The first 500 people to use this link and code ARVIN30 will get 30% off their first subscription with Soylent: bit.ly/3S3KnYB Many thanks to Soylent for sponsoring this video. Support us by clicking the link above,. Quick story about their name: Soylent was actually named after the food in the 1966 science fiction novel "Make Room! Make Room!" and later 1973 film Soylent Green. While the food in the book is made from soy and lentils (hence the name), the food in the movie is made from humans. Soylent actually in 2022 (the year the film takes place), released a SoylentGreen snack bar in a mystery flavor as a humorous nod to the film.
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@@SpotterVideo Good question. I'm not sure that it would work in the extreme chemical and temperature conditions, or whether there is sufficient electrolytic conditions for it to work. It's a good question for Copenhagen Atomics. You might ask them on one of their videos. The link to their YT page is in the description.
First: As a nuclear power plant engineer who is very interested in new nuclear power plants I would like to complement you on being I believe the 1st TH-camr to talk about the very real corrosion issue with MSR's. People often wonder why there was never a 2nd MSR test reactor after Oak Ridge. It was because there was no known super-alloy of the day that could withstand the corrosive effects of the daughter products and chemicals generated by their reactions in the mixed molten salt stream that occurred at the Oak Ridge test MSR. The good news is that a number of countries have been doing research into new "exotic" super-alloys that should better withstand the corrosion (to the best of my knowledge - no one has found an "immune" super-alloy at this time). Also, that the concept of chemical separation of the problem daughter products and resultant chemicals has been developed and limited testing of the concept has been done without actually using real MSR molten salts and daughter/chemical byproducts. So the theory is that if you use a much better super-alloy than what was used in Oak Ridge and can filter enough of the daughter products and chemical reactants that you can minimize the corrosion rate to one that would allow construction of a 40+ year operating life reactor and molten salt stream piping and equipment. As you pointed out this is only a theory and has not yet been adequately demonstrated. China built and started up a 2 MWthermal test reactor in I believe August 2023 to test their best guess of the right exotic super-alloy and an adequate filtering system. This test reactor is about 1/4 the size of the 1960's Oak Ridge Reactor. If it works (which is an unknown and failure is a real possibility) they plan on building another test reactor 10-15 size larger to see how it scales up. If that works then a small power plant (likely in the 40 - 60 MWe range). Then if that works they can design a power plant likely in the 200-400 MWe range. Etc. Each step is likely to require a minimum of 5 years of successful run time before finalizing the next larger size plant design and starting construction. Reliable MSR power plants are likely several decades away. Note that the history of nuclear plant development worldwide shows that scaling up from test or small reactors often does not go very well. Lots of plants the next size larger did not work well - or needed major modifications. No one at this point knows enough about the performance of any fuel in a MSR to do anything but take a very large gamble on building a power plant sized reactor (and we know that well as the USA built 4 commercial thorium fueled nuclear power plants in the 1960's - 1970's and all 4 were both a technical and a commercial economic failure: I will post separately on that history). Second: Liquid salts are not the only material that expand and self control a nuclear reacton in a reactor. Light water BWR's and PWR's do the same (I'm not sure of heavy water reactor designs); and in the case of PWRs (which I have worked extensively in) once the reactor is in the power range they pull out the control rods more and just let the water temperature self moderate the reaction rate. So nothing new here. Third: I hate to pop your bubble about Copenhagen Atomics, and about 15 other such companies in both the MSR and SMR market. I consider them an investment scam company (they exist to get investor money to fund jobs for a decade or more). They are not serious at all about building a real nuclear reactor and their designs and timetable are laughable to anyone with real experience in the nuclear industry. They don't even have a clue on which super-alloy will be needed to make the concept work yet (ordinary 304 SS is corrosion resistant to the pure lithium salt with unreacted nuclear fuel in it - the problems start once the nuclear reaction starts). Companies that are serious are working with a nuclear regulator for eventual licensing of the reactor. This typically takes several years and multi-millions of dollars in a "pre-License" review process (and all western nations have such a process or will tell you to use a design licensed by other western countries). The best example right now is I suggest that you look up the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission website, page down to "New Reactor Facility Projects" link, then use the link under "Current pre-licensing vendor design reviews" heading not quite half way down the page. There are two links near the top of the page for "Current" and "Completed" and a list of project at the bottom of the page. When this process is completed the vendor knows what will be needed in a license application for a reactor design. It typically takes several years to review a license application once submitted if it has all the required information and the regulator agrees things are properly designed and proper procedures and staffing will exist. The mass production possibility is a myth. Airbus and Boeing build over 100 of the same model airplane each year, and they are largely hand assembled. Yes a number of parts are mass produced; but its cost prohibitive at that production rate to build a plant that could automate the assembly much more than it is currently. You would likely need to have orders on the order of 250 near identical MSR plants per year for at least 5 years to justify building a plant for mass production (and that plant will take years to build). Just not happening - no one needs that many new power plants (even at 50 MWe each) for that amount of time. Also, nuclear plant is highly site specific due to earthquake and natural disaster requirements. One location may need very light reinforcement and provisions for a natural disaster. The next site may need 10 times as much. The sites with low risk do not want to pay for 10 times the reinforcement materials. Building nuclear plants requires a assembly of lots of parts; and having it in an appropriate safety structure. Also, nuclear construction codes exist due to lives lost and major nuclear plant issues. No short-cutting those and only about the top 25% of workers adjust to working like that (it's a completely different approach than normal construction). They also want to be paid for their expertise. This myth also assumes that your design is well proven. It took the light water PWR about 50 years of operating history and lots of failures along the way to know how to build a well proven design (the current AP-1000). It will likely take a similar amount of time and failures to get MSR reactor plants that are really well proven after the designs are proven in test reactors. Who is going to buy more than a few units until the design is shown to work well for decades? Low production numbers means no special factory and highly skilled and paid workers custom building most everything. Have a great day,
Thank you for this reality check. I had already suspected Copenhagen Atomics of being an investor-trap, and feel validated that somebody with more knowledge of the industry would say so as well. Does this go for all the highly profiled actors in the thorium space, like Flibe Energy, Thorcon, and so on?
Thanks a comprehensive reply from someone with his feet on the ground. One other point. commercial nuclear power came about on the back of the atomic bomb projects. Thorium has yet to find such a sponsor.
That's easily the most excellent comment I've ever seen on TH-cam! Better than anything I could've written. As of late, the TH-cam science and engineering community seems to have discovered nuclear power as a topic of interest. Obviously, MSRs and SMRs are the new thing that everybody seems to agree will make nuclear power generation rise to glory again and be the ultimate solution to decarbonization. I myself was getting tired of always pointing out the obvious problems with that. Your write-up gave me new energy, and I might quote you on occasion, If I may. Thanks for taking the time to share your reasoning.
@@haldir108 What separates the scammers from the potential real companies is how they talk about licensing and nuclear construction codes. Many of the scam companies talk about starting in 3rd world countries where they don't believe there will be any nuclear licensing and construction review. I'm sure that they can bribe some country leaders - and equally sure that they will leave a radioactive mess for that country to clean up when their commercialization plans don't work out. This past summer I looked and did not find any company working with the regulators in the EU for future licensing of MSR's or SMR's. Nor any in the USA except for the already issued 50 MWe SMR license that turned out to be too expensive to build in Utah. Note that the GE 300 MWe "small" (if you can call it that) SMR is being licensed in Canada. Most western countries accept other major western countries licensing with nothing more than a cursory review and approval. Non western countries often just accept western country licensing (China Built 4 AP-1000's licensed by the US NRC - and they run so well that they ordered 6 more last year, Ukraine is staring construction on a 2 unit AP-1000 plant a this time also with Ukraine's nuclear regulator just accepting the US NRC license). Canada has a number of companies who have entered the pre-license review process. Follow the instructions in my base post on how to find them. I limited my search due to time. But, see where they are planning to build a reactor and see if the country has a solid pre-license and licensing process, or look to see if the reactor is in license process, or has been approved, in a major western country. I've never seen a company that had an approved nuclear design license not make a point of having that license on their website. If they talk about building nuclear plants using ordinary construction methods and people - that's another solid clue (I've seen companies claim that their reactor is inherently safe and therefore does not need nuclear quality control and nuclear construction processes: It's not safe if it leaks or falls apart a lot worse than the problems that occur at properly constructed nuclear plants occur (you cannot eliminate all failures - you can just make them rare and have small leaks vs major ones)
In a post I did below I mentioned that I would post the history of Thorium fueled power plants. The USA built 4 of them. This is an edited version of a post I did elsewhere. Thorium as a potentially viable fuel was identified in the 1950's by many countries. First though is that thorium is not fissile (you cannot get a nuclear reaction using thorium). A thorium reactor actually runs on U233 in the end - and its U233 that is recoverable from them. In the presence of a properly controlled nuclear reaction thorium 232 absorbs a neutron and becomes protactinium233. The protactinium233 then decays to U233 (which takes about 2 months to get usable quantities of U233). As such all thorium reactors must be seeded with U233, U235, or plutonium239 (the common fissile materials) to supply fuel for the first 4+ months of operation. I’m not going to list and discuss all the existing test reactors that had thorium loaded into them or the thorium specific test reactors that were built. Suffice to say that thorium was tested in both existing test reactors and specific built thorium designed test reactors by multiple countries. Also in all kinds of designs since the 1950’s: Light Water, Heavy Water, High Temp Hot Gas (HTGR) and of course the Oak Ridge Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). The recent several decades have focused on HTGR pebble bed designs and of course China just built and started up in August 2023 a new thorium based MSR to determine if we technically have solved the molten salt corrosion issues well enough to proceed with further development. I am including the Shippingport thorium core load 3 (1977-1982) as a test reactor. Shippingport was a naval aircraft carrier PWR that became the 1st demonstration and test reactor for commercial power: 60MWe output, Online 1958 (1st nuclear electrical power generation from a plant built with its primary purpose to generate electricity). This thorium core proved that a thorium core could self-generate surplus U233 for recovery by reprocessing. Shippingport was shut down in 1982 at the end of this test. To date only the USA felt that they had thorium fuel designs based on test reactors that worked well enough to design commercial power plants from, which did not work out as explained below. In retrospect they can be viewed as very large and vastly costly test reactors. The USA had also spent the equivalent of $Billions in today’s money to build a stockpile of U233 to seed thorium reactors and for atomic bomb tests in the 1960's (the U233 bomb worked well). Note that they are now looking to spend $billions to dispose of that U233 stock as the containers are degrading and disposal is cheaper than repackaging the U233 stock into new containers which does not count long term cost of storage that follows - and eventual use or disposal in the future. Also, there is no real foreseen use at this time for that U233 to justify the cost of preserving it. 1st attempt was Indian Point Unit 1 - light water thorium fueled 275MWe PWR power plant. Online in 1962. The thorium fuel performed so badly that they changed to uranium fuel in 1965 and the plant spent the rest of its life as a uranium reactor that operated well. Unit 1 was shut down in 1974 due to changes in regulations from when it was built as the emergency core cooing system that was acceptable in 1962 was no longer acceptable in 1974, and initial plant design made retrofit of an acceptable system uneconomical (nuclear power plants tend to have lots of rooms with very substantial reinforced concrete walls - there may be almost no room to install something different). 2nd attempt (approved for construction at essentially the same time as Indian Point Unit 1) was Elk River - a light water thorium fueled 22 MWe BWR (Online in 1964, Shut down 3 ½ years later in 1968 due to major design and construction issues which led to cracks in the reactor vessel and main piping resulting in significant reactor water leakage. I have found comments that says the reactor and power plant did not operate as expected; but, no evidence if this was a fuel issue or other issues. More interesting is that this was presented as a prototype for a “Small Modular Reactor” for rural America (SMR’s as the reactor assembly and boiler was built in a plant and shipped to site by a railcar), which could be done anywhere as the key SMR concept of small nuclear reactors would be economical due to mass production was presented at an international conference in 1955. However, 17 power plant reactors which would be considered SMR size today were built in the USA from the 1950’s into the 1970’s. Not one of them is operating today - where a number of large central station nuclear power plants built at the same time are still operating. Other than the cracks and reactor water leaks the biggest lesson learned was that small nuclear units like this would never be cost competitive with larger nuclear units as they need more materials and cost much more to build on a MWhr generated basis; and also cost much more to operate and maintain on a MWhr generated basis than a larger plant due to staffing requirements. Note that a 12MWe uranium power plant in Piqua, Ohio which ran from 1963-1966 was closed with the same conclusion. 3rd attempt was Peach Bottom Unit 1 - a thorium fueled HTGR reactor (as that seemed to be the most applicable technology other than light water based on test reactors). I believe it was about 60MWe output. Online in 1967, shutdown in 1974. There were severe problems with the thorium fuel and it was quickly changed to U235 fuel. There were massive other plant design problems (scaling up from a test reactor size rarely goes smooth). A total commercial and technical flop. 4th attempt (based on lessons learned from Peach Bottom) was Fort St Vrain - a 330MWe output thorium fueled HTGR. Online in 1979, shutdown in 1989 due to several issues in the plant design that affected operation and required excessive and expensive maintenance and only produced 15% of the power it should have if it could run well enough to base load at 100% output which is how most US Nuclear Reactors are loaded. I had a coworker who had worked at Fort St Vrain and he told me that in the end it was also converted to Uranium fuel. I have been unable to verify that with limited internet searches (multiple sources report that Peach Bottom Unit 1 was quickly converted to Uranium). Fort St Vrain was again both a major technical and economic flop. Bottom line is that there has been extensive research into thorium-based reactors by multiple countries from the 1950’s to current time, and the USA even built 4 commercial power plants using BWR, PWR, and HTGR designs. No country to date has made a test reactor or power plant work well enough to design a future power plant at this point - especially when they look at the USA’s attempts at building thorium fueled power plants by substantial scaling up of test reactors. The world history of initial nuclear power plant designs, and even 2nd generation designs, in many countries show lots of failures as what seems to work so well on paper often does not work in practice (or is too expensive to maintain). Research continues and just because thorium did not work well and was not economical in the past does not mean that it won’t work well or be economical in the future. It’s just going to take a lot of money and time. If it was easy, it would have already been done. There are also a lot of investor scam companies out there claiming that they have the solution, when no one really knows what the solutions are yet. These companies often talk of building plants on a fast timetable but have never even started a "pre-licensing" review of their design which is normally needed to get to the point to be able to submit a reactor design for licensing (figure several years for pre-license review, and then several more years for licensing once a license application is submitted). Just how many reactors does anyone think they are going to build that are not approved by the nuclear regulators? But, they generate good paying jobs for people for a decade or more by telling by telling investors and lots of people that the solution is obvious and simple.
As I understand it, Thorium can be (and perhaps is) used in MOX fuel. By replacing some of the U238 with TH232 or mixing it with PU239, you can make a substitute fuel pellet that works similar to standard enriched uranium fuel pellets. Doing so can reduce the overall PU239 remaining in your fuel waste or be used to downgrade highly enriched weapons-grade materials. Though I do understand that such methods do not really count towards building a true reactor based on Thorium.
*It’s just going to take a lot of money and time. If it was easy, it would have already been done.* - Why bother? Wind and solar are cheap, safe and scale up.
I was wondering that too. I smiled at the last bottle was pulled out. I realized, "Of course that would be the last, They know what the name and color means." Well done!
Haha. I do know the movie and no, Soylent isn't made from people. I double-checked the ingredient list, just to be sure!.I endorse Soylent but not cannibalism. Quick story about their name: Soylent was actually named after the food in the 1966 science fiction novel "Make Room! Make Room!" and later 1973 film Soylent Green. While the food in the book is made from soy and lentils (hence the name), the food in the movie is made from humans, leading to this dramatic scene: th-cam.com/video/b2aH9tu4s30/w-d-xo.html . Soylent actually in 2022 (the year the film takes place), released a SoylentGreen snack bar in a mystery flavor as a humorous nod to the film.
What's interesting is that nearly all the negatives of solid fuel reactors have been solved by the Canadian CANDU reactors many decades ago. I'm disappointed the Canadian design wasn't even mentioned. Edit: except for the cost
CANDU reactors still produce waste containing long-lived actinides and plutonium that takes a long time to become safe. If we could get Fast Reactors working we could burn that waste and get most of the 97% waste that most of todays nuclear reactors produce. Also Thorium reactors would not produce Plutonium and other long lived radiation waste, molten salt, Thorium reactors would be 'walk-away' safe and what waste remains will be safe within 300 years.
It’s great that they can use U238, but they’re pressurized and thus need heavy reactor walls and large containment buildings which add to the cost, land requirements, safety, etc.
Last chance for fission is molten salt reactor, old fission had over 50 years to get the general public to accept it, it's like the old RCA video disks nobody wanted, a old technology that been pushed to far.
