Nuclear physicist Victor J. Stenger, for one, only first learned of the possibility of utilising Thorium it in 2012: "It came as a surprise to me to learn recently that such an alternative has been available to us since World War II, but not pursued BECAUSE it lacked weapons applications".
Where do people keep coming up with this BS that Uranium based PWR/BWR were chosen so we could make bombs? Hanford Wa. has been making weapons material since 1944, 12 years before the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant became operational and their weapons production reactors are very efficient graphite moderated reactors and DO NOT produce any electrical power. Savannah River site SC. Has been making weapons material since 1955 and their production reactors are very efficient low pressure heavy water moderated reactors and DO NOT produce electric power. Weapons production reactors are NOTHING like U.S. commercial PWR or BWR power reactors and commercial power reactors have NEVER been used to produce Pu239 for weapons. The U.S. currently has so much Pu239 that 34 tons of weapon grade Pu239 is being treated so it can eventually be disposed of at a cost of billions.
@@stevethea5250 i thought you needed thorium to even get energy from thorium so to put that in a weapon would be very hard to do and normal nuclear bombs can already easily end the world if they are used it doesnt matter if they are thorium or not
It went wrong when Dr Weinberg was fired from his job as director of Oak Ridge. He finished 5 years operating the molten salt reactor experiment, and then submitted a proposal for the molten salt breeder reactor. Dr Weinberg was also the inventor of the pressurized water reactor use by Rickover in the Nautilus, Enterprise and Shipping Port, not to mention 3/4 of all nuclear power plants operating today. His breeder reactor was designed to convert Thorium 232 to Uranium 233, which is far more efficient than U235. The issues with the MSRE presented were repeated from Wash 1222 which was an effort by the AEC to justify firing Dr Weinberg. All these issues were solved during the MSRE, but are still regurgitated by anti-nuclear activists. BTW: Costs given for wind and solar do not include the back up gas fired plants needed to run when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. There is a lot of mis-information when it comes to energy.
BTW: Costs given for wind and solar do not include the back up gas fired plants needed to run when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. ^^ I know. That stupid "renewable energy" is a kid's lemonade stand business.
Well, about missinformation.. ☝️There are peeps in Finland who created sandbattery that charges troughout while sun is shining and uses energy in winter times.. Working in one town of Finland.. & a LOT of whitheald information: there are inventions that we don't know yet, and are much better.. As cells that are charging in shadow as well as night time🌟 About failure of these horrible powerplants: well, it was Mother nature that protected humans from these stupid things... What was wrong with Teslas free energy? Yeah, it was not possible to plug into and earn money 🤑🤑🤑🙄 Tesla is turning in his grave...
Interesting thing about that Tritium is that it's needed for Fusion... assuming they get Fusion working and it seems like some are getting close, could use that Tritium 'waste' for Fusion. The two could work together nicely.
@@clarkkent9080 yeah, but you can get better public backing with thorium over uranium reactors. People are stubborn and stupid, so no matter what you say, they will deflect to Chernobyl and TMI (which ironically did pretty much nothing), and will 100% push against more nuclear reactors. But if you say you are building safer reactors that don’t use the “scary uranium” found in TMI and Chernobyl, then you will get more approval for building these reactors.
@@troybaxter Just tell them thorium isn't radioactive and they'd believe it. I wish we made it more known to the public just how much radiation just gets pumped into our atmosphere by coal plants.
The reason they thought uranium was more fun than thorium is quite simple: Uranium can turn into plutonium for use in nulcear weapons. Thorium can't be used directly or indirectly in nukes.
This is a simplification. Thorium produces uranium 233, which according to the Wiki page on the latter CAN be used as a weapon (quote "highly satisfactory as a weapons material")
2/ They even say it's allover the best weapons material and if the US would have a U-233 Arsenal, Livermore would see no reason to switch to plutonium. TLDR: it's not only feasible, it's the best material for weapons
I am glad other engineers are working on Thorium. I did my senior thesis on I a few years back and I was afraid I was gonna have to become a nuclear engineer.
India has already started using Thorium in it's Fast breeder reactors in 2nd stage of its 3 stage nuclear program and India has the largest reserves of Thorium in the world. India's nuclear program is designed around Thorium obviously beacuse of huge Thorium reserves.
Tritium is a very needed component in the ongoing research into viable fusion reactors. It is rare and difficult to obtain, so this seems like a win-win in the production of energy. Currently we could be using TSRs and stockpiling the resulting tritium in our attempts to research and get fusion online.
Sounds like a plan. And you remove transportation costs if the fusion plant is onsite. That and you would have more fusion options as you wouldn't need to produce tritium at the fusion plant. And you already have nuclear engineers and containment specialists on site. Fusion research needs all the help out can get. Unless we decide to use the already working fusion reactor (the sun). But that one is a bit inconvenient to use fully. For now anyway.
Boy I swear, Thorium is the political arena of all things energy production. Half the time I'm hearing that there's no point in pursuing it, the other half it's the savior of mankind.
Thorium safer. Thorium more common. Mining easier. Can be done smaller. Thorium no go accident boom. But Thorium no go boom at all. And of course companies are doing good making nice money off of what they have now i guess. But Thorium is the way to go. Just think of for instance Tsjernobyl and Fukushima, Now, there was more work to do on Thorium, but most likely it could have been way further along and done long ago if they just put more effort into it. And for some countries with power needs, they blindly go for Uranium, more expensive, more dangerous, makes bombs. If energy was the point, they could go nuts, nobody would care, they'd have power far cheaper. Clearly they just wants bombs. India has indeed been planning on Thorium, if it was developed more they would already be there. And as he explains, you can basically make container sized generators that are far easier to drop anywhere than building a big power plant and running power everywhere. And solar and wind is nice, and we should use it where useful for sure. BUT, making enough of that to generate enough power to really run us all, that will take far too long, a lot of resources, a lot of waste, and most are not decently recyclable, and it's mostly subsidising games and such bullshit. I don't understand why this is even an issue still. It shouldn't have been decades ago.
@@gabiballetje Just for the clarification, I'm *always* surprised when I see articles or videos crapping on the idea of Thorium based energy production. I even have a tennis ball sized chunk of Thorite in storage, lol. Long story behind that one. Thanks for all the information!
@@NightRunner417 oh yeah, heard weird stories. My old high school suddenly built a new safe near the physics classroom, they were able to buy a small chunk of radioactive material for cheap. What were they going to do with it ? They had no idea, but it was cheap, sooo, why not ? And yes, this was a rather big and rich high school. For existing like 25 or whatever years they had days of celebration, they celebrated with setting up a pool and dropping a BIG chunk of cesium in it, made a HUGE splash 😂 not just a soccer ball, no, BIG. Wonder how and why you got it though 😋
@@gabiballetje Lol, I don't mind telling and it's a pretty funny story by the end. Many years ago I took an interest in scintillating radiation detector technology and decided I had to experiment with it. I got familiar with 1P21 photomultiplier tubes and got myself a couple of barium fluoride crystals from eBay. After a lot of learning and trial and error I did manage to take the first steps down the road of making an actual scintillation radiation "counter", which amounted to the BaF2 crystal stuck to the side of the 1P21 tube and the output amplified and fed to a small speaker. One hilarious part is I decided to house it inside a classic metal lunchbox, and the cheapest I could find on eBay was a Jonas Brothers one, so it became officially the Jonas Brothers Scintillating Radiation Detector.🤣 Along the way, I needed various radioactive samples, so first I gutted an old smoke alarm for the Am241 pellet, then I got myself a tiny piece of Uranium 238 metal (eBay has EVERYTHING, man!) and then finally one day I stumbled on a Thorite rock from a mine in Canada for sale on eBay as well, dirt cheap and full of pretty dark red crystals by the picture. I bought it and it arrived in a 8" square box, wrapped in a single layer of aluminum foil. By then, I had a functional DIY geiger counter as well, and found out that even in the box and foil wrapping it made that sucker HOWL with counts per minute. I was pretty scared of radiation back then so I made a container for it by pouring 1" of lead in the bottom of a coffee can, then inserting a small fruit cocktail type can inside and filling the entire between space with molten lead as well. I called it the "Coffin Can" and the rock has lived in it ever since. For my radiation samples from it, I picked a few small pieces of the dark red crystals out of it, crushed them CAREFULLY into sand, and then packed them into the tips of coffee stir straws with glue as a binder. Thus I could do my experiments without having to handle that vicious little monster in the Coffin Can. Just needed small sources, not a monster throwing out upward of 20,000 CPM of god knows what. My experiments showed that ome of that radiation was passing through even 1/2 inch of lead plate. I learned a lot about decay series and types of radiation products and emissions in those days. Good times but I'm happy enough with it out of my system. 🤣
1:45 The main reason there's less waste from Thorium isn't the efficiency of the process itself, but that the byproducts have a much shorter half-life. Uranium-line byproducts' half-lives are often so long that the end-to-end result is that we need to store it for longer than has passed since the dinosaurs went extinct. Thorium-line byproducts' half-lives add up to a chain of thousands of years, not millions, and because it's shorter, it's also hotter: You would most likely be able to use crystallized waste's heat for something.
Thorium is the future of power and it will save the world! If nuclear energy from Thorium had the same time, money and resources put into it as fusion has had and still has we would already be well on our way to Thorium nuclear energy!! With the full utilization of our advanced modern technology, engineering, material science, safety measures understandings and designs, computer technology and robotics we could make it happen.
Neutron embrittlement was a thing everywhere in the early 70s, most reactor designs and their cold-shock shutdown hazards are due to embrittled welds in the high pressure plumbing, so it's not just the molten salt designs, which don't deal with the high pressure.
The main reason Thorium was abandoned was because the Air Force was the main entity interested in it for the possibility of having bombers operating like submarines of the sky that can stay airborn for months waiting to drop their atomic payload, but with the ICBM and mid-air refueling the need evaporated and it got back burnered.
Thorium reactors produce high energy neutrons needing huge amounts of heavy shielding, this made the idea of powering a plane totally out of the question.
its the gamma from the u232 thats the problem, other than a flying reactor that can crash or be shot down and contaminate a huge area, but the clever scientists said " shhhhh! we will build a slick , powerfull light weight reactor , liquid fuelled to burn most of the fuel to 90% with short lived fission products is the main beauty of these things , the thorium breeding is a bonus , plain molten salt uranium burners are an exciting technology that could take us to the stars with simple ion engines! @@schrodingerscat1863
My fundamental issue with fission reactors is the use of water and low boiling point. The thorium reactors in your video were molten salt with a much higher boiling point and safety profile making a melt down much less likely if ever. I still think fusion reactors are the future if we can crack the science to make it work.
@@stevegarcia3731 but you know that in a test run we already got more energy out than we put in that’s not just an inch I know it’s still gonna take fifty to a hundred years but we are making progress Sorry for my bad English
the thing is we can do the fission reactors right now. not some undefined point in the future. so we should do the thorium reactors now, and keep working on fusion reactors.
According to the reading I have done in the past. Thorium reactors can be built so that they are "walk away safe" If some kind of disaster occurs and no one can get to the unit or if it is abandon it will simply shut it self down. That is a feature that i like aaaaaaaa lot!!
The test reactor they built at Oak Ridge was shutdown every friday and restarted every monday when the scientist went home for the weekend. Something that takes weeks or months with other reactor designs took minutes with Thorium. And the hotter the reactor gets the less fission can occur making meltdowns impossible even without a freeze plug to dump the fuel.
It's that the fuel is dissolved into a liquid with the coolant. Not just because it's thorium. You can do the same with Uranium 238 and have it walk away safe to.
@@tonyrmathis What you said is correct about start and stop sequence for small test reactors. But for large power reactors, it is always problematic to start. Even coal power plants have 1 day stop-start cycle, not because reactor itself, because producing high quality steam for power generation takes time. But, supercritical carbondioxide cycle can be a solution. Negative void coefficient for a reactor is a problem to be solved effectively, it is a engineering problem. It can be achieved with designing geometry for that purpose. Even RBMK reactors channels are redesigned to negative, or slightly positive void coeficient after chernobyl disaster.
The problem with Thorium is that you don't need fuel rods made exclusively by the reactor builder like GE. You can just buy Thorium and shovel it in. There is no lock-in to one supplier so the giant energy corporations have to class Thorium as bad to protect their duopolies. Big energy dwarfs big pharma for restrictive practices and when Thorium reaches a viable commercial energy source they will invest in it by buying up the people, sites and licences and still exploit their market dominance. China is the best bet for universally available cheap clean power in the future but look who the U.S. is trying to pick a fight with today. The Ukraine battleground for oil rights and China over Taiwan. Coincidence?
@@fantabuloussnuffaluffagus It's not simply 'big energy' it's also the military industrial complex that's fueled by the petro dollar. When they can figure out a way to finance endless wars with Thorium it'll be adopted nationwide.
My parents were inundated with propaganda about Oak Ridge and how dangerous it was. They were told that an accident at the thorium test reactor would ignite the land and destroy all of humanity. of course at the time, coal didn't want to lose out to nuclear. Then came 5 mile island ... and then chernobyl ... and then Fukishima ... And in my lifetime my county is still coal powered. Economies of scale guaranteed that the price of energy could only stay on par and never cheapen.
Thorium can do anything except escape the laboratory. I've been hearing about flying cars and sex robots for years and want them to do something with that already
@@clarkkent9080 Sex robots have existed for several years at least with various personalities. I will tell no one of nor judge anyone about their deviation. After all, everyone has skeletons in their closets, why not a functional electric one?
