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Fusion and Fission/LFTR: Let's Do Both, Smartly
TheRealHocusLocus writes: Disaster preppers have a saying, "two is one and one is none," which might also apply to 24x7 base load energy sources that could sustain us beyond the age of fossil fuel. I too was happy to see Skunkworks' Feb 2013 announcement and the recent "we're still making progress" reminder. I was moved by the reaction on Slashdot: a groundswell of "Finally!" and "We're saved!" However, fusion doesn't need to be the only solution, and it's not entirely without drawbacks.
All nuclear reactors will generate waste via activation as the materials of which they are constructed erode and become unstable under high neutron flux. I'm not pointing this out because I think it's a big deal — a few fusion advocates disingenuously tend to sell the process as if it were "100% clean." A low volume of non-recyclable waste from fusion reactors that is walk-away safe in ~100 years is doable. Let's do it. And likewise, the best comparable waste profile for fission is a two-fluid LFTR, a low volume of waste that is walk-away safe in ~300 years. Let's do it.
Why pursue both, with at least the same level of urgency? Because both could carry us indefinitely. LFTR is less complicated in theory and practice. It is closer to market. There is plenty of cross-over: LFTR's materials challenges and heat engine interface — and the necessity for waste management — are the same as they will be for commercial-scale fusion reactors. To get up to speed please see the 2006 fusion lecture by Dr. Robert Bussard on the Wiffle ball 6 plasma containment, likely the precursor to the Skunkworks approach. And see Thorium Remix 2011 which presents the case for LFTR.
All nuclear reactors will generate waste via activation as the materials of which they are constructed erode and become unstable under high neutron flux. I'm not pointing this out because I think it's a big deal — a few fusion advocates disingenuously tend to sell the process as if it were "100% clean." A low volume of non-recyclable waste from fusion reactors that is walk-away safe in ~100 years is doable. Let's do it. And likewise, the best comparable waste profile for fission is a two-fluid LFTR, a low volume of waste that is walk-away safe in ~300 years. Let's do it.
Why pursue both, with at least the same level of urgency? Because both could carry us indefinitely. LFTR is less complicated in theory and practice. It is closer to market. There is plenty of cross-over: LFTR's materials challenges and heat engine interface — and the necessity for waste management — are the same as they will be for commercial-scale fusion reactors. To get up to speed please see the 2006 fusion lecture by Dr. Robert Bussard on the Wiffle ball 6 plasma containment, likely the precursor to the Skunkworks approach. And see Thorium Remix 2011 which presents the case for LFTR.
It doesn't matter how safe modern fission designs are; the public fears it after several high profile disasters and that isn't likely to change.
What the hell am I reading?
>Disaster preppers have a saying, "two is one and one is none," which might also apply to 24x7 base load energy sources that could sustain us beyond the age of fossil fuel.
How does a non-nonsensical saying apply to energy? Explain yourself.
> I too was happy to see Skunkworks' Feb 2013 announcement and the recent "we're still making progress" reminder. I was moved by the reaction on Slashdot: a groundswell of "Finally!" and "We're saved!"
How did we move from crazy people sayings into nuclear energy? This is the worst written summary on /. in a very long time.
Also, learn what a comma is and how it's used. For the love of god, this reads like stream of consciousness passed through google-translate a few times.
If you've got a valid business plan, then get investors like any other business.
Nobody has built a large-scale reactor of this type. What we had and have is THTR300 and CANDU converting Thorium. What we figured was that is IS HARD, ENGINEERING-WISE. I am not saying we should not do it, quite the opposite. But -
Now we have a bunch of folks claiming that an unproven-in-reality concept is "easy". What year do we have ? 1317 ???
Better look at the record of CANDU and the Russian fast breeder. These things ACTUALLY WORK.
This sounds like a fanboy cheerleading. Nothing really informative here just someone saying I support this.
I don't want to do a sig now
first, a fusion reactor can't "explode". It operates in a vacuum, and the amount of material fusing is less than a cup of deuterium gas (heavy hydrogen). If the fusing material does start to "explode", the fusion goes out and and the hydrogen dissipates in the vacuum.
Deuterium fusion has the lowest require startup energy, and produces the least amount of neutrons. The goal of fusion is the production of helium 4. The only stray neutrons come from making helium 3 - and that doesn't happen that often (it requires more energy to cause a deuterium nucleus to shed a neutron as it fuses with another deuterium nucleus).
Fission is only "super-dangerous" if you compare it with unicorn fairy energy sources. REAL ones badly compare to fission in terms of people killed/TWh. Just figure how many people fall off roofs installing solar panels and divide that by the funny leccy you get from that. Or better, dont get in rainy days and need coal backup. Or better Gazprom-based backup like we Germans idiots do it.
100 years or 300 years walk-away is fine if idiotic revolutions (like IS these days, but it doesn't have to be Islam) don't happen that often and/or the political class implements a good long term watchful eye policy regarding hazardous materials. But as soon as society collapses, once these rupture, we rapture, so to speak.