Thank you! Thank you so much for covering this! You did a great video and covered all of the important points. Here’s a couple of additional things: 1) You should see if you could tour Flibe Energy and interview Kirk Sorensen if possible. Flibe has several important additional uses for lithium-fluoride thorium molten salt reactors (LFTR) that involve using the radioactive byproducts for medical purposes and the heat for desalination and recycling. Also, Plutonium 238 is a byproduct and this is very rare and very useful for radioisotope batteries. 2) Another important benefit of LFTRs is since they don’t use water for cooling, they don’t need to be near large bodies of water. 3) There are other important political reasons why the world stuck with water-based reactors. 4) The low pressure and no water make them perfect for space-, moon-, and Mars-based power generation.
Your collection of videos on TH-cam are the greatest of all the TH-cam science channels! Even you older ones are relevant, thank you for years of teaching me more about how the world works
0:00 Soylent Green is both the name of a 1973 science fiction film and of a wafer-like food product in the film. The film is a police procedural set in the future, based on the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! The food is a processed protein ration made of human beings and distributed to an unsuspecting populace.
The basic premise of the story is flawed, because widespread cannibalism as a food source only works if you're shrinking the population as you go. You can't have everyone live 70 years eating nothing but human protein, when everyone else is doing the same. It's like if you ate a whole cow. Over time, you could do it. It might take you a year, but after that's done you starve to death. And a cow has more meat than a people.
The idea of shipping container sized nuclear reactors might be a more important innovation than either molten salt or thorium. If the reactors can be transported efficiently, then their manufacturing and maintenance can all happen at a central facility. The on site construction, then, becomes much easier to regulate. Also, for powering cargo ships and freight trains, a shipping container sized nuclear boiler would be really handy. That might even be the first market ready application. An efficient nuclear powered freight delivery system could be the backbone of green transportation infrastructure. I can imagine a high speed trans siberia nuclear train that goes 200 mph and only needs refuelling every other decade! The potential of nuclear makes the transition seem that much more attainable.
It’s only possible of low pressure reactors like molten salt ones. The reactor walls of Light Water Reactors are 10 inches of steel, and the containment buildings of water cooled reactors have to have 1000 times the volume of the reactor and use reinforced concrete.
You never be able to move them after they been fueled & used because of severe radiation contamination. No way to move it on roads, ships. Not practical for utilities since they still have all of the regulatory costs, but the reactors only produce a small fraction of power. When it comes to reactors size, only very big reactors many any economically sense. Also two of the three companies working on SMR have cancelled their projects. The only remaining company is NuScale, which I am sure will exit when the grant money from the gov't runs out.
@@randalljsilva There's a number of conventional miniaturized reactors, it's just that none of them are for civilian use. Only military, research and space applications. We could have gone nuclear 30 years ago, that's the sad reality. We're not waiting on technological innovation, we're waiting on governments willing to put the fossil fuel industry out of business.
@@guytech7310 Nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines have been moving around just fine for decades now. It's a very dense source of energy, which is exactly what you want for TRANSPORTATION. You don't have anything except complaining, and it's really dubious complaining at that. Understand the tech before you criticize it.
What a superbly informative video! I'm an engineer of 40 years and I learned a lot. One thing; The turbine you show is I believe, a gas turbine rather than a steam turbine. Not that it does anything to detract from brilliance of the video, but you clearly value accuracy. Thank you for this lesson. I'm a believer and I subscribed.
No private investors in their right mind would build another nuclear power plant until it is proven that it can be built on a predictable schedule (preferably no more than 7 years) and a known cost. I say this as a nuclear engineer who worked in the industry for 35 years and was laid off when the AP1000 plant in South Carolina was cancelled after delays and cost overruns back in 2017. Several executives faced criminal charges and jail time over this. Either the design company is going to have to build their own prototype and demonstrate the feasibility at their own expense or the government will have to subsidize it. Scale models, computer simulations and CGI are not enough. And whatever concept is envisioned, it better take into account for the decline in quantity and quality of the workforce that is going to design, build and operate it.
Two remarks that I have picked up from other TH-cam video's on the subject: 1. Thorium can also be used in presurized water reactors. But it is less useful. The shorter half-life of the waste products remains, though. So I still would prefer it to Uranium. 2.Presurized Water Reactors use solid fuel. Which results in only a fraction of the fuel being used. With Molten Salt Reactors, pretty much all of it can be used. (And I don't mean the U235 is only a few percents of the rods. I mean not all U235 is used up.) Maybe an idea for a followup video?
Awesome. In 1984 I graduated with a BSNE from NCSU, Disappointed with the US effectively abandoning the nuclear fuel cycle, I reluctantly moved into another discipline. Hopefully there is a less emotional and political response to nuclear power When I left, we were struggling to keep the Liquid Metal cooling technology alive. Combining that with the homogeneous reactor tech we had, there was promise. Glad to see the good fight is still going on. I'd like to see the notion of alternate fuels go away, instead a notion of using right fuel to solve the problem at hand.
Alternative energy is well and good, but I agree with you that we have this technology in hand and it's only a matter of commercialization and public willingness that we need to overcome.
NUCLEAR IS NOT DEAD. Nuclear Energy is essential for low carbon future world, this is science. What we need is to install more and more fission reactors plus renewables as their costs get lower and lower. The more reactors, the better the future
I think nuclear energy’s future is not promising. It works but the electricity it generates costs three times more per kilowatt-hour than the same kilowatt-hour from renewables that are close to free. Battery storage costs are falling dramatically so this factor can almost be ignored depending on how much coverage you need. Nuclear energy is prohibitively expensive if used to meet peak load needs, which is the more valued electricity. It is okay for less valuable base load needs if that’s your only option but it remains more costly.
Nuclear is not dead but nearly dead! It's an efficient stop gap between fossil fuel and fully renewable energy. Why we need a stop gap? Because despite our collective minds and efforts it turns out we cannot store energy in a small, portable, efficient, durable storage. Yes lithium battery is good, but it degrades over time, not that efficient, dangerous, low density energy storage, and toxic for the environment. We need time to find alternative for grid scale battery system, a time that we do not have. So going for nuclear is a much preferable option than maintaining coal or other fossil fuel power plant.
The problem with commercialisation of molten salt reactors is the wear issue, not only is the molten salt extremely corrosive and reactive it also mechanically etches it's vessels and pipes as it circulates. This was one of the primary reasons it was initialy shelved until further advances in materials sciences brought about the ability to negate or at least resist those effects long enough to be viable. I like the tech and it is pretty safe as an automated installtion, I would indeed like to see further development on this and other thorium cycle small reactors.
As well as the gaseous pollutants, coal also produces arsenic as a byproduct; it also releases more radioactive waste, albeit low level, than a nuclear reactor.
Hmm I'd argue that at least for people living in the US, the thousands of nuclear warheads that are literally designed to explode are a much bigger hazard than the handful of nuclear power plants that are designed to be as safe as possible.
Beyond less waste, it can be used to burn the waste produced by traditional uranium fired reactors. I first heard of thorium molten salt reactors like 15 years ago. It's nice to see someone is finally working on their construction.
Imagine the treasure chest of fuel sitting on-site at current nuclear facilities. Being called "waste" (and it's not even a lot, in fact it's negligible next to the gigatons of particulates each and every year thrown right into the atmosphere from fossil fuel!) These plant operators are smart to not want to bury it kilometers down: after a few decades there will be some very valuable elements in those concrete cylinders.
@A-Milkdromeda-Laniakea-Hominid and, due to the high cost of the current plants, as the reactors come up for recertification, most power companies in the US are opting to decommission the sites. TMI hasn't been operating for several years now, and they're dismantling the facility that could have been converted to thorium liquid salt.
@@pohldriver That's ridiculous. If you have the site and the containment buildings already that's a good piece of the work done. This could change everything. Humans could actually stop hacking down the Amazon and burning it as biomass. We're such an idiot species.
It would be nice if there was less misinformation out there concerning nuclear energy. If people could actually be educated on the real risks and safety, we could all just use regular nuclear energy.
That’s intentional. Government-fueled climate change activists are after power and control cannot achieve that if there’s cheap, abundant, green energy.
There's no misinformation out there in the general public that wasn't generated by the from the fossil fuel industry. It has it's tendrils into the Right and Left of politics, but on the Right they are honest about it. They're playing this game where they are making out they possess the panacea to save us as opposed to the pagans that are the proponents of renewables. I put it to you most people think nuclear is already safe. All that's happening is renewables are being demonized by big business, who see renewables as a direct threat to their profits. They are deliberately trying to make nuclear look like the underdog. Market forces are driving cost of renewables and that does not suit the greedy puppeteers behind the push for nuclear. Nuclear should have to compete like everything else in the marketplace. The Right of politics representing the fossil fuel energy sector is now doing what they always do and that's trying to manipulate market forces in their favor. The Right opposed climate change regulation because they denied climate change existed. Now they can see climate change does exist (although it couldn't possibly be man made) they are trying to keep their pockets lined by artificially monopolizing electricity production through government regulation. I'm all for nuclear energy if the electricity it supplies is a) competitive when compared to renewables and b) not subject to fossil fuel type cartel behavior and c) that it can be implemented very quickly. At the moment we're seeing energy companies closing coal power stations not for environmental concerns but for profit by reducing supply therefore driving up energy costs. The treachery of these pigs knows no bound because a regular maintenance overhaul has all of a sudden become the excuse to close down a whole power station during the transition from fossil fuel to renewables. They are manipulating the market and we're paying. It's corruption. Now apply this to the subject of this vid to see what will likely happen. Make no mistake we will pay through the teeth for electricity after they have used their influence to a) use taxpayer funds to wholly or partially build their high cost nuclear electricity power plants, b) use taxpayer government subsidies to make their electricity affordable compared to renewables thereby costing renewables out of the market. c) once the subsidies are lifted the power price goes up but they use their considerable market powers to control renewables. It's called the free market in a 'democracy'. It's not a democracy we live in per se, but the illusion of it - that is so long as big business get what they want then all's well. They corrupt both the Right and the Left BTW through a well understood process called State Capture: "The classical definition of state capture refers to the way formal procedures (such as laws and social norms) and government bureaucracy are manipulated by government officials, state-backed companies, private companies or private individuals, so as to influence state policies and laws in their favour."
@@_DZ_UR_ Riiiight.... That "way" being the usual human shortsightedness along the lines of: "Problem's gonna be here for around 100.000 years. Im'ma live around 80 years. Cool, not my problem, really." That attitude is what lead to climate change in the first place.
@@danieloberhofer9035 That's a straight out fact 💯 Till this day I wonder why they don't make good use of it (Nuclear waste) instead of disposing of it via store them inside a deep underground bunker or vice versa 🤔
another problem with molten salt reactors is containment. meaning how do they make sure that no nuclear material is stolen. With conventional control rods, since they don't go anywhere, if they are pulled out and weighed, you know EXACTLY how much you have and it can be compared to what was put in, and there is perfect traceability of all that material. With molten reactors, you don't know if some of the molten salt is still in the system, if some of it is stuck the walls of the reactor. It's almost impossible to get a perfect tracking of material, which means you can't rule out that some of it might have gone missing.
This is a molten salt power storage plant, heated by a nuclear reactor. If molten salt plants turn out to be a competitive storage option, they'll be heated by peaks in cheap and cheerful renewable output, not expensive, high security nuclear reactors.
I don't think you got it, you can buy their fuel right now and it's not illegal, if someone wants to make a dirty bomb they don't need to get anywhere near a power plant, minerals come from nature and if you have someone that determined to do stuff with it then they will find it in nature. There's actual natural material that is orders of magnitude worse than the salt they will use.
Taking water out of the core of the reactor has so many benefits. The low boiling point of water is the big one, but also that it dissociates. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima all happened because water’s limitations. When things go wrong, water becomes a liability.
@@samuelec Honestly, I would, and I would also be bathed in LESS radioactivity than living next to a coal plant. Also, do you *_seriously_* think highly-educated and expensive people would work inside nuclear plants, every, single, day, if they didn't believe it was safe???
Without commenting on the validity of molten salt, I would just like to say that the fact that a video about saving nuclear power is sponsored by a food called Soylent is hilarious.
I answered and said, "If I have found favor in thy sight, O Lord, show this also to thy servant: whether after death, as soon as every one of us yields up his soul, we shall be kept in rest until those times come when thou wilt renew the creation, or whether we shall be tormented at once?" 76 He answered me and said, "I will show you that also, but do not be associated with those who have shown scorn, nor number yourself among those who are tormented. 77 For you have a treasure of works laid up with the Most High; but it will not be shown to you until the last times. 78 Now, concerning death, the teaching is: When the decisive decree has gone forth from the Most High that a man shall die, as the spirit leaves the body to return again to him who gave it, first of all it adores the glory of the Most High. 79 And if it is one of those who have shown scorn and have not kept the way of the Most High, and who have despised his law, and who have hated those who fear the Most High -- 80 such spirits shall not enter into habitations, but shall immediately wander about in torments, ever grieving and sad, in seven ways. 81 The first way, because they have scorned the law of the Most High. 82 The second way, because they cannot now make a good repentance that they may live. 83 The third way, they shall see the reward laid up for those who have trusted the covenants of the Most High. 84 The fourth way, they shall consider the torment laid up for themselves in the last days. 85 The fifth way, they shall see how the habitations of the others are guarded by angels in profound quiet. 86 The sixth way, they shall see how some of them will pass over into torments. 87 The seventh way, which is worse than all the ways that have been mentioned, because they shall utterly waste away in confusion and be consumed with shame, and shall wither with fear at seeing the glory of the Most High before whom they sinned while they were alive, and before whom they are to be judged in the last times. 88 "Now this is the order of those who have kept the ways of the Most High, when they shall be separated from their mortal body. 89 During the time that they lived in it, they laboriously served the Most High, and withstood danger every hour, that they might keep the law of the Lawgiver perfectly. 90 Therefore this is the teaching concerning them: 91 First of all, they shall see with great joy the glory of him who receives them, for they shall have rest in seven orders. 92 The first order, because they have striven with great effort to overcome the evil thought which was formed with them, that it might not lead them astray from life into death. 93 The second order, because they see the perplexity in which the souls of the unrighteous wander, and the punishment that awaits them. 94 The third order, they see the witness which he who formed them bears concerning them, that while they were alive they kept the law which was given them in trust. 95 The fourth order, they understand the rest which they now enjoy, being gathered into their chambers and guarded by angels in profound quiet, and the glory which awaits them in the last days. 96 The fifth order, they rejoice that they have now escaped what is corruptible, and shall inherit what is to come; and besides they see the straits and toil from which they have been delivered, and the spacious liberty which they are to receive and enjoy in immortality. 97 The sixth order, when it is shown to them how their face is to shine like the sun, and how they are to be made like the light of the stars, being incorruptible from then on. 98 The seventh order, which is greater than all that have been mentioned, because they shall rejoice with boldness, and shall be confident without confusion, and shall be glad without fear, for they hasten to behold the face of him whom they served in life and from whom they are to receive their reward when glorified. 99 This is the order of the souls of the righteous, as henceforth is announced; and the aforesaid are the ways of torment which those who would not give heed shall suffer hereafter." 100 I answered and said, "Will time therefore be given to the souls, after they have been separated from the bodies, to see what you have described to me?" 101 He said to me, "They shall have freedom for seven days, so that during these seven days they may see the things of which you have been told, and afterwards they shall be gathered in their habitations." 102 I answered and said, "If I have found favor in thy sight, show further to me, thy servant, whether on the day of judgment the righteous will be able to intercede for the unrighteous or to entreat the Most High for them, 103 fathers for sons or sons for parents, brothers for brothers, relatives for their kinsmen, or friends for those who are most dear." 104 He answered me and said, "Since you have found favor in my sight, I will show you this also. The day of judgment is decisive and displays to all the seal of truth. Just as now a father does not send his son, or a son his father, or a master his servant, or a friend his dearest friend, to be ill or sleep or eat or be healed in his stead, 105 so no one shall ever pray for another on that day, neither shall any one lay a burden on another; for then every one shall bear his own righteousness and unrighteousness." 2 Esdras 7:75 ''''''''////////////////
Amazing videos. Not sure about sponsorship. Second ingredient on list is sugar (Maltodextrin) probably not the best supplement unless you like a sugar spike and your insulin working overtime.
The real Elephant in the Room should be named here and that is that our "traditional" U235 fission plants prime functionality wasn't ever meant as a power source, but to produce weapon grade PU239! It never was intended as "Waste Product", it was the main cause to build them that way. Power generation was just how PR sold us that Billion Dollar Tax spendings If it ever was about power generation, the molten salt route would have been the method of choice even back then. But it was the cold War and they needed to bamboozle Taxpayers out of their money to fund the creation of the industrialized military Complex we have around the world today
That is incorrect. Standard U235 nuclear power plants cannot be used to create bomb grade plutonium; and this was known prior to the 1st nuclear power plant being built. While most of the uranium in a U235 power plant is U238, and the U238 does convert to P239; a small amount of the P239 converts to P240. P240 is a poison for the fissile P239 and if you get more than a very small amount of P240 then the plutonium will not go "boom." The amount of P240 generated is dependent on the time the P239 is inside a reactor. Special bomb grade plutonium reactors were developed (with one exception discussed below) where the fuel rods are only in the reactor for several months to limit the P240 to acceptable levels. Note that same applies to the U233 that a thorium reactor runs on - which also makes a great bomb - but is poisoned by U234. Fuel assemblies in power plants are typically inside the reactor for a minimum run time of 11 months and most are there for 33 - 46 month run times. 11 months creates far to much P240 (or U234 in a thorium core) for use as a bomb material. The key exception to this is that the UK designed and developed a series of Magnox AGR power plants specifically to produce weapons grade plutonium. They were not a commercially economic source of power. All of the Magnox reactors have been decommissioned and replaced with reactor designs that cannot produce weapons grade plutonium.