Fantastic video! I’d also include Clean Core Thorium Energy. They developed a Thorium-based fuel (oxide pellet) that fits into CANDU/PHWR reactors - no modifications to existing reactors or the original design. Imagine getting all the noted benefits of Thorium in less time/capital!
Thorium-232, which is the isotope that everyone _should_ be specifying, _is not fissile_ in the thermal neutron spectrum so _it’s not a fuel!_ Any thorium going into conventional reactors is being used as a breeding substrate in order to produce uranium-233 (which _is_ a fissile fuel). The transmutation of Th-232 into U-233 is _far_ from instant, taking weeks as multiple intermediary nuclides undergo decay processes. Therefore, it Th-232 cannot be used to sustain a chain reaction is these reactors. People should stop buying into the hype they can’t comprehend. There’s nothing miraculous about thorium.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 You are correct. However research and effort should be increased on Thorium. It is the fuel that can power mankind for thousands of year. The potential for mankind is immense.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 I don't see why a slow start-up procedure cannot be developed that allows the U233 to be bred. A procedure can have a (small) supply of U233 injected into the process to speed up the startup for example. This is in fact a good thing because it is tedious to try and extract the U233 for military purposes, for which you need substantial amounts.
Thanks for showing both the pro's and con's. Too many others want to claim that thorium is ready now and never present the downside of this technology. I do hope these issues can be resolved.
Not to mention the existing stockpile of thorium. "The Defense National Stockpile Center (DNSC), a field level activity of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has stewardship of a stockpile of thorium nitrate that has been in storage for decades. The stockpile is made up of approximately 3.2 million kg (7 million lb) of thorium nitrate crystals (hydrate form) stored at two depot locations in the United States."
@@Bewefau Right now it's not being used.. Thorium was/is a bi-product of other mining-operations so instead of just leaving it in the ground they collected it. Thorium is not expensive either as it's quite common all over the world so will most likely stay quite cheap even after it starts being used in nuclear reactors. The main reason why it was stored instead of just disposed of was it's possible use as an alternative nuclear fuel. The current US stockpile would be enough to power the US for a thousand years or so if new reactors where built. On top of that those new reactors could also be used to dispose of most of our existing spent nuclear-fuel so no more 100 thousand year storage.
I've been saying this for years. People are all nutting over fusion - but Thorium is so much more feasible. Only greed has prevented this from happening so far.
Tritium may be useful, but as a byproduct, it’s very difficult to refine. That’s why it’s giving Japan a big headache, most of the contaminants in the radioactive water stored in Fukushima are tritium because they are a pain to isolate.
Just FYI thorium can dissolve into seawater, so you don't really even need to mine it you can pull it right of the ocean. also tritium is a valuable fuel component is some types of fusion reactors so there is a better use for it after, its not just waste
Nice video. I would add one thing: Tritium is extremely precious. It's needed for Fusion reactor development and operation. A functioning Fusion reactor would produce it's own Tritium and more then it would use up, bu not much more. So this byproduct is actually great if you can contain it safely.
Tritium is kind of a pain in the butt just like all hydrogen is. Not insurmountable but it costs money to extract and I'm not entirely sure, unless there's a considerable demand for it, that it's economically viable. Fusion uses Lithium to breed its own Tritium. It's in fact the Lithium and Beryllium which are the expensive consumables. Beryllium is relatively rare and Lithium is skyrocketing in price since most of its production is consumed by batteries.
@@shoeskode136 It is rare unless you want to make it or buy it. Deuterium Oxide (heavy water) is NOT radioactive and is present in all water in small quantities. It can be extracted from "normal" water and every CANDU reactor uses thousands of gallons as reactor coolant. So it is not that difficult to obtain. When Light water (H2O) reactor coolant absorbs a neutron, it forms heavy water (deuterium Oxide). Absorb another neutron and you have tritiated water. CANDU reactors skip that first step since they start with heavy water. Passing a current through water results in disassociation into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas be it protium, deuterium, or tritium. Lithium absorption of a neutron through a decay chain results in Tritium gas. EVERY nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal contains Deuterium and Tritium. So, we have a lot and continue to make a lot. Anyone can purchase heavy water (deuterium oxide) and Tritium gas is in many commercial items like exit signs and gun sights.
Great video! It's always interesting to learn about new alternative energy sources and the potential they hold. I appreciated the clear explanation of Thorium and its advantages over traditional energy sources. The examples provided were very helpful in understanding the potential applications of Thorium as an energy source. It's exciting to think about the possibilities that thorium could open up for sustainable and unlimited energy. I'll definitely be following your channel for more updates on thorium and other alternative energy sources.
Do the Thorium fan boys realize that Thorium is not fissile and will not fission. Thorium requires a 2 step process of transmutation into U233 in a URANIUM reactor and THEN expensive reprocessing the extract the U233.
Also follow the dozen or so companies and independent researchers and teams pursuing Thorium reactor design and implementation. Videos, TED TALK, etc, by Kirk Sorensen are very informative. For years it seemed he was a voice crying in the wilderness when it came to Thorium & LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) technology. BTW the Chinese have been working on Thorium reactor technology for quite some time, and the last I read, they were intent on implementing 10 or more Thorium reactors.
@@MG.50 YT videos and TED talks are not science but opinions. In most cases, people who have an opinion but no real experience or education in that area. Opinions are like @ssholes, everyone has one so yours is no more valid than mine. Kirk Sorensen is a aerospace engineer and while he says he took classes in nuclear engineering he does not even have a nuclear engineering degree. His "company" Flibe has been trying to get taxpayer welfare for 12 years and he tried to sell his idea to Bill Gates when he started Terrapower. Gates turned him down flat and said his ideas had no engineering basis and were just that ideas. Kirk is a snake oil salesman looking for handouts. China has built a DEMO TEST Thorium MSR reactor that produce no electrical power and is 1/4 the size of the one the U.S. built and tested in the 1960s. China has said they plant on running it for 5 years before they even begin to test the support systems. We have all the Uranium that we need for hundreds of years of reactor operation and if fusion is proven, why stick with fission? Thorium requires expensive reprocessing and has been proven over and over to be more expensive that uranium based reactors. Yt and TED talks are the only place you find any interest in the U.S.
This is clearly the best way, we don't even need fusion at this stage. We could have gone down this route already, hopefully we actually do soon. I don't see fusion being the solution for another 30 years.
Tritium is actually a very needed product and easily capturable, or maintened with baffled vents to compressors. It’s just spicy hydrogen It is very much needed for any fusion reactions, and those Chinese little glowing glass vials that are fun to buy and look at glow for 25 years.
This will be an unpopular opinion, but while a lot of people say the main reason we didn't keep pursuing thorium was because the government wanted to make nuclear bombs, there's another more important related issue. Thorium reactors require plutonium to produce power. Plutonium is made in uranium reactors. There are lots of people saying the ONLY reason thorium didn't become the main reactor type, given all of its positives, is because the government wanted plutonium for bombs. But nuclear power companies didn't want to invest research into reactors that would require the byproducts of their rivals. And governments figured if we had to build uranium plants first anyway and we can get power from uranium plants, why make it a 2 step process and build a uranium plant to feed a thorium plant to produce power. Now we've had uranium reactors long enough that there is an abundant (enough) supply of "waste" plutonium to use for a thorium reactor. We didn't get thorium reactors in the 50s because you have to have uranium reactors first. He briefly touches on this in India's plan about 6 minutes in. The reason India can't just start making thorium reactors is because they need to create enough plutonium in modern breeder reactors first.
Where do people keep coming up with this BS that Thorium was abandoned and Uranium based PWR/BWR were chosen so we could make bombs? Hanford Wa. has been making weapons material since 1944, 12 years before the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant became operational and their weapons production reactors are very efficient graphite moderated reactors and DO NOT produce any electrical power. Savannah River site SC. Has been making weapons material since 1955 and their production reactors are very efficient low pressure heavy water moderated reactors and DO NOT produce electric power. Weapons production reactors are NOTHING like U.S. commercial PWR or BWR power reactors and commercial power reactors have NEVER been used to produce Pu239 for weapons, since there has never been a need beyond what the efficient weapons production reactors could provide.. The U.S. currently has so much Pu239 that 34 tons of weapon grade Pu239 is being treated so it can eventually be disposed of at a cost of billions.
We see same thing with oil USA oil except in Texas is pink Texas dark and USA refiners are built to process dark oil we export most our clearer oil to refineries out of the USA so till recently helped our trade deficit. Now we need refineries to process pink oil but no we plan to go electric but how long will supply of natural gas last if we limit it? We going to need something
4m:36s: That's exactly what was at fault the first time around, they never further tried to manage such did they, whereas these others coming later which never conceived to utilise thorium just had to learn such that.. To manage the issue over a period. Now I'm not sure but already within five minutes of this I can see the biggest reason for everyone not taking further thorium is chances are because maybe the uranium or usual method we are today was actually a government or science requirement globally for enriched means of this material, or easier methods to produce more using less something else. Happy to watch the rest, amazing so far :D
As an example within technology doing such now, if you've hit a big limit or need to widen a dataset but dont want everything public, you could use a service to build a set.. AI GPT would be one or perhaps batch data compiling like SETI@home compute, ToR and such same thing to advance a need but using others to expand on the base. (somewhat doing the further work for you)
Well.... that thorium 232 _actually_ neutron activates into protactinium and then decays into fisile uranium 233 over the course of a month or so. Protactinium is a strange material, pretty easy to filter out of other materials, but it's hella radioactive.
@Ben There yeah, it's really weird compared to uranium and plutonium, it washes right out. It's also Hella radioactive, so anyone who tries to walk off with a kilo or two of protactinium is going to glow like the Las Vegas strip.
Glad someone brought that up. I ve studied the use of Thorium 232 as a potential power source and admit I haven't covered all info or understand all I did cover. It was apparent from the information I found that more was put into the feasibility of reprocessing Thorium in a breeder into Protactinium isotopes that decay into U233 and U232 isotopes for the potential in nuclear weapons than as a power generation source. Priorities I guess. Difficulties weren't limited to Protactinium but also the Uranium 232 isotope which is also highly radioactive producing intense gamma rays but can be further reprocessed into U233. This is the isotope needed to fuel the reactor but also is in some ways a better fission material for bombs than U235 or Pu 239. Like I said , I don't understand everything but apparently the reprocessing of Plutonium in a reactor from U 238 ( sometimes referred to depleted U after the 235 isotope was refined out) was a more manageable way to go so bye bye Thorium. India has at least one reactor fueled with U233 from Thorium so it is possible and prolific unlike the future of our existence unless those Ole Priorities don't change. Wind and Solar won't do it Joe. Untill a controllable fusion reactor can be developed or if, Thorium is your only hope for green energy. Joe? He's asleep, oh well. Nobody's in charge.
I firmly believe this is the greenest/cleanest energy path within our reach, our failure to develop it is a depressing indictment of the energy debate as a whole.
It was not developed as it would not produce weapons grade material as waste, maybe its time is here but i still believe solar is the only way forward right now , well until they produce a car battery size reactor that produces enough energy to run a car for a few years.
@@andrewbrown3439 These “thorium reactors” literally breed fissile U-233 which can be - and has been - used in nuclear weapons. It’s best to comprehend some rudimentary physics before attempting to sift through the lies, half-truths, and truths, of thorium-related information.
That's the problem, thorium reactors aren't capable of producing plutonium which is why they weren't developed originally. Now they're still ignored primarily for two reasons: because every time the word 'nuclear' is mentioned it sends a section of the voting public rabid; and it would kill both the established fossil fuel energy interests and the burgeoning renewable energy interests. There's not the political will to overcome these obstacles at present, not in the west anyway.
There was a thorium/U233 reactor used as the final core in the Shippingport PA commercial reactor called Light Water Breeder Reactor (LWBR). It was designed to be a nearly 1:1 swap replacement in a conventional uranium reactor designed to operate without the need for Heavy Water and would breed U233 to sustain a perpetuating fuel cycle. It worked, exceeded design specifications, but it was too expensive to be used commercially. It was the last core to be used at Shippingport and it was a joint venture between the Navy, who was very concerned about the access to Uranium, and Westinghouse who was a major contributor to the naval nuclear propulsion program. It was one of Rickover's dreams.
In order to conserve every neutron possible, it had NO neutron absorbing control rods. To go critical, it inserted fuel assemblies into the core from above and to shutdown, fuel assemblies were pulled out of the core against gravity. Certainly not a fail safe design and a design that could not be used today. I worked there during the install of that last core
Can you do a video on Japan's breakthroughs with helium cooled reactors? I think they play a large part in convincing the general public that our industry is safe
Yes it is absolutely critical to get water out of the nuclear equation because as you know water mutes directly to plasma state and explodes this is why the spider arm reactor design uses no water at all or any other coolant liquid because pipes leak and degrade
Where do people keep coming up with this BS that Thorium was abandoned and Uranium based PWR/BWR were chosen so we could make bombs? Hanford Wa. has been making weapons material, at their 9 reactors, since 1944, 12 years before the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant became operational and their weapons production reactors are very efficient graphite moderated reactors and DO NOT produce any electrical power. Savannah River site SC. Has been making weapons material since 1955 and their 5 production reactors are very efficient low pressure heavy water moderated reactors and DO NOT produce electric power. Thorium was tried at Shippingport and Indian Point commercial reactors in the 1970s and abandoned as too costly compared to Uranium. Weapons production reactors are NOTHING like U.S. commercial PWR or BWR power reactors and commercial power reactors have NEVER been used to produce Pu239 for weapons, since there has never been a need beyond what the efficient weapons production reactors could provide.. The U.S. currently has so much Pu239 that 34 tons of weapon grade Pu239 is being treated so it can eventually be disposed of at a cost of billions. Your comment is like saying automobiles use gas engine because the military wanted jet fighters. God help us that people base their knowledge on social media and YT videos.