This is actually the point of LFTR. They operate at low pressure and are inherently unable to "meltdown". It's a design that has lots of promise if not for the fact that we no longer really need it.
We have 6 fission reactors under construction or licensed to begin construction. These are proven reactors designs and there is no shortage of fuel for them to burn. Thorium is more plentiful, but at present consumption levels we already have a worldwide supply of uranium to last another 230 years.
So who is going to invest in a new fission technology at this late stage? Sure, it's cleaner and safer, but it's not economically viable to develop it anymore.
Actually pretty interesting numbers
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/...
History has shown (most recently with the baby boomers) that humans don't handle abundance so well. I mean, by all means, go for it, just don't be all slovenly about it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Deuterium fusion does not produce the least amount of neutrons. :)
There are plenty of fusion processes that produce ZERO neutrons, that is less than your proposal
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How the hell did this get modded insightful? It's full of total BS.
First, as the summary even pointed out, fusion will produce waste due to the high neutron flux. You didn't even read the summary, nor do you have the faintest idea what you're talking about.
Second, LFTRs were designed to NOT meltdown. In fact, you need to heat the piping in order to have the salt not freeze. Again, your statement that all fission reactors melt down is proof of your ignorance. You're full of FUD.
Third, they tested them. They just walked away. And it shut down by itself. No special magic, no SCRAM. Then they walked away for 40 years. And it didn't melt down. Instead, it froze. Yes, there were problems discovered later, like the evolution of fluorine gas--but these are not even on the same scale of challenges as preventing an inherently meltdown-prone PBWR from going south for the winter. Also, you don't need to use water as your coolant. As we all know very well, water is dangerously prone to turning into a fuel-oxidizer mix and going off.
Also, what would make you think that solutions need to be expensive? Why is THAT your criteria for a safe design? See, PBWRs are bad because they're inherently unstable. I hope we never build another. However, I'm still pro-nuclear, and I think that a LFTR is the way to go for now, since the design is inherently walk-away safe. Yes, there are materials challenges. You need to use special piping doped with 1.1% niobium and so on. But these are things we've researched and can continue to refine. Solutions should be judged on technical merit, not simply on, "it's expensive, so it must be good!"
Also, why the hell would you suggest launching old nuclear reactor parts into space? Which orifice did you pull that out of?
You're so full of FUD that I can only wonder which energy conglomerate you're shilling for. Care to tell us?
I have always felt the problem of fission waste disposal has been overblown.
If the goal is "walk away safe", then fission fuel is walk away safe in about 300 years too. The high level radiation emitted by the fission products comes from cesium and strontium and in 300 years, it will all be gone. Leaving low level radioactives, Uranium and a tiny amount of plutonium. In 300 years, the used rods will emit the same level of radiation as the unused rods. Since plutonium is an alpha emitter, the used rod will effectively not emit any radiation from plutonium. You could store one under your couch and not suffer any ill effects.
Reason why the US doesn't reprocess nuclear fuel rods anymore is that the Dept of Energy realized that as long as the fuel pellets remain intact, the uranium and plutonium is entrapped in the metallurgical structure of the fuel pellets. For the uranium and plutonium to be released back into the environment they will have to be melted down. If the pellets are unchanged, we could probably recycle them back into a new reactor in 300 years even.
I love the idea of LFTR. Honestly. A thousand years of cheap and plentiful fuel, simplified nuclear design, smaller physical footprint, lower risk of cataclysmic meltdown & resulting fallout, waste having a much lower half-life, no CO2 emissions...
But it's still an idea. After Oak Ridge, there's been no government-led development of LFTR reactors in the states. Our only hopes at present are either with the Chinese or a private company called Flibe Energy that's trying to gather investment funds to build LFTE reactors for army bases.
>but at present consumption levels we already have a worldwide supply of uranium to last another 230 years.
That's great, but at present uranium is only supplying 12.3% of the world's energy generation - switch to an all-uranium energy economy and that number drops to only 28 years, even assuming energy consumption remains constant (which it won't). It's not a viable option except as a stopgap as more sustainable alternatives are deployed. As I recall even thorium will only provide several centuries at 100%, though we could increase that by an order of magnitude by developing seawater extraction technology.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Mining uranium is one of the dirtiest parts of the process. The idea that we should mine out all the easily accessible Uranium is just as foolish as to drill all the oil or mine all the coal.
With breeder reactors, either designs like the LFTR or more established designs like SFRs, we don't need to mine significant amounts of additional fissionables for a century. And with the SFRs there's not much left to develop - we can just deploy the existing designs more widely.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
The fusion "waste" isn't even in the same category. The fission reactor has the same problem with the neutron flux of the containment vessel and adds on a waste stream from the reaction. On top of that processing the fuel is not without it's own waste stream. It's that very processing which did in breeder reactors because it was dirtier and more polluting than the reactor.