It is just hard to believe that the US federal government is not providing the necessary R&D funding to properly develop at a rapid pace these reactors. The scale and significant number of remaining technical issues is too great for private firms to realistically get it done in the near future. I admire any firm that tries and advances knowledge along the way, but a dream of a working commercial system made by a private firm is many decades and many billions in venture capital devoted to R&D away. I would not go so far as to say these firms working on it now are scams as some have said. The greatest scam of the 21st century has been the delusion that current green energy iterations will amount to anything more that a small fraction of global power generation and that these systems are non toxic from production through disposal. These reactors are green energy with it's own unique waste disposal issue. By comparison Co2 producing power plants also produce a toxic waste of sorts that is slowly destroying our planet. These reactors will not catastrophically fail and pose any real danger to the public.
14:12 The ability to refuel while the reactor was on was a trait of the RBMK reactors as well. Although they have now become obselete not only through the chernobyl accident (which was corrected for in other similar plants later), but also through time and advancing technology.
You are the ONLY podcaster that actually did his homework before he spewed his opinions and I thank you for that. Of COOOURSsse~~ we SHOULD invest immensely in order to make LFTRs commercially successful.
Right on Arvin! We need more people willing to take a serious new look at Nuclear Energy. The info was great and easy to understand. Some additional info about other practical uses besides electricity generation would also be helpful, such as water desalinization, medical isotopes, and industrial scale heating using the waste heat. Imagine a small modular liquid thorium reactor being built for a community in an artic location. It could provide electricity, heat and viable by-products for the community, all while doing it in an environmentally friendly way. A small modular micro fission reactor could also provide stable abundant energy for a lunar or Mars colony. The words of FDR remind us that "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." When it comes to anxiety about Nuclear Energy, perhaps we should remember and apply FDR's words in the context of Nuclear Energy.
Sad that even conventional nuclear plants are so much safer and cleaner than all fossil fuels, even with the disasters. What an oversight to not have everything nuclear by now, well unless you're invested in fossil fuels, know that most people need a car by design, and have so much money that politicians can be easily convinced to turn a blind eye.
Political bullshit from many politicians across the world, but not only that, many stupid people still have very perverse opinions on how the technology works, even when much information exists to indicate otherwise.
The crippling regulatory environment, public scaremongering about radiation, together with horrendous construction delays of the nuclear industry, has frightened priced nuclear power out of the market. Most power companies don't want to risk this industry anymore.
Except that you need 10+ years and $Billions of moneys to build nuclear, you can't build nuclear at all sites, it must be safe from natural disasters and have access to water, plus all the extra cost in fuel transport, waste material transport and storage. Didn't it occurred to you that there maybe be reasons why not everything is nuclear by now? Nuclear is expensive, risky and doesn't scale.
I am with you all the way. Pro nuclear since the mid 2000s. Against environmentally destructive renewables and think it absurd that so much credence is given to them, plus the denial of environmental/wildlife harm they cause. Also, they cannot run modern civilization 24/7. so why are they being pushed so hard? Glad to see this presentation about MSR technology, thank you very much Arvin!
IMO the biggest problem with nuclear power IS the nuclear waste. If a country(ies) can't get to a single storage facility for waste as is the case in the US it makes waste storage cost prohibitive since it's something that has to happen for 1000s of year. A secondary problem is cost. If the energy produced costs so much that most people can't afford it, it's not beneficial. Govts. COULD subsidize it but since in the US we have slashed taxes so much that we can't even fund the IRS, or people are getting close to seeing their Medicare get slashed and can't afford medical care and SS benefits are about to get slashed by 25% which will turn a few million retired people into abject poverty, then nuclear power needs to be able to be built and operated to where the output power can be sold on the market for no more than 25 cents/KWh. And even at that cost it has to be mixed with lower cost power. Otherwise we turn ever more into a country of have and have nots where the people without have to do a LOT of power rationing.
The waste isn't a problem 90% of it can be reprocessed into medical isotopes Lab isotopes Or more fuel. America just doesn't reprocess fuel cause Jimmy Carter was an asshole. As for cost Yeah Thats why goverments need to do it. Money's fake, but it's really fake for governments Look at france. They built the Super Phonix, and a shiton of conventional reactors that are copy pasted down to the bolts
I see no mention of the Moltex stable salt reactor designs, which use zirconium galvanised tubes to avoid corrosion, and convection only to transfer heat to the primary cooling circuit. That avoids the need to pump highly radioactive molten salt fuel through pipes valves heat exchanges and a chemical processing unit. This reduces the capital cost to a little over $1 per Watt. The Moltex flex design uses uranium fuel dissolved in molten salt, which is a simpler fuel cycle than thorium. The stable salt reactor waste burner design being developed in Canada uses molten salt fuel recycled from nuclear waste, using The Moltex waste to stable salt process. You can find all this explained several years ago on a TH-cam video by chief technology officer Ian Scott. there is no plan to make large reactors. They will all be small modular reactors sitting side-by-side. The Moltex flex design produces 800°C heat, which provides efficient electricity generation using the same turbines off the shelf that are used with coal-fired power plants, further reducing costs.
This is the type of reactor that I think we need NOW!! If they could address the corrosion problem it seems it would be almost perfect. If they could get the cost of them heating chambers down low enough, you could just remove the salts, bring in a new chamber, but the salts back in and keep going. I know that's too simple, but I just got the oil in my car changed today, and thought you could do the same with the reactor. Please don't take me serious!
No practical way to remove waste products from the salt especially neutron poisons. MSR will never happen because they have unsolvable technical problems.
rdgale2000, you deserve a medal for expertly using sarcasm. At first you had me, when you went on with your car I almost choked - and I think I needed your exit line to really catch your drift. Well done!
@guytech7310 that is not true, you can process them in the loop. There are chemical and electromagnetic techniques to remove byproducts and treat the fuel salts as they pump through the primary loop.
@@ironassbrownNo that is wrong. No process has been develeped to date to extract waste products in situ. There has been talk about it, but no process has been developed. In the 1970s ORNL process was to extract (remove) the salt, dissolve the salt in water, extract the U-233 and dispose of the contaminated Salt & use fresh uncontaminated salt to replace the disposed contaminated salt. This is not practical & creates a huge amount of waste included a large amounts of contaminated water.
Chernobyl was not an accident. The people in charge knew they were ignoring restrictions and the safety protocol. For the sake of their careers. The reason for the disaster was selfishness, greed and ignorance to finish a simulation, a test. But the reactor wasn't in the right condition. They did it anyway. All that mattered to those who were responsible was their careers. Nuclear power isn't a threat. It's the people who are responsible who are a threat.
FLUID DYNAMICS pipe size matters! Flow efficiency physics, dictates that you want larger pipes for efficient flow efficiency. Large reactors are more efficient. SMRs are more for Silicon Valley glossy brochured investor schemes than a practical economic solution for energy. MSRs need exotic expensive materials. Hastelloy, Li7 via depleted lithium or similar, tritium management and the high temperature 🌡️ corrosive salts and neutrons are harsh on components it is not just the water. Hit 700c and Cr migrates in the Hastelloy. We need nuclear power plants now! CANDU style heavy water 🌊 reactors are more efficient and effective. Tested and proven. MSRs are promising and should be researched. We lack the necessary information and experience to deploy at scale.
It's not safety concerns that makes nuclear not to be adopted, rather, It is its deep cost, and lcoe that deters wide adoption, solar, wind and battery are cheaper. We can as well wait for fusion while solar and wind and battery fills in the gap
The reason you think so is that here in the USA (and a few other countries) is that they are not telling you the truth of the cost of different power sources. They've created a "convenient lie" to push the wind and solar. If you only look at the cost of the generation plant - then solar and wind beats nuclear plants. But if you look at the cost of power delivered to the customer (including transmission and distribution cost) then new nuclear is often cheaper than either new solar or wind in many places in the world (including in many places in the USA). It turns out that the connection cost of a multitude of small generators to the grid and being able to handle reactive power without a spinning generator that can generate "VARs" is very very expensive. In my area people are very upset about how much the cost of electricity is going up with all the new solar and wind-farms. It's mostly because the "transmission" component of the power bill has skyrocketed. There have been many studies on this by many countries and even international agencies. That is why so many new nuclear power plants are under construction worldwide - with more planned. Because the delivered power cost for substantial generation is cheaper than solar and wind in most cases. Not to mention more long term reliable. Solar and wind typically has to be replaced every 20 years of so. New nuclear power plants are now initially licensed for 60 years and it's likely that they will run about 100 years. Note that the "better designed" 40 year licensed plants from the early 1970's have now been running for 50+ years and are seeking another license extension to 80 years (and people are talking about rewiring the plant and replacing controls to go for 100 years or more). Be careful to ask the right question, and don't be distracted by only part of the picture.
@@saumyacow4435 About 20 other countries and the studies within the US on total cost of power delivered disagree with you. Feel free to believe what you wish. Wishful thinking is free and available to all. However, those of use who are actually trying to solve problems tend to focus more on the facts.
The recent promotion of molten salt nuclear reactors began about 25 years ago. The main two promoters were hoping to attract government funding to finance their dream technology. Even now very little has resulted from that effort which aimed to recruit thousands of people, with no academic background in nuclear technologies, to promote the technology. Typically, nuclear power promoters continue to assume that we have 20-30 years left to turn this 'Titanic' around. They frequently employ the fear of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption effects to sell their favored nuclear technology. As is the case with the vast majority of the Earth's 8.0+ billion humans they have masterfully excluded the following warnings from their consciousness. I urge readers to search for the following article titles. IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster (TheGuardian) UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change' (TheHill) * This statement was made 4.8 years ago.
I think the biggest issue with fission isnt any of the concerns over waste and safety, you need only watch some Kyle Hill videos to see how overblown these problems are. Its time. Renewables are already here, being built, being improved rapidly, and in the last ten or twenty years have seen explosive growth even with a fraction of the support that they should have received from governments. Meanwhile, traditional fission can require in excess of a decade for new reactors to be built despite repeated broken promises of this being sped up, and Thorium could presumably take even longer because as this video points out its not yet commercially proven. To me this means we need to have grid ready reactors starting to be built _right now_ I mean literally within the next year or two, otherwise the technology risks being redundant, superceded by waves of ever more efficient renewables coupled with grid level storage solutions that are already coming online and can resolve remaining issues with renewable unreliability. If we had a different attitude to nuclear over the past few decades I think wed be in a much better position, but as it stands, the window for their use seems to be shrinking fast. I should clarify though, even if Im right about everything above I do think we should keep current reactors working (Germany...), current projects building, planned expansions going, and research in to fission tech trucking along. Maybe they can beat the clock, maybe itll be useful in ways we cant even foresee; Im increasingly skeptical of how useful the technology will be in future, but we have to keep as many options open as possible to address global warming. Its too vast a threat to risk doing anything else.
Hear! Hear! One of the big downsides of nuclear is that it's almost always government driven. Here in South Africa, the state owned power utility took 10 years to build a basic coal plant which should have taken 4-5, yet they still think they can build nuclear plants in our lifetimes. Meanwhile private firms are building wind and solar farms in 12-18 months, on budget.
Lol. Yes, I checked the ingredients...twice. See Soylent's website for the story of how and why they named the company. The stuff iis delicious by the way!
Well, I can finally top Arvin, I had a chance to visit the local Fusion start-up company. They say instead of always being 30-years away, Fusion is now always 10-years away...I must correct Arvin at 1:40
Nope: 1. Too may technical problems, such as salt caking breaking off in chunks and destroying the circulation pumps, to no practical way to extract waste products, especially neutron poisons that will impact critically & efficiency of the reactor. 2. Salt makes it difficult to fully inspect & maintain the reactor as of its opacity, and when cold the salt is a solid, and the salt is hard on equipment like circulation pumps & heat exchangers. 3. World is running out of economically recoverable Uranium. At current production the World will run out of economically recoverable Uranium around 2050. Most utilities are aware of this & will not invest in new reactors or plants unless the gov't pays for it. 4. Forget Thorium as it fertile & not fissile, requiring a Breeder type reactor, and has a problem with U-232 (produced when Th-232 is converted into fissile U-233) is nasty gamma emitter. A MSR using thorium would be complete unserviceable because of the extreme radiation. 5. Liquid metal reactors (ie Sodium) is far far more practical than MSR, but even they are a nightmare to run & maintain. France & Japan ended their Sodium reactors as they had to deal with constant problems & cost too much to operate. Russia also had a Sodium reactor BN-800 as was going to build a larger BN-1200, but canceled the project because of issues with the BN-800. Operating a Sodium reactor is like going to the moon, Operating a MSR would be like going to Pluto, its far more difficult & costly. What is going to happen is the world is going to revert back to perhaps a 19th century level of economy when Oil production crashes, and probably cause a fast population crash as the global economy & food production crashes with it. Global Oil production peaked in 2018 and diesel production peaked in 2015. Most of the worlds production originates from very large oil fields that are in or near terminal decline. The world managed to postpone an energy crisis with advanced drilling & shale Oil. Conventional Oil production peaked in 2005. Since about 2010, US shale Oil production has managed to delay Peak Oil Production until 2018, However 3 of the 4 Shale sweet spots are now in decline and Shale well have an extremely short production life (most of the Oil is extracted in the first 18 months as production rapidly drops off).
The Thorium based modular nuclear reactors is essentially not a new technology, it's an old branch that was mothballed. Since this technique has been revisited it makes sense to delve further into it's feasibility. The current renewable technologies, ie. Wind and Solar are simply not " Green", more to the point; they are not recyclable or efficient! They are simply a quick fix to make a small group of individuals rich!
I'm so glad that after soo maaaany decades this topic starts to emerge again. For me it was almost unbelievable it wasn't considered before, since the nuclear is actually the cleanest and safest way to produce green energy and in difference to all other sources that need to rely on other factors like sun, wind or geothermal and cannot be used constantly and reliably, nuclear energy is the ONLY way to have energy supply constantly. Most ironic is that we had technology like in 60'tees even for molten salt reactors, but its sad that sheer politics never got us this way. The big elephant in the room was that nuclear had it golden age in the time of the Cold War, where research and development of the civil reactors got hand in hand with military needs. If I'm not wrong, the first idea for molten salt reactor use was proposed for nuclear plane engine concept, since it needed to be small enough and not have any waste product released in atmosphere. But in the end it was scrapped for convenience of water cooled reactors that were developed for nuclear submarines, and since technology was proven *and fairly simple* in the end we were stuck with water cooled reactors that got constantly improved and built while molten salt got in the dustbins of history. Also the Thorium, although cleaner and more abundant than Uranium wasn't even considered, because it cannot be used for nuclear weapon production, since at the time good deal of civil reactors was used for Plutonium production for weapon usage at the Hight of the nuclear race. So it was too sad that this revolutionary technology never got the right chance to shine. And in 2010 it got derailed again after Fukushima incident, when even Germany that had Angela Merkel at the time as Chancellor (who is actually a nuclear physicist by education) needed to yield under the public pressure and its coalition partners and commit on shutting down of all Germany nuclear reactors. So...irony is that today Germany is one of the biggest proponents of the total fossil fuels ban and 100% green energy production and it sits of the back seat for the best and most efficient way to do it, since they tied both their hands for it. That's why the China will be the leader in this technology, since they're developing it for quite some time and it will most likely field the fist commercial reactors that uses this approach for energy production.
Here is an little thought experiment for you Nuclear fanatics with your hard-on for the energy density of Nuclear fuels. Calculate the total kwh of electricity from a kg of Nuclear fuel in a normal LWR, vs the kwh from the lifetime output of a kg of industry standard solar panels at an average mid latitude location of the US. Hint the Solar panel gonna beat the nuclear fuel by a factor of 10, just try it.
Did. Solar panels have to be replaced long before the same kg of raw materials. Hint for your calculations; use real life actual output, not Greenie induced RATED numbers.
the thing with the waste is that it doesn't actually take much space at all and with current and upcoming technology people are working on turning the waste into forever batteries. they dont make much power but will never need charged so can be used for heart machines and other things that never get touched. there was a basic version on one of the probes that still operate in space after 40+ years. I dont remember who but someone on youtube went into a reactor plant and even kissed a tank of waste because its not actually much of a hazard if stored properly in concrete.