There's Terrestrial Energy's IMSR design. Not a Thorium burner but a liquid Uranium burner. The hard part for any new design is the licensing process. They seem to be making the best headway. Due to the corrosion issue you mentioned, they decided to build their reactor around a seven year lifespan. They do not use Hastalloy for the piping, just nuclear grade stainless steel. This also may address the buildup of fission products being deposited in unwanted areas of the piping. Sounds odd to me, especially when decommissioning but I hope it works. If interested, the best idea for new fission is the solid Uranium/TRISO fueled pebble bed reactor. I think it's called KP-FHR. Licensing is progressing fast.
Good video but a couple things. On cracking. The issue was pretty much solved. From a paper by Jack Devanney in response to a critique of the MSRE….“After the MSRE was over, Oak Ridge discovered they could pretty much eliminate this cracking and the embrittlement by controlling the redox level in the salt.” “One way of controlling the redox level is by feeding beryllium wire into the salt. The beryllium soaks up fluorine atoms released by the fission process, and maintains the salt in a reducing condition via a UF3/UF4 buffer.” On the tritium issue. Gotta say that this issue is pretty overhyped since mitigation is pretty well handled and the danger from Tritium is misunderstood and basically not really much of a danger, and pretty much every reactor makes it including fusion concepts which actually consider it a “feature not a bug” soooooo….. Kinda think the excuses against Thorium should be put to rest and it should be pursued.
One idea that could make the tritium issue less of a problem is to avoid using steam to drive your generator turbo machinery. Critical carbon dioxide could be used as a working fluid to avoid tritated water being produced. This would also make your turbo machinery much smaller.
@@dkd1228 Actually the Tritium still gets in there cause it penetrates metals and machinery like crazy. Using super critical CO2 would still have the advantage in this regard because you would know that any hydrogen present in the working fluid has to be tritium which allows easy collecting instead of trying to separate hydrogen from hydrogen in a steam working fluid. Also CO2 is more efficient and it’s supercritical physics allow the extreme compact turbo machinery. Your point kinda still stands tho. Just semantics here.
@@dkd1228, the Tritium is produced directly in the fuel salt, not the secondary coolant (steam generators/water), so switching to SC C02 secondary would have little effect on Tritium production.
Nice overview in a really well made video! I'm following the development since about 2016, but it's rather slow, probably because of the constricting regulations around nuclear energy worldwide.
I think the major problems of the corrosive nature of molten salts may have been solved. I say this because Thorcon is going to open a plant in Indonesia and China has a plant online.
I love the throwaway lines at the end. The pipes still crack and even small spills of liquid fuel are extremely difficult to clean up. But other than that..,.
Very cool. I found out about this about 10 years ago when the YT algorithm recommended a documentary on it. I agree with some comments that we didn't use it because it didn't have military applications. Thank you.
Where do people keep coming up with this BS that Thorium was abandoned and Uranium based PWR/BWR were chosen so we could make bombs? Hanford Wa. has been making weapons material, at their 9 reactors, since 1944, 12 years before the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant became operational and their weapons production reactors are very efficient graphite moderated reactors and DO NOT produce any electrical power. Savannah River site SC. Has been making weapons material since 1955 and their 5 production reactors are very efficient low pressure heavy water moderated reactors and DO NOT produce electric power. Thorium was tried at Shippingport and Indian Point commercial reactors in the 1970s and abandoned as too costly compared to Uranium. Weapons production reactors are NOTHING like U.S. commercial PWR or BWR power reactors and commercial power reactors have NEVER been used to produce Pu239 for weapons, since there has never been a need beyond what the efficient weapons production reactors could provide.. The U.S. currently literally has hundreds of TONS of Pu239 (takes less than 20 pounds per weapon). The U.S. has so much that 34 tons of weapon grade Pu239 is being treated so it can eventually be disposed of at a cost of billions. Your comment is like saying automobiles use gas engine because the military wanted jet fighters. God help us that people base their knowledge on social media and YT videos.
Dead wrong. It was a myth and it is not true. Military wants to make nuclear bombs and they make bombs. They have the material, the technology and the uranium concentration facility. Their bomb making is independent with the electricity generation nuclear industry. They are separate. US is a nuclear owning country and they do not need to hide their bomb making with electricity generation.
I thought you gave a really good, fair and well informed overview of the subject although the title was a little click-baity. The only thing I took a little issue with was the tritium, it's really more of nuisance than an actual problem. There are 7 PBq of tritium produced naturally in the atmosphere by cosmic rays every year, it's very weakly radioactive, has a relative short half life and unlike for example C-14 it doesn't concentrate up the food chain. The only way one could consider tritium every remotely dangerous is by using the LNT hypothesis and some really dishonest scare mongering tactics. And yes, thorium will be great at some time in the future, but we are decades away from even a prototype of a commercially viable thorium reactor. Meanwhile we have the perfectly fine uranium fuel cycle and the current designs of gen III/III+ reactors that just waits to be built and deployed.
Indeed, there’s no great benefit of breeding U-233 over use of U-235/Pu-239. What we need to be doing is using the current fuels in reactors that are walk-away safe, so low pressure liquid (or somewhat liquid) fuel/coolant designs. Also, nuclear energy needs to removed from corporate influence entirely. Nuclear power “for profit” is simply far too risky.
Thorium used to be used in television picture tubes ages ago. Remember those brightly glowing fuel fired camping lanterns? The wicks contained thorium so they would glow brightly.
@@atomicblender thorium reactors were shut down in the 50,s. by the military, cos they didnt produce weapons grade material.. how about you tell the truth..
You’ve got to get enough fissile material up there to sustain a chain reaction in a reactor first. Thorium isn’t a fissile fuel, it has to be transmuted into uranium first, which requires decent neutron flux. Also, the most significant problems with human habitation of the moon are not associated with a lack of energy.
An excellent exposition, thank you. One thing you apparently glossed over that makes a HUGE difference in cost of fuel- Thorium has only ONE stable isotope, so no enrichment is needed, unlike Uranium, which requires thousands of centrifuges operating for a long time to extract the U-235 from the much larger amount of U-238 (also, no need to use Flourine to make Uranium Hexafloride for the centrifuges).
Did you forget that Thorium is not fissile and will not fission while U235 does very easily. So you need a uranium or plutonium reactor and you steal some of the neutrons that could result in fission and power production and instead absorb them in thorium which will then transmute into U233 which then must be extracted from the fuel using a very very expensive reprocessing facility,
@@Kpar512 Thorium does not fission and does not produce ANY energy. There is essentially no difference between U233 and U235 fission energy. WTF are you trying to say
@@Kpar512 Yes I did and no where does he say thorium produces more power than uranium. In fact Thorium produces NO power. In fact, neutrons that could be used to fission uranium are absorbed in Thorium meaning it is less efficient. I think you are confusing the fuel usage comment which is very misleading.
Regarding TMSR-LF1, you say it started up in late 2022, but I haven't been able to find any confirmation of that. Several articles about it having been cleared to start, yes, but nothing else. Any info on that?
Isn't the tritium byproduct a critical material for advanced technology...and certain fusion production methods (not to mention illuminated elements for guns, watches, cameras)?
@@TheTaXoro in the original experiment they planed to capture it as HF, i would prefer store it as H2O, sure you will get H and D too and sure it's kinda hard to capture in gaseous form.
Thorium also generates a lot less energy. Additionally molten salt reactors have a major fatal flaw. Liquid sodium which is used for the primary coolant loop cannot have any direct contact with the secondary loop which uses water. Sodium reacts violently witg water, meaning you need a large complicated heat exchanger to allow the primary loop to transfer its heat off
Tritium is hugely valuable, you'd think they would find a way to contain and collect it and then producing tritium as a byproduct would be a good thing.
The half life is 12 years. Even if some of it got into the environment, unlike heavy metals from coal plants which last forever, this stuff would be gone in 60 years, one lifetime.
I hope Rusatom and China work together for this one. Poor countries need this shit desperately and we're already at a "tipping point" when it comes to a fullscale collapse of the antartic ice cap melting crisis.
Nice video. It sounds to be more of a sideways step than a forward one. Yes reducing nuclear waste and bringing energy prices per MWH down is a great step forward, but we shouldn’t be discarding or slowing the impetus around fusion which has the potential to be an infinite renewable energy source. But yes, considering we shouldn’t expect anything from Fusion commercially for the next 20-30 years, anything nuclear that improves upon existing waste production and affordability should definitely be pursued. At least in the meantime.
Fusion will not happen without a revolutionary discovery or invention. Despite the hyperbole, we are no closer than we were 30 years ago. It's time to move on from that costly experiment, and also wind and solar FTM.
Now if we could figure out how to make a pump for 600°C molten salts this idea would actually be useful. And don't forget to build the chemical company next door to the reactor to manage the waste.
Talk to Copenhagen Atomics who are making these pimps in a joint project with Toledo. The pumps can be designed to be online exchanged after years of use and thereby extend the life of the overall unit.
@@rtzx12570 60 years later and still working on it. I understand perfectly. I'm all for thorium. The institution of physics is a farce. Take solar energy for example. 5 square meters gathers more than enough calories to power a human life in a comfortable way. And so where are the solar panels. Let's call Copenhagen and find out.
@@rtzx12570 All I did was write a logical response to your comment and TH-cam deleted me. That should tell you all you need to know who is behind the slow progress of thorium and it's incredible potential.
@@rippedlimbo7884 lack of money? China invested 500 million USD and claims to have solved most of the technical problems, enough to build 2 test reactors in the Gobi desert. I'm guessing most Western startups have much less money. Thorizon says it collected 25 million Euros to start. Is that enough? Probably not.
Probably because most politicians are too busy lining their own pockets to take the time to do something that would actually help the rest of humankind.
Because Thorium is no alternative. Thorium was a fluke of the Nuclear Industry and still is. Thorium is breeded inside a reactor into Uranium, and than we get the same problems as with any Uranium reactor.Used up thorium containing U233 is very nasty to handle.
The cost of renewables have time and time again shown degradation of energy production levels, downtime, maintenance and replacement costs always making them more expensive to run and sustain. Renewable will never entirely power a modern civilization.
@@clarkkent9080 I watched the documentary on it, which tends to be one sided. No I do not believe anything someone says. Do you randomly go on the internet and ask ridiculous questions because I did not bother to write down my entire experience and knowledge of a subject before commenting a thank you for more information? When I see people ask questions like yours it is a red flag of superiority complex.
@@erich6860 I was agreeing with you. My question was for the many that do not question one sided presentations. Chill dude...someone is on their period
@@clarkkent9080 "Do you believe anything someone says when they only provide pros but no cons." Perhaps you might want to change how you put that sentence, because in no way can this be construed as an agreement.
Interesting video. I feel like you explained it well from multiple perspectives. Not that I really understand any of it, its interesting none the less. :)
What provisions are made to deal with the reduced waste? Waste is the no 1 cause for fossil fuel use in power generation. Until this is dealt with the renewed interest will be stopped in its tracks. There is an underground nuclear fire caused by disposal of Uranium tailings. It is in a city.
The problem with Thorium is that it can easily be used by anyone to create a nuclear reaction. In case you haven't noticed, they have quietly been removing public access to Thorium.
At most, they can make a dirty bomb with it. Thorium does not have the ompf to create the thermal nuclear explosion because it simply doesn't have enough energy. In addition to that. It is not nearly as radioactive as uranium is. Thorium is still toxic just like any other heavy metals like lead. In addition it will bind with your cells and slowly irradiate the victim. As for easy creation of a nuclear reaction, I can do that right now with skin of bananas witch contain cesium, Americium from smoke alarms also works great and many more! 😇 The point I'm making is: Everything can become "dangerous". You are in danger right now and nothing you do will prevent you from dying as some point. It could be half a second from you read this, maybe lots of years... Who knows. 🤷♂️
@@powerupminion Thorium can easily act as a neutron donor creating a fission reaction. It can be used to easily create a breeder reactor which can irradiate a large area. The Atomic Boyscout, as the media called him, made such a reactor. ( May he rest in peace. ) You can also use it to refine Uranium into fisile material.
@@JR-kk6ce Why are people so quick to double down on a topic they are clearly not knowledgeable in, i don't get it... 🤦♂️ > The material properties of thorium doesn't support necessary features to make a themo-nuclear explosion. When it gets over 400°C hot it losses radiation intensity fast. > The radiation output does not have the intensity to create a violent chain reaction. That is why it is considered safer than uranium. It can still produce neutrons yes, but it has to be kept going, contrary to uranium witch can go on its own. > Thorium does not have the energy to make any element that can work in a nuclear weapon. I just checked. 😉 > You could make a dirty bomb with it yes, but that can also be done with any other element. This is not a qualifying trait. > I just literally did the math myself. I suggest you stay within your own field of education, because a physicist you clearly are not. 🤓
@@powerupminion no, you are the one who is applying your flawed reasoning onto me. I never said Thorium could be used for a nuclear explosion. That's you jumping to conclusions in order to feed your your flawed circular reasoning. I could take the time to explain to you, step by step, on how to use Thorium to create a breeder reactor the size of a 16oz soda can that can erriadiate a 10 block square area. However, I won't for obvious reasons..