Saying they generate approximately equivalent waste streams is an out and out lie. The fusion systems neutron enriched vessel and systems can be taken care of by leaving on site for 50 years then decommissioning and burying it in a conventional low level nuclear landfill or waiting 100 years and then melting it down and reusing it. The waste products generated from not only the fission reactor, the vessel, and the processing of the fuel are not even in the same category, the vessel alone might be close but even that will likely be contaminated beyond just neutron enrichment.
This is a total bullshit claim.
I agree, acronyms should generally be expanded the first time they're used in the summary. Hell, I'm even rather familiar with LFTRs, but had to google it to remember exactly *which* reactor family with an L-starting acronym it was.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Where did I say they generated equivalent waste streams? Seriously, quote it. You've got a straw-man going. I was pointed out the problem where the GGP claimed fusion was 100% clean!
FFS learn to read already. All I said was "fusion will produce waste due to the high neutron flux". I don't know HOW you read anything else into that. Not once did I discuss waste from fission, except to say that launching it into space is a preposterous idea.
You're so full of it, it isn't even funny. You're imagining words where I didn't say any.
Unbunch your panties.
My reply was more targeted at the summary than your reply but I replied to you because you perpetuated that same line of thought by claiming Fusion generates a waste stream. Fusion and Fission aren't in the same ballpark. Anyone claiming Thorium reactors are just as good is full of shit.
Now calm down, you're hyperventilating over a comment on slashdot. If this is typical behavior you should consider seeking medical help with your anxiety problem.
Wow. More straw-man. Where did I say thorium reactors were just as good? Fact is, I didn't. And you're STILL lying your ass off. You're insisting I said things that I never did--and you can't quote them, because I didn't say them.
Will someone mod this idiot -1, Flamebait already? This isn't a case of disagreeing; he's flat out lying about what I said.
screw you. Fusion has the potential to fuel all energy needs and future ones with minimal waste. How do you plan on creating solar panels with no energy? it costs a mountain of coal/gas/oil to produce. Solar has some big issues involving night time, scaling and expanding to meet future needs.
How will you launch rockets using solar? You won't. You'll never reach that level of energy production. You can with a fusion reactor.
The vast majority of cheap solar is in fact passive solar, and solar heating/coooling, not solar panels per se.
Comparing construction accidents for anything done on top of buildings we find they're no more risky than roofing in general.
Same applies to fusion reactors. The main problems are with radiation shielding, which is the part that becomes radioactive over time. Because it's doing it's job.
You still have to dispose of it the same way you do with fission reactors, and the materials used in modern fusion have some "salts" that are very unpleasant if not kept separate, and the method to create them can be a bit controversial at times. But all forms of energy creation have negative consequences.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...fusion will produce waste due to the high neutron flux.
Not necessarily. The most viable fusion approach does not produce neutrons as a product of the reaction. In addition, they don't need to contain and stabilize the plasma which is the bane of most fusion programs. They intend to leverage the inherent instability of plasma to produce 200 small reactions or pulses per second. They won't need steam generators since most of the energy is released in the form of an ion beam.
There's almost zero reason we should put LFTR and Fusion into an adversarial relationship.
LFTR is closer to market right now, and fuel for it is ridiculously plentiful. It can easily power this planet for hundreds of years.
At the same time, Fusion is around the corner (though it's been "around the corner" for several decades).
Still, instead of dealing with:
* Nasty, polluting fossil fuel generation
* Solar/Wind/Hydro installs that fuck up the local ecology
* Dirty, ancient solid-fuel fission tech
Take the first step forward with LFTR and MSR fission.
Yes, we'll have waste still. But it's FAR easier to design storage/depletion facilities that last 100-300 years. Current fission plants are producing stuff that'll be hot for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. And, quite simply, we can't guarantee anything we engineer will last that long. The oldest (mostly intact) megastructures on this planet are the Egyptian pyramids. And they're only about 4500 years old. Mostly because they're just a giant pile of stone.
Still with LFTR/MSR, we can lower emissions and give ourselves time to grow and improve the grid while we get the kinks out of Fusion technology.
With portable, modular solutions like Boeing's fusion skunkworks project, we can put cheap, safe power generation capacity just about ANYWHERE.
When more power's needed? Just drop another unit next to the first and keep adding until your requirements are met.
And when it's time to decommission a unit? Simply truck it away!
And both of these technologies are engineered, from the get-go, to be inherently safe.
With LFTR/MSR fission. If power is cut, you don't get a runaway reaction. By design, the reactor dumps the medium into dump tanks, away from the reagent.
With fusion, you turn off power to a fusion reactor or change the dynamics inside the reactor, and the process shuts down naturally. Snuffed like a blown out candle.
But, will all the "nuclear = bombs" hysterics ever allow this to go through?
Hell no!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I love being proven wrong. +1 Informative. You learn something everyday.
