid29ah Fukushima was just a decade ago.
im NOT a Thorium fan ...im a fission fan . Theres no such thing as nuclear waste in SPACE. Imagine having an Palladium 107 pile stock near Neptune cooled by hellium . 20 million years of energy independence :) Many things can happen in 20 million years... a super nova blowing off nearby bringing new spicy stuff into the system...Nuclear waste '' its LIFE counted by the killos
"to actually learn something, you have to do it"
Are you telling me to build a thorium reactor?
build ay REACTOR
why not?👍
I mean, some kid did it in his parents garage that one time...
@@Lusa_Iceheart "the nuclear boyscout", and it was in a shed in the backyard....
@@someoneelse7629 Ah, been awhile since I read the story, shed or detached garage really wasn't a detail I remembered lol. He ended up in the Navy tho I do remember, but like his life went down the gutter afterwards, became a petty criminal trying to steal more components to build another one and I think last I heard he died. Sad waste of someone who probably just needed guidance, and could have been an asset to society.
"Everything is fissile if you hit it hard enough!"
My high-school education was fun
Yeah, a lot of people miss this point. All elements can be fusioned or fissioned, it's just a question of whether the process consumes energy or yields it.
*raises hand* is mayonnaise fissile?
@@orangedalmatian If you hit hard enough
@@jbtechcon7434 fission doesn't really work for most hydrogen atoms.
@@garethbaus5471 ...and yet proton-proton fusion does occur, hence the sun and all the matter in the universe that isn't hydrogen. But the point of my comment above was that a lot of people mistakenly believe fusion/fission reactions can only happen if they yield energy, but that's not correct. If you provide the huge energy necessary, you can fission helium back into nucleons--or tear the nucleons back down into quarks for that matter. It just costs energy instead of yielding it.
I’ve been watching this channel for about 5 years and I still get excited whenever I see a new upload in my inbox 😁 the only content creator to hold that Accolade in my subscriptions!
Thanks to SFIA, I always know how far away Thursday is.
Couldn’t agree more. Been an active subscriber and patron supporter for years. Best content on TH-cam.
@@Andrew-zq3ip 😁😁😁
@@mjk9388 I couldn’t agree more
NOT the only but... a dear one YES :)
3:40 -- "What are you playing at Thorium 231? We had a nice clean exponential curve going there. Really impressive. But you just had to be special, didn't you? Couldn't just enjoy being part of the team."
Happy Arthursday fellow consumers of drinks and snacks! Hope you're staying warm or cool by the non-thorium powered HVAC!
How do you know my hvac aint thorium powered? You dont know me how dare you underestimate my diy abilities
@@fookyu1621 I sold that to you on the strict understanding that you would not tell anyone. Bang out of order dude... ☹️
@@nonsequitor next time make sure i sign the NDA
Sure but we really need to know WHICH drinks and snacks are most condusive to quickly comprehending the current lecture at hand!
@@fookyu1621 you beat me to it.
Also please say hello to Wi Tu Lo, Sum Ting Wong, How Lee Fuk, and Bing Dang Ou.
I was watching the episode on embracing nuclear power a second time today, and I was wondering when this episode would come out and then Bam!
Thorium powered Reactors. Because they haven't discovered Odinium yet...
In order to obtain Odinium you must hang yourself on a tree and get stabbed by a spear as a sacrifice to see the tr- wait, this sounds familiar…
@@mike-0451
lol
We have neodymium which sounds kinda similar is still pretty awesome.
It would be even more proliferation-prone. Neither Plutonium nor U233 from Th232. And the Valhalla gods forbid, not even Odinium.
"What is Thorium?"
Baby don't fuse me, don't fuse me, no more.
Brilliant 👍🏼 😂 🤣
@@mariajaujou yeah but we’re already drifting pretty far from “baby don’t hurt me” and at least this has a U in it 🤣
@@mariajaujou well, I chose fuse because I am pretty sure there is no verb for "to fission" and fiss sounded weird. :)
This channel is very underated.
This comment is very underrated.
This reply is very underrated.
Over 650k subscribers isn't what I would call underrated
Its highly rated. But needs sharing!!
It has grown a lot I remember when it had 281k subs
Love your work Arthur since Mining the Moon years ago. Your voice has changed for the better. Congrats!!!
I need another cup of a coffee because I read this as if you were mining on the moon and not the episode lmao. 🤣
I was about to question light lag but thankfully, the more sane explanation is I need more coffee.
yes! I remember having to give a disclaimer when introducing others to his videos. No need to do that anymore
Electricity from Thorium is on the brink of becoming a reality. China is set to complete an experimental Thorium Molten Salt Reactor that will generate 2 MW of electrical power later this month.