Soylent Green was last. Ah, just wondering. What’s really in Soylent Green?😇 And, I’m all for Nuclear Fusion and in my backyard but really, I want to get started on that Dyson Sphere. The feasible one, not the one on Star Trek.
Ever since I was a kid in the 70's and 80's I've always liked nuclear power. In fact, I was going to enter the Navy after high school and enter the sub fleet to become a nuclear engineer (and the higher pay and better food). I didn't end up going that route as I could unfortunately see that the US (especially here in California) was trying to phase out nuclear power. I'm excited for technology like these molten salt reactors and would can't wait to see a few of these come on line to prove how well the tech can work. The guys at Oak Ridge back in the 60's were working on this tech. It is shame we missed out on decades of R&D on this as if we had continued development, we could largely be powering the world cleanly, safely and without the fear of nuclear disaster (which in all honesty, hasn't been all that disastrous given the scope of the two major ones in the last 30 years). Thank you for this video Arvin. I've subscribed to your channel now and am looking forward to seeing what other great information you have available.
I love that the most recent examples of issues with nuclear reactors across the globe are from 1.5 and 4 decades ago. To me this just goes to show how good the technology is and that we should be pouring as many resources into it as we can to advance it and get its usage widespread.
Thank U for the concise summary of Thorium/molten salt reactor system! It appears to be a step forward for our energy depended lifestyle! Or course there is a new way of producing fusion energy to electricity eye have seen on your tube!
Almost there, but you missed the worst source of radioactive waste, one that all too often gets ignored or overlooked in such discussions. Coal-fired plants release prodigious quantities of radioactive radon, straight into the atmosphere in a conveniently breathable form.
Not prodigious amounts. Typically radon is stable you breathe it in, you breathe it out unless you are in radon long enough to have it on your skin or whatever you are wearing, which is very low activity but you are right Radon is a pain when leaving a nuclear plant and the instruments now have radon discriminators but they are not fallible but no, the hazard is lower than what you are making it...
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⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ ❌Avoid Soylent❌ It uses sugar alternatives that lead to chronic irritable intestines & bowel syndrome❌ u might not start feeling it right away, but after weeks of using, u will start to feel constant discomfort in ur belly ❌ SAY NO FOR SUGAR ALTERNATIVES ❌
No one ever said producing power would be risk-free. Unless you want to freeze in the dark during a war, you still need to have and use them. The bigger risk is that you'll be bereft of power than that the plant will harm you in its destruction.
It's not clear to me that nuclear power plants are any more of a liability than a munitions storage, or any number of chemical processing facilities. When the situation is war, you're going to have more to worry about than power plants.
Excellent video. Great summary. We need to be open to this innovation. Thorium reactors have struggled to get attention for decades, but so glad Copenhagen are making inroads into a container sized reactor.
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I'm convinced. I love the idea, and most of my questions were answered in the video. This needs to be physically put to use and tested. If all goes well, with no major unforeseen consequences, then start making this the new standard. Fusion is indeed the holy grail, but it does always seem just out of reach.
Chernobyl accident was caused by human stupidity, by bypassing the safety systems, while Fukushima was caused by the same stupidity, by placing the powerplant on the sea shore, in an area prone to large quakes and tsunamis. It is hard to believe that a thorium powerplant is safe facing the limitless stupidity. As a note, the oxygen is not the only element than can cause corrosion, flourine is also very aggressive, along others. The video looks more like a hidden ad to a company that payed for a nice trip.
@@DrDeuteron well, you might be right. However, from my point of view, that was marginally acceptable, considering the operational lifetime of a nuclear powerplant of about 50years. That would raise the chance to have such an event, in that area , probably to 1:100, which seems quite high from the point of view of the risk management.
@@alex3261 true. Low prob X massive high consequence = not good risk. But it came down to the tsunami wall, which was very high. I think it was rated for an 8.9 generated tsunami, and guess what? They got a 9.0, which is absurdly high number, and it was overtopped. I’m not sure if that’s on the nuclear industry, or the geologists. There was a design flaw that should it flood, the diesel backup pumps were in the basement, iirc?
@@DrDeuteron as I said, the risk assessment was starting from wrong assumptions. Remember the 2004 Indonesia quake, they was a 9.3, generating a 100 ft. tsunami
@@DrDeuteron Actually no. Tsunami's like that occured in that area about every 90 years. They have lots of history and there are stone markers on all the hillsides on how high they reached. The Japan Nuclear Regulator only requred reactors in those days design for flood events that occured on average twice the desing life of the plant. So they only had to look at events that occured every 80 years or less on average. That left Fukushima with a probability of 45% of a tsunami in its 40 year life - a bet they lost. That plant never would have been licensed in the USA, Canada, or most of the EU as they require looking and designing based on the much more than the worst event in the historical record. Sad thing is that Japan bull dozed away about 5 meters of a hilltop to get the plant to the level they built it. Had they built it 3 or 4 meters higher the tsunami would never had affected it.
I was always skeptical about molten salts because it isn’t used at scale after all these decades and people come up with silly reasons like it can’t breed weapons grade fuel etc. I knew there must be a catch, same with thorium reactors. I wouldn’t have watched another video on molten salt if any other person produced it, because they don’t tell both sides of the story. Only guys like Arvin can be trusted to give balanced and transparent views on such subjects.
Feasible or not in the near future - it is good to know that research is done in the high density energy sector other than oil and coal. Notice Solar and Wind are low density energy producers that need a lot of land, the right climate conditions - not every country is blessed with spacious deserts. Go Thorium go.
I have invented a power source that uses absolutely no fuel at all. It's scaleable, it's able to be put anywhere in the world as long as you can get water to it to fill it to start it. It's an inverted water wheel. If you know how a water wheel works, then inverted the elements. By that I mean put a wheel in a tank of water. Instead of having troughs to collect water you have bellows air bags. I'll explain the bellows bags, a wedgebox shaped bag that is 12" tall 24" wide and 36" long so it's like a slice of cake laying on its side. The top of the bag has 2 rollers on it that helps it to squeeze out there air through the pipeline to the adjacent bellows bag at bottom of the wheel to start all over again. So air will be in the ,7,8,9,10,11,and 12 o'clock positions . The one at 12 is transferring to the adjacent bellows bag at bottom of the wheel to start all over again with lifting strength. 1cubic foot of air has the lifting strength of 62 pounds. And a cubic foot of water weighs 62 pounds. So we are reversing the elements. The 3 cubic feet of air in the air bags has the lifting strength of 186 pounds and remember there are 5 of them lifting at the same time. That would be 930 pounds of lift strength on one side of the wheel. That's more than sufficient to send the one at 12 o'clock position through the squeeze chute on top. All the squeeze chute is , is two rails that slowly get closer to the wheel. The rollers hit the railway as they rotate and squeeze out there air through the pipeline to the adjacent bellows bag at bottom of the wheel.. The top of the water line is from the 11:30 to the 1:00 position and that's the squeeze chute distance too. As the bellows bag gets squeezed out the lock keeps the bag shut until it gets unlocked simply by hitting a lever on its way to the 5:30 position where it gets unlocked and is ready to receive air again. One side of the wheel has air bags lifting and the other side is empty of air. So all the lifting is from one side of the wheel. So simple it's crazy that after 2400 years that the water wheel has been working, nobody ever thought to invert the elements..... Water cannot be transferred to the top of the wheel because of the weight and the inefficiency of the transfer speed. But air can be transferred to the bottom quickly and efficiently..you have 930 pounds of lift strength pushing the one at the top through the squeeze chute ..just build one and see...nobody will sue you because I'm the sole inventor of the inverted water wheel. I have gone on a radio station twice and gave extensive description on air of the device and all details to the public. I had to call back in a few times to give clarification on the wheel so the listeners would have understanding of the wheel. So once you've put it out over the internet and on air like I did ,,, it's cannot be legally patented by anyone. And that was my intention to do so. A power source that uses absolutely no fuel at all. And it's free to the world. You can now live in the desert, or anywhere in the world as long as you can get water to it to fill it. May God bless you all.
Fantastic video! Please, please, keep Soylent as your sponsor. The Mint-chocolate is priceless and goes really well with the images of Chernobyl. Is that the flavor of recycled old people? I love the "*" after "'plant protein". 🙂 More seriously, I am and have always been a strong supporter of nuclear power, but I fully get that for the vast majority of humanity, a few high-profile disasters look unacceptable. The human brain isn't a rational tool. I personally believe that nuclear power will never be popular, even after we run out of space paving the world with solar panels. Regulation will always have a huge double standard massively detrimental to nuclear power, making it too risky for most businesses.
According to a 2018 article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a byproduct of thorium reactors is protactinium, which quickly decays into weapons-grade uranium that could be used for nuclear bombs.
It's the worst type of material for a b0mb as its contaminated with U232, which is a hard gamma emitter that is really bad for humans to be near and would damage the electronics in the b0mb itself.
@@joesimones730 : The article I mentioned discussed the U-232. It didn't affect their conclusion that the protactinium could easily be used for weapons. Read the article?
I have been monitoring this research for several years and have researched the concepts and engineering. I am convinced this is the best course of action for eventually replacing the fossil fuels and laying the "Renewable Energy" dogma to rest (it will never be efficient enough to replace fossil fuels or Nuclear).
As a general rule, compounds will increase in size with higher temperature (molecule translation rotation etc). However, ionic compounds have an extremely high boiling point
That pot of gold at the end of that rainbow is dead. Long live this pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Nuclear power: fuelling politicians' ability to kick the renewable energy can down the road for decades to come.
The biggest hurdle for MSRs is licensing. China is getting the jump on it with the TMSR-LF1. The closest Western firm to rolling out an MSR is ThorCon, (IIRC) they are about to test a non-fissile "Hot Loop" very soon. ThorCon, a US firm, decided to do the work in Indonesia because of the licensing issues. Thorium is a better fuel than Uranium because only U235 is fissile, whereas all Thorium 232 (non-fissile) can be used as fuel once seeded with a neutron emitter to start the reaction to Protactinium 233 then Uranium 233.
Great update for me on the state of thorium molten salt reactors. In a future post, could you discuss subcritical reactors as a way to "burn" high-level nuclear waste down to a lesser amount of intermediate-level waste? Wikipedia discusses it in their subcritical reactor page but It's such a great idea (reaping power from nuclear waste while making it less dangerous) someone as good as you should bring it up so we can discuss it more. It could eliminate the fear of nuclear energy for many people who understand the basics of subcritical reactors, and help lend support to building a community of fast reactors that share one subcritical facility for reduction of the threat of nuclear waste, which would make the whole concept better accepted by general public.
Thorium, while interesting, doesn't really have any significant advantage over Uranium aside from the fact that it can successfully breed in the thermal spectrum and that it is really abundant. Many of the supposed advantages that get brought up are either objectively false or blown out of proportion. First of all, the waste from both Uranium and Thorium are for all intents and purposes identical. If you put either of them in your typical light water reactor, they'll both produce long lived waste without the use of reprocessing and they can both eliminate that type of waste when put into breeder reactors. Thorium just happens to be able to breed in both the fast and thermal spectrum, while Uranium requires the use of the fast spectrum due to insufficient neutron production by Pu239 in the thermal spectrum. That certainly opens up options for Thorium breeder reactor designs, but it's not that big of an advantage especially since we still have a waste stock to deal with and fast reactors can be fuel agnostic. Another big supposed advantage that often gets touted (and I'm glad you made no mention of) is the perceived inability of Thorium to make nuclear bombs. That's objectively not true as there have been a handful of bombs made using U233 from Thorium. There are certainly some major issues Thorium presents in making bomb material like the U232 that decays into daughter products that release high energy gamma radiation. That being said, MSRs can pretty much eliminate the potential of contamination of U233 by operating the reactor in the thermal spectrum and by using online fuel reprocessing (just like what many of these new Thorium MSR companies are trying to build.)
I have an idea for corrosion container. Container made of clay does not corrode with salt. Temperate In modern societies pottery and brick is fired in kilns to temperatures ranging from 1,800 F to 2,400 F. Most of the common clays like clay shown here on th 17:49 e left found in our back yards start to deform and melt if they are fired higher than about 1,900 F. In ancient time in Persia (Iran, Iraq) jar clays were used for batteries and other chemical reaction, also clay jar were used to store water as good insulation.
Thanks for the video. There are many new designs for fission nuclear. It is kind of exciting. There are also other molten salts power production. All of it is exciting. I'd like more folks to be open to many different ways of producing the power we need. That goes for big commercial power production that can and will serve large needs. Down to houses that are built to power themselves and potentially a couple of vehicles. The molten salts solar power production here in Nevada is very exciting. Yet not everywhere has the sun and space Nevada has. Meaning its good to have many different ways to produce power. Soon I believe that it will become code that new homes be capable of producing 150% of the needs of the home. Thanks for the video. You always do such a great job.
Yes, embrace nuclear power. Additionally, nuclear waste can be processed and reutilized for additional power production that decreases the half-life. Furthermore, materials like xenon and plutonium can be used in space propulsion and RTGs, which we currently lack sufficient plutonium.
There is a problem with the information you provided in this video. A Thorium salt reactor DOES produce Plutonium as well, 75% as much as a regular reactor. Governments have to place strict controls so that Plutonium is recovered (they will take that Plutonium for weapons) and to keep it away from anyone else's hands. Recovery and government control is a severe drag on adoption and implementation.
100% No one is going to power their Thorium Reactor with a pure WG-U235 seed, it will LEU, and since LEU contains >95% U238, Pu239 production is unavoidable.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
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Quick story about their name: Soylent was actually named after the food in the 1966 science fiction novel "Make Room! Make Room!" and later 1973 film Soylent Green. While the food in the book is made from soy and lentils (hence the name), the food in the movie is made from humans. Soylent actually in 2022 (the year the film takes place), released a SoylentGreen snack bar in a mystery flavor as a humorous nod to the film.
...why would the nuclear power industry require "saving" when it claims to be efficient, economic and safe?
Could "Cathodic protection" be used to help reduce corrosion, in the same way it is used on underground natural gas pipelines?
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@@SpotterVideo Good question. I'm not sure that it would work in the extreme chemical and temperature conditions, or whether there is sufficient electrolytic conditions for it to work. It's a good question for Copenhagen Atomics. You might ask them on one of their videos. The link to their YT page is in the description.
Soylent is trash. I hope you don't eat it.
Isn't it a bit eery that a food company is named Soylent?
It's sus
This is why we don't believe in Science.
Soylent green is disgusting
But is it green?
Sorry, I'm a bit slow. Why is it weird/eery? What does soylent mean?
@@andrewmiller8402the movie Soylent green
First: As a nuclear power plant engineer who is very interested in new nuclear power plants I would like to complement you on being I believe the 1st TH-camr to talk about the very real corrosion issue with MSR's. People often wonder why there was never a 2nd MSR test reactor after Oak Ridge. It was because there was no known super-alloy of the day that could withstand the corrosive effects of the daughter products and chemicals generated by their reactions in the mixed molten salt stream that occurred at the Oak Ridge test MSR.
The good news is that a number of countries have been doing research into new "exotic" super-alloys that should better withstand the corrosion (to the best of my knowledge - no one has found an "immune" super-alloy at this time). Also, that the concept of chemical separation of the problem daughter products and resultant chemicals has been developed and limited testing of the concept has been done without actually using real MSR molten salts and daughter/chemical byproducts.
So the theory is that if you use a much better super-alloy than what was used in Oak Ridge and can filter enough of the daughter products and chemical reactants that you can minimize the corrosion rate to one that would allow construction of a 40+ year operating life reactor and molten salt stream piping and equipment. As you pointed out this is only a theory and has not yet been adequately demonstrated.
China built and started up a 2 MWthermal test reactor in I believe August 2023 to test their best guess of the right exotic super-alloy and an adequate filtering system. This test reactor is about 1/4 the size of the 1960's Oak Ridge Reactor. If it works (which is an unknown and failure is a real possibility) they plan on building another test reactor 10-15 size larger to see how it scales up. If that works then a small power plant (likely in the 40 - 60 MWe range). Then if that works they can design a power plant likely in the 200-400 MWe range. Etc.
Each step is likely to require a minimum of 5 years of successful run time before finalizing the next larger size plant design and starting construction. Reliable MSR power plants are likely several decades away.
Note that the history of nuclear plant development worldwide shows that scaling up from test or small reactors often does not go very well. Lots of plants the next size larger did not work well - or needed major modifications. No one at this point knows enough about the performance of any fuel in a MSR to do anything but take a very large gamble on building a power plant sized reactor (and we know that well as the USA built 4 commercial thorium fueled nuclear power plants in the 1960's - 1970's and all 4 were both a technical and a commercial economic failure: I will post separately on that history).
Second: Liquid salts are not the only material that expand and self control a nuclear reacton in a reactor. Light water BWR's and PWR's do the same (I'm not sure of heavy water reactor designs); and in the case of PWRs (which I have worked extensively in) once the reactor is in the power range they pull out the control rods more and just let the water temperature self moderate the reaction rate. So nothing new here.