What is really needed is a fusion/fission hybrid, which has been theorized for decades, but somehow never makes it past initial design phases. Gives a bridge to pure fusion, burns nuclear waste and/or thorium. Far fewer unknowns and engineering problems to overcome than pure fusion. What’s not to love?
Letter To Iran
Quoting S.R. Hadden (from Contact): "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
... As I recall even thorium will only provide several centuries at 100%, though we could increase that by an order of magnitude by developing seawater extraction technology.
Good that you brought up seawater extraction technology. Using that we have enough uranium, even just using once-through burning, for something like a 10,000 year supply at current consumption rates. Increase nuclear power ten-fold (125% of current world electricity consumption) and it is still 1,000 years. If we implement breeding (we could get the bugs worked out in a few centuries I imagine) then we are back up 100,000 years or so.
Why does thorium need to enter the picture?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Here in Georgia we are having a heck of a time jumping through the political hoops to build two new much needed pressurized water nuclear (fission) plants in east Georgia. We also have a boiling water nuclear (fission) plant in south Georgia that probably needs to be decommissioned due to age and the problems of radioactive leaks in boiling water reactors inside the reactor containment bunker...er...building.
P.S. How can you call an airtight, air-locked, negative-pressured, yards thick of specially hardened reinforced concrete, enough to survive at least 2 9/11 style airplane crashes, "building" anything but an above ground bunker?
I have to say that where we built our nuclear plants geologically, population-wise, and climate-wise, are the best places to put such nuclear plants. Far better than in the crowded Northeast US or on the West Coast.
In Georgia we have no single "go-to" on alternative energy for base electric generation, no desserts for large scale solar projects, like Nevada, nor massive amounts of land for large scale wind farms, like the Plain states, and we lost much of our hydro capacity in the last 30 years or so. Natural Gas and Nuclear are our go-to for large scale base electric generation and our chance to break from coal. We use too way much coal here in Georgia our air quality has suffered immensely for it. At least nuclear plants do not create millions of tons of CO2 and makes our air cleaner.
I sincerely hope that the fusion plants can be built here.
That quote is from A Universally Acceptable and Economical Energy Source?, the worlds largest climate "denier" site. You would think environmentalists would be jumping up and down with joy. Here is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: reduce both nuclear waste and fossil fuel consumption; and climate "deniers" are fully on board!
So why isn't there more interest?
Not necessarily. The most viable fusion approach does not produce neutrons as a product of the reaction. In addition, they don't need to contain and stabilize the plasma which is the bane of most fusion programs. They intend to leverage the inherent instability of plasma to produce 200 small reactions or pulses per second. They won't need steam generators since most of the energy is released in the form of an ion beam.
"Viable" roughly means "practical", the first step for something to be practical is to be able to do it. Did you read page you linked to? It admits that "Humanity hasn't figured out how to harness it yet." Actually that is a half-truth. We haven't learned how to harness convention tritum+deuterium fusion yet. But we at least can demonstrate it in a laboratory. With aneutronic thermonuclear fusion can't do it at all under any circumstances!
This isn't in a class with fairies, unicorns and pixie dust since it is based on physical principles, but it is in the same class as those elevators that take us to the Moon.
We are better off restricting energy plans to technologies that we know can be implemented this century.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
"You're so full of FUD that I can only wonder which energy conglomerate you're shilling for. Care to tell us?"
He is not he is a green.
You see the truth is that there are a good number of "activists" that make a living telling people that "you never know".
The will spout off about solar and ignore the problems like storage and the fact that solar peak is not the same as usage peak. They will just use buzzwords like "smart grid" and then complain about the cost of nuclear being greater than natural gas but ignore the cost of solar and wind being higher than natural gas.
It has become a religion and if you dare to be pro-nuclear your friends and the other people you self identify with will shun you.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...How do you plan on creating solar panels with no energy? it costs a mountain of coal/gas/oil to produce...
Where did all the energy go? Is solar energy tainted and unusable for making new solar panels? The energy payback time for current solar technology is 3 years, and steadily dropping. It should reach 1 year over the next decade.
You can with a fusion reactor.
How? They don't exist.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
...though we could increase that by an order of magnitude by developing seawater extraction technology.
Good that you mentioned seawater extraction. If we did that for uranium then we would have a 10,000 year supply at current consumption rates. If we increase nuclear power 20-fold, to 250% of world electricity production today, it is still 500 years. If we implement breeding (I suspect we could get the bugs worked out by then) we are back up to a 50,000 year supply.
Where is the necessity of thorium?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
You don't get thorium from seawater; there isn't enough there. Uranium can be recovered from the ocean, and there is enough thorium on land to last nearly forever.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Oh boy, that is so utterly wrong.
But okay, I will do a quick google search for you and pass on the first result I find.
http://fire.pppl.gov/fusion_la...
That's because you cain't find nobody to read the instructions.
I mean, we're talking Georgia.
You just build them next to that damn meth lab.
I found this documentary about the people building the Georgia nuclear plants:
http://youtu.be/HBwUROwdE6w?t=...