I'm not sure if his voice really changed, or if we've just gotten used to it. Ive been subscribed for ~5 years and I can barely tell that he's Canadian anymore...
@@SpecialEDy HE'S CANADIAN?!
LOVE LOVE LOVE when you go deeper into the physics and especially love when it's about nuclear energy too!
You Rs have improved vastly over the last 5 years I've been watching.
I figured it was my gradual familiarization with his voice.
@@sid2112 He mentioned at some point a couple/few years ago that he was doing some sort of practice/training to help with his rhotacism. He has certainly come a long way from his Elmer Fudd warning days.
I haven't been watching as long but going through the back log it's noticable how much better it's gotten.
@@LegoDork I haven't been following his channel, so I don't know how much he's improved; however, I think this goes to show that you can have some flaws -- and even some rather severe flaws -- yet still succeed, if you can produce interesting content!
I don't want to say "never change", since we all should seek to improve ourselves, in both small and big ways; however, the lesson here is clearly "don't let perfection be the enemy of doing something!"
Isaac certainly can get that R articulation… but it’s a real effort that requires really good speech and articulation coaching. I’ve had good success with my students using a variation of the “taco roll.” I instruct the student first stick out their tongue and lift up the sides of their tongue to make the “taco shape”. If that’s easy, go to the retraction step. If it’s difficult, the taco shape can be made by first sticking out the tongue and then bring the lips together as you do when when blowing out candles on a birthday cake (but a bit looser and not as tight as you would when actually blowing). Once the taco shape is made correctly with the tongue sticking out, hold the position. Then retract the tongue with awareness for the tongue’s sides against the gums just above the molars. The tip of the tongue should not touch the front teeth or front gums. Only the sides of the tongue should touch the gums as the tip of the tongue points up (but doe not touch) the roof of the mouth. Some speech pathologists emphasize pursing the lips outward, but this is a mistake in my opinion as it over emphasizes the role of the lips in making the R sound (you can still make the wrong sound with lips pushed out). My variation of the “taco role” also emphasizes the action of retracting the tongue, which is absolutely necessary to produce the R sound wherever it occurs in a word. I’m not a speech path, just a teacher. My amazing grandmother was Stanford grad and a speech pathology professor at a CSU Sacramento. I picked up all sorts of great articulation and enunciation exercises from her and refined them in my own teaching and tutoring practice.
I remember when I used to think Thorium was a made up material for World of Warcraft.
What when we are NPCs in an alien supercomputer WoW mmorpg and you could've talked to one of the Players without even realising it?
@@aleisterlavey9716 We ARE aliens, just can't leave
Great video. I've been waiting for more details on Thorium and its potential in our near future. Thanks to all involved, your hard work is always appreciated
Me yelling into the valley below: Thorium is love. Thorium is life!
I've talked my coworkers ear off about the topic. I stopped talking about it.
For real man for real!
I loved this episode. I shed some light on the mystery of decay rates and such. One thing I didn't hear you go into was the molten salt reactors ability to recycle spent fuel rods back into usable material. (Yes, handling is still a problem) Thank you for all your work.
I've been a huge fan of thorium and MSR's since high school. Thanks Isaac.
Dude I was watching some 5 year old videos of yours, first of all, it's incredible how high your quality ALREADY was so long ago AND that you've maintained it, definitely surpassed in some ways but there's really not much higher to go in my opinion.
But the main thing was that you used to point out that you had a speech impediment, likely as a result of people leaving a few mean comments on top of what's likely a lifetime of already existing insecurity.
I never would've noticed if you didn't say it, and I think you may have realized that as the reason why you stopped mentioning it at the start of every video.
Your diction even then was phenomenal, your audio quality has increased, but you've had so much practice and I'm so proud to know that your insecurity regarding such a minor, almost imperceptible speech impediment has diminished and that you've gained such an amazing amount of confidence in yourself. You are an amazing presenter, these videos are all so long and in depth and it blows my mind how fucking quickly you can come out with them. Absolutely godlike work ethic.
I am so happy and so proud to know that your own attitude regarding how others interact with something you had every excuse and to be insecure about in your own mind has improved so drastically in this half decade. It is a massive step, beyond any subscriber count, any quality of content increase. Your own personal confidence in yourself and your craft and your place in the world is the most important thing I can think of. Congratulations man. I'm so happy to have revisited those videos to become aware of how far you've come, something I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
Part of why he mentioned his speech impediment so much early on is because part of why he started this channel is as a way to practice speaking.