Third: I hate to pop your bubble about Copenhagen Atomics, and about 15 other such companies in both the MSR and SMR market. I consider them an investment scam company (they exist to get investor money to fund jobs for a decade or more). They are not serious at all about building a real nuclear reactor and their designs and timetable are laughable to anyone with real experience in the nuclear industry. They don't even have a clue on which super-alloy will be needed to make the concept work yet (ordinary 304 SS is corrosion resistant to the pure lithium salt with unreacted nuclear fuel in it - the problems start once the nuclear reaction starts).
Companies that are serious are working with a nuclear regulator for eventual licensing of the reactor. This typically takes several years and multi-millions of dollars in a "pre-License" review process (and all western nations have such a process or will tell you to use a design licensed by other western countries).
The best example right now is I suggest that you look up the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission website, page down to "New Reactor Facility Projects" link, then use the link under "Current pre-licensing vendor design reviews" heading not quite half way down the page. There are two links near the top of the page for "Current" and "Completed" and a list of project at the bottom of the page. When this process is completed the vendor knows what will be needed in a license application for a reactor design. It typically takes several years to review a license application once submitted if it has all the required information and the regulator agrees things are properly designed and proper procedures and staffing will exist.
The mass production possibility is a myth. Airbus and Boeing build over 100 of the same model airplane each year, and they are largely hand assembled. Yes a number of parts are mass produced; but its cost prohibitive at that production rate to build a plant that could automate the assembly much more than it is currently. You would likely need to have orders on the order of 250 near identical MSR plants per year for at least 5 years to justify building a plant for mass production (and that plant will take years to build). Just not happening - no one needs that many new power plants (even at 50 MWe each) for that amount of time. Also, nuclear plant is highly site specific due to earthquake and natural disaster requirements. One location may need very light reinforcement and provisions for a natural disaster. The next site may need 10 times as much. The sites with low risk do not want to pay for 10 times the reinforcement materials.
Building nuclear plants requires a assembly of lots of parts; and having it in an appropriate safety structure. Also, nuclear construction codes exist due to lives lost and major nuclear plant issues. No short-cutting those and only about the top 25% of workers adjust to working like that (it's a completely different approach than normal construction). They also want to be paid for their expertise.
This myth also assumes that your design is well proven. It took the light water PWR about 50 years of operating history and lots of failures along the way to know how to build a well proven design (the current AP-1000). It will likely take a similar amount of time and failures to get MSR reactor plants that are really well proven after the designs are proven in test reactors. Who is going to buy more than a few units until the design is shown to work well for decades? Low production numbers means no special factory and highly skilled and paid workers custom building most everything.
Have a great day,
Thank you for this reality check. I had already suspected Copenhagen Atomics of being an investor-trap, and feel validated that somebody with more knowledge of the industry would say so as well. Does this go for all the highly profiled actors in the thorium space, like Flibe Energy, Thorcon, and so on?
Thanks a comprehensive reply from someone with his feet on the ground. One other point. commercial nuclear power came about on the back of the atomic bomb projects. Thorium has yet to find such a sponsor.
That's easily the most excellent comment I've ever seen on TH-cam! Better than anything I could've written.
As of late, the TH-cam science and engineering community seems to have discovered nuclear power as a topic of interest. Obviously, MSRs and SMRs are the new thing that everybody seems to agree will make nuclear power generation rise to glory again and be the ultimate solution to decarbonization.
I myself was getting tired of always pointing out the obvious problems with that. Your write-up gave me new energy, and I might quote you on occasion, If I may.
Thanks for taking the time to share your reasoning.
Very well said. Thanks 👍
@@haldir108 What separates the scammers from the potential real companies is how they talk about licensing and nuclear construction codes. Many of the scam companies talk about starting in 3rd world countries where they don't believe there will be any nuclear licensing and construction review. I'm sure that they can bribe some country leaders - and equally sure that they will leave a radioactive mess for that country to clean up when their commercialization plans don't work out.
This past summer I looked and did not find any company working with the regulators in the EU for future licensing of MSR's or SMR's. Nor any in the USA except for the already issued 50 MWe SMR license that turned out to be too expensive to build in Utah. Note that the GE 300 MWe "small" (if you can call it that) SMR is being licensed in Canada. Most western countries accept other major western countries licensing with nothing more than a cursory review and approval. Non western countries often just accept western country licensing (China Built 4 AP-1000's licensed by the US NRC - and they run so well that they ordered 6 more last year, Ukraine is staring construction on a 2 unit AP-1000 plant a this time also with Ukraine's nuclear regulator just accepting the US NRC license). Canada has a number of companies who have entered the pre-license review process. Follow the instructions in my base post on how to find them. I limited my search due to time. But, see where they are planning to build a reactor and see if the country has a solid pre-license and licensing process, or look to see if the reactor is in license process, or has been approved, in a major western country. I've never seen a company that had an approved nuclear design license not make a point of having that license on their website.
If they talk about building nuclear plants using ordinary construction methods and people - that's another solid clue (I've seen companies claim that their reactor is inherently safe and therefore does not need nuclear quality control and nuclear construction processes: It's not safe if it leaks or falls apart a lot worse than the problems that occur at properly constructed nuclear plants occur (you cannot eliminate all failures - you can just make them rare and have small leaks vs major ones)
A big drawback of coal is how much radiation it releases because of the radioactive elements in the coal you are burning 🔥
Maria Curie
radioactivity is released also due to mining. low grade coal need to be washed and that produces water pollution. and the fly ash
Not to mention all the mercury and cadmium.
@@rtqii mercury and cadmium are not related to coal or coal mining. Both are expensive metals and if we can recover any, we shall
In a post I did below I mentioned that I would post the history of Thorium fueled power plants. The USA built 4 of them. This is an edited version of a post I did elsewhere.
Thorium as a potentially viable fuel was identified in the 1950's by many countries.
First though is that thorium is not fissile (you cannot get a nuclear reaction using thorium). A thorium reactor actually runs on U233 in the end - and its U233 that is recoverable from them.
In the presence of a properly controlled nuclear reaction thorium 232 absorbs a neutron and becomes protactinium233. The protactinium233 then decays to U233 (which takes about 2 months to get usable quantities of U233). As such all thorium reactors must be seeded with U233, U235, or plutonium239 (the common fissile materials) to supply fuel for the first 4+ months of operation.
I’m not going to list and discuss all the existing test reactors that had thorium loaded into them or the thorium specific test reactors that were built. Suffice to say that thorium was tested in both existing test reactors and specific built thorium designed test reactors by multiple countries. Also in all kinds of designs since the 1950’s: Light Water, Heavy Water, High Temp Hot Gas (HTGR) and of course the Oak Ridge Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). The recent several decades have focused on HTGR pebble bed designs and of course China just built and started up in August 2023 a new thorium based MSR to determine if we technically have solved the molten salt corrosion issues well enough to proceed with further development.
I am including the Shippingport thorium core load 3 (1977-1982) as a test reactor. Shippingport was a naval aircraft carrier PWR that became the 1st demonstration and test reactor for commercial power: 60MWe output, Online 1958 (1st nuclear electrical power generation from a plant built with its primary purpose to generate electricity). This thorium core proved that a thorium core could self-generate surplus U233 for recovery by reprocessing. Shippingport was shut down in 1982 at the end of this test.
To date only the USA felt that they had thorium fuel designs based on test reactors that worked well enough to design commercial power plants from, which did not work out as explained below. In retrospect they can be viewed as very large and vastly costly test reactors.
The USA had also spent the equivalent of $Billions in today’s money to build a stockpile of U233 to seed thorium reactors and for atomic bomb tests in the 1960's (the U233 bomb worked well). Note that they are now looking to spend $billions to dispose of that U233 stock as the containers are degrading and disposal is cheaper than repackaging the U233 stock into new containers which does not count long term cost of storage that follows - and eventual use or disposal in the future. Also, there is no real foreseen use at this time for that U233 to justify the cost of preserving it.
1st attempt was Indian Point Unit 1 - light water thorium fueled 275MWe PWR power plant. Online in 1962. The thorium fuel performed so badly that they changed to uranium fuel in 1965 and the plant spent the rest of its life as a uranium reactor that operated well. Unit 1 was shut down in 1974 due to changes in regulations from when it was built as the emergency core cooing system that was acceptable in 1962 was no longer acceptable in 1974, and initial plant design made retrofit of an acceptable system uneconomical (nuclear power plants tend to have lots of rooms with very substantial reinforced concrete walls - there may be almost no room to install something different).
2nd attempt (approved for construction at essentially the same time as Indian Point Unit 1) was Elk River - a light water thorium fueled 22 MWe BWR (Online in 1964, Shut down 3 ½ years later in 1968 due to major design and construction issues which led to cracks in the reactor vessel and main piping resulting in significant reactor water leakage. I have found comments that says the reactor and power plant did not operate as expected; but, no evidence if this was a fuel issue or other issues.
More interesting is that this was presented as a prototype for a “Small Modular Reactor” for rural America (SMR’s as the reactor assembly and boiler was built in a plant and shipped to site by a railcar), which could be done anywhere as the key SMR concept of small nuclear reactors would be economical due to mass production was presented at an international conference in 1955. However, 17 power plant reactors which would be considered SMR size today were built in the USA from the 1950’s into the 1970’s. Not one of them is operating today - where a number of large central station nuclear power plants built at the same time are still operating.
Other than the cracks and reactor water leaks the biggest lesson learned was that small nuclear units like this would never be cost competitive with larger nuclear units as they need more materials and cost much more to build on a MWhr generated basis; and also cost much more to operate and maintain on a MWhr generated basis than a larger plant due to staffing requirements. Note that a 12MWe uranium power plant in Piqua, Ohio which ran from 1963-1966 was closed with the same conclusion.
3rd attempt was Peach Bottom Unit 1 - a thorium fueled HTGR reactor (as that seemed to be the most applicable technology other than light water based on test reactors). I believe it was about 60MWe output. Online in 1967, shutdown in 1974. There were severe problems with the thorium fuel and it was quickly changed to U235 fuel. There were massive other plant design problems (scaling up from a test reactor size rarely goes smooth). A total commercial and technical flop.
4th attempt (based on lessons learned from Peach Bottom) was Fort St Vrain - a 330MWe output thorium fueled HTGR. Online in 1979, shutdown in 1989 due to several issues in the plant design that affected operation and required excessive and expensive maintenance and only produced 15% of the power it should have if it could run well enough to base load at 100% output which is how most US Nuclear Reactors are loaded. I had a coworker who had worked at Fort St Vrain and he told me that in the end it was also converted to Uranium fuel. I have been unable to verify that with limited internet searches (multiple sources report that Peach Bottom Unit 1 was quickly converted to Uranium). Fort St Vrain was again both a major technical and economic flop.
Bottom line is that there has been extensive research into thorium-based reactors by multiple countries from the 1950’s to current time, and the USA even built 4 commercial power plants using BWR, PWR, and HTGR designs.
No country to date has made a test reactor or power plant work well enough to design a future power plant at this point - especially when they look at the USA’s attempts at building thorium fueled power plants by substantial scaling up of test reactors. The world history of initial nuclear power plant designs, and even 2nd generation designs, in many countries show lots of failures as what seems to work so well on paper often does not work in practice (or is too expensive to maintain).
Research continues and just because thorium did not work well and was not economical in the past does not mean that it won’t work well or be economical in the future. It’s just going to take a lot of money and time. If it was easy, it would have already been done.
There are also a lot of investor scam companies out there claiming that they have the solution, when no one really knows what the solutions are yet. These companies often talk of building plants on a fast timetable but have never even started a "pre-licensing" review of their design which is normally needed to get to the point to be able to submit a reactor design for licensing (figure several years for pre-license review, and then several more years for licensing once a license application is submitted). Just how many reactors does anyone think they are going to build that are not approved by the nuclear regulators? But, they generate good paying jobs for people for a decade or more by telling by telling investors and lots of people that the solution is obvious and simple.
Wow, thanks. 😎
Thanks, I was a fan of Thorium MSRs until reading your comments. I would love to see them happen but that probably wont be in my lifetime, if ever.
As I understand it, Thorium can be (and perhaps is) used in MOX fuel. By replacing some of the U238 with TH232 or mixing it with PU239, you can make a substitute fuel pellet that works similar to standard enriched uranium fuel pellets. Doing so can reduce the overall PU239 remaining in your fuel waste or be used to downgrade highly enriched weapons-grade materials.
Though I do understand that such methods do not really count towards building a true reactor based on Thorium.
*It’s just going to take a lot of money and time. If it was easy, it would have already been done.* - Why bother? Wind and solar are cheap, safe and scale up.
Next time, could you just write an abstract or executive summary?
Kirk Sorensen was on this case for decades now. Good to see this finally hitting mainstream.
0:01 As he was taking the bottles out of the box, I was wondering -- will there be a green bottle? Yes!!! Soylent Green!!!
I was wondering that too. I smiled at the last bottle was pulled out. I realized, "Of course that would be the last, They know what the name and color means." Well done!
For those of use who watched Soylent Green...how could they name their product that!
Yeah, right? Obviously, they've never watched the movie!
I think they actually knew and called it as a joke, there is a YT interview somewhere.@@Cybersawz
@@arofhoofwe know why science sucks. Disgusting science in Soylent
It's all about name recognition!
Haha. I do know the movie and no, Soylent isn't made from people. I double-checked the ingredient list, just to be sure!.I endorse Soylent but not cannibalism.
Quick story about their name: Soylent was actually named after the food in the 1966 science fiction novel "Make Room! Make Room!" and later 1973 film Soylent Green. While the food in the book is made from soy and lentils (hence the name), the food in the movie is made from humans, leading to this dramatic scene: th-cam.com/video/b2aH9tu4s30/w-d-xo.html . Soylent actually in 2022 (the year the film takes place), released a SoylentGreen snack bar in a mystery flavor as a humorous nod to the film.
What's interesting is that nearly all the negatives of solid fuel reactors have been solved by the Canadian CANDU reactors many decades ago. I'm disappointed the Canadian design wasn't even mentioned.
Edit: except for the cost
CANDU reactors still produce waste containing long-lived actinides and plutonium that takes a long time to become safe. If we could get Fast Reactors working we could burn that waste and get most of the 97% waste that most of todays nuclear reactors produce. Also Thorium reactors would not produce Plutonium and other long lived radiation waste, molten salt, Thorium reactors would be 'walk-away' safe and what waste remains will be safe within 300 years.
It’s great that they can use U238, but they’re pressurized and thus need heavy reactor walls and large containment buildings which add to the cost, land requirements, safety, etc.
While CANDU have mostly succeeded you might recall Darlington had a long outage.
Last chance for fission is molten salt reactor, old fission had over 50 years to get the general public to accept it, it's like the old RCA video disks nobody wanted, a old technology that been pushed to far.
All the D2O is out on neutrino detectors.
Thank you! Thank you so much for covering this! You did a great video and covered all of the important points.
Here’s a couple of additional things:
1) You should see if you could tour Flibe Energy and interview Kirk Sorensen if possible. Flibe has several important additional uses for lithium-fluoride thorium molten salt reactors (LFTR) that involve using the radioactive byproducts for medical purposes and the heat for desalination and recycling. Also, Plutonium 238 is a byproduct and this is very rare and very useful for radioisotope batteries.
2) Another important benefit of LFTRs is since they don’t use water for cooling, they don’t need to be near large bodies of water.
3) There are other important political reasons why the world stuck with water-based reactors.
4) The low pressure and no water make them perfect for space-, moon-, and Mars-based power generation.
Your collection of videos on TH-cam are the greatest of all the TH-cam science channels! Even you older ones are relevant, thank you for years of teaching me more about how the world works
0:00 Soylent Green is both the name of a 1973 science fiction film and of a wafer-like food product in the film. The film is a police procedural set in the future, based on the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! The food is a processed protein ration made of human beings and distributed to an unsuspecting populace.
The basic premise of the story is flawed, because widespread cannibalism as a food source only works if you're shrinking the population as you go. You can't have everyone live 70 years eating nothing but human protein, when everyone else is doing the same.
It's like if you ate a whole cow. Over time, you could do it. It might take you a year, but after that's done you starve to death. And a cow has more meat than a people.
I was thinking about Soylent Green, also. Who is their marketing strategist?!
Fact. Joe Biden's uncle was sold as Soylent Green.
The Chinese are quite advanced in the development of their own thorium molten salt reactor.
If the Chinese told you the truth they simply forgot to lie.
The idea of shipping container sized nuclear reactors might be a more important innovation than either molten salt or thorium.
If the reactors can be transported efficiently, then their manufacturing and maintenance can all happen at a central facility.
The on site construction, then, becomes much easier to regulate.
Also, for powering cargo ships and freight trains, a shipping container sized nuclear boiler would be really handy.
That might even be the first market ready application. An efficient nuclear powered freight delivery system could be the backbone of green transportation infrastructure.
I can imagine a high speed trans siberia nuclear train that goes 200 mph and only needs refuelling every other decade!
The potential of nuclear makes the transition seem that much more attainable.