You are welcome on my lawn.
> nor massive amounts of land for large scale wind farms
I had to look this up because I thought you were wrong. But you're not. Georgia has crap for wind:
http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_resource_maps.asp?stateab=ga
What up with that?
Realistically we should be making a new Nuclear Power utility every 20-40 years just to keep up to date with our technologies. More realistically: People are guaranteed to have health problems with coal furnaces, but only a chance that people get hurt by nuclear.
God spoke to me
> Fusion has the potential to fuel all energy needs and future ones with minimal waste
For infinite cost.
Sheesh, how do people not understand this fundamental point? There are hundreds of forms of energy out there, thousands. We don't use them because they cost to much. Fusion costs more. Even if the price of energy goes up, that means we'll use one of the thousands we're not using now. There is an infinity of money between now and fusion.
Count all those and nuclear power is still safer by at least an order of magnitude, as repeatedly stated by numerous studies.
> Look up "energy return on investment" if you want to know more.
I did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested#Economic_influence_of_EROEI
Wind outperforms nuclear, 180%. PV is 70% of nuclear.
So, you were saying?
That brings to mind this quote, which seems to adequately describe much of the hoopla surrounding this topic. (Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-solar or other technologies, but each has its place. Nuclear is a superior baseload technology and can even be operated in load-following mode.)
The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it.
-- RAH
I believe you're overestimating by an order of magnitude or two, but perhaps I'm misremembering. Or perhaps my source was assuming energy consumption would continue to increase exponentially.
Regardless, we don't have seawater extraction technology today, and are unlikely to develop it in the next thirty years, so it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand - we still need some other energy source in the short term.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Look at the three big reactor failures: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. All three were caused by human error. For Chernobyl, it was a dangerous design and running dangerous tests. For TMI, it was a less dangerous design, and they still screwed it up with bad procedures. For Fukushima, they made a series of globally bad design choices because they refused to consider realistic worst case external events. Plus they uncovered a flaw in the containment structure design that lead to the hydrogen explosions.
All of these are human error.
And it's not just reactors. The British Petroleum oil platform blowout in the Gulf of Mexico was human error. The sinking of the ferry Sewol in Korea was human error, as was the sinking of the Concordia off of Italy. BP also had a refinery blow up in Texas because of bad operations and ignoring a known problem with volatile fume leakage.
So no matter how secure a technology looks, it will still suffer a complete worst case failure. Assuming anything else is wishful thinking.
What's the worst case for LFTR? No one seems willing to even talk about it. It's remarkably like the head in the sand attitude that lead to the Fukshima disaster.
So here's a question: what happens when a molten salt containing fluorine, uranium, thorium and other miscellaneous radioactive elements comes in contact with water? Does it explode? Does it burn in air? How toxic are the substances entering the environment? (Trick question: both uranium and fluorine are very toxic elements. Fluorine forms many toxic compounds with carbon.) What is the equivilant explosive energy of tons of molten uranium salts?
If it is burning, how do you put it out? (Note: with fluorine compounds water is a bad idea. It's explosive.) How do you build a containment vessel that will withstand all of that? How will the cost of proper containment and emergency planning and equipment impact the economics of power generation?
A burning LFTR makes a burning graphite reactor seem like a campfire for a marshmallow roast. Good luck with that.
Why is Snark Required?
Because thorium might end up being cheaper and easier than uranium. The reason we were able to go from the speed of a horse to beyond the speed of sound is because we were able to find cheap and plentiful energy in coal and petroleum. As energy gets cheaper the more things become feasible.
Why is it that people don't have flying cars? We certainly have the technology for everyone to have their own personal aircraft. The limitation is the price of energy. It just costs too much to fly a helicopter for a person with an average income. But if energy were to be one tenth of what it is now then we'd be flying to get groceries instead of driving.
I believe we need to investigate every possible energy source. Solar power may last us for a billion years but I doubt it will ever be able to do so at a price as cheap as what thorium could do.
We don't burn coal because we want to live in a smog filled world. We burn coal because it gives us energy cheap enough that we can enjoy air conditioning while sitting in front of a computer. We are going to keep burning coal until something cheaper comes around. We do that because cold beer and hot pizza means more to us than some theoretical future where Florida is under water from melting the polar ice caps.
So, why thorium? Because beer, pizza, and Miami.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I sincerely hope that the fusion plants can be built here.
Congratulations on achieving ~22% nuclear electricity in July 2014.
My state of no-nuke Oklahoma is powered by natural gas and coal (which arrives by train), considers itself a nexus of wind power but after decades of investment, hundreds of turbines and probably much more money spent --- net generation of mostly-wind ~809GWh for July is still less than the ~855GWh that would have been generated that month by the single two-reactor Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant. That is... if it had not been the only nuclear plant in the United States cancelled after construction began, in 1982.
