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Thorium, the Next Nuclear Fuel?
mrshermanoaks writes "When the choices for developing nuclear energy were being made, we went with uranium because it had the byproduct of producing plutonium that could be weaponized. But thorium is safer and easier to work with, and may cause a lot fewer headaches. 'It's abundant — the US has at least 175,000 tons of the stuff — and doesn't require costly processing. It is also extraordinarily efficient as a nuclear fuel. As it decays in a reactor core, its byproducts produce more neutrons per collision than conventional fuel. The more neutrons per collision, the more energy generated, the less total fuel consumed, and the less radioactive nastiness left behind. Even better, Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. The design is based on the lab's finding that thorium dissolves in hot liquid fluoride salts. This fission soup is poured into tubes in the core of the reactor, where the nuclear chain reaction — the billiard balls colliding — happens. The system makes the reactor self-regulating: When the soup gets too hot it expands and flows out of the tubes — slowing fission and eliminating the possibility of another Chernobyl. Any actinide can work in this method, but thorium is particularly well suited because it is so efficient at the high temperatures at which fission occurs in the soup.' So why are we not building these reactors?"
Because a number of groups with rather different goals have one thing in common.
Sustainable nuclear power is a threat to their pocketbooks.
You mad
- 1/2 the country doesn't believe what scientists tell them: evolution, global warming, birth control/STDs. Why believe them now?
- No new nuclear plants have been built in 30-ish years.
- uranium was thought to be pretty much endless, so why do more research into thorium? (yes, U is getting in short supply now)
- nuclear power still has the stigma of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl attached to it. It'll be tough to get public opinion on that changed, especially with advances in fuel cell and solar technologies
On the one hand, modern uranium reactors (pebble bed, or even well-made light water reactors) are perfectly safe. Using thorium instead is at best a minor improvement.
On the other hand, if using a different fuel convinces members of the general public that nuclear power is safe, and allows the construction of new facilities in less than a decade, that's great, and worth it even if thorium is slightly inferior as a fuel. In short, it can be a PR win.
And how many genuinely foolproof and fail-safe machines do you use every day without noticing, because they work so well?
We can build nuclear reactors that are safe, and we don't need thorium to do it. We can build inherently safe nuclear reactors today using a variety of techniques. (See "void coefficient".)
But like I said above, if using thorium leads to new public acceptance of nuclear power, it's a win regardless of its technical merits.
Japan, Canada, South Korea
Those certainly use their own tech in nuclear reactors, they actually build them instead of contracting out. But don't have any bombs.
Ukraine is also an interesting example. Not sure how much of a nuclear power plant they can build domestically, but certainly quite a bit...and they had 5000 warheads when the USSR dissolved. Got rid of all of them.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I prefer small chance of it leaking out (which happened only once) more than the routine of "leaking" it out into biosphere on a daily basis, in the amounts no nuclear power plant will match. As do coal-fired plants.
One that hath name thou can not otter
According to this (see the section called "Fuel cycle concerns"), because there is no need to refine the Thorium fuel, which is the stage where the nuclear power companies currently make their money, they would need to change their business model to cope. We all know how much companies like to do that.
So, you combine the politicians' lack of desire to risk being associated with nuclear power, and the entrenched industry's lack of interest in the business model, and it's suddenly easy to explain.
How many times have we designed things that are supposed to be unsinkable or infallible and then had them sink or fail? If there is a radioactive material being used in the plant, then there is a chance that some of it will leak out.
See, it's fucking dimwits like you that talk about 7-sigma events as if they're 3-sigma events that keep us using fucking coal, with its 100% probability of continuously releasing radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Get a fucking education, or failing that, go die in a fucking fire, you goddamn Luddite.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Um, I'm no mathematician, but there have been several hundred reactors built (maybe even a few thousand), and at least 2 have failed to some extent (TMI & Chernoble), which seems to put it right around 3 sigma... a 7-sigma event would only happen once for every 390,600,000,000 reactors.
I'm with you on the problems of coal, and I think nuclear is much better, but let's get real here - it's nowhere near 7 sigma.
So still no explanation as to why no common use of Thorium reactors.
Same reason we don't use hemp paper, and why anyone thinking we'll move away from oil based cars before the famine starts is fooling themselves.
The existing corporate status quo makes money doing it this way, and they won't change unless made to (by, say, running out of uranium or oil or what have you).
Sure, there's a chance of failure in every system, but good design can reduce it to an acceptable level. There's chance in everything: you could walk outside and be struck dead my a freak meteor.
As for the Titantic: how many passenger liner disasters have there been since her sinking?
A heavy water reactor is the anti-thesis of the salt-based Thorium reactors.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Oil is the primary energy source, mostly due to cars and trucks and such, but coal and natural gas (combined) power just as much, and the US has lots of both. In a bad enough oil crisis, the US could ramp up coal production and convert cars (and furnaces) to run off of compressed natural gas (which is common enough in niche markets, mostly big fleets).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
North Korea has nukes, and we leave them alone.
