Thorium - a technological game-changer?

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.financialsense.com/financial ... ergy-needs

leading proponent for liquid-fluoride thorium reactor technology, to discuss the growing thorium movement around the globe. Kirk notes that thorium has 10,000 times more energy density than coal, as well as providing growing applications in the medical field. The Chinese are clearly the leaders in developing thorium reactors, with the United Kingdom looking at the potential of thorium to replace coal as a domestic energy source. The US invented the technology, but is not among the global leaders in thorium reactor development.

Kirk Sorensen has been studying thorium technology since 2000 and has been a public advocate for its use and development since 2006. He started the weblog, Energy from Thorium, which has spawned a global movement of interest in liquid-fluoride thorium reactor technology.

Does anybody here with a scientific background have any educated view on this potential technology? Or have any links to open minded sources on thorium.

What I don't want is the usual suspects sneering that this won't work without giving any good reason why. You know who you are.

[UndercoverElephant]

This isn't fusion. No sneering from me, but certainly some caution.

Thorium is much safer than Uranium, and the technology is within reach (unlike fusion.) I think it is highly likely that we will see many thorium plants built in the future.

The caution is because this although this does alter the game, it doesn't change the general trajectory of where we are headed. It's not some magic bullet that can solve all of our sustainability problems, but it might help to keep the lights on.

[paul m]

What is Thorium,who has it,how much is there?

[UndercoverElephant]

What is Thorium,who has it,how much is there?

Thorium is a radioactive element which has 2 less protons than uranium.

There's quite a lot of it. About as much as there is lead. Who has it is not easy to answer, because in a lot of cases the answer is we don't know. There's known to be a lot in Australia and the US, but there are deposits in various other places. There's at least three different geological mechanisms that concentrate thorium, and historically we have not used it for much because it is radioactive and there's not much it is useful for that can't be done better by something non-radioactive. We haven't really looked that hard specifically for thorium.

Why haven't we built loads of thorium reactors already?

Because we don't really know how to do it, and the initial costs are very large. Thorium is naturally radioactive, but not fissile. i.e. it emits particles but doesn't naturally break into pieces. You have to fire neutrons at it, and only then can you use it to create energy. That means that it can't go into meltdown on its own - it will naturally shut up shop as soon as the neutrons stop arriving. There are also other ways of using thorium to create energy, sometimes in combination with uranium. I'm not sure how much of it is just theory and how far the technology itself has progressed, but it is much more promising than fusion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgKfS74h ... r_embedded

ETA: I'm watching this now, and need to correct something.

What I didn't know was that one of the main reasons we now have uranium/plutonium reactors rather than thorium reactors is that much of the research leading to modern nuclear power came out of the Manhattan Project i.e. research primarily aimed at making weapons. Had the primary motive been the production of clean energy, we may have ended up with thorium technology instead.

Shorter, easier one... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ9Ll5EX1jc

[paul m]

Thankyou,that has made it a lot clearer. Interesting what you say about cost etc. we can't even get funding for new nuclear reactors.

[UndercoverElephant]

Having dug into this a bit more, I'd say that this ought to be a major gamechanger in the UK debate about the future of nuclear fission. I'm learning stuff I did not realise about thorium. The technology is more advanced than I thought it was, and the reasons for its non-development would appear to be the same old same old....vested interests are already backing the uranium cycle, thorium is no use for making weapons.

It's a game-changer in the UK debate because we're already at the point where even the environmental movement is reluctantly accepting the need to build new nuclear power stations. I've been wobbling on that debate, but I have now changed my mind. We should not build any more uranium plants. We should build thorium plants and the whole environmental movement ought to back it, because it is by FAR the best option at this point.



To answer your question again, Beria: YES, this is a gamechanger. I'm kicking myself for taking so long to realise this.

[biffvernon]

Yes but one of the little problems with thorium is that the details of the technology have not been invented yet.

The devil is always in the details.

Will they be sorted before the peak-oil induced end of civilisation? No.

[UndercoverElephant]

An opposing voice (the only one I could find)

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_a ... ption.html

I'm interested to hear some input from other people on the conflicting claims being made here.