Oklahoma sits on the border of the three North American grid interconnects. I have been trying to convince the powers that be and Halliburton Corporate to embrace molten salt research, to no avail so far.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
no, you are confused. The worst case is exactly what LFTR addresses and of course its engineers talk about that. Blow a hole in a LTFR reactors, the fuel drains into collection tanks and cools like glass. The salts are chemically stable and don't burn, decompose or explode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
The reason the US stopped reprocessing nuclear waste from its reactors is because one of the steps in the process results in weapons-grade material and there was (and still is with the terror threat) a proliferation risk.
If it is burning, how do you put it out?
You are confusing fluorine with fluoride. A fluoride will not burn because it has already reached a state with a potential lower than that it would have with water or air.
With that said most every LFTR design I've seen does have fluorine as a gas at some point in the process but that is in the chemical processing of the fuel while outside the reactor. There is little to no fluorine in the reactor vessel.
There would not be a fire because the stuff in a LFTR does not burn. If there were things burning then the answer is to use water.
both uranium and fluorine are very toxic elements.
Uranium tetrafluoride is an insoluble salt, no more toxic than sand. Saying uranium and fluorine are very toxic is like saying sodium and chlorine are very toxic. Sodium and chlorine alone are very bad but combined they create a substance vital to life. I suppose you think we should ban the use of table salt because of the toxic materials it is made of.
What's the worst case for LFTR?
The worst case is you douse it with water for hours, maybe days, until it cools off. After it's cool you send in people with jackhammers and tractors to haul away the pieces for recycling. The mangled mess would no doubt contain radioactive material but since fission would have been stopped for days at this point the pile of scrap would be about as radioactive as a typical granite counter top. The workers would have to wear protective gear for the dust because heavy metal poisoning is a risk, just like for people that mine for gold or coal.
Perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps I exaggerated a bit, but regardless a LFTR simply cannot burn or react with water like you describe.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Do you really think it would be very hard to convince the public that it is inherently safer than other fission designs.
I expect that you can convince them that LFTR is safer than our current reactors but that is not the same as convincing them that it is safe enough to build. If you want to do that they best way to do it would be to sell them cheaper electricity. They are unlikely to be able to sensibly judge the risk but at least this way they see that they are benefiting from having a plant nearby.
However there is still the issue of nuclear waste. Both LFTR and fusion still generate it but the advantage of fusion is that it is a one-generation problem not a 10-100,000 year issue. The lighter nuclei activated by neutron radiation from fusion reactors have far shorter half lives than the heavy nuclear fragments left by thorium fission. LFTR might reduce the volume but not to zero and it will be with us for a VERY long time.
He's not referring to you, he's addressing the summary. The first paragraph of his first reply was directed at you, and then he went on to argue with the OP. He does the same sort of thing with his second response. He was pretty vague about it though so I can see how you misunderstood.
At the risk of beating a dead horse, read "Record proton-boron fusion rate achieved". Clearly aneutronic fusion HAS been demonstrated in a laboratory. I have no idea how you came to your conclusion or why you would express it so vehemently, when a simple google search shows that you are clearly wrong.
By "most viable fusion approach" I meant the approach most likely to succeed within the next decade. But hey, that's just an opinion. They say on their indiegogo page: "we have already achieved two of the three conditions needed to produce net fusion energy. We heated the fusion fuel up to 1.8 billion degrees—200 times hotter than the center of the sun, and confined it in a tiny plasmoid for 10 billionths of second. This is not a long time, but it is all we need. The third condition, which we still have not achieved, is enough density so the fuel will burn up during the confinement time."
Nobody is saying there aren't technical challenges, and nobody is saying it is a sure thing. For example, they have not yet achieved the densities needed, and there are issues both with arcing and x-rays with degrading materials. I think the biggest challenge is to demonstrate how the quantum magnetic field effect can prevent the plasmoid from cooling (caused by x-rays).
Regardless, these guys are doing real science and they deserve more respect than the dismissive nonsense you posted above.
Hi, sockpuppet with a grand total of THREE posts, two on this thread...
That's what creating a new thread is for. None of his replies addressed me whatsoever. Not a single thing referred to something I actually stated. Instead he replied directly to me, and claimed I said things I didn't, repeatedly, and can't quote them--because I didn't say ANY of them.
I'm going to assume you meant to say "hundreds of thousands" and that English is not your first language. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt that far.
You're going to have to provide a citation for the actual value, though. According to the estimates that I've read, you're off by two orders of magnitude (that is, it's a few thousand deaths, not tens much less hundreds of thousands). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... (Estimates of human deaths due to radiation from Three Mile Island and Fukushima - neither of which killed anybody directly - are in the single digits.)
How do you justify the claim that mining accidents don't count, by they way? The extraction of the fuel is certainly a part of the cost - both in money and in lives - of running a power plant.