Excited about this. From what I know about it so far, happy to see more people talking about it. This deep dive is going to be amazing.
best consumed with an wikipedia page open aside :)
too deep! brain too small.
Oak Ridge TN, had a molten salt thorium reactor running for years, 50 years ago. The largest problem then was pipe corrosion, this was before ceramic lined pipes were available.
As long as no one teams Thorium powerplants up with Solar freakin roadways, think we will be ok :P
HUUUH?? NO WAY!!
Hey man, The Roads Must Roll
Robert Heinlein - Astounding Science Fiction 1940.
I own a copy :)
Elon can do it!
@@10aDowningStreet
Well thats what his PR agent keeps telling me :P
@@10aDowningStreet Elon is an expert swindler and vaporware salesman. If anybody has the charisma to sell that bullshit. It would be him
Howdy Isaac, I'd love to see more stuff on different forms of solar energy combined with different forms of energy storage and implementions. And since you were mentioning different scales of energy use, I've also seen some interesting small scale, modular wind energy systems that can be attached to and access the grid via light and electrical poles along roads. The ones I saw were only about 6' off the ground and about 6' diameter but a single one on a busy street could produce more power than most people would expect. Having a safe nuclear base load would be a ideal, but maximizing the total renewable energy production and finding ways to store is equally important.
I have watched probably over a hundred of your videos and I love them. However, I don't think I've ever learned more concepts and gained understanding than in this episode. Thank you for your work. And yes I was wondering about the script being very hard to narrate.
Last time I was here, Thor was still widely worshipped in the Scandinavian North and wasn’t named Chris Hemsworth and an Atomic Element.
Been away for a long time huh?
Hii Endorsi.
I started following the “new nuclear” story when Kirk Sorensen started putting out a lot videos about LFTR ideas around 7 or 8 years ago. I have since lost interest as it seems the investor community has, simply because there are too many hurdles for a totally new nuclear plant design. The NuScale SMR solves most of the problems with current nuclear plants, most important of which is cost.
I believe the most important hurdle for nuclear energy is centralization. Solar, wind and batteries allow more and more decentralization and freedom, which is better. An analogy would be nuclear requiring design and build by a committee while renewables can be designed and built by a dude in a garage.
Cost also does not help of course.
@@rushwasaband8842 Kirk Sorensen talks a lot about the “retirement cliff”. Almost 90 active nuclear reactors in the US are due for retirement later this decade. Many are already uneconomical. So there is an easy business case to be made for building a new type of reactor on the same site with a similar power output. I think the NuScale SMR will win the most contracts. GE-Hitachi has a fairly conventional design in the pipeline. But Kirk’s LFTR design is a new technology based on molten salt as a fluid/coolant. There are many challenges to overcome to commercialize something like that. I don’t think the financing is there for what he wants to do.
@@rushwasaband8842 you kinda simplify here Decentralization/freedom =/= equal better in all circumstances. We will likely qlways want some form of centralization as decentralized grids are vulnerable to fluctuations and disasters. This was readily apparent during the cold wave last winter for the mid-south of the United States. Texas is a mostly decentralized grid being fairly independent from the rest of the states. This lead them to suffer more then the western portion of Texas, or their neighboring states, who were able to pull power from the rest of the grid to supplement their failing production to an extent allowable. Given that we are expecting, and already experiencing, an increase in the instances and severity of extreme weather, complete decentralization of power girds would be a poor choice, especially given that wind and solar are extremely vulnerable to severe weather.
Not saying decentralization doesnt have its merits, but full decentralization has just as many faults as fully centralized grids do.
Doing a weapons-grade Captain Picard-style double facepalm at the moment.
You she entity lifeforces (including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) are an an endless source of exasperation
and having to do a weapons-grade Captain Picard-style double facepalm.
@@tlpineapple1 I agree David. Full decentralization is a bad idea. That however does not mean we will need centralized power generation in a few decades from now. We will definitely need connected, relatively decentralized grids and decentralized generation. That way, a remote homestead or business can throw in an extra generator or long duration battery for a rainy day, in addition to regular solar/wind + battery setup they have. Rest of us will use locally generated power most of the time and outsourced power during rare occasions.
I am looking forward to seeing new nuclear generation technologies in space tugs or space stations that are too far from any star for utilizing solar panels.
Agreed, Arthur could you do a video comparing the new and improved reactor designs (Thorium and otherwise) and their reaction/breeder cycles?
One of those channels where even before watching the video I give it a like then watch the whole video and wish I could give it another like because they are just that good...