It was the salt itself that attacked the Hastelloy (chloride stress cracking corrosion). Shippingport was converted to run on thorium and did for several years before being shut down by an anti-nuke administration and cleared to greenfield condition.
I think you might be slightly misled by tritium. It’s a form of hydrogen. Additionally, you can mention it’s used in nuclear fusion is that’s going to be one of the rate limiting factors involved in the sustained function of nuclear fusion.
Other than a Thorium research reactor or two I never understood why this never went into production. Did you know in the 60's Porter Chemcraft used to put Thorium in their products with a simple viewer to see collisions of Alpha particles?
I just watched a video on fusion & the cost/complexity/difficulty in getting a viable fusion reaction is sadenning. This shows much more promise, with existing technology & much better outcomes right now. I can't see a world with just wind & solar.
I'd read that they can't make the same "quality" of bombs as easily with Thorium that they can with other nuclear weapons grade types such as Uranium and Plutonium. (True ?)
Well, thorium can’t be used to make nuclear weapons _at all!_ The uranium-233 that’s bred from it can most certainly be used for such weapons. Uranium-233 can contain impurities that make handling it hazardous, but when has nuclear weapons production ever been halted due the various radiation hazards involved? Technically it could be purified (enriched) or obtained by a special process to make it as safe as any other fissionable core for warheads.
Irradiated Thorium is more dangerously radioactive in the short term. The Th-U cycle invariably produces some U-232, which decays to Tl-208, which has a 2.6 MeV gamma ray decay mode. Bi-212 also causes problems. These gamma rays are very hard to shield, requiring more expensive spent fuel handling and/or reprocessing.
01:00 how you g'on go over the best explanation of uranium vs thorium fission that fast dawg? Had to bring it back six times to catch the words my man. You a real one for this video though. Much love, pause.
The problem is that if we were to switch to Thorium for supplying our energy needs, then those in the fossil fuel industry aren't going to be very happy about that, since their source of income will disappear.
What a stupid comment. Uranium reactors and renewables are all over the place, so why do you imagine this bogeyman magically only shuts down thorium reactors? There are many countries with huge usage of uranium reactors and ZERO domestic oil resources, and they're not doing thorium either. You're such an unpleasant human.
The biggest advantage to Thorium is the cost saving for the fuel its self. It cost more for enriched Uranium per gram then gold. Lets that sink it. When you also consider the aging US nuclear power plants. It makes since to start replace or upgrade them in some cases to the safter LFTR design.
I remember how excited I was when I first heard about this in college 40 years until I found out the path they took on development. Molten salt reactors work better with fissile materials and we still don't have them because they are much messier than you think. Sooner or later you either have a molten salt leak which is a royal mess, or you get the right alpha emmiter mixed with the right fluoride and you get loads of gamma from sodium-22 and heaps of neutrons that you don't know what to do with. Recover fission products from molten salt is not going to be any neater than recovering them in a traditional fuel recycling process. Research West Valley New York fuel recycling, the B, U and S plants at Hanford and the British Thorpe process to see how that goes.. Thorium itself has a 1 billion year half life and it will always be in the waste.. 900 year-old spent uranium fuel is no more dangerous than spent thorium salts wastes, possibly safer if you get the alpha neutron reaction going in the thorium waste.
@@manw3bttcks my bad I was thinking of potassium 40, which isn't exactly a billion either. I never had to know that naturally occurring isotope half lives beyond Radon.
I have been telling everyone I know about LFTR's for the last 3 years. Keep promoting this as much as possible! Thanks for reviving this wonderful idea.
There WAS. The push was in China, led by some nuclear scientist member of Xis family, I think... And 2 months ago, the Chinese got an operating for a 3 megawatt plant in western China. And they plan on building 250 new power plants by 2050. How many of those will be LFTRs I don't know.
I know nearly nothing about today's efforts to use Thorium in a reactor but I spent most of the 1970s, as an engineer fresh out of college, working on a reactor design that used Thorium but not as a fuel. Thorium itself does not fission. As the narrator said early in the presentation it must first be converted to Uranium (U233 to be precise) and it requires the presence of a fissile material to fission before it can become a fuel. This presents some situations not thoroughly addressed in the video. The first issue is that a highly enriched form of Uranium must be present at all times in the reactor because the Thorium interferes with the chain reaction. "Highly enriched" is synonymous with "weapons grade". It can be used to make a bomb and is easily chemically separated from the Thorium. This Uranium must also be handled outside of the reactor on an ongoing basis unless an elaborate fuel cleaning system is incorporated into the highly radioactive sections of the plant. The presence of the Thorium in the reaction means that some of the reaction energy is no longer available to produce steam, instead it is absorbed by the Thorium meaning the the production of the fission waste products is increased as a cost of converting the Thorium to Uranium. There are many waste products and they must be removed from the reactor as they, too, interfere with the reaction. These fission products are the nuclear waste that upsets so many people about nuclear fission. They essentially last forever and are very, very dangerous. Using salt as a liquid transport mechanism, as I see often mentioned as the latest technology, adds problems that are seldom mentioned as the reactors are hyped in the media. I think that the narrator made a mistake in saying that the Hastaloy alloy suffered cracks caused by the radiation products. As I recall from years ago, the salt itself is the problem. Radiation causes embrittlement of Hastaloy, the salt causes the cracks by chemically reacting with the metal. It's the combination that is a problem. The salt is solid at room temperature which means that an elaborate heating system is needed to start up the reactor and makes any maintenance or repair a nightmare. I left the industry 40 years ago because I saw that nuclear energy technolgy had many problems that no one was seriously addressing. All of the enthusiasm was in the fun stuff (typical engineers). The people relegated to solving the really scary issues like waste management, runaway meltdowns and proliferation didn't seem to be the brightest bulbs on the tree. I see nothing today to convince me that that situation is changed. As major problems arise new methods whose problems aren't understood become the next bright idea.
Very infomative. 👍 Does your statement about thorium possibly providing energy for “thousands of years” also include the exponential growth of energy consumption?
Most cost estimates for renewables don't include the downtime compensation. The plant must must be overbuilt to provide surplus for charging batteries or other energy storage technology for use when the sun doesn't shine, wind doesn't blow, inclement weather or other non optimal occasions. The renewable power is a part time worker. Virtually all renewable power sources are land use intensive. Low cost renewables are more of an accounting trick. A wind farm may be good for 20 years and then there is the decommissioning costs. Wind farms are very difficult to recycle. What do you do with old solar panels?
"and yet today it's nowhere to be seen" Because 1. Cost. 2. Corrosive materials, more cost or short lifespan. 3. Cost. 4. There are no finalised prototypes that deal with corrosion for the long term. 5. Cost. 6. Reusing fuel is very very expensive.
ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY. Someone or some group, has been able to make millions off of the horrific uranium. That's why. Of course, the tech issues on cracking of the piping is a major problem as well as the tritium. So, the drive to overcome these must be present before meaningful progress can occur. Profit and fear are the two most powerful motivations I know of.
I'm of the thought that even 'baseline' power - such as nuclear - benefits tremendously from the battery tech developments in alternative energy storage. (Such as gravity batteries or heat batteries, etc.) The reason for this is that we never really use 'base electricity' in a constant pattern. The use of nuclear as an alt. energy 'range extender' is also dependent on it being an always available trickle-buffer to the grid.
Nuclear physicist Victor J. Stenger, for one, only first learned of the possibility of utilising Thorium it in 2012:
"It came as a surprise to me to learn recently that such an alternative has been available to us since World War II, but not pursued BECAUSE it lacked weapons applications".
Where do people keep coming up with this BS that Uranium based PWR/BWR were chosen so we could make bombs?
Hanford Wa. has been making weapons material since 1944, 12 years before the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant became operational and their weapons production reactors are very efficient graphite moderated reactors and DO NOT produce any electrical power.
Savannah River site SC. Has been making weapons material since 1955 and their production reactors are very efficient low pressure heavy water moderated reactors and DO NOT produce electric power.
Weapons production reactors are NOTHING like U.S. commercial PWR or BWR power reactors and commercial power reactors have NEVER been used to produce Pu239 for weapons.
The U.S. currently has so much Pu239 that 34 tons of weapon grade Pu239 is being treated so it can eventually be disposed of at a cost of billions.
WHY CAN TTHEY UITLISE UNLIMITED POWER IN WEAPONS
@@stevethea5250 i thought you needed thorium to even get energy from thorium so to put that in a weapon would be very hard to do and normal nuclear bombs can already easily end the world if they are used it doesnt matter if they are thorium or not
@@computerboi4667 I wanna take a shot every time I read thorium 🤣🤣
wait till they discover Hulkium or Viabranium or Spidermanium
It went wrong when Dr Weinberg was fired from his job as director of Oak Ridge. He finished 5 years operating the molten salt reactor experiment, and then submitted a proposal for the molten salt breeder reactor. Dr Weinberg was also the inventor of the pressurized water reactor use by Rickover in the Nautilus, Enterprise and Shipping Port, not to mention 3/4 of all nuclear power plants operating today. His breeder reactor was designed to convert Thorium 232 to Uranium 233, which is far more efficient than U235. The issues with the MSRE presented were repeated from Wash 1222 which was an effort by the AEC to justify firing Dr Weinberg. All these issues were solved during the MSRE, but are still regurgitated by anti-nuclear activists. BTW: Costs given for wind and solar do not include the back up gas fired plants needed to run when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. There is a lot of mis-information when it comes to energy.
Comments like yours maintain my love of yt, and the internet. Please continue.
BTW: Costs given for wind and solar do not include the back up gas fired plants needed to run when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.
^^ I know.
That stupid "renewable energy" is a kid's lemonade stand business.
You can say that again. Get Weinberg’s book “the second nuclear era”.
Another factor in dropping thorium were Richard Nixon’s cronies in the uranium business and warhead manufacturing. Pure stupid corruption.
Well, about missinformation.. ☝️There are peeps in Finland who created sandbattery that charges troughout while sun is shining and uses energy in winter times.. Working in one town of Finland.. & a LOT of whitheald information: there are inventions that we don't know yet, and are much better.. As cells that are charging in shadow as well as night time🌟 About failure of these horrible powerplants: well, it was Mother nature that protected humans from these stupid things... What was wrong with Teslas free energy? Yeah, it was not possible to plug into and earn money 🤑🤑🤑🙄 Tesla is turning in his grave...
Interesting thing about that Tritium is that it's needed for Fusion... assuming they get Fusion working and it seems like some are getting close, could use that Tritium 'waste' for Fusion. The two could work together nicely.
uranium based light and heavy water reactors also make tritium
@@clarkkent9080 yeah, but you can get better public backing with thorium over uranium reactors. People are stubborn and stupid, so no matter what you say, they will deflect to Chernobyl and TMI (which ironically did pretty much nothing), and will 100% push against more nuclear reactors.
But if you say you are building safer reactors that don’t use the “scary uranium” found in TMI and Chernobyl, then you will get more approval for building these reactors.
Tin foil hat time for the crazies
@@troybaxter Just tell them thorium isn't radioactive and they'd believe it. I wish we made it more known to the public just how much radiation just gets pumped into our atmosphere by coal plants.
@@troybaxter Nuclear needs better marketing.
The reason they thought uranium was more fun than thorium is quite simple:
Uranium can turn into plutonium for use in nulcear weapons. Thorium can't be used directly or indirectly in nukes.
Why this isn't included in this video is beyond speculation.
@@AkumaQiu possibly because governments refuse to admit it?
This is a simplification. Thorium produces uranium 233, which according to the Wiki page on the latter CAN be used as a weapon (quote "highly satisfactory as a weapons material")
Untrue - nuclear proliferation is also a concern for thorium, you find enough sources that say it's more than "decent" for that purpose
2/
They even say it's allover the best weapons material and if the US would have a U-233 Arsenal, Livermore would see no reason to switch to plutonium.
TLDR: it's not only feasible, it's the best material for weapons
I am glad other engineers are working on Thorium. I did my senior thesis on I a few years back and I was afraid I was gonna have to become a nuclear engineer.
Senior thesis? As in highschool? What did you become instead?
@@esbenmadsen5220 u know that 4th year of college is also senior year too right?
His senior thesis was on various señors and señoritas.
I am a senior in grad school
Coward?
India has already started using Thorium in it's Fast breeder reactors in 2nd stage of its 3 stage nuclear program and India has the largest reserves of Thorium in the world. India's nuclear program is designed around Thorium obviously beacuse of huge Thorium reserves.
Awesome. Any links or names of companies working on it.
@@roshanthapa8487KAMINI (Kalpakkam Mini reactor) .Search for more info
Tritium is a very needed component in the ongoing research into viable fusion reactors. It is rare and difficult to obtain, so this seems like a win-win in the production of energy. Currently we could be using TSRs and stockpiling the resulting tritium in our attempts to research and get fusion online.
you are correct good sir
Actually, fusion reactors can breed their own tritium with lithium.
@shaind tritium is still needed to start the reaction. Also, tritium breeding from lithium is still a far way off from being developed and efficient.