Don't believe the spin on thorium being a ‘greener’ nuclear option

[snip]

China did announce this year that it intended to develop a thorium MSR, but nuclear radiologist Peter Karamoskos, of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), says the world shouldn’t hold its breath.

‘Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.’

China’s development will persist until it experiences the ongoing major technical hurdles the rest of the nuclear club have discovered, he says.

I do not believe this is true. Thorium salt reactors have already been built, and work.

But even were its commercial viability established, given 2010’s soaring greenhouse gas levels, thorium is one magic bullet that is years off target. Those who support renewables say they will have come so far in cost and efficiency terms by the time the technology is perfected and upscaled that thorium reactors will already be uneconomic. Indeed, if renewables had a fraction of nuclear’s current subsidies they could already be light years ahead. 



This is not true. There are severe limitations to all of the existing renewables. Sure, it is not a magic bullet that will change all the other "peak everything" problems, but it is a magic bullet regarding the specific problem of generating electricity.

Extra radioactive waste

All other issues aside, thorium is still nuclear energy, say environmentalists, its reactors disgorging the same toxic byproducts and fissile waste with the same millennial half-lives. Oliver Tickell, author of Kyoto2, says the fission materials produced from thorium are of a different spectrum to those from uranium-235, but ‘include many dangerous-to-health alpha and beta emitters’.

Tickell says thorium reactors would not reduce the volume of waste from uranium reactors. ‘It will create a whole new volume of radioactive waste, on top of the waste from uranium reactors. Looked at in these terms, it’s a way of multiplying the volume of radioactive waste humanity can create several times over.’

This contradicts everything else I've read about thorium.

I'm very interested to hear what others have to say, but I think we have here a case of being anti-nuclear for the hell of it, without considering it properly. Unless I've got something badly wrong, I think ecologists should back this, not oppose it.

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes but one of the little problems with thorium is that the details of the technology have not been invented yet.

The devil is always in the details.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Sal ... Experiment

Results

The broadest and perhaps most important conclusion from the MSRE experience was that a molten salt fueled reactor concept was viable. It ran for considerable periods of time, yielding valuable information, and maintenance was accomplished safely and without excessive delay.

The MSRE confirmed expectations and predictions.[13] For example, it was demonstrated that: the fuel salt was immune to radiation damage, the graphite was not attacked by the fuel salt, and the corrosion of Hastelloy-N was negligible. Noble gases were stripped from the fuel salt by a spray system, reducing the 135Xe poisoning by a factor of about 6. The bulk of the fission product elements remained stable in the salt. Additions of uranium and plutonium to the salt during operation were quick and uneventful, and recovery of uranium by fluorination was efficient. The neutronics, including critical loading, reactivity coefficients, dynamics, and long-term reactivity changes, agreed with prior calculations.

In other areas, the operation resulted in improved data or reduced uncertainties. The 233U capture-to-fission ratio in a typical MSR neutron spectrum is an example of basic data that was improved. The effect of fissioning on the redox potential of the fuel salt was resolved. The deposition of some elements (“noble metals”) was expected, but the MSRE provided quantitative data on relative deposition on graphite, metal, and liquid-gas interfaces. Heat transfer coefficients measured in the MSRE agreed with conventional design calculations and did not change over the life of the reactor. Limiting oxygen in the salt proved effective, and the tendency of fission products to be dispersed from contaminated equipment during maintenance was low.

Operation of the MSRE provided insights into the problem of tritium in a molten-salt reactor. It was observed that about 6–10% of the calculated 54 Ci/day (2.0 TBq) production diffused out of the fuel system into the containment cell atmosphere and another 6–10% reached the air through the heat removal system.[16] The fact that these fractions were not higher indicated that something partially negated the transfer of tritium through hot metals.