Australia has 25% of Thorium reserves. The irony of mining metals here is that Thorium is waiting in the tailings dumps of the extraction process regarding other rare earths. There is a gram of Thorium in every cubic meter of dirt worldwide. Furthermore Molten salt reactors have been around since the 1950's. An added bonus is that we can add the current wasted fuel rods to "burn up" that toxic waste. No pressure vessel is needed.
19:27 Narrating a video full of isotopes has got to be easier than understanding a video full of isotopes.
Isaac Arthur. Finally you take-on Thorium. Yes, this is the future. Thank you!!!
Anyone that thinks we should stop improving on existing nuclear programs in the hope that fusion will be manifest soon should be slapped.
Agreed, given fusions track record we will likely say fusion energy is still twenty years away... Twenty years from now.
Specially since fusion (deuterium) is not necessarily cleaner.
word, it's like saying we should stop working on rockets cuz one day we'll have orbital rings. sure & in the meantime?
Another advantage of thorium is reduced decay heat when the reactor is shut down. With thorium will have a lot less actinides in the core and nuclear waste generating decay heat.
Thorium MSR can be run as fast reactor without graphite moderator. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who invented the MSR, also experimented fast breeding reactor based on MSR. Not so promising for fuel breeding purpose but it can be effective waste burner, which is great solution to burn away radioactive spend fuel waste. We need to invest more R&D money in thorium reactor. It can be run like pumped hydraulic power plant by storing heat and will be good mean to complement shortcomings of solar power.
I am a nuclear engineer and at 9:10 I would never use lead to absorb neutrons. The neutron absorption cross sections are just ridiculously low for that. Using lead to shield gammas from inelastic neutron collisions is a different matter.
Cadmium or Boron bro?
@@sid2112 Gadolinium if you can get it.
Dayum Isaac, with your isotopes and tongue twisters! Great video as always, your verbal delivery is so on point these days.
Hopefully you're planning a video on Thorium MSR's because, from everything I've heard, the primary and huge advantage is that they operate at high temperature and low pressure (as opposed to Uranium Pressurized water reactors at high pressure and low temperature). High temperature is ideal for thermodynamic efficiency in the generators and low pressure massively simplifies and cheapens the construction costs. Basically current the PWR design is the very worst for cost and efficiency. From a first principles physics and engineering perspective LowT/HighP designs are absurd,.. they're just best for generating fissile materials for bombs and maintaining a construction monopoly (and cost inflation) for the giant firms capable of building them
Also the molten salt reactors allow a huge percentage of the fuel load to be consumed compared to solid fuel rods that degrade so fast that they're useless after only a couple of percent of the fuel is used.
There's also the whole "fail-safe" nature of the MSR with a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity and safe shutdown by dumping and solidifying the molten fuel.
Actually, a thorium MSR is a long way off but uranium MSRs are less than ten years away. Uranium has all the same advantages as thorium in a MSR except it's much easier and cheaper to do. That's why all the MSR start-ups are using uranium, and not thorium.
OMG a THORIUM EPISODE!
the most problems we have with nuke power comes down to user error, putting plants in stupid places and playing stupid games.
The freaking Dakotas, Montana, and Idaho an Utah are wide open....
Can someone clarify: I thought one of the advantages of thorium, was we are already mining a lot of it without trying, as it is a major waste product of other mining operations. Thus using it for power would reduce this waste. Was this incorrect?
Not wrong, but also applies to uranium. Mining rare earths also gives you uranium, which is thrown away. Given that a lot of this happens in countries with weak environmental laws, that phrase is rather literal
@@mattdombrowski8435 I can't speak for other nations, but if it could be made economically viable it'll happen. The way to do that would be to build the facilities that use it. Big investment right there.
US regulation relating to thorium a and REE mining seem like they are written by the Chinese in order to slow US production and continue to make US dependent on Chinese controlled sources. The Critical Minerals Act is supposed to help fix this, but it hasn't been passed yet.
No! ;o)
@@TagiukGold sorry if I wasn't clear. The Chinese are dumping industrial quantities of heavy metals into their own rivers.
If we didnt need nukes so fast in ww2, and running by the seat of our pants.
We very much could of chose to go with thorium as we built both kinds of reactors but settle on the one that requires less work to make weapons grade material.
of course decades later we prove you can make weapons grade material from thorium reactors you just have to install a simple collector at a specific point in the reactor and it will collect what you need before it gets degraded in the cycle.
but the safety level of thorium reactors make it quite possible to build massive thorium reactors, as salt plugs and dranage tanks that require no power or human intervention are dame near cheap proof.
and that's the problem with current nuclear reactors they're all built with cheapness in mind no mind for where you build it and no mind for skimping on maintenance and what it does for the safety.
me look at Japan they're not known for going cheap but they knew that those backup generators were in a high-risk area of flooding damage and they got knocked for it on safety reports multiple times but they never did anything about it because it would have cost money to fix.
we need reactors that are idiot government proof and cheap proof and that's where I think thorium comes in and micro nuclear reactors.