And tiny AA sized reactors please.
It’s only possible of low pressure reactors like molten salt ones. The reactor walls of Light Water Reactors are 10 inches of steel, and the containment buildings of water cooled reactors have to have 1000 times the volume of the reactor and use reinforced concrete.
You never be able to move them after they been fueled & used because of severe radiation contamination. No way to move it on roads, ships. Not practical for utilities since they still have all of the regulatory costs, but the reactors only produce a small fraction of power. When it comes to reactors size, only very big reactors many any economically sense. Also two of the three companies working on SMR have cancelled their projects. The only remaining company is NuScale, which I am sure will exit when the grant money from the gov't runs out.
@@randalljsilva There's a number of conventional miniaturized reactors, it's just that none of them are for civilian use. Only military, research and space applications.
We could have gone nuclear 30 years ago, that's the sad reality. We're not waiting on technological innovation, we're waiting on governments willing to put the fossil fuel industry out of business.
@@guytech7310 Nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines have been moving around just fine for decades now.
It's a very dense source of energy, which is exactly what you want for TRANSPORTATION.
You don't have anything except complaining, and it's really dubious complaining at that.
Understand the tech before you criticize it.
What a superbly informative video! I'm an engineer of 40 years and I learned a lot. One thing; The turbine you show is I believe, a gas turbine rather than a steam turbine. Not that it does anything to detract from brilliance of the video, but you clearly value accuracy. Thank you for this lesson. I'm a believer and I subscribed.
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!!!
No private investors in their right mind would build another nuclear power plant until it is proven that it can be built on a predictable schedule (preferably no more than 7 years) and a known cost. I say this as a nuclear engineer who worked in the industry for 35 years and was laid off when the AP1000 plant in South Carolina was cancelled after delays and cost overruns back in 2017. Several executives faced criminal charges and jail time over this. Either the design company is going to have to build their own prototype and demonstrate the feasibility at their own expense or the government will have to subsidize it.
Scale models, computer simulations and CGI are not enough.
And whatever concept is envisioned, it better take into account for the decline in quantity and quality of the workforce that is going to design, build and operate it.
Two remarks that I have picked up from other TH-cam video's on the subject:
1. Thorium can also be used in presurized water reactors. But it is less useful. The shorter half-life of the waste products remains, though. So I still would prefer it to Uranium.
2.Presurized Water Reactors use solid fuel. Which results in only a fraction of the fuel being used. With Molten Salt Reactors, pretty much all of it can be used. (And I don't mean the U235 is only a few percents of the rods. I mean not all U235 is used up.)
Maybe an idea for a followup video?
Awesome. In 1984 I graduated with a BSNE from NCSU, Disappointed with the US effectively abandoning the nuclear fuel cycle, I reluctantly moved into another discipline. Hopefully there is a less emotional and political response to nuclear power When I left, we were struggling to keep the Liquid Metal cooling technology alive. Combining that with the homogeneous reactor tech we had, there was promise. Glad to see the good fight is still going on. I'd like to see the notion of alternate fuels go away, instead a notion of using right fuel to solve the problem at hand.
Alternative energy is well and good, but I agree with you that we have this technology in hand and it's only a matter of commercialization and public willingness that we need to overcome.
NUCLEAR IS NOT DEAD.
Nuclear Energy is essential for low carbon future world, this is science.
What we need is to install more and more fission reactors plus renewables as their costs get lower and lower.
The more reactors, the better the future
Unfortunately, science sucks.
Science doesn't exist, only curiosity and greed
Low carbon is a scam 😂
I think nuclear energy’s future is not promising. It works but the electricity it generates costs three times more per kilowatt-hour than the same kilowatt-hour from renewables that are close to free. Battery storage costs are falling dramatically so this factor can almost be ignored depending on how much coverage you need. Nuclear energy is prohibitively expensive if used to meet peak load needs, which is the more valued electricity. It is okay for less valuable base load needs if that’s your only option but it remains more costly.
Nuclear is not dead but nearly dead! It's an efficient stop gap between fossil fuel and fully renewable energy. Why we need a stop gap? Because despite our collective minds and efforts it turns out we cannot store energy in a small, portable, efficient, durable storage. Yes lithium battery is good, but it degrades over time, not that efficient, dangerous, low density energy storage, and toxic for the environment. We need time to find alternative for grid scale battery system, a time that we do not have. So going for nuclear is a much preferable option than maintaining coal or other fossil fuel power plant.
but...there is NO climate emergency...that is a huuuuggee scam designed to control you
The problem with commercialisation of molten salt reactors is the wear issue, not only is the molten salt extremely corrosive and reactive it also mechanically etches it's vessels and pipes as it circulates.
This was one of the primary reasons it was initialy shelved until further advances in materials sciences brought about the ability to negate or at least resist those effects long enough to be viable.
I like the tech and it is pretty safe as an automated installtion, I would indeed like to see further development on this and other thorium cycle small reactors.
Ed Pheil (MCSFR) claims that corrosion isn't a problem so long as no water gets into the fuel/coolant.
As well as the gaseous pollutants, coal also produces arsenic as a byproduct; it also releases more radioactive waste, albeit low level, than a nuclear reactor.
Indeed
Hmm I'd argue that at least for people living in the US, the thousands of nuclear warheads that are literally designed to explode are a much bigger hazard than the handful of nuclear power plants that are designed to be as safe as possible.
Beyond less waste, it can be used to burn the waste produced by traditional uranium fired reactors.
I first heard of thorium molten salt reactors like 15 years ago. It's nice to see someone is finally working on their construction.
Imagine the treasure chest of fuel sitting on-site at current nuclear facilities. Being called "waste" (and it's not even a lot, in fact it's negligible next to the gigatons of particulates each and every year thrown right into the atmosphere from fossil fuel!)
These plant operators are smart to not want to bury it kilometers down: after a few decades there will be some very valuable elements in those concrete cylinders.
@A-Milkdromeda-Laniakea-Hominid and, due to the high cost of the current plants, as the reactors come up for recertification, most power companies in the US are opting to decommission the sites. TMI hasn't been operating for several years now, and they're dismantling the facility that could have been converted to thorium liquid salt.
@@pohldriver That's ridiculous. If you have the site and the containment buildings already that's a good piece of the work done.
This could change everything. Humans could actually stop hacking down the Amazon and burning it as biomass. We're such an idiot species.
It would be nice if there was less misinformation out there concerning nuclear energy. If people could actually be educated on the real risks and safety, we could all just use regular nuclear energy.
That’s intentional. Government-fueled climate change activists are after power and control cannot achieve that if there’s cheap, abundant, green energy.
There's no misinformation out there in the general public that wasn't generated by the from the fossil fuel industry. It has it's tendrils into the Right and Left of politics, but on the Right they are honest about it.
They're playing this game where they are making out they possess the panacea to save us as opposed to the pagans that are the proponents of renewables.
I put it to you most people think nuclear is already safe. All that's happening is renewables are being demonized by big business, who see renewables as a direct threat to their profits. They are deliberately trying to make nuclear look like the underdog.
Market forces are driving cost of renewables and that does not suit the greedy puppeteers behind the push for nuclear. Nuclear should have to compete like everything else in the marketplace.
The Right of politics representing the fossil fuel energy sector is now doing what they always do and that's trying to manipulate market forces in their favor. The Right opposed climate change regulation because they denied climate change existed. Now they can see climate change does exist (although it couldn't possibly be man made) they are trying to keep their pockets lined by artificially monopolizing electricity production through government regulation.
I'm all for nuclear energy if the electricity it supplies is a) competitive when compared to renewables and b) not subject to fossil fuel type cartel behavior and c) that it can be implemented very quickly.
At the moment we're seeing energy companies closing coal power stations not for environmental concerns but for profit by reducing supply therefore driving up energy costs. The treachery of these pigs knows no bound because a regular maintenance overhaul has all of a sudden become the excuse to close down a whole power station during the transition from fossil fuel to renewables. They are manipulating the market and we're paying. It's corruption.
Now apply this to the subject of this vid to see what will likely happen.
Make no mistake we will pay through the teeth for electricity after they have used their influence to a) use taxpayer funds to wholly or partially build their high cost nuclear electricity power plants, b) use taxpayer government subsidies to make their electricity affordable compared to renewables thereby costing renewables out of the market. c) once the subsidies are lifted the power price goes up but they use their considerable market powers to control renewables.
It's called the free market in a 'democracy'. It's not a democracy we live in per se, but the illusion of it - that is so long as big business get what they want then all's well. They corrupt both the Right and the Left BTW through a well understood process called State Capture:
"The classical definition of state capture refers to the way formal procedures (such as laws and social norms) and government bureaucracy are manipulated by government officials, state-backed companies, private companies or private individuals, so as to influence state policies and laws in their favour."
Yep you're right. Nuclear waste isn't really a big ass problem. we've got our way to deal with such Threat
@@_DZ_UR_ Riiiight....
That "way" being the usual human shortsightedness along the lines of:
"Problem's gonna be here for around 100.000 years. Im'ma live around 80 years. Cool, not my problem, really."
That attitude is what lead to climate change in the first place.
@@danieloberhofer9035 That's a straight out fact 💯
Till this day I wonder why they don't make good use of it (Nuclear waste) instead of disposing of it via store them inside a deep underground bunker or vice versa 🤔
another problem with molten salt reactors is containment. meaning how do they make sure that no nuclear material is stolen.
With conventional control rods, since they don't go anywhere, if they are pulled out and weighed, you know EXACTLY how much you have and it can be compared to what was put in, and there is perfect traceability of all that material.
With molten reactors, you don't know if some of the molten salt is still in the system, if some of it is stuck the walls of the reactor. It's almost impossible to get a perfect tracking of material, which means you can't rule out that some of it might have gone missing.
This is a molten salt power storage plant, heated by a nuclear reactor. If molten salt plants turn out to be a competitive storage option, they'll be heated by peaks in cheap and cheerful renewable output, not expensive, high security nuclear reactors.
I don't think you got it, you can buy their fuel right now and it's not illegal, if someone wants to make a dirty bomb they don't need to get anywhere near a power plant, minerals come from nature and if you have someone that determined to do stuff with it then they will find it in nature. There's actual natural material that is orders of magnitude worse than the salt they will use.
Taking water out of the core of the reactor has so many benefits.
The low boiling point of water is the big one, but also that it dissociates.
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima all happened because water’s limitations. When things go wrong, water becomes a liability.
Fukushima is indeed, a good example of how safety nuclear plants are. A nuclear plant that survived a seaquake, with 0 direct deaths and 1 indirect.
Well you can go to live beside a nuclear power plant, it's curiously cheap and safe!
@@samuelec If you live in France, probably this is the case.
Unless you count deaths as a result of the (unnecessary) evacuation itself.
@@samuelec Honestly, I would, and I would also be bathed in LESS radioactivity than living next to a coal plant.
Also, do you *_seriously_* think highly-educated and expensive people would work inside nuclear plants, every, single, day, if they didn't believe it was safe???
@@unduloid or a hydroelectric dam
Without commenting on the validity of molten salt, I would just like to say that the fact that a video about saving nuclear power is sponsored by a food called Soylent is hilarious.
The entire video is hilarious and he is having hassles hiding a lot of answers contradicting him so far
Soylent Green is my favorite, it reminds me of my grandparents 😊
I answered and said, "If I have found favor in thy sight, O Lord, show this also to thy servant: whether after death, as soon as every one of us yields up his soul, we shall be kept in rest until those times come when thou wilt renew the creation, or whether we shall be tormented at once?" 76 He answered me and said, "I will show you that also, but do not be associated with those who have shown scorn, nor number yourself among those who are tormented. 77 For you have a treasure of works laid up with the Most High; but it will not be shown to you until the last times.
78 Now, concerning death, the teaching is: When the decisive decree has gone forth from the Most High that a man shall die, as the spirit leaves the body to return again to him who gave it, first of all it adores the glory of the Most High. 79 And if it is one of those who have shown scorn and have not kept the way of the Most High, and who have despised his law, and who have hated those who fear the Most High -- 80 such spirits shall not enter into habitations, but shall immediately wander about in torments, ever grieving and sad, in seven ways.
81 The first way, because they have scorned the law of the Most High. 82 The second way, because they cannot now make a good repentance that they may live. 83 The third way, they shall see the reward laid up for those who have trusted the covenants of the Most High. 84 The fourth way, they shall consider the torment laid up for themselves in the last days. 85 The fifth way, they shall see how the habitations of the others are guarded by angels in profound quiet. 86 The sixth way, they shall see how some of them will pass over into torments. 87 The seventh way, which is worse than all the ways that have been mentioned, because they shall utterly waste away in confusion and be consumed with shame, and shall wither with fear at seeing the glory of the Most High before whom they sinned while they were alive, and before whom they are to be judged in the last times.
88 "Now this is the order of those who have kept the ways of the Most High, when they shall be separated from their mortal body. 89 During the time that they lived in it, they laboriously served the Most High, and withstood danger every hour, that they might keep the law of the Lawgiver perfectly. 90 Therefore this is the teaching concerning them: 91 First of all, they shall see with great joy the glory of him who receives them, for they shall have rest in seven orders.
92 The first order, because they have striven with great effort to overcome the evil thought which was formed with them, that it might not lead them astray from life into death. 93 The second order, because they see the perplexity in which the souls of the unrighteous wander, and the punishment that awaits them. 94 The third order, they see the witness which he who formed them bears concerning them, that while they were alive they kept the law which was given them in trust. 95 The fourth order, they understand the rest which they now enjoy, being gathered into their chambers and guarded by angels in profound quiet, and the glory which awaits them in the last days. 96 The fifth order, they rejoice that they have now escaped what is corruptible, and shall inherit what is to come;
and besides they see the straits and toil from which they have been delivered, and the spacious liberty which they are to receive and enjoy in immortality. 97 The sixth order, when it is shown to them how their face is to shine like the sun, and how they are to be made like the light of the stars, being incorruptible from then on. 98 The seventh order, which is greater than all that have been mentioned, because they shall rejoice with boldness, and shall be confident without confusion, and shall be glad without fear, for they hasten to behold the face of him whom they served in life and from whom they are to receive their reward when glorified.
99 This is the order of the souls of the righteous, as henceforth is announced; and the aforesaid are the ways of torment which those who would not give heed shall suffer hereafter." 100 I answered and said, "Will time therefore be given to the souls, after they have been separated from the bodies, to see what you have described to me?" 101 He said to me, "They shall have freedom for seven days, so that during these seven days they may see the things of which you have been told, and afterwards they shall be gathered in their habitations."
102 I answered and said, "If I have found favor in thy sight, show further to me, thy servant, whether on the day of judgment the righteous will be able to intercede for the unrighteous or to entreat the Most High for them, 103 fathers for sons or sons for parents, brothers for brothers, relatives for their kinsmen, or friends for those who are most dear." 104 He answered me and said, "Since you have found favor in my sight, I will show you this also. The day of judgment is decisive and displays to all the seal of truth. Just as now a father does not send his son, or a son his father, or a master his servant, or a friend his dearest friend, to be ill or sleep or eat or be healed in his stead, 105 so no one shall ever pray for another on that day, neither shall any one lay a burden on another; for then every one shall bear his own righteousness and unrighteousness." 2 Esdras 7:75
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Amazing videos. Not sure about sponsorship. Second ingredient on list is sugar (Maltodextrin) probably not the best supplement unless you like a sugar spike and your insulin working overtime.
The real Elephant in the Room should be named here and that is that our "traditional" U235 fission plants prime functionality wasn't ever meant as a power source, but to produce weapon grade PU239!
It never was intended as "Waste Product", it was the main cause to build them that way.
Power generation was just how PR sold us that Billion Dollar Tax spendings
If it ever was about power generation, the molten salt route would have been the method of choice even back then.
But it was the cold War and they needed to bamboozle Taxpayers out of their money to fund the creation of the industrialized military Complex we have around the world today
That is incorrect. Standard U235 nuclear power plants cannot be used to create bomb grade plutonium; and this was known prior to the 1st nuclear power plant being built.
While most of the uranium in a U235 power plant is U238, and the U238 does convert to P239; a small amount of the P239 converts to P240.
P240 is a poison for the fissile P239 and if you get more than a very small amount of P240 then the plutonium will not go "boom."
The amount of P240 generated is dependent on the time the P239 is inside a reactor. Special bomb grade plutonium reactors were developed (with one exception discussed below) where the fuel rods are only in the reactor for several months to limit the P240 to acceptable levels. Note that same applies to the U233 that a thorium reactor runs on - which also makes a great bomb - but is poisoned by U234.
Fuel assemblies in power plants are typically inside the reactor for a minimum run time of 11 months and most are there for 33 - 46 month run times. 11 months creates far to much P240 (or U234 in a thorium core) for use as a bomb material.
The key exception to this is that the UK designed and developed a series of Magnox AGR power plants specifically to produce weapons grade plutonium. They were not a commercially economic source of power.
All of the Magnox reactors have been decommissioned and replaced with reactor designs that cannot produce weapons grade plutonium.