You sound like somebody who has made some assumptions, decided they are facts, made more assumptions based on them, and continued on until you have an entire encyclopedia of "knowledge" that has no basis in reality. For example, you appear to believe that mining, refining, and transporting uranium is dangerous. None of those are really true. Uranium mining per unit volume is comparable to coal mining for the same volume, but the volume of coal used by a single commercial power plant in a day is more than the volume of uranium fuel used by all the world's reactors in a year. Refining and transporting uranium is *expensive* (because people are so cautious about it, and so afraid of terrorists getting ahold of it) but not actually unsafe; until combined into fuel rods for insertion in a reactor assembly, fuel-grade uranium is safer to transport than, say, natural gas or gasoline (petrol). It's already obvious you didn't look up any statistics about Chernobyl, either; you appear to have just decided that "lots of people died" -> "lots" of deaths must mean hundreds of thousands -> "hundred[s of] thousands dead after [C]hernobyl..." May I recommend using facts based on observations instead of guesses in the future?
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Yep, that was definitely a guess. Perhaps this will help
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
New here, then? All downmods are of the form "I disagree", with a soupçon of "what choice least likely to get my ass metamodded"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What's the worst case for LFTR? No one seems willing to even talk about it. .
Well if you stick your fingers in your ears and yell "NA NA NA I CANT HEAR YOU" of course it's going to sound like no one is talking about it. In reality it's been discussed and disected quite a bit
By safe, I mean it can't be used to blow things up -- either by accident or on purpose. This makes it bad for nuclear Proliferation -- Including making bombs for the US military. That's why it never got as much funding as Uranium-based reactors ... they couldn't figure out how to use Thorium reactors to make bombs. Remember that this was in the 60's and 70's and at the height of the cold war // arms race.
As a side point of not being useful for making bombs, it's also harder to have a (semi) critical accident -- i.e. a Chernobyl / 3-mile-island / China-syndrome type accident.
That's a big problem when you're trying to get the civilian population to accept bomb-making, but (and) much more dangerous Uranium - based reactors... Which would you rather have in your back yard? A Thorium reactor that pretty much can't have a meltdown, or a Uranium one that is one (albeit unlikely) step from being a bomb.
The other problem is that it's too cheap.... from a commercial vantage point, Uranium-based fuels are incredibly hard to make properly -- and their exact format varies from reactor to reactor... That means that reactors that aren't sufficiently profitable to make (even with military^w government subsidies) can make (more) profits because the plant manufacturer has an effective monopoly on making fuel pellets. ... kinda like the way that printer manufacturers sell you the printer for cheap, then ding you on ink refils. LFTR plants, on the other hand, just need an occasional addition of Thorium, and a little bit of the salts (to make up for any evaporation).
That means that there's less likely to be a commercial proponent for LFTR Thorium reactors. Why spend billions researching a reactor that will never get Military/Government subsidies ... and then -- once built -- won't be a lucrative source of fuel sales? It's really good for the utility using the reactor (and their customers), but it sucks for the plant manufacturer.
So there you have it.. LFTR is unlikely to be created because it's.
That's why LFTR may never find a good backer -- unless we can find a billionaire willing to fund the development on a lark (and to save mankind from our own greed/hatred).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Hmm... It seems like Aneutronic fusion is actually a light-weight fission process. -- splitting Barium into 3 Helium by adding a Proton (as opposed to a Neutron for most fission processes).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Hey look, I'm a "known renewable troll". Yay, I'm famous!
> First of all, LCoE ignores the cost of integrating intermittent wind and solar into the grid
Which is why everyone is building wind and not nuclear, I guess.
> Those cheap wind turbines require an economically infeasible storage and transmission infrastructure
Which is why Lazard, and enormous economic forecaster, is the one making these numbers.
> The Chinese are now building AP1000s for a quarter of the cost
So they say, but they also say they are building wind turbines for a quarter of the cost
> Picking the most expensive first of a kind nuclear build ever is hardly representative of the cost of nuclear.
The Lazard numbers were averages, with error bars.
> Fuel cost is negligible today,
Wind is free. Last time I checked that was cheaper than "negligible".
> Read about ThorCon [c4tx.org] for what is possible
A device designed by a guy with exactly zero experience in reactor design, worked on as a home project? Right, ok.
> as compact brayton cycle turbines become available
Which, of course, would have the exact same effect on any other power source that uses them, which means everything else would get cheaper too, and reactors would retain their cost disadvantage.
Wow, some comeback there AC.
I thought the used fuel was too polluted with fission products and crap to be useful. You would at least need to use your civilian reactor in short runs tuned for millitary plutonium breeding rather than normal operation. (and that's what very old dual use designs were design to do, such as Chernobyl type.)
If we can do that sort of thing then theoretically a thorium reactor can be used to make Uranium 233 bombs.
That's why LFTR may never find a good backer -- unless we can find a billionaire willing to fund the development on a lark (and to save mankind from our own greed/hatred).