Thanks for the thumps up.
and another great thing about thorium is the half-life of the gamma radiation is so short compared to nuclear waste.
We can store the thorium casings then melt them down and then reuse them in decades not centuries.
you just cant do that level of turnaround with standard reactors, the cleanup process is so extensive which just adds to the cost.
It's why so many of these old reactors are kept online past their life.
Decommissioning a reactor can be a real b****. Not including what it cost to clean up a reactor that's gone critical. An the cost is still going up for Japan and Russia/Ukraine.
It’s pretty amazing just how far Isaac has come in conquering his speech impediment the past few years
Definitely no need for Elmer Fudd warnings anymore.
Personally, I think the speech impediment was a blessing in disguise. It forced IA to be extremely methodical and clear when writing and narrating scripts. You can tell that he puts a lot more thought into what he says and how he says it.
On top of that he still has an extremely distinctive accent. Having a unique voice is a great asset on social media platforms.
Nah, we just got so use to it, sounds normal to us now…
Oh, it's a speech impediment? I thought it was some weird accent.
Pyrophoric just means it will burn. Even non-powdered Uranium will burn. One of the big reasons that depleted uranium (mostly U238) is used in tank rounds is because it is both dense *AND* will burst into flames due to friction as it goes through metal armor.
@John pyrophoric doesn't mean that. it refers to a material that will spontaneously combust in air & in the context of uranium & thorium it refers to the powdered form of the pure metals
Outstanding information on DECAY that I have never seen elsewhere. Outstanding research, as usual!
Isaac - "Power is power, and you can weaponize any power..."
Me smiling, while looking at my bike generator, a cat treadmill and a laser pointer.
I immediately imagined a bunch of scientists in a damn, under government orders to find a way to weaponize hydro power. Some tiny nation with lots of rivers fearful of being invaded for their water.
No man should have that kind of power.
@@lefu87williford55 -- i can already think of a bunch of ways to weaponize hydro off the top of my head:
Electric fences, surveillance cameras, electric floodlights, systems to selectively flood different sections of different rivers, using rechargable batteries in infantry gear, electric vehicles, and more.
More importantly though, a small country with lots of rivers will want lots of river boats and amphibious vehicles to maintain their mobility and DEFEND their hydro-electric dams from air strikes.
@@Grizabeebles fascinating. Thanks, I might put this in a game now. Gnomes with death rays powered by water turbines to shoot down dragons.
@@lefu87williford55 water can be weaponized ! A hydro damm its a PRECIOUS strategic target to defend so... you draw the conclusions
China are nearing completion of a trial Thorium reactor. Trials start this year, which if successful will lead to a full size reactor by 2030. Who knows where this will go or if the information is accurate, but given it takes 20 years to build a conventional reactor in the US, this could lead to an interesting shift in global power.
Yes. This has gotten little coverage on the www. Electricity from Thorium molten salt reactors is going to be a reality. This very month it should actually start.
Essentially, China is replicating the Molten Salt Reactor experiment from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, while also upgrading it with technologies that produce alloys capable of corrosion and high temperature resistance and additionally connected the MSR to a turbine generator unit for a 2 MW output.
My conscienceness is faster then light. When I go to sleep for 8 hours...it's a few seconds for me. The world and whole universe literally spins until I wake up and stop it. You guys are all time travelers.
Light can go around the earth 7 times in one second
'post scarcity civilization in a century or two' it doesn't hurt to dreambrother
@6:17 I absolutely LOVE the representation of the atom and it's shells of electrons.
Arthursday!
If all hope fails, bring a drink and a snack
Have you ever considered creating a second channel that covers the full technical details for people with formal STEM backgrounds?
More lengthy + more detail == more better!
Thanks for all your hard work. Just wanted to bump the vid with a comment 😁
Develop molten salt slow neutron uranium reactors. Later if uranium gets resource constrained use the msr uranium experience to develop msr thorium.
You might have mentioned that traditional nuclear reactors are inefficient using only 3% of the energy of fuel. This is not a problem for running out of fuel as much as it is waste problem. Thorium MSRs produce a small fraction of the waste, and the waste is safer with a much shorter life. Also, thorium MSRs can use the nuclear waste we have now for fuel to produce power, reduce waste and make it safer.
Add to that MSRs do not need a large source of coolant water, and MSRs can be placed almost anywhere with much more safety due to passively shutting-down on their own.