Sounds like a plan. And you remove transportation costs if the fusion plant is onsite. That and you would have more fusion options as you wouldn't need to produce tritium at the fusion plant. And you already have nuclear engineers and containment specialists on site. Fusion research needs all the help out can get. Unless we decide to use the already working fusion reactor (the sun). But that one is a bit inconvenient to use fully. For now anyway.
Would you live next door to a Thorium power plant? .With your kids? Didn't think so.
Boy I swear, Thorium is the political arena of all things energy production. Half the time I'm hearing that there's no point in pursuing it, the other half it's the savior of mankind.
Thorium safer.
Thorium more common.
Mining easier.
Can be done smaller.
Thorium no go accident boom.
But Thorium no go boom at all.
And of course companies are doing good making nice money off of what they have now i guess.
But Thorium is the way to go.
Just think of for instance Tsjernobyl and Fukushima,
Now, there was more work to do on Thorium, but most likely it could have been way further along and done long ago if they just put more effort into it.
And for some countries with power needs, they blindly go for Uranium, more expensive, more dangerous, makes bombs. If energy was the point, they could go nuts, nobody would care, they'd have power far cheaper. Clearly they just wants bombs. India has indeed been planning on Thorium, if it was developed more they would already be there.
And as he explains, you can basically make container sized generators that are far easier to drop anywhere than building a big power plant and running power everywhere.
And solar and wind is nice, and we should use it where useful for sure. BUT, making enough of that to generate enough power to really run us all, that will take far too long, a lot of resources, a lot of waste, and most are not decently recyclable, and it's mostly subsidising games and such bullshit.
I don't understand why this is even an issue still. It shouldn't have been decades ago.
@@gabiballetje Just for the clarification, I'm *always* surprised when I see articles or videos crapping on the idea of Thorium based energy production. I even have a tennis ball sized chunk of Thorite in storage, lol. Long story behind that one. Thanks for all the information!
@@NightRunner417 oh yeah, heard weird stories.
My old high school suddenly built a new safe near the physics classroom, they were able to buy a small chunk of radioactive material for cheap. What were they going to do with it ? They had no idea, but it was cheap, sooo, why not ?
And yes, this was a rather big and rich high school.
For existing like 25 or whatever years they had days of celebration, they celebrated with setting up a pool and dropping a BIG chunk of cesium in it, made a HUGE splash 😂 not just a soccer ball, no, BIG.
Wonder how and why you got it though 😋
@@gabiballetje Lol, I don't mind telling and it's a pretty funny story by the end. Many years ago I took an interest in scintillating radiation detector technology and decided I had to experiment with it. I got familiar with 1P21 photomultiplier tubes and got myself a couple of barium fluoride crystals from eBay. After a lot of learning and trial and error I did manage to take the first steps down the road of making an actual scintillation radiation "counter", which amounted to the BaF2 crystal stuck to the side of the 1P21 tube and the output amplified and fed to a small speaker. One hilarious part is I decided to house it inside a classic metal lunchbox, and the cheapest I could find on eBay was a Jonas Brothers one, so it became officially the Jonas Brothers Scintillating Radiation Detector.🤣
Along the way, I needed various radioactive samples, so first I gutted an old smoke alarm for the Am241 pellet, then I got myself a tiny piece of Uranium 238 metal (eBay has EVERYTHING, man!) and then finally one day I stumbled on a Thorite rock from a mine in Canada for sale on eBay as well, dirt cheap and full of pretty dark red crystals by the picture. I bought it and it arrived in a 8" square box, wrapped in a single layer of aluminum foil. By then, I had a functional DIY geiger counter as well, and found out that even in the box and foil wrapping it made that sucker HOWL with counts per minute. I was pretty scared of radiation back then so I made a container for it by pouring 1" of lead in the bottom of a coffee can, then inserting a small fruit cocktail type can inside and filling the entire between space with molten lead as well. I called it the "Coffin Can" and the rock has lived in it ever since. For my radiation samples from it, I picked a few small pieces of the dark red crystals out of it, crushed them CAREFULLY into sand, and then packed them into the tips of coffee stir straws with glue as a binder. Thus I could do my experiments without having to handle that vicious little monster in the Coffin Can. Just needed small sources, not a monster throwing out upward of 20,000 CPM of god knows what. My experiments showed that ome of that radiation was passing through even 1/2 inch of lead plate. I learned a lot about decay series and types of radiation products and emissions in those days. Good times but I'm happy enough with it out of my system. 🤣
@@gabiballetje BTW I would have loved to see that Cesium touchdown in the pool. 🤣
1:45 The main reason there's less waste from Thorium isn't the efficiency of the process itself, but that the byproducts have a much shorter half-life. Uranium-line byproducts' half-lives are often so long that the end-to-end result is that we need to store it for longer than has passed since the dinosaurs went extinct. Thorium-line byproducts' half-lives add up to a chain of thousands of years, not millions, and because it's shorter, it's also hotter: You would most likely be able to use crystallized waste's heat for something.
Best explanation of Thorium nuclear power I’ve seen. Should be required viewing by policy makers
Thorium is the future of power and it will save the world! If nuclear energy from Thorium had the same time, money and resources put into it as fusion has had and still has we would already be well on our way to Thorium nuclear energy!! With the full utilization of our advanced modern technology, engineering, material science, safety measures understandings and designs, computer technology and robotics we could make it happen.
No it wont save the world. A new, clean form of energy will just make us destroy the natural world more...
Neutron embrittlement was a thing everywhere in the early 70s, most reactor designs and their cold-shock shutdown hazards are due to embrittled welds in the high pressure plumbing, so it's not just the molten salt designs, which don't deal with the high pressure.
The main reason Thorium was abandoned was because the Air Force was the main entity interested in it for the possibility of having bombers operating like submarines of the sky that can stay airborn for months waiting to drop their atomic payload, but with the ICBM and mid-air refueling the need evaporated and it got back burnered.
Actually the shielding required to keep the crew safe took up the entire payload of the plane making it useless.
Thorium reactors produce high energy neutrons needing huge amounts of heavy shielding, this made the idea of powering a plane totally out of the question.
its the gamma from the u232 thats the problem, other than a flying reactor that can crash or be shot down and contaminate a huge area, but the clever scientists said " shhhhh! we will build a slick , powerfull light weight reactor , liquid fuelled to burn most of the fuel to 90% with short lived fission products is the main beauty of these things , the thorium breeding is a bonus , plain molten salt uranium burners are an exciting technology that could take us to the stars with simple ion engines! @@schrodingerscat1863
I learned about thorium in 2010 and became obsessed with it. I lost hope in seeing it any time soon. I hope I'm wrong.
You are wrong, about thorium though.......retard.
the materials problems it had in 2010 still exist now.
Obsessed how exactly? You are building your own reactor at home or something? :)
My fundamental issue with fission reactors is the use of water and low boiling point. The thorium reactors in your video were molten salt with a much higher boiling point and safety profile making a melt down much less likely if ever. I still think fusion reactors are the future if we can crack the science to make it work.
Fusion is about one inch closer than it was in 1960.
Yea that's a big if harnessing fusion is pretty much impossible simply due to energies involved.
“crack” is not the best word for Thorium.
@@stevegarcia3731 but you know that in a test run we already got more energy out than we put in that’s not just an inch
I know it’s still gonna take fifty to a hundred years but we are making progress
Sorry for my bad English
the thing is we can do the fission reactors right now. not some undefined point in the future. so we should do the thorium reactors now, and keep working on fusion reactors.
According to the reading I have done in the past. Thorium reactors can be built so that they are "walk away safe" If some kind of disaster occurs and no one can get to the unit or if it is abandon it will simply shut it self down. That is a feature that i like aaaaaaaa lot!!
The test reactor they built at Oak Ridge was shutdown every friday and restarted every monday when the scientist went home for the weekend. Something that takes weeks or months with other reactor designs took minutes with Thorium. And the hotter the reactor gets the less fission can occur making meltdowns impossible even without a freeze plug to dump the fuel.
It's that the fuel is dissolved into a liquid with the coolant. Not just because it's thorium. You can do the same with Uranium 238 and have it walk away safe to.
@@SkullKing11841 Thank you for saving me the effort. Why those without any grasp of basic physics feel compelled to comment is entirely beyond me.
@@tonyrmathis What you said is correct about start and stop sequence for small test reactors. But for large power reactors, it is always problematic to start. Even coal power plants have 1 day stop-start cycle, not because reactor itself, because producing high quality steam for power generation takes time. But, supercritical carbondioxide cycle can be a solution.
Negative void coefficient for a reactor is a problem to be solved effectively, it is a engineering problem. It can be achieved with designing geometry for that purpose. Even RBMK reactors channels are redesigned to negative, or slightly positive void coeficient after chernobyl disaster.
The problem with Thorium is that you don't need fuel rods made exclusively by the reactor builder like GE. You can just buy Thorium and shovel it in. There is no lock-in to one supplier so the giant energy corporations have to class Thorium as bad to protect their duopolies. Big energy dwarfs big pharma for restrictive practices and when Thorium reaches a viable commercial energy source they will invest in it by buying up the people, sites and licences and still exploit their market dominance. China is the best bet for universally available cheap clean power in the future but look who the U.S. is trying to pick a fight with today. The Ukraine battleground for oil rights and China over Taiwan. Coincidence?
Homie China is literally as bad as they get. Genocide, complete state surveillance, social credit scores. China is horrible
I completely agree with your first statement, but y'all went just a little too tinfoil hat after that.
@@fantabuloussnuffaluffagus That's not really tinfoil at all, just a fact of where the governments priorities lie.
@@fantabuloussnuffaluffagus
It's not simply 'big energy' it's also the military industrial complex that's fueled by the petro dollar. When they can figure out a way to finance endless wars with Thorium it'll be adopted nationwide.
My parents were inundated with propaganda about Oak Ridge and how dangerous it was. They were told that an accident at the thorium test reactor would ignite the land and destroy all of humanity. of course at the time, coal didn't want to lose out to nuclear. Then came 5 mile island ... and then chernobyl ... and then Fukishima ... And in my lifetime my county is still coal powered. Economies of scale guaranteed that the price of energy could only stay on par and never cheapen.
Been hearing about thorium for like a decade I want them to do something with it already
Thorium can do anything except escape the laboratory. I've been hearing about flying cars and sex robots for years and want them to do something with that already
@@clarkkent9080 to be fair, we do not want flying cars. That is a fantasy idea that thankfully will not come true.
@@troybaxter Speak for yourself. I see you are not opposed to sex robots.
@Tj Semeniuk ahum. Femenists? They don’t like to see men happy :)
@@clarkkent9080 Sex robots have existed for several years at least with various personalities. I will tell no one of nor judge anyone about their deviation. After all, everyone has skeletons in their closets, why not a functional electric one?
Fantastic video! I’d also include Clean Core Thorium Energy. They developed a Thorium-based fuel (oxide pellet) that fits into CANDU/PHWR reactors - no modifications to existing reactors or the original design.
Imagine getting all the noted benefits of Thorium in less time/capital!
Thorium-232, which is the isotope that everyone _should_ be specifying, _is not fissile_ in the thermal neutron spectrum so _it’s not a fuel!_ Any thorium going into conventional reactors is being used as a breeding substrate in order to produce uranium-233 (which _is_ a fissile fuel). The transmutation of Th-232 into U-233 is _far_ from instant, taking weeks as multiple intermediary nuclides undergo decay processes. Therefore, it Th-232 cannot be used to sustain a chain reaction is these reactors.
People should stop buying into the hype they can’t comprehend. There’s nothing miraculous about thorium.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 You are correct. However research and effort should be increased on Thorium. It is the fuel that can power mankind for thousands of year. The potential for mankind is immense.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 I don't see why a slow start-up procedure cannot be developed that allows the U233 to be bred. A procedure can have a (small) supply of U233 injected into the process to speed up the startup for example. This is in fact a good thing because it is tedious to try and extract the U233 for military purposes, for which you need substantial amounts.
I believe that ORNL proved that it was not viable. 60 years ago and not one working Thorium MSR that produces power
@@clarkkent9080 It was all a ruse to push everything towards Uranium reactors because there was already so much money invested in that technology.
Tritium is regularly removed from Heavy Water at the Tritium Removal Facility at Darlington GS in Ontario, Canada.
Micrograms
LFTR MSR converts 90% current nuclear waste to usable fuel, it also creates more Pu-238 for RTG power units for space missions.
Thanks for showing both the pro's and con's. Too many others want to claim that thorium is ready now and never present the downside of this technology. I do hope these issues can be resolved.
when has the government gave a fuck about the down sides? You read history you seen all the fucked up shit they did.
"pros and cons" you mean.
In response I'd like to congratulate you on your imaginative use of apostrophes.
@@MisterHowzat Good catch!
@@IamGoen Thanks for being good natured about it ☺️
Not to mention the existing stockpile of thorium.
"The Defense National Stockpile Center (DNSC), a field level activity of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has stewardship of a stockpile of thorium nitrate that has been in storage for decades. The stockpile is made up of approximately 3.2 million kg (7 million lb) of thorium nitrate crystals (hydrate form) stored at two depot locations in the United States."
we should sell it to India and pay off our debt. WTF we using it for ?
@@Bewefau Right now it's not being used.. Thorium was/is a bi-product of other mining-operations so instead of just leaving it in the ground they collected it.
Thorium is not expensive either as it's quite common all over the world so will most likely stay quite cheap even after it starts being used in nuclear reactors. The main reason why it was stored instead of just disposed of was it's possible use as an alternative nuclear fuel.