One unexpected finding was shallow, inter-granular cracking in all metal surfaces exposed to the fuel salt. The cause of the embrittlement was tellurium - a fission product generated in the fuel. This was first noted in the specimens that were removed from the core at intervals during the reactor operation. Post-operation examination of pieces of a control-rod thimble, heat-exchanger tubes, and pump bowl parts revealed the ubiquity of the cracking and emphasized its importance to the MSR concept. The crack growth was rapid enough to become a problem over the planned thirty-year life of a follow-on thorium breeder reactor. This cracking could be reduced by adding small amounts of niobium to the Hastelloy-N.[17]

Will they be sorted before the peak-oil induced end of civilisation? No.

I'm not so sure, Biff.

It isn't going to stop the monetary system from crashing or mean we aren't in general overshoot, but the technical problems you are talking about are certainly less than those that existed at the start of the Manhatten Project.

[Lord Beria3]

Thanks UE

Sounds like thorium could be one of those 'game-changers' that in conjunction with a more sustainable approach to our usuage of resources and restrictions on population growth, it could help ensure a smoother transition over the coming decades.

Of course, there will still be a lot of shit coming down the line, economic, social, political and energetic, but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971

An excellent article and probably about the most promising alternative energy source that exists today. Failing the development of controlled nuclear fusion, thorium breeder reactors would appear to be almost as good in terms of fuel security and environmental impact. Unfortunately, the more useful an energy source is, the more that it permits the exploitation of other resources and thus damage to the environment. That is after all, exactly what harnessed energy sources are intended to do.

This discussion brings us back to the problem that we live within perpetual growth machine, on a finite land space, with finite material and biological resources. We therefore face the problem that giving human beings a fantastic new energy source, would allow growth based economic systems to reap even more damage on the planet. This is a fundamental problem with any living system that grows within a finite environment. It can either choose to reach a stable state, or it can continue to grow until every resource is consumed and die off like bacteria in petri dish. Unfortunately, a cooperative Power Down or species-wide self-limitation would appear to be impossible in the present global political environment. The only way out of this paradox is for humanity to collectively agree to reduce population size (as China has taken steps towards achieving) and allow continued per capita economic growth. This would allow individual living standards to expand even as total GDP remained static. Gradual progression of technology, the development of compact agricultural systems, car-free cities, integrated waste management, etc, would allow environmental impact to gradually decline. Such a development would require the leadership of a body like the UN.

Great Oil Drum article on the potential on this technology.

My personal opinion is that it will take a good couple of decades for this technology to be developed, commercialised and so on... enough time for our global energy crisis to deepen dramatically and hopefully a widespread consensus that thing have to change, for the long-run.

Basically, the world will and needs to go through a fair amount of shit before thorium comes along and smoothes out the transition to a low-carbon world.

[UndercoverElephant]

Beria,

As that OilDrum article points out, unless we accept that there are physical limits to growth, this sort of technology just delays the inevitable, and maybe even makes things worse in the long run. There is also going to have to be some sort of major political change to remove the power of the banks and the corporations. The whole strategy still has to change. This mustn't be seen as a means of preserving BAU.

The energy crisis is just one part of a general resources/population/cultural crisis.

UE

[Lord Beria3]

Beria,

As that OilDrum article points out, unless we accept that there are physical limits to growth, this sort of technology just delays the inevitable, and maybe even makes things worse in the long run. There is also going to have to be some sort of major political change to remove the power of the banks and the corporations. The whole strategy still has to change. This mustn't be seen as a means of preserving BAU.

The energy crisis is just one part of a general resources/population/cultural crisis.

UE

Totally agree.

And I think that the transition to Scarcity Industrialism would eventually achieve that consensus which by that time thorium should be near commercially available.

[ceti331]

I'd heard the story about "no good for weapons" too. The technology was experimented with very early on, but was of no use to the weapons program so it didn't get funding.
Domestic nuclear was always an offshoot of a government developing nuclear weapons.

Thorium is perhaps a small ray of hope out there, its' one of the small % chances that might allow us to keep technology in the future, but it seems unlikely we can develop it in time ?

I was told by an optimist that thorium would allow "micro-generators" about the size of shipping crates, one in every city, reducing grid losses.

in the long run thorium is still something you dig up and burn though - we shouldn't be at the level where we need to do that to eat and drink, solar is the only longterm option.

[biffvernon]

Solar is the only long term option that does not alter the planetary heat balance.