These days they've gotten lazy about hiding they're intentions
It is just hard to believe that the US federal government is not providing the necessary R&D funding to properly develop at a rapid pace these reactors. The scale and significant number of remaining technical issues is too great for private firms to realistically get it done in the near future. I admire any firm that tries and advances knowledge along the way, but a dream of a working commercial system made by a private firm is many decades and many billions in venture capital devoted to R&D away. I would not go so far as to say these firms working on it now are scams as some have said. The greatest scam of the 21st century has been the delusion that current green energy iterations will amount to anything more that a small fraction of global power generation and that these systems are non toxic from production through disposal. These reactors are green energy with it's own unique waste disposal issue. By comparison Co2 producing power plants also produce a toxic waste of sorts that is slowly destroying our planet. These reactors will not catastrophically fail and pose any real danger to the public.
As a nuclear reactor operator, Arvin is spot on.
Don't you know, "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!". At least in the movie.
14:12 The ability to refuel while the reactor was on was a trait of the RBMK reactors as well. Although they have now become obselete not only through the chernobyl accident (which was corrected for in other similar plants later), but also through time and advancing technology.
You are the ONLY podcaster that actually did his homework before he spewed his opinions and I thank you for that. Of COOOURSsse~~ we SHOULD invest immensely in order to make LFTRs commercially successful.
Right on Arvin! We need more people willing to take a serious new look at Nuclear Energy. The info was great and easy to understand. Some additional info about other practical uses besides electricity generation would also be helpful, such as water desalinization, medical isotopes, and industrial scale heating using the waste heat. Imagine a small modular liquid thorium reactor being built for a community in an artic location. It could provide electricity, heat and viable by-products for the community, all while doing it in an environmentally friendly way. A small modular micro fission reactor could also provide stable abundant energy for a lunar or Mars colony. The words of FDR remind us that "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." When it comes to anxiety about Nuclear Energy, perhaps we should remember and apply FDR's words in the context of Nuclear Energy.
Sad that even conventional nuclear plants are so much safer and cleaner than all fossil fuels, even with the disasters. What an oversight to not have everything nuclear by now, well unless you're invested in fossil fuels, know that most people need a car by design, and have so much money that politicians can be easily convinced to turn a blind eye.
Political bullshit from many politicians across the world, but not only that, many stupid people still have very perverse opinions on how the technology works, even when much information exists to indicate otherwise.
The crippling regulatory environment, public scaremongering about radiation, together with horrendous construction delays of the nuclear industry, has frightened priced nuclear power out of the market. Most power companies don't want to risk this industry anymore.
All of you ARE taking CMEs into account, AREN'T you?
Well, of COURSE you are! Being such all-knowing know-it-alls who already know EVERYthing.
@@satanofficial3902CMEs? As in, coronal mass ejections?
Except that you need 10+ years and $Billions of moneys to build nuclear, you can't build nuclear at all sites, it must be safe from natural disasters and have access to water, plus all the extra cost in fuel transport, waste material transport and storage. Didn't it occurred to you that there maybe be reasons why not everything is nuclear by now? Nuclear is expensive, risky and doesn't scale.
I am with you all the way. Pro nuclear since the mid 2000s. Against environmentally destructive renewables and think it absurd that so much credence is given to them, plus the denial of environmental/wildlife harm they cause. Also, they cannot run modern civilization 24/7. so why are they being pushed so hard? Glad to see this presentation about MSR technology, thank you very much Arvin!
It seems the Greenie agenda is to destroy the grid with ruinables and kill transportation by forcing EV's.
IMO the biggest problem with nuclear power IS the nuclear waste. If a country(ies) can't get to a single storage facility for waste as is the case in the US it makes waste storage cost prohibitive since it's something that has to happen for 1000s of year.
A secondary problem is cost. If the energy produced costs so much that most people can't afford it, it's not beneficial. Govts. COULD subsidize it but since in the US we have slashed taxes so much that we can't even fund the IRS, or people are getting close to seeing their Medicare get slashed and can't afford medical care and SS benefits are about to get slashed by 25% which will turn a few million retired people into abject poverty, then nuclear power needs to be able to be built and operated to where the output power can be sold on the market for no more than 25 cents/KWh. And even at that cost it has to be mixed with lower cost power. Otherwise we turn ever more into a country of have and have nots where the people without have to do a LOT of power rationing.
The waste isn't a problem
90% of it can be reprocessed into medical isotopes
Lab isotopes
Or more fuel.
America just doesn't reprocess fuel cause Jimmy Carter was an asshole.
As for cost
Yeah
Thats why goverments need to do it. Money's fake, but it's really fake for governments
Look at france. They built the Super Phonix, and a shiton of conventional reactors that are copy pasted down to the bolts
I see no mention of the Moltex stable salt reactor designs, which use zirconium galvanised tubes to avoid corrosion, and convection only to transfer heat to the primary cooling circuit. That avoids the need to pump highly radioactive molten salt fuel through pipes valves heat exchanges and a chemical processing unit. This reduces the capital cost to a little over $1 per Watt. The Moltex flex design uses uranium fuel dissolved in molten salt, which is a simpler fuel cycle than thorium. The stable salt reactor waste burner design being developed in Canada uses molten salt fuel recycled from nuclear waste, using The Moltex waste to stable salt process. You can find all this explained several years ago on a TH-cam video by chief technology officer Ian Scott. there is no plan to make large reactors. They will all be small modular reactors sitting side-by-side.
The Moltex flex design produces 800°C heat, which provides efficient electricity generation using the same turbines off the shelf that are used with coal-fired power plants, further reducing costs.
Doesn't the high price of zirconium make this cost prohibitive?
This is the type of reactor that I think we need NOW!! If they could address the corrosion problem it seems it would be almost perfect. If they could get the cost of them heating chambers down low enough, you could just remove the salts, bring in a new chamber, but the salts back in and keep going. I know that's too simple, but I just got the oil in my car changed today, and thought you could do the same with the reactor. Please don't take me serious!
No practical way to remove waste products from the salt especially neutron poisons. MSR will never happen because they have unsolvable technical problems.
rdgale2000, you deserve a medal for expertly using sarcasm. At first you had me, when you went on with your car I almost choked - and I think I needed your exit line to really catch your drift. Well done!
@@guytech7310 Not necessarily unsolvable only not answered yet.
@guytech7310 that is not true, you can process them in the loop. There are chemical and electromagnetic techniques to remove byproducts and treat the fuel salts as they pump through the primary loop.
@@ironassbrownNo that is wrong. No process has been develeped to date to extract waste products in situ. There has been talk about it, but no process has been developed.
In the 1970s ORNL process was to extract (remove) the salt, dissolve the salt in water, extract the U-233 and dispose of the contaminated Salt & use fresh uncontaminated salt to replace the disposed contaminated salt. This is not practical & creates a huge amount of waste included a large amounts of contaminated water.
Chernobyl was not an accident. The people in charge knew they were ignoring restrictions and the safety protocol. For the sake of their careers.
The reason for the disaster was selfishness, greed and ignorance to finish a simulation, a test. But the reactor wasn't in the right condition. They did it anyway.
All that mattered to those who were responsible was their careers. Nuclear power isn't a threat. It's the people who are responsible who are a threat.
FLUID DYNAMICS pipe size matters! Flow efficiency physics, dictates that you want larger pipes for efficient flow efficiency. Large reactors are more efficient. SMRs are more for Silicon Valley glossy brochured investor schemes than a practical economic solution for energy.
MSRs need exotic expensive materials. Hastelloy, Li7 via depleted lithium or similar, tritium management and the high temperature 🌡️ corrosive salts and neutrons are harsh on components it is not just the water. Hit 700c and Cr migrates in the Hastelloy.
We need nuclear power plants now! CANDU style heavy water 🌊 reactors are more efficient and effective. Tested and proven.
MSRs are promising and should be researched. We lack the necessary information and experience to deploy at scale.
It's not safety concerns that makes nuclear not to be adopted, rather, It is its deep cost, and lcoe that deters wide adoption, solar, wind and battery are cheaper.
We can as well wait for fusion while solar and wind and battery fills in the gap
Except that fusion will also be uneconomic.
The reason you think so is that here in the USA (and a few other countries) is that they are not telling you the truth of the cost of different power sources. They've created a "convenient lie" to push the wind and solar.
If you only look at the cost of the generation plant - then solar and wind beats nuclear plants.
But if you look at the cost of power delivered to the customer (including transmission and distribution cost) then new nuclear is often cheaper than either new solar or wind in many places in the world (including in many places in the USA).
It turns out that the connection cost of a multitude of small generators to the grid and being able to handle reactive power without a spinning generator that can generate "VARs" is very very expensive. In my area people are very upset about how much the cost of electricity is going up with all the new solar and wind-farms. It's mostly because the "transmission" component of the power bill has skyrocketed.
There have been many studies on this by many countries and even international agencies.
That is why so many new nuclear power plants are under construction worldwide - with more planned. Because the delivered power cost for substantial generation is cheaper than solar and wind in most cases.
Not to mention more long term reliable. Solar and wind typically has to be replaced every 20 years of so. New nuclear power plants are now initially licensed for 60 years and it's likely that they will run about 100 years. Note that the "better designed" 40 year licensed plants from the early 1970's have now been running for 50+ years and are seeking another license extension to 80 years (and people are talking about rewiring the plant and replacing controls to go for 100 years or more).
Be careful to ask the right question, and don't be distracted by only part of the picture.
@@perryallan3524 You missed the fact that even considering all these factors, nuclear is more expensive.
@@saumyacow4435 About 20 other countries and the studies within the US on total cost of power delivered disagree with you.
Feel free to believe what you wish. Wishful thinking is free and available to all.
However, those of use who are actually trying to solve problems tend to focus more on the facts.
@@perryallan3524 If you want the facts, just google "csiro gencost". Read it. Then get back to me.
The recent promotion of molten salt nuclear reactors began about 25 years ago. The main two promoters were hoping to attract government funding to finance their dream technology. Even now very little has resulted from that effort which aimed to recruit thousands of people, with no academic background in nuclear technologies, to promote the technology.
Typically, nuclear power promoters continue to assume that we have 20-30 years left to turn this 'Titanic' around. They frequently employ the fear of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption effects to sell their favored nuclear technology. As is the case with the vast majority of the Earth's 8.0+ billion humans they have masterfully excluded the following warnings from their consciousness. I urge readers to search for the following article titles.
IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster (TheGuardian)
UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change' (TheHill)
* This statement was made 4.8 years ago.
China is builting these reactors and are going to go online very soon.
I think the biggest issue with fission isnt any of the concerns over waste and safety, you need only watch some Kyle Hill videos to see how overblown these problems are. Its time.
Renewables are already here, being built, being improved rapidly, and in the last ten or twenty years have seen explosive growth even with a fraction of the support that they should have received from governments. Meanwhile, traditional fission can require in excess of a decade for new reactors to be built despite repeated broken promises of this being sped up, and Thorium could presumably take even longer because as this video points out its not yet commercially proven.
To me this means we need to have grid ready reactors starting to be built _right now_ I mean literally within the next year or two, otherwise the technology risks being redundant, superceded by waves of ever more efficient renewables coupled with grid level storage solutions that are already coming online and can resolve remaining issues with renewable unreliability. If we had a different attitude to nuclear over the past few decades I think wed be in a much better position, but as it stands, the window for their use seems to be shrinking fast.
I should clarify though, even if Im right about everything above I do think we should keep current reactors working (Germany...), current projects building, planned expansions going, and research in to fission tech trucking along. Maybe they can beat the clock, maybe itll be useful in ways we cant even foresee; Im increasingly skeptical of how useful the technology will be in future, but we have to keep as many options open as possible to address global warming. Its too vast a threat to risk doing anything else.
Hear! Hear! One of the big downsides of nuclear is that it's almost always government driven. Here in South Africa, the state owned power utility took 10 years to build a basic coal plant which should have taken 4-5, yet they still think they can build nuclear plants in our lifetimes. Meanwhile private firms are building wind and solar farms in 12-18 months, on budget.
Those Soylent people have watched "Soylent Green" right? Not sure I could bring myself to consume anything named that!
Lol. Yes, I checked the ingredients...twice. See Soylent's website for the story of how and why they named the company. The stuff iis delicious by the way!
Well, I can finally top Arvin, I had a chance to visit the local Fusion start-up company. They say instead of always being 30-years away, Fusion is now always 10-years away...I must correct Arvin at 1:40
Yet you have been saying that for all of my 60 years. We don't believe you anymore, especially when you say, "no really this time for real."
Nope:
1. Too may technical problems, such as salt caking breaking off in chunks and destroying the circulation pumps, to no practical way to extract waste products, especially neutron poisons that will impact critically & efficiency of the reactor.
2. Salt makes it difficult to fully inspect & maintain the reactor as of its opacity, and when cold the salt is a solid, and the salt is hard on equipment like circulation pumps & heat exchangers.
3. World is running out of economically recoverable Uranium. At current production the World will run out of economically recoverable Uranium around 2050. Most utilities are aware of this & will not invest in new reactors or plants unless the gov't pays for it.
4. Forget Thorium as it fertile & not fissile, requiring a Breeder type reactor, and has a problem with U-232 (produced when Th-232 is converted into fissile U-233) is nasty gamma emitter. A MSR using thorium would be complete unserviceable because of the extreme radiation.
5. Liquid metal reactors (ie Sodium) is far far more practical than MSR, but even they are a nightmare to run & maintain. France & Japan ended their Sodium reactors as they had to deal with constant problems & cost too much to operate. Russia also had a Sodium reactor BN-800 as was going to build a larger BN-1200, but canceled the project because of issues with the BN-800. Operating a Sodium reactor is like going to the moon, Operating a MSR would be like going to Pluto, its far more difficult & costly.
What is going to happen is the world is going to revert back to perhaps a 19th century level of economy when Oil production crashes, and probably cause a fast population crash as the global economy & food production crashes with it. Global Oil production peaked in 2018 and diesel production peaked in 2015. Most of the worlds production originates from very large oil fields that are in or near terminal decline. The world managed to postpone an energy crisis with advanced drilling & shale Oil. Conventional Oil production peaked in 2005. Since about 2010, US shale Oil production has managed to delay Peak Oil Production until 2018, However 3 of the 4 Shale sweet spots are now in decline and Shale well have an extremely short production life (most of the Oil is extracted in the first 18 months as production rapidly drops off).
The Thorium based modular nuclear reactors is essentially not a new technology, it's an old branch that was mothballed. Since this technique has been revisited it makes sense to delve further into it's feasibility. The current renewable technologies, ie. Wind and Solar are simply not " Green", more to the point; they are not recyclable or efficient!
They are simply a quick fix to make a small group of individuals rich!
I'm so glad that after soo maaaany decades this topic starts to emerge again. For me it was almost unbelievable it wasn't considered before, since the nuclear is actually the cleanest and safest way to produce green energy and in difference to all other sources that need to rely on other factors like sun, wind or geothermal and cannot be used constantly and reliably, nuclear energy is the ONLY way to have energy supply constantly. Most ironic is that we had technology like in 60'tees even for molten salt reactors, but its sad that sheer politics never got us this way. The big elephant in the room was that nuclear had it golden age in the time of the Cold War, where research and development of the civil reactors got hand in hand with military needs. If I'm not wrong, the first idea for molten salt reactor use was proposed for nuclear plane engine concept, since it needed to be small enough and not have any waste product released in atmosphere. But in the end it was scrapped for convenience of water cooled reactors that were developed for nuclear submarines, and since technology was proven *and fairly simple* in the end we were stuck with water cooled reactors that got constantly improved and built while molten salt got in the dustbins of history. Also the Thorium, although cleaner and more abundant than Uranium wasn't even considered, because it cannot be used for nuclear weapon production, since at the time good deal of civil reactors was used for Plutonium production for weapon usage at the Hight of the nuclear race. So it was too sad that this revolutionary technology never got the right chance to shine. And in 2010 it got derailed again after Fukushima incident, when even Germany that had Angela Merkel at the time as Chancellor (who is actually a nuclear physicist by education) needed to yield under the public pressure and its coalition partners and commit on shutting down of all Germany nuclear reactors. So...irony is that today Germany is one of the biggest proponents of the total fossil fuels ban and 100% green energy production and it sits of the back seat for the best and most efficient way to do it, since they tied both their hands for it. That's why the China will be the leader in this technology, since they're developing it for quite some time and it will most likely field the fist commercial reactors that uses this approach for energy production.
Here is an little thought experiment for you Nuclear fanatics with your hard-on for the energy density of Nuclear fuels. Calculate the total kwh of electricity from a kg of Nuclear fuel in a normal LWR, vs the kwh from the lifetime output of a kg of industry standard solar panels at an average mid latitude location of the US. Hint the Solar panel gonna beat the nuclear fuel by a factor of 10, just try it.
Did. Solar panels have to be replaced long before the same kg of raw materials. Hint for your calculations; use real life actual output, not Greenie induced RATED numbers.
when do we want it? we want it Now!