The current US stockpile would be enough to power the US for a thousand years or so if new reactors where built. On top of that those new reactors could also be used to dispose of most of our existing spent nuclear-fuel so no more 100 thousand year storage.
@@patric3917 So the real reason for not using it is because its too efficient and would make less money.
I've been saying this for years. People are all nutting over fusion - but Thorium is so much more feasible. Only greed has prevented this from happening so far.
Correct me if Im wrong, but I recall in other videos the production of Tritium was viewed as a salable asset by most of the Thorium promoters today.
Not to mention that tritium is necessary for some proposed fusion reactor designs, and is quite rare!
Tritium is very valuable. It’s hard to make, hard to collect, and hard to store. Basically, it doesn’t want to exist.
Is true but h 3 has a half life of 12.5 years or something then its gone yunis
@@blankrofl The U.S. makes a significant amount of tritium at various reactors and it is the "H" in H-bomb. It is also made in every PWR or BWR
Tritium may be useful, but as a byproduct, it’s very difficult to refine. That’s why it’s giving Japan a big headache, most of the contaminants in the radioactive water stored in Fukushima are tritium because they are a pain to isolate.
Just FYI thorium can dissolve into seawater, so you don't really even need to mine it you can pull it right of the ocean.
also tritium is a valuable fuel component is some types of fusion reactors so there is a better use for it after, its not just waste
Not really, it forms insoluble oxide in seawater. Uranium however dissolves in sea water
Nice video. I would add one thing: Tritium is extremely precious. It's needed for Fusion reactor development and operation. A functioning Fusion reactor would produce it's own Tritium and more then it would use up, bu not much more. So this byproduct is actually great if you can contain it safely.
Every PWR and BWR in the world produces tritium and it is not precious
@@clarkkent9080 CANDO reactors can do it
Tritium is kind of a pain in the butt just like all hydrogen is. Not insurmountable but it costs money to extract and I'm not entirely sure, unless there's a considerable demand for it, that it's economically viable. Fusion uses Lithium to breed its own Tritium. It's in fact the Lithium and Beryllium which are the expensive consumables. Beryllium is relatively rare and Lithium is skyrocketing in price since most of its production is consumed by batteries.
@@clarkkent9080 yes it is heavy water [deuterium] is also needed for tritium fusion tritium and deuterium is extremely rare to come across naturally
@@shoeskode136 It is rare unless you want to make it or buy it.
Deuterium Oxide (heavy water) is NOT radioactive and is present in all water in small quantities. It can be extracted from "normal" water and every CANDU reactor uses thousands of gallons as reactor coolant. So it is not that difficult to obtain.
When Light water (H2O) reactor coolant absorbs a neutron, it forms heavy water (deuterium Oxide). Absorb another neutron and you have tritiated water. CANDU reactors skip that first step since they start with heavy water.
Passing a current through water results in disassociation into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas be it protium, deuterium, or tritium.
Lithium absorption of a neutron through a decay chain results in Tritium gas.
EVERY nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal contains Deuterium and Tritium. So, we have a lot and continue to make a lot.
Anyone can purchase heavy water (deuterium oxide) and Tritium gas is in many commercial items like exit signs and gun sights.
Great video! It's always interesting to learn about new alternative energy sources and the potential they hold. I appreciated the clear explanation of Thorium and its advantages over traditional energy sources. The examples provided were very helpful in understanding the potential applications of Thorium as an energy source. It's exciting to think about the possibilities that thorium could open up for sustainable and unlimited energy. I'll definitely be following your channel for more updates on thorium and other alternative energy sources.
There are many many many other channels regularly covering Th as a potential fuel. No need to just focus on this guy.
@@nowandrew4442 Sounded like a generated comment anyways.
Do the Thorium fan boys realize that Thorium is not fissile and will not fission. Thorium requires a 2 step process of transmutation into U233 in a URANIUM reactor and THEN expensive reprocessing the extract the U233.
Also follow the dozen or so companies and independent researchers and teams pursuing Thorium reactor design and implementation.
Videos, TED TALK, etc, by Kirk Sorensen are very informative. For years it seemed he was a voice crying in the wilderness when it came to Thorium & LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) technology.
BTW the Chinese have been working on Thorium reactor technology for quite some time, and the last I read, they were intent on implementing 10 or more Thorium reactors.
@@MG.50 YT videos and TED talks are not science but opinions. In most cases, people who have an opinion but no real experience or education in that area. Opinions are like @ssholes, everyone has one so yours is no more valid than mine.
Kirk Sorensen is a aerospace engineer and while he says he took classes in nuclear engineering he does not even have a nuclear engineering degree. His "company" Flibe has been trying to get taxpayer welfare for 12 years and he tried to sell his idea to Bill Gates when he started Terrapower. Gates turned him down flat and said his ideas had no engineering basis and were just that ideas. Kirk is a snake oil salesman looking for handouts.
China has built a DEMO TEST Thorium MSR reactor that produce no electrical power and is 1/4 the size of the one the U.S. built and tested in the 1960s. China has said they plant on running it for 5 years before they even begin to test the support systems.
We have all the Uranium that we need for hundreds of years of reactor operation and if fusion is proven, why stick with fission? Thorium requires expensive reprocessing and has been proven over and over to be more expensive that uranium based reactors.
Yt and TED talks are the only place you find any interest in the U.S.
Rest in peace Prof. Dr. Engin Arık. We are sorry for we didn't continue your work. 🇹🇷🇹🇷
This is clearly the best way, we don't even need fusion at this stage. We could have gone down this route already, hopefully we actually do soon. I don't see fusion being the solution for another 30 years.
Tritium is actually a very needed product and easily capturable, or maintened with baffled vents to compressors.
It’s just spicy hydrogen
It is very much needed for any fusion reactions, and those Chinese little glowing glass vials that are fun to buy and look at glow for 25 years.
Spicy Hydrogen is performing this week at the Kit Kat Club.
Hydrogen is a very expensive gas to produce in the first place, bog standard hydrogen, let alone deuterium and tritium.
This will be an unpopular opinion, but while a lot of people say the main reason we didn't keep pursuing thorium was because the government wanted to make nuclear bombs, there's another more important related issue. Thorium reactors require plutonium to produce power. Plutonium is made in uranium reactors. There are lots of people saying the ONLY reason thorium didn't become the main reactor type, given all of its positives, is because the government wanted plutonium for bombs. But nuclear power companies didn't want to invest research into reactors that would require the byproducts of their rivals. And governments figured if we had to build uranium plants first anyway and we can get power from uranium plants, why make it a 2 step process and build a uranium plant to feed a thorium plant to produce power.
Now we've had uranium reactors long enough that there is an abundant (enough) supply of "waste" plutonium to use for a thorium reactor. We didn't get thorium reactors in the 50s because you have to have uranium reactors first. He briefly touches on this in India's plan about 6 minutes in. The reason India can't just start making thorium reactors is because they need to create enough plutonium in modern breeder reactors first.
Where do people keep coming up with this BS that Thorium was abandoned and Uranium based PWR/BWR were chosen so we could make bombs?
Hanford Wa. has been making weapons material since 1944, 12 years before the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant became operational and their weapons production reactors are very efficient graphite moderated reactors and DO NOT produce any electrical power.
Savannah River site SC. Has been making weapons material since 1955 and their production reactors are very efficient low pressure heavy water moderated reactors and DO NOT produce electric power.
Weapons production reactors are NOTHING like U.S. commercial PWR or BWR power reactors and commercial power reactors have NEVER been used to produce Pu239 for weapons, since there has never been a need beyond what the efficient weapons production reactors could provide..
The U.S. currently has so much Pu239 that 34 tons of weapon grade Pu239 is being treated so it can eventually be disposed of at a cost of billions.
We see same thing with oil USA oil except in Texas is pink Texas dark and USA refiners are built to process dark oil we export most our clearer oil to refineries out of the USA so till recently helped our trade deficit. Now we need refineries to process pink oil but no we plan to go electric but how long will supply of natural gas last if we limit it? We going to need something
4m:36s: That's exactly what was at fault the first time around, they never further tried to manage such did they, whereas these others coming later which never conceived to utilise thorium just had to learn such that.. To manage the issue over a period. Now I'm not sure but already within five minutes of this I can see the biggest reason for everyone not taking further thorium is chances are because maybe the uranium or usual method we are today was actually a government or science requirement globally for enriched means of this material, or easier methods to produce more using less something else.
Happy to watch the rest, amazing so far :D
As an example within technology doing such now, if you've hit a big limit or need to widen a dataset but dont want everything public, you could use a service to build a set.. AI GPT would be one or perhaps batch data compiling like SETI@home compute, ToR and such same thing to advance a need but using others to expand on the base. (somewhat doing the further work for you)
Well.... that thorium 232 _actually_ neutron activates into protactinium and then decays into fisile uranium 233 over the course of a month or so.
Protactinium is a strange material, pretty easy to filter out of other materials, but it's hella radioactive.
Protactinium can be chemically separated from the salt solution. It's an easy process.
@@benthere8051 yes.... that's what Michael just said...
@Ben There yeah, it's really weird compared to uranium and plutonium, it washes right out. It's also Hella radioactive, so anyone who tries to walk off with a kilo or two of protactinium is going to glow like the Las Vegas strip.
Glad someone brought that up.
I ve studied the use of Thorium 232 as a potential power source and admit I haven't covered all info or understand all I did cover. It was apparent from the information I found that more was put into the feasibility of reprocessing Thorium in a breeder into Protactinium isotopes that decay into U233 and U232 isotopes for the potential in nuclear weapons than as a power generation source.
Priorities I guess. Difficulties weren't limited to Protactinium but also the Uranium 232 isotope which is also highly radioactive producing intense gamma rays but can be further reprocessed into U233. This is the isotope needed to fuel the reactor but also is in some ways a better fission material for bombs than U235 or Pu 239. Like I said , I don't understand everything but apparently the reprocessing of Plutonium in a reactor from U 238 ( sometimes referred to depleted U after the 235 isotope was refined out) was a more manageable way to go so bye bye Thorium. India has at least one reactor fueled with U233 from Thorium so it is possible and prolific unlike the future of our existence unless those Ole Priorities don't change. Wind and Solar won't do it Joe. Untill a controllable fusion reactor can be developed or if, Thorium is your only hope for green energy. Joe? He's asleep, oh well. Nobody's in charge.
Thank you. You’re within the 0.2% of comments that reveal adequate knowledge and cognitive prowess for the discussion of this topic.
I firmly believe this is the greenest/cleanest energy path within our reach, our failure to develop it is a depressing indictment of the energy debate as a whole.
It was not developed as it would not produce weapons grade material as waste, maybe its time is here but i still believe solar is the only way forward right now , well until they produce a car battery size reactor that produces enough energy to run a car for a few years.
@@andrewbrown3439 These “thorium reactors” literally breed fissile U-233 which can be - and has been - used in nuclear weapons. It’s best to comprehend some rudimentary physics before attempting to sift through the lies, half-truths, and truths, of thorium-related information.
Then just don’t use it to make weapons.
That's the problem, thorium reactors aren't capable of producing plutonium which is why they weren't developed originally. Now they're still ignored primarily for two reasons: because every time the word 'nuclear' is mentioned it sends a section of the voting public rabid; and it would kill both the established fossil fuel energy interests and the burgeoning renewable energy interests. There's not the political will to overcome these obstacles at present, not in the west anyway.
Actually the greenest and the cleanest energy source will always be nuclear fusion. Nothing is comparable to that. Not even nuclear fission
There was a thorium/U233 reactor used as the final core in the Shippingport PA commercial reactor called Light Water Breeder Reactor (LWBR). It was designed to be a nearly 1:1 swap replacement in a conventional uranium reactor designed to operate without the need for Heavy Water and would breed U233 to sustain a perpetuating fuel cycle. It worked, exceeded design specifications, but it was too expensive to be used commercially. It was the last core to be used at Shippingport and it was a joint venture between the Navy, who was very concerned about the access to Uranium, and Westinghouse who was a major contributor to the naval nuclear propulsion program. It was one of Rickover's dreams.
In order to conserve every neutron possible, it had NO neutron absorbing control rods. To go critical, it inserted fuel assemblies into the core from above and to shutdown, fuel assemblies were pulled out of the core against gravity. Certainly not a fail safe design and a design that could not be used today. I worked there during the install of that last core
Can you do a video on Japan's breakthroughs with helium cooled reactors? I think they play a large part in convincing the general public that our industry is safe
You must be the guy that inverted a car engine that runs on water
Yes it is absolutely critical to get water out of the nuclear equation because as you know water mutes directly to plasma state and explodes this is why the spider arm reactor design uses no water at all or any other coolant liquid because pipes leak and degrade
Thank you for a balanced report showing both the pros and cons of each technology.
Where do people keep coming up with this BS that Thorium was abandoned and Uranium based PWR/BWR were chosen so we could make bombs?
Hanford Wa. has been making weapons material, at their 9 reactors, since 1944, 12 years before the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant became operational and their weapons production reactors are very efficient graphite moderated reactors and DO NOT produce any electrical power.
Savannah River site SC. Has been making weapons material since 1955 and their 5 production reactors are very efficient low pressure heavy water moderated reactors and DO NOT produce electric power.
Thorium was tried at Shippingport and Indian Point commercial reactors in the 1970s and abandoned as too costly compared to Uranium.