Once the optimum technologies is decided upon, modular MSRs can be mass produced and refurbished in shipyards using their existing manufacturing technology creating economies of scale.
I love all of his videos. So much information and so entertaining...I get excited thinking of the possibilities ahead
While I'm happy Isaac covered this ....finally, I feel like there's not enough covered of this topic.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and ideas. Any future videos on LFTR reactors would be appreciated. Some questions I have are, can they work in space possibly using artificial gravity in stead of pumps. Are they all highly responsive to load changes due to the fuel salt density leading to higher or lower reactivity. Could the xenon gas given off and other byproducts be made in sufficient quantities needed to be useful as a propellant in space travel. Would also appreciate if you could riff on the accomplishments and possible development that could have been likely if the Oakridge experiment hadn’t been shuttered. As always, your videos are very interesting, informative and entertaining. Wishing you the best in the New Years to come.
Isaac Arthur? More like Isaac Awesome!
@Isaac Arthur: You are one of my fave channels, specifically bc I enjoy your voice calmly talking about speculative science. Altho idk if you quite beat out Neil drGrasse Tyson's videos, I do love listening to your videos and you're definitely up there... it's relaxing, helps me destress, entertains me, and gives me fun story ideas. Thank you for these continued videos.
In summary, there is nothing special about thorium, but the molten salt reactors are very special and are the future of nuclear fission.
Every time Arthur says the numbers 2 or 3, take a shot! anyone still standing at the end of this video is the champion.
20:00 Ah, an orbital superweapon just hit Florida.
Floridians: Oh no...So anyways-
another great video, you make videos on the stuff i like thinking about its amazing
I work in the nuclear field and I believe that (LFTR) are worth a try.
Vogtle 3 and 4 are now at a price tag of 25 billion with over 10 years of construction. Existing light-water reactors are being decommissioned in Rapid succession. By 2040, most plants will become non existent. We need to do something and do it now!
I'm all for light-water reactors, but we've already proven that we can't build them cheaply and quickly.
There are no other nuclear reactors being built besides Vogtle right now in the USA. So, hypothetically even if we started breaking ground on new LWR, it would be 2035. I have no proof to back this up but I think that thorium reactors could be built a lot quicker and cheaper. I understand the downside to them as far as power output, but we need something now.
I was just thinking about this topic this week, happy to have a trusted source
The way to convince people this is the way to go one on one and explain it. One person at a time.
Amazing amount of information in such a short time. My college physics professor would have needed a week of lectures to deliver this. LOL
OMG! The most complex and technical episode of SFIA I have ever seen! Wow!
I had to *pause* about half way through the video to let my brain "cool off" from the intense Nuclear Physics lesson in the beginning of the episode!
I just wonder how many people just completely zoned out and shut it off because it was just overwhelming?
Anyway - I stuck in there, because I'm very interested in Thorium powered nuclear, most especially the molten salt and LFTR variants, for our medium-term future power source.
Thanks for the fascinating episode Isaac! It's REAL CLEAR your extremely experienced and VERY knowledgeable about the physics of all of this!
17:48 "power is power" I love this quote
While I normally greatly enjoy this channel and the various topics covered I found that within 5 minutes on this I was completely lost.
I like your videos bro good graphics and information
Thanks :)
Welcome and a little tq from subscribers that we can do for free
Isaac. Many thanks for outstanding content. I know you’ve likely worked on R articulation since your early education, so hope you don’t find the following offensive or irritating. I’ve had good success with my students using a variation of the “taco roll.” I instruct the student to first stick out their tongue and lift up the sides of their tongue to make the “taco shape”. If that’s easy, go to the retraction step. If it’s difficult, the taco shape can be made by first sticking out the tongue and then bring the lips together as you do when when blowing out candles on a birthday cake (but a bit looser and not as tight as you would when actually blowing). Once the taco shape is made correctly with the tongue sticking out, hold the position. Then retract the tongue with awareness for the tongue’s sides against the gums just above the molars. The tip of the tongue should not touch the front teeth or front gums. Only the sides of the tongue should touch the gums as the tip of the tongue points up (but doe not touch) the roof of the mouth. Some speech pathologists emphasize pursing the lips outward, but this is a mistake in my opinion as it over emphasizes the role of the lips in making the R sound (you can still make the wrong sound with lips pushed out). My variation of the “taco role” also emphasizes the action of retracting the tongue, which is absolutely necessary to produce the R sound wherever it occurs in a word. I’m not a speech path, just a teacher. My amazing grandmother was Stanford grad and a speech pathology professor at a CSU Sacramento. I picked up all sorts of great articulation and enunciation exercises from her and refined them in my own teaching and tutoring practice.