It would take 20 or 30 years to fully develop and build in reality.
the thing with the waste is that it doesn't actually take much space at all and with current and upcoming technology people are working on turning the waste into forever batteries. they dont make much power but will never need charged so can be used for heart machines and other things that never get touched. there was a basic version on one of the probes that still operate in space after 40+ years. I dont remember who but someone on youtube went into a reactor plant and even kissed a tank of waste because its not actually much of a hazard if stored properly in concrete.
Soylent Green was last. Ah, just wondering. What’s really in Soylent Green?😇 And, I’m all for Nuclear Fusion and in my backyard but really, I want to get started on that Dyson Sphere. The feasible one, not the one on Star Trek.
Soylent Green is People!
Ever since I was a kid in the 70's and 80's I've always liked nuclear power. In fact, I was going to enter the Navy after high school and enter the sub fleet to become a nuclear engineer (and the higher pay and better food). I didn't end up going that route as I could unfortunately see that the US (especially here in California) was trying to phase out nuclear power. I'm excited for technology like these molten salt reactors and would can't wait to see a few of these come on line to prove how well the tech can work. The guys at Oak Ridge back in the 60's were working on this tech. It is shame we missed out on decades of R&D on this as if we had continued development, we could largely be powering the world cleanly, safely and without the fear of nuclear disaster (which in all honesty, hasn't been all that disastrous given the scope of the two major ones in the last 30 years). Thank you for this video Arvin. I've subscribed to your channel now and am looking forward to seeing what other great information you have available.
I love that the most recent examples of issues with nuclear reactors across the globe are from 1.5 and 4 decades ago. To me this just goes to show how good the technology is and that we should be pouring as many resources into it as we can to advance it and get its usage widespread.
Sounds a bit like an ad for Copenhagen atomics
I think the same. I'm not 100% against nuclear but I'm still suspicious of these allout positive videos.
Cool video! Your narration fits quite well over the animations. Very nice
I built a small thorium reactor in my lab.
Fr? Upload a video
I built a small thorium reactor in my pants.
Thank U for the concise summary of Thorium/molten salt reactor system!
It appears to be a step forward for our energy depended lifestyle!
Or course there is a new way of producing fusion energy to electricity eye have seen on your tube!
Almost there, but you missed the worst source of radioactive waste, one that all too often gets ignored or overlooked in such discussions. Coal-fired plants release prodigious quantities of radioactive radon, straight into the atmosphere in a conveniently breathable form.
Not prodigious amounts. Typically radon is stable you breathe it in, you breathe it out unless you are in radon long enough to have it on your skin or whatever you are wearing, which is very low activity but you are right
Radon is a pain when leaving a nuclear plant and the instruments now have radon discriminators but they are not fallible but no, the hazard is lower than what you are making it...
For those interested, there are several videos about nuclear power generation in the Illinois Energy Prof channel.
Soylent green?
why would anyone name a product after an apocalyptic movie ?
⚠️ WARNING ⚠️
❌Avoid Soylent❌ It uses sugar alternatives that lead to chronic irritable intestines & bowel syndrome❌ u might not start feeling it right away, but after weeks of using, u will start to feel constant discomfort in ur belly ❌ SAY NO FOR SUGAR ALTERNATIVES ❌
@@steveducell2158 It would provide an association that would make it easier to remember. There's others. B well m8. 🙂
thank you, Alvin M. Weinberg
Soylent green has all extra protein a body needs. Made from people by people. 😮
⚠️ WARNING ⚠️
❌Avoid Soylent❌ It uses sugar alternatives that lead to chronic irritable intestines & bowel syndrome❌ u might not start feeling it right away, but after weeks of using, u will start to feel constant discomfort in ur belly ❌ SAY NO FOR SUGAR ALTERNATIVES ❌
Haha...I double checked the ingredients to make sure! No meat! Only veggies.
Never knew that molten salt was an option. Thank you for video and look forward to the video tour.
it has been for 60 years. and yet, we have no idea if it is a WORKING option.
Any power plant becomes a huge liability in case of war. What about thorium?
My understanding is that Thorium reactors are more of a safety hazard than proponents usually claim.
@@TV-xm4ps Do you care to make a case?
No one ever said producing power would be risk-free. Unless you want to freeze in the dark during a war, you still need to have and use them. The bigger risk is that you'll be bereft of power than that the plant will harm you in its destruction.
It's not clear to me that nuclear power plants are any more of a liability than a munitions storage, or any number of chemical processing facilities.
When the situation is war, you're going to have more to worry about than power plants.
Excellent video. Great summary. We need to be open to this innovation.
Thorium reactors have struggled to get attention for decades, but so glad Copenhagen are making inroads into a container sized reactor.
What happened to your normal videos? This seems like you are reading somebody else's script
Seemed normal to me.
⚠️ WARNING ⚠️
❌Avoid Soylent❌ It uses sugar alternatives that lead to chronic irritable intestines & bowel syndrome❌ u might not start feeling it right away, but after weeks of using, u will start to feel constant discomfort in ur belly ❌ SAY NO FOR SUGAR ALTERNATIVES ❌
We should embrace nuclear for sure!
Why should he have to stick to some video formula just to please those with expectations?
Commercialism Bru
I'm convinced. I love the idea, and most of my questions were answered in the video. This needs to be physically put to use and tested. If all goes well, with no major unforeseen consequences, then start making this the new standard. Fusion is indeed the holy grail, but it does always seem just out of reach.
Chernobyl accident was caused by human stupidity, by bypassing the safety systems, while Fukushima was caused by the same stupidity, by placing the powerplant on the sea shore, in an area prone to large quakes and tsunamis. It is hard to believe that a thorium powerplant is safe facing the limitless stupidity. As a note, the oxygen is not the only element than can cause corrosion, flourine is also very aggressive, along others.
The video looks more like a hidden ad to a company that payed for a nice trip.
Fukushima wasn’t that dumb. The expectation time for a quake of that size is 400 years…..so it should be save to run it there now for quite some time.
@@DrDeuteron well, you might be right. However, from my point of view, that was marginally acceptable, considering the operational lifetime of a nuclear powerplant of about 50years. That would raise the chance to have such an event, in that area , probably to 1:100, which seems quite high from the point of view of the risk management.
@@alex3261 true. Low prob X massive high consequence = not good risk. But it came down to the tsunami wall, which was very high. I think it was rated for an 8.9 generated tsunami, and guess what? They got a 9.0, which is absurdly high number, and it was overtopped. I’m not sure if that’s on the nuclear industry, or the geologists. There was a design flaw that should it flood, the diesel backup pumps were in the basement, iirc?
@@DrDeuteron as I said, the risk assessment was starting from wrong assumptions. Remember the 2004 Indonesia quake, they was a 9.3, generating a 100 ft. tsunami
@@DrDeuteron Actually no. Tsunami's like that occured in that area about every 90 years. They have lots of history and there are stone markers on all the hillsides on how high they reached.
The Japan Nuclear Regulator only requred reactors in those days design for flood events that occured on average twice the desing life of the plant. So they only had to look at events that occured every 80 years or less on average.
That left Fukushima with a probability of 45% of a tsunami in its 40 year life - a bet they lost.
That plant never would have been licensed in the USA, Canada, or most of the EU as they require looking and designing based on the much more than the worst event in the historical record.
Sad thing is that Japan bull dozed away about 5 meters of a hilltop to get the plant to the level they built it. Had they built it 3 or 4 meters higher the tsunami would never had affected it.
I was always skeptical about molten salts because it isn’t used at scale after all these decades and people come up with silly reasons like it can’t breed weapons grade fuel etc. I knew there must be a catch, same with thorium reactors. I wouldn’t have watched another video on molten salt if any other person produced it, because they don’t tell both sides of the story. Only guys like Arvin can be trusted to give balanced and transparent views on such subjects.
this is really good
Feasible or not in the near future - it is good to know that research is done in the high density energy sector other than oil and coal. Notice Solar and Wind are low density energy producers that need a lot of land, the right climate conditions - not every country is blessed with spacious deserts. Go Thorium go.
I have invented a power source that uses absolutely no fuel at all. It's scaleable, it's able to be put anywhere in the world as long as you can get water to it to fill it to start it. It's an inverted water wheel. If you know how a water wheel works, then inverted the elements. By that I mean put a wheel in a tank of water. Instead of having troughs to collect water you have bellows air bags. I'll explain the bellows bags, a wedgebox shaped bag that is 12" tall 24" wide and 36" long so it's like a slice of cake laying on its side. The top of the bag has 2 rollers on it that helps it to squeeze out there air through the pipeline to the adjacent bellows bag at bottom of the wheel to start all over again. So air will be in the ,7,8,9,10,11,and 12 o'clock positions . The one at 12 is transferring to the adjacent bellows bag at bottom of the wheel to start all over again with lifting strength. 1cubic foot of air has the lifting strength of 62 pounds. And a cubic foot of water weighs 62 pounds. So we are reversing the elements. The 3 cubic feet of air in the air bags has the lifting strength of 186 pounds and remember there are 5 of them lifting at the same time. That would be 930 pounds of lift strength on one side of the wheel. That's more than sufficient to send the one at 12 o'clock position through the squeeze chute on top. All the squeeze chute is , is two rails that slowly get closer to the wheel. The rollers hit the railway as they rotate and squeeze out there air through the pipeline to the adjacent bellows bag at bottom of the wheel.. The top of the water line is from the 11:30 to the 1:00 position and that's the squeeze chute distance too. As the bellows bag gets squeezed out the lock keeps the bag shut until it gets unlocked simply by hitting a lever on its way to the 5:30 position where it gets unlocked and is ready to receive air again. One side of the wheel has air bags lifting and the other side is empty of air. So all the lifting is from one side of the wheel. So simple it's crazy that after 2400 years that the water wheel has been working, nobody ever thought to invert the elements..... Water cannot be transferred to the top of the wheel because of the weight and the inefficiency of the transfer speed. But air can be transferred to the bottom quickly and efficiently..you have 930 pounds of lift strength pushing the one at the top through the squeeze chute ..just build one and see...nobody will sue you because I'm the sole inventor of the inverted water wheel. I have gone on a radio station twice and gave extensive description on air of the device and all details to the public. I had to call back in a few times to give clarification on the wheel so the listeners would have understanding of the wheel. So once you've put it out over the internet and on air like I did ,,, it's cannot be legally patented by anyone. And that was my intention to do so. A power source that uses absolutely no fuel at all. And it's free to the world. You can now live in the desert, or anywhere in the world as long as you can get water to it to fill it. May God bless you all.
0:01 "...people..."
Fantastic video! Please, please, keep Soylent as your sponsor. The Mint-chocolate is priceless and goes really well with the images of Chernobyl. Is that the flavor of recycled old people? I love the "*" after "'plant protein". 🙂
More seriously, I am and have always been a strong supporter of nuclear power, but I fully get that for the vast majority of humanity, a few high-profile disasters look unacceptable. The human brain isn't a rational tool. I personally believe that nuclear power will never be popular, even after we run out of space paving the world with solar panels. Regulation will always have a huge double standard massively detrimental to nuclear power, making it too risky for most businesses.
According to a 2018 article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a byproduct of thorium reactors is protactinium, which quickly decays into weapons-grade uranium that could be used for nuclear bombs.
It's the worst type of material for a b0mb as its contaminated with U232, which is a hard gamma emitter that is really bad for humans to be near and would damage the electronics in the b0mb itself.
@@joesimones730 : The article I mentioned discussed the U-232. It didn't affect their conclusion that the protactinium could easily be used for weapons. Read the article?
@@joesimones730 : Did you intentionally post 10 copies of your reply? Please delete 9 of them.
@@brothermine2292 that was weird. Lol.
@@joesimones730 : By "that" I assume you refer to the 10 copies of your reply.
Note: I still see 2 copies.
I have been monitoring this research for several years and have researched the concepts and engineering. I am convinced this is the best course of action for eventually replacing the fossil fuels and laying the "Renewable Energy" dogma to rest (it will never be efficient enough to replace fossil fuels or Nuclear).
Nuclear peaked in the 90s and the procentage was 16 percent.
As a general rule, compounds will increase in size with higher temperature (molecule translation rotation etc). However, ionic compounds have an extremely high boiling point
Very interesting
That pot of gold at the end of that rainbow is dead. Long live this pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Nuclear power: fuelling politicians' ability to kick the renewable energy can down the road for decades to come.
The MSRs can also run on Plutonium, which means that they can be used to consumer existing nuclear waste from conventional reactors.
The biggest hurdle for MSRs is licensing. China is getting the jump on it with the TMSR-LF1. The closest Western firm to rolling out an MSR is ThorCon, (IIRC) they are about to test a non-fissile "Hot Loop" very soon. ThorCon, a US firm, decided to do the work in Indonesia because of the licensing issues.
Thorium is a better fuel than Uranium because only U235 is fissile, whereas all Thorium 232 (non-fissile) can be used as fuel once seeded with a neutron emitter to start the reaction to Protactinium 233 then Uranium 233.
Yes! Been thinking for 10 years that this is the answer, just hope that a viable solution to the corrosion can be found.
Great update for me on the state of thorium molten salt reactors. In a future post, could you discuss subcritical reactors as a way to "burn" high-level nuclear waste down to a lesser amount of intermediate-level waste? Wikipedia discusses it in their subcritical reactor page but It's such a great idea (reaping power from nuclear waste while making it less dangerous) someone as good as you should bring it up so we can discuss it more. It could eliminate the fear of nuclear energy for many people who understand the basics of subcritical reactors, and help lend support to building a community of fast reactors that share one subcritical facility for reduction of the threat of nuclear waste, which would make the whole concept better accepted by general public.
Thorium, while interesting, doesn't really have any significant advantage over Uranium aside from the fact that it can successfully breed in the thermal spectrum and that it is really abundant. Many of the supposed advantages that get brought up are either objectively false or blown out of proportion. First of all, the waste from both Uranium and Thorium are for all intents and purposes identical. If you put either of them in your typical light water reactor, they'll both produce long lived waste without the use of reprocessing and they can both eliminate that type of waste when put into breeder reactors. Thorium just happens to be able to breed in both the fast and thermal spectrum, while Uranium requires the use of the fast spectrum due to insufficient neutron production by Pu239 in the thermal spectrum. That certainly opens up options for Thorium breeder reactor designs, but it's not that big of an advantage especially since we still have a waste stock to deal with and fast reactors can be fuel agnostic. Another big supposed advantage that often gets touted (and I'm glad you made no mention of) is the perceived inability of Thorium to make nuclear bombs. That's objectively not true as there have been a handful of bombs made using U233 from Thorium. There are certainly some major issues Thorium presents in making bomb material like the U232 that decays into daughter products that release high energy gamma radiation. That being said, MSRs can pretty much eliminate the potential of contamination of U233 by operating the reactor in the thermal spectrum and by using online fuel reprocessing (just like what many of these new Thorium MSR companies are trying to build.)
You are wasting your time explaining facts to these YT educated people. Most don't even understand the Thorium is not fissile
I have an idea for corrosion container. Container made of clay does not corrode with salt.
Temperate
In modern societies pottery and brick is fired in kilns to temperatures ranging from 1,800 F to 2,400 F. Most of the common clays like clay shown here on th 17:49 e left found in our back yards start to deform and melt if they are fired higher than about 1,900 F.
In ancient time in Persia (Iran, Iraq) jar clays were used for batteries and other chemical reaction, also clay jar were used to store water as good insulation.
Awesome! I think we need to move in this direction.
Thanks for the video. There are many new designs for fission nuclear. It is kind of exciting. There are also other molten salts power production. All of it is exciting.
I'd like more folks to be open to many different ways of producing the power we need. That goes for big commercial power production that can and will serve large needs. Down to houses that are built to power themselves and potentially a couple of vehicles.
The molten salts solar power production here in Nevada is very exciting. Yet not everywhere has the sun and space Nevada has. Meaning its good to have many different ways to produce power.
Soon I believe that it will become code that new homes be capable of producing 150% of the needs of the home.
Thanks for the video. You always do such a great job.
Yes, embrace nuclear power.
Additionally, nuclear waste can be processed and reutilized for additional power production that decreases the half-life. Furthermore, materials like xenon and plutonium can be used in space propulsion and RTGs, which we currently lack sufficient plutonium.
I learnt about the MSRE about a decade ago and was dumbfounded that we had a solid solution to a major problem and everyone was just ignoring it.
Very nice presentation. Is there any expectation on having a commercial application anywhere soon?
Yes, about 1-2 years away from commercial plant.
There is a problem with the information you provided in this video. A Thorium salt reactor DOES produce Plutonium as well, 75% as much as a regular reactor. Governments have to place strict controls so that Plutonium is recovered (they will take that Plutonium for weapons) and to keep it away from anyone else's hands.
Recovery and government control is a severe drag on adoption and implementation.
100% No one is going to power their Thorium Reactor with a pure WG-U235 seed, it will LEU, and since LEU contains >95% U238, Pu239 production is unavoidable.