Weapons production reactors are NOTHING like U.S. commercial PWR or BWR power reactors and commercial power reactors have NEVER been used to produce Pu239 for weapons, since there has never been a need beyond what the efficient weapons production reactors could provide..
The U.S. currently has so much Pu239 that 34 tons of weapon grade Pu239 is being treated so it can eventually be disposed of at a cost of billions.
Your comment is like saying automobiles use gas engine because the military wanted jet fighters. God help us that people base their knowledge on social media and YT videos.
How about $34 billion and 16 years to build the Vogtle units. New nuclear is not even in the running when compared to any generation method.
There's Terrestrial Energy's IMSR design. Not a Thorium burner but a liquid Uranium burner. The hard part for any new design is the licensing process. They seem to be making the best headway. Due to the corrosion issue you mentioned, they decided to build their reactor around a seven year lifespan. They do not use Hastalloy for the piping, just nuclear grade stainless steel. This also may address the buildup of fission products being deposited in unwanted areas of the piping. Sounds odd to me, especially when decommissioning but I hope it works. If interested, the best idea for new fission is the solid Uranium/TRISO fueled pebble bed reactor. I think it's called KP-FHR. Licensing is progressing fast.
Good video but a couple things.
On cracking. The issue was pretty much solved. From a paper by Jack Devanney in response to a critique of the MSRE….“After the MSRE was over, Oak Ridge discovered they could pretty much eliminate this cracking and the embrittlement by controlling the redox level in the salt.”
“One way of controlling the redox level is by feeding beryllium wire into the salt. The beryllium soaks up fluorine atoms released by the fission process, and maintains the salt in a reducing condition via a UF3/UF4 buffer.”
On the tritium issue. Gotta say that this issue is pretty overhyped since mitigation is pretty well handled and the danger from Tritium is misunderstood and basically not really much of a danger, and pretty much every reactor makes it including fusion concepts which actually consider it a “feature not a bug” soooooo…..
Kinda think the excuses against Thorium should be put to rest and it should be pursued.
One idea that could make the tritium issue less of a problem is to avoid using steam to drive your generator turbo machinery. Critical carbon dioxide could be used as a working fluid to avoid tritated water being produced. This would also make your turbo machinery much smaller.
@@dkd1228
Actually the Tritium still gets in there cause it penetrates metals and machinery like crazy. Using super critical CO2 would still have the advantage in this regard because you would know that any hydrogen present in the working fluid has to be tritium which allows easy collecting instead of trying to separate hydrogen from hydrogen in a steam working fluid.
Also CO2 is more efficient and it’s supercritical physics allow the extreme compact turbo machinery. Your point kinda still stands tho. Just semantics here.
@@dkd1228, the Tritium is produced directly in the fuel salt, not the secondary coolant (steam generators/water), so switching to SC C02 secondary would have little effect on Tritium production.
More people must see this. We can't solve the problem of carbon dependency from anywhere but the source, the coal plants themselves.
Just the title was enough to make me happy, I literally educate people on this almost daily.
Yes! Thorium revolution!
Nice overview in a really well made video! I'm following the development since about 2016, but it's rather slow, probably because of the constricting regulations around nuclear energy worldwide.
What about the 16 years to build a new nuclear plant???? How much does it produce during that time?
Oppenheimer was blatantly wrong when he said Thorium could power civilization for thousands of years. The correct estimate is MILLIONS of years.
Thanks for a balanced review of where we are with Thorium, it has great potential, and great problems.
They solved the problems in the '60s.
I think the major problems of the corrosive nature of molten salts may have been solved. I say this because Thorcon is going to open a plant in Indonesia and China has a plant online.
@@williamhensley8698 Thanks. It has such great potential, been a long time in development.
you must have invented the car engine that runs on water
I love the throwaway lines at the end. The pipes still crack and even small spills of liquid fuel are extremely difficult to clean up. But other than that..,.
Very cool. I found out about this about 10 years ago when the YT algorithm recommended a documentary on it. I agree with some comments that we didn't use it because it didn't have military applications. Thank you.
Where do people keep coming up with this BS that Thorium was abandoned and Uranium based PWR/BWR were chosen so we could make bombs?
Hanford Wa. has been making weapons material, at their 9 reactors, since 1944, 12 years before the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant became operational and their weapons production reactors are very efficient graphite moderated reactors and DO NOT produce any electrical power.
Savannah River site SC. Has been making weapons material since 1955 and their 5 production reactors are very efficient low pressure heavy water moderated reactors and DO NOT produce electric power.
Thorium was tried at Shippingport and Indian Point commercial reactors in the 1970s and abandoned as too costly compared to Uranium.
Weapons production reactors are NOTHING like U.S. commercial PWR or BWR power reactors and commercial power reactors have NEVER been used to produce Pu239 for weapons, since there has never been a need beyond what the efficient weapons production reactors could provide..
The U.S. currently literally has hundreds of TONS of Pu239 (takes less than 20 pounds per weapon). The U.S. has so much that 34 tons of weapon grade Pu239 is being treated so it can eventually be disposed of at a cost of billions.
Your comment is like saying automobiles use gas engine because the military wanted jet fighters. God help us that people base their knowledge on social media and YT videos.
Dead wrong. It was a myth and it is not true. Military wants to make nuclear bombs and they make bombs. They have the material, the technology and the uranium concentration facility. Their bomb making is independent with the electricity generation nuclear industry. They are separate. US is a nuclear owning country and they do not need to hide their bomb making with electricity generation.
Very nice presentation informative and direct. Thanks very much Atomic Blender ppl.
✌😎
I thought you gave a really good, fair and well informed overview of the subject although the title was a little click-baity.
The only thing I took a little issue with was the tritium, it's really more of nuisance than an actual problem. There are 7 PBq of tritium produced naturally in the atmosphere by cosmic rays every year, it's very weakly radioactive, has a relative short half life and unlike for example C-14 it doesn't concentrate up the food chain. The only way one could consider tritium every remotely dangerous is by using the LNT hypothesis and some really dishonest scare mongering tactics.
And yes, thorium will be great at some time in the future, but we are decades away from even a prototype of a commercially viable thorium reactor.
Meanwhile we have the perfectly fine uranium fuel cycle and the current designs of gen III/III+ reactors that just waits to be built and deployed.
Indeed, there’s no great benefit of breeding U-233 over use of U-235/Pu-239. What we need to be doing is using the current fuels in reactors that are walk-away safe, so low pressure liquid (or somewhat liquid) fuel/coolant designs. Also, nuclear energy needs to removed from corporate influence entirely. Nuclear power “for profit” is simply far too risky.
*India is building SIX commercial sized Thorium reactors AS WE SPEAK!*
No they are NOT
I wonder if they considered a different material for the piping like ceramic used in a smelting crucible. Although I guess porosity could be a concern
No, they didn't take that into account, because it would have made the narrative fall apart yet again. And then what?
Thorium used to be used in television picture tubes ages ago. Remember those brightly glowing fuel fired camping lanterns? The wicks contained thorium so they would glow brightly.
Thorium was used as an electron emitter in the gun of the crt. Also favorable blackbody radiation spectrum.
Thorium was used as a floor wax and a dessert topping
VERY underrated channel. I love your content!
Glad you enjoy it!
@@atomicblender thorium reactors were shut down in the 50,s. by the military, cos they didnt produce weapons grade material.. how about you tell the truth..
if we have fusion why would we need Thorium? Just asking?
There's also an enormous amount of Thorium on the Moon which might solve quite a lot of issues for human permanent presence
You’ve got to get enough fissile material up there to sustain a chain reaction in a reactor first. Thorium isn’t a fissile fuel, it has to be transmuted into uranium first, which requires decent neutron flux. Also, the most significant problems with human habitation of the moon are not associated with a lack of energy.
An excellent exposition, thank you. One thing you apparently glossed over that makes a HUGE difference in cost of fuel- Thorium has only ONE stable isotope, so no enrichment is needed, unlike Uranium, which requires thousands of centrifuges operating for a long time to extract the U-235 from the much larger amount of U-238 (also, no need to use Flourine to make Uranium Hexafloride for the centrifuges).
Did you forget that Thorium is not fissile and will not fission while U235 does very easily.
So you need a uranium or plutonium reactor and you steal some of the neutrons that could result in fission and power production and instead absorb them in thorium which will then transmute into U233 which then must be extracted from the fuel using a very very expensive reprocessing facility,
@@clarkkent9080 I did not forget that. Take another look at the video- you can get four times the energy with Thorium.
@@Kpar512 Thorium does not fission and does not produce ANY energy. There is essentially no difference between U233 and U235 fission energy. WTF are you trying to say
@@clarkkent9080 Did you watch the video?
@@Kpar512 Yes I did and no where does he say thorium produces more power than uranium. In fact Thorium produces NO power. In fact, neutrons that could be used to fission uranium are absorbed in Thorium meaning it is less efficient.
I think you are confusing the fuel usage comment which is very misleading.
Regarding TMSR-LF1, you say it started up in late 2022, but I haven't been able to find any confirmation of that. Several articles about it having been cleared to start, yes, but nothing else. Any info on that?
Isn't the tritium byproduct a critical material for advanced technology...and certain fusion production methods (not to mention illuminated elements for guns, watches, cameras)?
and if you capure it and wait for a while you get He3, which might become usefull.
Yes, however it is very difficult to capture tritium.
@@TheTaXoro in the original experiment they planed to capture it as HF, i would prefer store it as H2O, sure you will get H and D too and sure it's kinda hard to capture in gaseous form.
@@TheTaXoro T2(g) + F2(g) ought to produce 2 TF quite easy.
Thorium also generates a lot less energy.
Additionally molten salt reactors have a major fatal flaw. Liquid sodium which is used for the primary coolant loop cannot have any direct contact with the secondary loop which uses water. Sodium reacts violently witg water, meaning you need a large complicated heat exchanger to allow the primary loop to transfer its heat off
We have to look at fuel cost and waste disposal
@@jmanke6057 waste disposal isn't really that big of an issue, but fuel cost definitely is
Tritium is hugely valuable, you'd think they would find a way to contain and collect it and then producing tritium as a byproduct would be a good thing.
The half life is 12 years. Even if some of it got into the environment, unlike heavy metals from coal plants which last forever, this stuff would be gone in 60 years, one lifetime.
@@daniellarson3068 It probably leaks out of anything too, like hydrogen.
@@jamesvandamme7786 And where does hydrogen go,.........up, up and away. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
@@daniellarson3068 Not a good thing if you actually want to store it and use it sometime
@@jamesvandamme7786 Yes - You'll just have to make more.
Converting thorium to protactinium is a really difficult task and the energy of the nucleus and the problem of using thorium as fuel is the same.
I hope Rusatom and China work together for this one.
Poor countries need this shit desperately and we're already at a "tipping point" when it comes to a fullscale collapse of the antartic ice cap melting crisis.
@@N1c0T1n3__
The solution is to build a tokamak and go for nuclear fusion energy.
@@mahdi_kheibari Yeah, if only there was a single reactor out there which managed to actually convert the energy into electricity.
Nice video. It sounds to be more of a sideways step than a forward one. Yes reducing nuclear waste and bringing energy prices per MWH down is a great step forward, but we shouldn’t be discarding or slowing the impetus around fusion which has the potential to be an infinite renewable energy source.
But yes, considering we shouldn’t expect anything from Fusion commercially for the next 20-30 years, anything nuclear that improves upon existing waste production and affordability should definitely be pursued. At least in the meantime.
Fusion will not happen without a revolutionary discovery or invention. Despite the hyperbole, we are no closer than we were 30 years ago. It's time to move on from that costly experiment, and also wind and solar FTM.
I hadn't heard of thorium reactors. Good video, I like your style of presentation! :)
Glad you enjoyed!
You haden't hear of them because no one in the U.S. is even remotely interested in Thorium.
No such thing as a throrium reactor.. Throium is the fuel used. You dont call the ither reactirs uranium reactors do you.
Now if we could figure out how to make a pump for 600°C molten salts this idea would actually be useful. And don't forget to build the chemical company next door to the reactor to manage the waste.
Talk to Copenhagen Atomics who are making these pimps in a joint project with Toledo. The pumps can be designed to be online exchanged after years of use and thereby extend the life of the overall unit.
@@rtzx12570 60 years later and still working on it. I understand perfectly. I'm all for thorium. The institution of physics is a farce. Take solar energy for example. 5 square meters gathers more than enough calories to power a human life in a comfortable way. And so where are the solar panels. Let's call Copenhagen and find out.
@@rtzx12570 All I did was write a logical response to your comment and TH-cam deleted me. That should tell you all you need to know who is behind the slow progress of thorium and it's incredible potential.
Recently a new company was founded to develop Thorium reactors in the Netherlands called Thorizon. It's still in its startup phase.
Hmm now... why would ALL thorium reactor companies be stuck in startup phase I wonder
@@rippedlimbo7884 lack of money? China invested 500 million USD and claims to have solved most of the technical problems, enough to build 2 test reactors in the Gobi desert. I'm guessing most Western startups have much less money. Thorizon says it collected 25 million Euros to start. Is that enough? Probably not.
@@petersteenkamp this is a dead end
Why isn't thorium being discussed as an alternative?
It would seem to be the perfect adjunct to wind and solar.
Because environmental lobbyist want to push Wind and Solar instead of Nuclear and Hydro. It’s a tough uphill battle for nuclear right now.
Probably because most politicians are too busy lining their own pockets to take the time to do something that would actually help the rest of humankind.