The primary proliferation resistance feature of an MSR isn't U-232, although that's nice. The thing that makes thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeders super proliferation resistant is their anemic breeding ratios, which are between 1.05 and 1.07, depending on whether you do protactinium separation. That means it's going to take you between 17 and 25 years to double the amount of fissile material in your reactor. So, you CONCEIVABLY could design a reactor from which you could "skim" some excess fissile material which you could eventually make a bomb with, but it's going to take you at least a couple years just to get enough material for one bomb, not great for a weapons program. It's going to take you that long because, in thermal spectrum reactors, they don't have a whole lot of fuel in them to start, 3-4% of the material in the reactor being the fissile fuel, which will be just what you need to maintain criticality. So you're starting with a relatively small amount of fissile material and then growing/breeding/increasing the amount of that material at an EXTREMELY slow rate over a long period of time (this is only the case for thermal spectrum reactors).
So, hypothetically, if you could pull out pure U-233 out of your thermal spectrum reactor, and you decided to just start pulling out a ton of pure U-233 to make bombs, you're going to kill your reactor almost immediately, causing your weapons program to go tits up. This happened because if you pull out more than just that tiny sliver of excess U-233 you're producing every year or so, you're reactor will no longer have a sufficient fuel in it in order to maintain criticality.
Of course, the anemic breeding ratio's of thermal spectrum reactors vs. fast spectrum reactors can also be seen as a weakness of thermal spectrum reactors, as it's not really practical to generate the starting fuel load for a new thermal spectrum MSR from an existing thermal spectrum MSR, because it'll take you FOREVER to produce/breed enough material from one reactor to start a second one. Fast spectrum reactors, on the other hand, can do this as they have much higher breeding ratios.
But as I said, the flip side of that is that it makes all fast spectrum reactors potential MAJOR proliferation risks while the thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder is about as proliferation resistant as you can conceivably be.
You "might" be able to make a weapon from U-233 produced in a LFTR, but that's not actually a certainty. And even if you did want to make weapons from a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder, producing a small amount of U-233 that's free of U-232, EVERYONE is going to know you're doing it as you're going to be doing. That's because you're going to have to do protactinium separation in batches, isolating all the Pa-233 you produced over a day in a single batch, allowing the Pa-232 to decay to U-232 (as it's got a shorter decay period than Pa-233) over a few weeks to months till you have almost pure Pa-233/U-233.
That's going to require individual aging tanks for each batch, flanges and valves which will allow you to move the flow of protactinium from one tank to the next, piping sending fluorene gas to EACH individual protactinium aging tank so as to convert the U-232 & U-232 to UF6 till you're sure there's virtually no Pa-232/U-232 left in the tank, and then you'll have to have some kind of method of monitoring the overall chemistry in the reactor, in real time/in 600-800 C temps/with insane levels of electronics frying radiation, so that you always know how much fissile material is in the reactor and EXACTLY how much U-233 you can get away with skimming off of each aging batch without causing fuel density in the reactor to fall below the minimum level required to maintain criticality.
Everyone would know that you're trying to use your reactor to make weapons because a weapons program is the ONLY reason to do almost any of that. That's because if you doing protactinium separation (which you don't actually have to do) and weren't trying to make weapons, you wouldn't have multiple batch tanks, you wouldn't have flanges and valves which can hold up in that kind of insane environment, you wouldn't be piping fluorene gas to each tank, you wouldn't be funneling separate streams of UF6 into a single stream which is funneled back into the system to convert the UF6 to UF4 (running increased risk of leaks).
Nope, you wouldn't have any of it. You'd just have a single un-valved pipe running a constant stream of chemically separated PF4 to a SINGLE tank into which a constant stream of fluorene gas flowed, from a single pipe, and from which a constant stream of UF6 flowed, through a single pipe.
You do still need to track the chemistry inside the reactor, but not in real time, as you only need to monitor the chemistry so as to prevent noble metals from plating out inside the heat exchanger.
The biggest reason to pursue thorium reactors is that you never ever want to put all your eggs in one basket.
If some kind of Krakatoa event happened then the entire solar panel grid would lose 50% or more of power. Or winds could drastically change because of Climate Change. Or more likely something happens that no one ever thought of.
Uranium reactors take way too long to build. 5+ years and with the growing complexity of fusion that could take 10+ years.
but a thorium reactor is supposed to take way less time?