Nah. It's because Seoul (with 25% of ROK's population) is 30km from the DMZ, which means that it's within reach of large artillery and MLRS/Katyusha rockets.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets. The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets, (it) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet.
Basically, he denies that the holocaust happened. And attacks those who have tolerance of religion or the lack of.
Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism? You should know that this slogan, this goal, can certainly be achieved.
Basically, not only does he think Israel doesn't have the right to exist, but apparently neither does America.
In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. [...] In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have this.
And he not only denies gay rights, but denies that there were even homosexuals in Iran. Even America didn't deny the fact there were black people who were being oppressed. Some might have said that they weren't being oppressed but no one would be as stupid as to say that there is no such thing as black people.
So in light of a politically unstable region, a leader who has made stupid and dangerous comments, how can we say letting them have nuclear power/weapons is a good thing? If Iran wants nuclear power, how about they let the developed nations build and supervise the infrastructure until Iran becomes stable?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
What the Chernobyl exclusion zone demonstrates is that from the animals POV, humans are worse than a nuclear disaster.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
How exactly did Israel suffer and how exactly are they accountable, any more than Iran? They weren't accountable when they got nukes, and once they did, they became even less so. They ensure Palestine is essentially a ghetto without real blowback. Nukes gave them the same non-accountability and irresponsibility than Pakistan got with their nukes.
I'm no fan of the Iranian govt, but neither am I of the Israeli one. Instead of teetering on edge all the time about when Israel is going to attack Iran's wannabe nuke facilities with rockets, I'd rather they have MAD. Actually I'd rather there were a regulated peace, but no one (and I mean the US govt here) wants that, apparently.
By the way, it's irrelevant how many allies it has "in that part" of the world. They have the only ally that counts.
What type of nuclear reactor to use it completely unrelated to what fuel to use to power cars.
You aren't going to stick a nuclear reactor in the trunk, and how the grid gets its electricity has no impact on electric cars either.
My point is there is an existing system that involves large amounts of profit in doing it the old way, and the people making said profit have no reason to foster change just because science said so. In fact, given the dismal state of the US education and patent systems, companies often can actively push back by simply hiring, destroying, or buying out people with new ideas.
Look at digital music, for example -- we had to drag the music industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and they only came along after they had time to get their lawyers and executives to put down their clay tablets and abacuses long enough to think up some admittedly pretty innovative ways of screwing the rest of us over.
I guess a more succinct way to put it is that corporations have used profit to make science and progress their bitch this past century, and I see no reason why this won't continue going forward.
Because everyone that has nuclear reactors also builds bombs, so they go hand in hand, and cost less in the short run.
No. South Korea, Japan, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, have nuclear reactors and do not have nuclear weapons. This is not by any means an exhaustive list either.
You do not need nuclear reactors to make nuclear weapons. You can make nuclear fission weapons by using U-235 or Plutonium. If you have a centrifuge cascade like Iran does, or some other means to separate fuel, you can make U-235 weapons without owning a single nuclear reactor. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Little Boy) was of this type.
While I can see the validity of your main point about Iran being "unstable" and not democratic, the way you present your argument has at least two deep flaws.
You have to also see it from the side of everyone else who isn't Iran.
Like every other country in the region that is not Israel? Are they as concerned as the west about Iran's nuclear program? What about their opinion on the fact that Israel secretly produced nuclear weapons and still has them?
And he not only denies gay rights, but denies that there were even homosexuals in Iran. Even America didn't deny the fact there were black people who were being oppressed. Some might have said that they weren't being oppressed but no one would be as stupid as to say that there is no such thing as black people.
Denying human rights to anyone is unacceptable. And of course denying the existence of people with different sexual orientations, when it is a well know fact of life, is stupid. But your analogy is simply wrong. One of the reasons why no one who practiced slavery (or oppressed black people) would deny their existence was simply because they treated black people as less than people. In their view, they were not equals.
Ah, BTW, a country leader making stupid and dangerous comments is in no way an Iranian privilege.
-- SouNerd.com
What 'heat' other than strongly worded letters did the State of Isreal take in response to their Gaza attacks?
They're not even part of the Non-proliferation treaty. Your assertations need citations.
Blar.
"Fail-safe" does not mean "free from failure". Fail-safe means that when said machine fails, it always fails in such a way that minimizes harm to equipment and operators.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Posting anonymously because it's bull. 200 years to peak oil there? Maybe if they don't sell any.
This isn't flamebait at all. None other than Dick Cheney was running around telling everyone who would listen that there was a huge production problem in the middle east. He had a great quote to sum it, something like, "If the Saudi's have so much more oil, they would have to be finding other fields like Gawar, and they haven't been". In fact, he calculated out how many Gawar size mega fields anybody would have to find, simply to meet existing demand, and they aren't out there.
Suddenly we find the USA sitting in Iraq, for what reason? The whole Bush administration's energy policy was essentially to get the dibs on the last remaining oil taps in the world, its own coastlines, interior, and in Iraq, essentially to buy time for its other plan of shoveling money at alternative energy projects would kick in.
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