Coudl it be that the powers that be did not want humanity to have such a beatiful technology?
It’s actually too efficient to maximize profits for all parties involved in nuclear power.
Because Thorium is no alternative. Thorium was a fluke of the Nuclear Industry and still is. Thorium is breeded inside a reactor into Uranium, and than we get the same problems as with any Uranium reactor.Used up thorium containing U233 is very nasty to handle.
The cost of renewables have time and time again shown degradation of energy production levels, downtime, maintenance and replacement costs always making them more expensive to run and sustain. Renewable will never entirely power a modern civilization.
And you think new nuclear is cheap???? Really???
TY for this video, I've been a fan of the concept of molten salt/thorium reactors, and to hear the shortcomings is very informative. 🙂
Do you believe anything someone says when they only provide pros but no cons. When I see that in any discussion, it is a red flag of distrust
@@clarkkent9080 I watched the documentary on it, which tends to be one sided. No I do not believe anything someone says.
Do you randomly go on the internet and ask ridiculous questions because I did not bother to write down my entire experience and knowledge of a subject before commenting a thank you for more information?
When I see people ask questions like yours it is a red flag of superiority complex.
@@erich6860 I was agreeing with you. My question was for the many that do not question one sided presentations. Chill dude...someone is on their period
@@clarkkent9080 "Do you believe anything someone says when they only provide pros but no cons."
Perhaps you might want to change how you put that sentence, because in no way can this be construed as an agreement.
@@erich6860 You may want to rephrase your response because I have no idea what you mean.
Great video, well worded and informative.
The cost of solar and wind does not include the cost of intermittency
I already knew about throrium 10 years ago. China had a team of hundreds of Phds looking into it. Then things went awfully silent.
U know we have a thorium nuclear power plant in China up and running right?
@@Red.Star.Over.China. probably performing below expectations or we'd hear more about it. But please by all means, prove me wrong
Interesting video. I feel like you explained it well from multiple perspectives. Not that I really understand any of it, its interesting none the less. :)
What provisions are made to deal with the reduced waste? Waste is the no 1 cause for fossil fuel use in power generation. Until this is dealt with the renewed interest will be stopped in its tracks. There is an underground nuclear fire caused by disposal of Uranium tailings. It is in a city.
The problem with Thorium is that it can easily be used by anyone to create a nuclear reaction. In case you haven't noticed, they have quietly been removing public access to Thorium.
At most, they can make a dirty bomb with it. Thorium does not have the ompf to create the thermal nuclear explosion because it simply doesn't have enough energy.
In addition to that. It is not nearly as radioactive as uranium is. Thorium is still toxic just like any other heavy metals like lead. In addition it will bind with your cells and slowly irradiate the victim.
As for easy creation of a nuclear reaction, I can do that right now with skin of bananas witch contain cesium, Americium from smoke alarms also works great and many more! 😇
The point I'm making is: Everything can become "dangerous". You are in danger right now and nothing you do will prevent you from dying as some point. It could be half a second from you read this, maybe lots of years... Who knows. 🤷♂️
@@powerupminion Thorium can easily act as a neutron donor creating a fission reaction. It can be used to easily create a breeder reactor which can irradiate a large area. The Atomic Boyscout, as the media called him, made such a reactor. ( May he rest in peace. ) You can also use it to refine Uranium into fisile material.
@@JR-kk6ce Why are people so quick to double down on a topic they are clearly not knowledgeable in, i don't get it... 🤦♂️
> The material properties of thorium doesn't support necessary features to make a themo-nuclear explosion. When it gets over 400°C hot it losses radiation intensity fast.
> The radiation output does not have the intensity to create a violent chain reaction. That is why it is considered safer than uranium. It can still produce neutrons yes, but it has to be kept going, contrary to uranium witch can go on its own.
> Thorium does not have the energy to make any element that can work in a nuclear weapon. I just checked. 😉
> You could make a dirty bomb with it yes, but that can also be done with any other element. This is not a qualifying trait.
> I just literally did the math myself. I suggest you stay within your own field of education, because a physicist you clearly are not. 🤓
@@powerupminion no, you are the one who is applying your flawed reasoning onto me. I never said Thorium could be used for a nuclear explosion. That's you jumping to conclusions in order to feed your your flawed circular reasoning. I could take the time to explain to you, step by step, on how to use Thorium to create a breeder reactor the size of a 16oz soda can that can erriadiate a 10 block square area. However, I won't for obvious reasons..
It was the salt itself that attacked the Hastelloy (chloride stress cracking corrosion). Shippingport was converted to run on thorium and did for several years before being shut down by an anti-nuke administration and cleared to greenfield condition.
I worked at Shippingport in the 70s and you are incorrect
Thorium reactors are being constructed in China🇨🇳, India🇮🇳, and other countries.
I think you might be slightly misled by tritium. It’s a form of hydrogen. Additionally, you can mention it’s used in nuclear fusion is that’s going to be one of the rate limiting factors involved in the sustained function of nuclear fusion.
Unless we can mine helium-3 from the moon's regolith... fusing with deuterium, and is an even better solution as all fuels are stable isotopes.
Yes but it's still dangerous if let be released into the atmosphere. Tritium can be very valuable IF you capture it.
Other than a Thorium research reactor or two I never understood why this never went into production. Did you know in the 60's Porter Chemcraft used to put Thorium in their products with a simple viewer to see collisions of Alpha particles?
maybe just maybe it is not better than Uranium?
@@clarkkent9080 Don't think so. More money in Uranium reactors and post life cleanup.
@@Aethelwolf 2 things. Corrosion. And tritium being very hard to contain. And thrium being much harder to fision that uranium
I just watched a video on fusion & the cost/complexity/difficulty in getting a viable fusion reaction is sadenning. This shows much more promise, with existing technology & much better outcomes right now. I can't see a world with just wind & solar.
I'd read that they can't make the same "quality" of bombs as easily with Thorium that they can with other nuclear weapons grade types such as Uranium and Plutonium. (True ?)
Well, thorium can’t be used to make nuclear weapons _at all!_ The uranium-233 that’s bred from it can most certainly be used for such weapons. Uranium-233 can contain impurities that make handling it hazardous, but when has nuclear weapons production ever been halted due the various radiation hazards involved? Technically it could be purified (enriched) or obtained by a special process to make it as safe as any other fissionable core for warheads.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 hence why its back of the line in the development and propagation avenue.
Irradiated Thorium is more dangerously radioactive in the short term. The Th-U cycle invariably produces some U-232, which decays to Tl-208, which has a 2.6 MeV gamma ray decay mode. Bi-212 also causes problems. These gamma rays are very hard to shield, requiring more expensive spent fuel handling and/or reprocessing.
01:00 how you g'on go over the best explanation of uranium vs thorium fission that fast dawg? Had to bring it back six times to catch the words my man. You a real one for this video though. Much love, pause.
Thanks, I know it's fast. This was one of my early videos and I clearly still needed to work on my pacing. Always room to improve
@@atomicblender incredible answer. It indicates you are self impoving
The problem is that if we were to switch to Thorium for supplying our energy needs, then those in the fossil fuel industry aren't going to be very happy about that, since their source of income will disappear.
Wrong nuclear is still more expensive.
What a stupid comment. Uranium reactors and renewables are all over the place, so why do you imagine this bogeyman magically only shuts down thorium reactors? There are many countries with huge usage of uranium reactors and ZERO domestic oil resources, and they're not doing thorium either. You're such an unpleasant human.
There's also a prototype thorium-powered car where eight grams of thorium would be enough to power the vehicle for its entire life.
unless you crashed it and blew up your neighborhood
The biggest advantage to Thorium is the cost saving for the fuel its self. It cost more for enriched Uranium per gram then gold. Lets that sink it. When you also consider the aging US nuclear power plants. It makes since to start replace or upgrade them in some cases to the safter LFTR design.
I remember how excited I was when I first heard about this in college 40 years until I found out the path they took on development. Molten salt reactors work better with fissile materials and we still don't have them because they are much messier than you think. Sooner or later you either have a molten salt leak which is a royal mess, or you get the right alpha emmiter mixed with the right fluoride and you get loads of gamma from sodium-22 and heaps of neutrons that you don't know what to do with.
Recover fission products from molten salt is not going to be any neater than recovering them in a traditional fuel recycling process. Research West Valley New York fuel recycling, the B, U and S plants at Hanford and the British Thorpe process to see how that goes.. Thorium itself has a 1 billion year half life and it will always be in the waste.. 900 year-old spent uranium fuel is no more dangerous than spent thorium salts wastes, possibly safer if you get the alpha neutron reaction going in the thorium waste.
There is no isotope of Th with a 1 billion year half life, it's 14 billion years for Th 232
@@manw3bttcks my bad I was thinking of potassium 40, which isn't exactly a billion either. I never had to know that naturally occurring isotope half lives beyond Radon.
Yes , unlimited energy for unlimited population with unlimited geological resources .......till unlimited apocalypse
You figure its time to flip your switch to "off"
@@redpilltattoo Not necessarily, a pause button could help
In backround has Thorium lamp.....
I have been telling everyone I know about LFTR's for the last 3 years. Keep promoting this as much as possible! Thanks for reviving this wonderful idea.
Imagine if there was a push the size of Manhattan Project to develop viable Thorium reactors
Lots of imagination with 0 knowhow all over da f place
There WAS. The push was in China, led by some nuclear scientist member of Xis family, I think... And 2 months ago, the Chinese got an operating for a 3 megawatt plant in western China. And they plan on building 250 new power plants by 2050. How many of those will be LFTRs I don't know.
I know nearly nothing about today's efforts to use Thorium in a reactor but I spent most of the 1970s, as an engineer fresh out of college, working on a reactor design that used Thorium but not as a fuel. Thorium itself does not fission. As the narrator said early in the presentation it must first be converted to Uranium (U233 to be precise) and it requires the presence of a fissile material to fission before it can become a fuel. This presents some situations not thoroughly addressed in the video.
The first issue is that a highly enriched form of Uranium must be present at all times in the reactor because the Thorium interferes with the chain reaction. "Highly enriched" is synonymous with "weapons grade". It can be used to make a bomb and is easily chemically separated from the Thorium. This Uranium must also be handled outside of the reactor on an ongoing basis unless an elaborate fuel cleaning system is incorporated into the highly radioactive sections of the plant.
The presence of the Thorium in the reaction means that some of the reaction energy is no longer available to produce steam, instead it is absorbed by the Thorium meaning the the production of the fission waste products is increased as a cost of converting the Thorium to Uranium. There are many waste products and they must be removed from the reactor as they, too, interfere with the reaction. These fission products are the nuclear waste that upsets so many people about nuclear fission. They essentially last forever and are very, very dangerous.
Using salt as a liquid transport mechanism, as I see often mentioned as the latest technology, adds problems that are seldom mentioned as the reactors are hyped in the media. I think that the narrator made a mistake in saying that the Hastaloy alloy suffered cracks caused by the radiation products. As I recall from years ago, the salt itself is the problem. Radiation causes embrittlement of Hastaloy, the salt causes the cracks by chemically reacting with the metal. It's the combination that is a problem. The salt is solid at room temperature which means that an elaborate heating system is needed to start up the reactor and makes any maintenance or repair a nightmare.
I left the industry 40 years ago because I saw that nuclear energy technolgy had many problems that no one was seriously addressing. All of the enthusiasm was in the fun stuff (typical engineers). The people relegated to solving the really scary issues like waste management, runaway meltdowns and proliferation didn't seem to be the brightest bulbs on the tree. I see nothing today to convince me that that situation is changed. As major problems arise new methods whose problems aren't understood become the next bright idea.
Not 1,000 years, China said 20,000 years and is building 450 thorium reactor power stations in Gobi desert.
China built ONE demo test reactor....that is all
Very infomative. 👍 Does your statement about thorium possibly providing energy for “thousands of years” also include the exponential growth of energy consumption?
last time i remember, 1000 years does not equal infinity years.
Thousand years with very few amount
Molten salt cools if it leaks from a reactor. It becomes solid and contains the fuel for easier clean up.
Most cost estimates for renewables don't include the downtime compensation. The plant must must be overbuilt to provide surplus for charging batteries or other energy storage technology for use when the sun doesn't shine, wind doesn't blow, inclement weather or other non optimal occasions. The renewable power is a part time worker. Virtually all renewable power sources are land use intensive. Low cost renewables are more of an accounting trick. A wind farm may be good for 20 years and then there is the decommissioning costs. Wind farms are very difficult to recycle. What do you do with old solar panels?
"and yet today it's nowhere to be seen"
Because
1. Cost.
2. Corrosive materials, more cost or short lifespan.
3. Cost.
4. There are no finalised prototypes that deal with corrosion for the long term.
5. Cost.
6. Reusing fuel is very very expensive.
ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY. Someone or some group, has been able to make millions off of the horrific uranium. That's why. Of course, the tech issues on cracking of the piping is a major problem as well as the tritium. So, the drive to overcome these must be present before meaningful progress can occur. Profit and fear are the two most powerful motivations I know of.
video is interesting and comment section is more interesting, thanks to everyone for their inputs..
I'm of the thought that even 'baseline' power - such as nuclear - benefits tremendously from the battery tech developments in alternative energy storage.
(Such as gravity batteries or heat batteries, etc.)
The reason for this is that we never really use 'base electricity' in a constant pattern.
The use of nuclear as an alt. energy 'range extender' is also dependent on it being an always available trickle-buffer to the grid.