Or you have island nations like New Zealand where you could never build enough solar panel and battery farms to fill all your needs
Congratulations on a very interesting lecture. I have a question about spaceflight and original technology. Can we send non-noble materials such as iron, silicon, etc. to the vicinity of the sun to transmute them in the rain of the corpuscular radiation from the sun?
suprised you did not mention that when you make u233 the u234 you make is a hard gamma emitter and very easy to trace. so you can see where the bombs would be and the hard gamma kills electronics in bombs and people working on them
The way I see it, thorium will be useful in the future by allowing us to manufacture U233 fuel, instead of having to mine U235. This gets pushed back a bit by fast-neutron reactors being able to burn U238 and many fission products. Still, just as growing food is a vital step up from having to hunt and forage, being able to produce fissile fuel will be a great asset going forward.
Thank you for incredible amount of the superb content!
They way he says R”s used to throw me off but his depth of thought and explanation is so sick
ok. so the 2 biggest advantage ive found with thorium vs uranium is first that a thorium -> u-233 fuel cycle produces far few of the transuranic trash products than the u-238 -> pu-239 cycle does. the extra transuranics throw off the neutron cycle and require more effort to deal with or become more high level waste we need to store somewhere.
second big advantage. thorium can be used to breed more pure pu-238 for rtg than uranium as uranium tends to produce a bit of pu-238 thru pu-242 all at the same time and its not easy to separate.
And that's what you need to know about Thorium.
New Isaac Arthur video? Time to grab a drink and a snack
Became aware of this 5years ago… finally starting to make some headway!
19:40 you had me laughing out loud, nice one :)
You should understand the sun is a very *weak* source of energy per square kilometer, and the storage problem will likely never be solved this side of the 22nd century. Advanced fission is the scaleable, efficient stopgap we need until fusion is actually practical
Thank you Arthur for a well presented talk. I see no current insolveable problems with molten salt thorium breeder reactors. Chemists have found that silicon carbide dissolves in flibe. What I see wrong right now is the graphite moderator. While this unit can burn up most of the current nuclear waste stored in pools at the reactors, I see a huge problem using those transuranics with the graphite moderator because those transuranics will impregnate the graphite making more waste than you had before transmuting the bad isotopes with neutrons. So uranium 233 may be necessary to keep away from transuranic waste streams thus a different moderator would be needed. What moderator would that be?
This video was uploaded on Thursday i.e. Thor's day. Huh. Neat.
Gah. Now I need to go listen to the Duke Nukem 3D theme song.
Dun dun dun... dun dun dun...
"Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shootin up my ride."
Can a black powder engine give us enough cheap energy to :
Make a post scarcity economy;
Remove salt from sea water cheaply;
And terraform a big chunk of the desert ?
Thanks a lot
Marc-André
Weaponizing U233 is difficult because of the U232 percentage, a heavy gamma emitter. U233 bombs have very short shelf lifes due to radiation damage of the physics package. Explosive yeild is also very deficient, even when cut with Pu during the Teapot nuke test.
They could let the Uranium sit around till the radiation wears off.
@@businessproyects2615 ermmm, the bomb components are still damaged, and now radioactive. The US DoD abandoned the idea because it was just bad. Crappy low yield bombs that can't be handled safely in storage.
What if the people doing the grunt work of making the bombs are willing to die if they can take some of the enemy with them? Suicide bombers on a strategic scale.
I really think the LFTR could use an episode in and of itself. How would would you manage a liquid fueled reactor in the changing gravitational fields the reactor would be in within a spacecraft? Would something like that have to be a u235(other fissile) burner only, due to the complexity the thorium decay cycle adds to a system?
Waiting for this video for ages. Since you said something like: Thorium is not a magic substance ..... so many myths around it.
true :) but.... hey we dealing with very scared peoples so...Thorium seems MAGIC IN THAT regard :)
bare in mind an fast evacuation during an fire outbreak or terrorist event...People FREEZE by fear :( They cant process and orderly move on anymore. THE FIRST case of cancer appeared in hospital would be ''THE PROOF '' ! tHE sheer happines of our childrens PLAYING in the backyard...would be FORGOTTEN . Suddenly we will become some very WORRIED parents with HAPPY childrens in their backyards !
Thorium international or Thorium company would be a great name to own as it is the future!
At 22:10 you say that solar is the cheapest energy option right now. This is a big fat lie, I would say that you were just incorrect, but you are smart enough to know that's not true. Solar panels are cheap (built with slave labor in China) but everything else needed to make that electricity reliable and dispatchable is wildly expensive. It's destructive to talk about wind and solar even being an option for anything other than residential off-grid options.
I spilled my drink on my snack and don’t have the energy to push the like button…
I failed at all of your instructions!
Exploring all options is never a dangerous distraction. Seek everything.