It would take two or more celebrity billionaires coming together who are polar opposites (green+oil, democrat+republican, penguin+polar bear, etc.) coming together and shaking hands under a Thorium banner. It's for the grandchildren, but also good for business. The only 'sustainable' form of wealth creation is to introducing something completely new that changes the game --- by lowering the personal and corporate cost of living.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
Meltdowns at the recent 2014 Thorium Energy Conference
John Kutsch is positively ape-shit about lack of support for the S.2006 Thorium Bill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgRn4g7a068
He's Mad As Fucking Hell And Not Going To Take It Anymore (with bonus luddite doofus footage)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUXmff5R_bI
Jim Kennedy is absolutely bleedin' outraged that DOD is 'blocking' the Thorium Bill and handing over rare earth production, parts to China like fucktard traitorous pussies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CARlEac1iuA
Cavan Stone is excited about Bismth-213 for cancer treatment, also in a blather over S.2006's stall in Congress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAUzldJqlq4
Fascinating new topic this year, Andrew Dodson (BS EE, going for Master's in Power Distribution) is tearing out his beard about grid instability
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU6izpryqqw
But also choleric, fuming about the ridiculous current state of things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJtv7gkuh1s
All in all it's a great time to be stark raving monkey fuck for Thorium energy.
We are completely surrounded by fools -- they cannot possibly escape now.
Playlist of all TEAC6 conference videos so far (includes all above)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKfir74hxWhMI5JIcVhnWAZjrDszejxjS
Profanity used for entertainment purposes only. Management regrets any inconvenience experienced by those with delicate sensibilities.
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Management regrets any inconvenience
Meant to say incontinence, my bad.
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The estimates go from a few ten k to up to a million, should I google some links as well? ...
The fist few thousand dead where put to public viewing in moscow on the kreml place, until it was clear that riots would start soon, so they stopped showing the coffins of the dead on TV. And yes: I saw those dead on TV my self!
If you did not watch TV at that time you don't know that
Every 5 - 10 years on the aniversary european TV shows send camara teams to Russia and the Ukraine. They interview the survivors they can find and the typical questions include: how many of your clean up brigade is still alive?
The numbers are very scary, there is no doubt that a few 100k died at minimum! I know dozens of Ukraninians or Russians, there is not a single one who does not know one or even has a relative who died to the Chernoby disasterl.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why don't you google a bit?
Greenpeace as well as the World Health Organization (yes, the guys who coordinate the fight against Ebola) both speak of up to a million.
I eye wittnessed theveral thousand.
Every 5 - 10 years there again TV shows about it, the consensus is that it is minimum a few 100k and likely over half a million.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well, a bunker is indeed a building, isn't it?
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Ivanpah, CA, has plenty of featureless open desert for its solar mirrors. Unfortunately, it's also infested with Californians.
Hey look, I'm a "known renewable troll". Yay, I'm famous!
Pleased to meet ya. Famous myself, though I hardly ever get a -1 Troll. Usually it's an -1 Overrated, which is what meta-mods use when they don't like your face. I have an ugly face.
> First of all, LCoE ignores the cost of integrating intermittent wind and solar into the grid
Which is why everyone is building wind and not nuclear, I guess.
Beg to differ here. The real reason we've been building out so much utility-wind these last decades is not that it is a workable solution (never was)... it's not that the folks doing it haven't gotten around to running the numbers yet (some have, that's why natural gas plant manufacturers are the real winners)... it's not even that fossil companies actively support these renewable options because they do not pose any kind of threat (so much for conspiracy theory, it's plain conspiracy fact)... it's simply because nuclear has been kept off the table by a social phenomenon of fear that became rooted in the 'environmentalist' demographic, and that group has been steering the ship. I describe the genesis of this in this adjacent post. Chernobyl may have stirred it further but the fear was already entrenched by 1980.
I believe there will be a time --- soon --- when the emerging generation takes the reins and examines the gigawatt-year track record nuclear plants have demonstrated, even with 'old' designs. If Stewart Brand, a founder of the environmental movement, can re-think this fear, why cannot others? If demonstrated wind output on the grid has taught me anything, it is that you will probably never see a windmill produced by a factory that is powered by windmills. Our fixation with wind has produced some great strides in compact Neodymium designs (Tesla would be proud!) but it has delayed us at a crucial time.
> Read about ThorCon [c4tx.org] for what is possible
A device designed by a guy with exactly zero experience in reactor design, worked on as a home project? Right, ok.
Jack Devanney's summary and his slide show prepared for the 3rd Annual Workshop on Accelerator-Driven Sub-Critical Systems & Thorium Utilization, which is fancy speak for 'nuclear furnace'.
This approach is brilliant and deserves more than a one liner --- whether you have the time to work your way through this 69 page summary or not. I have, and though I've never designed a nuclear reactor either, I have boned up on LFTR tech and will try to do it justice...
I can see that he has tacked the heat expansion problems in the reactor head-on by doing something that only a designer of naval ships (and not conventional reactors) might think of --- shrugging off the problem entirely by suspending components. [p.18] "Almost all the vertical expansion is downward. The drain line is hung from the PHX to Pot line and has no direct physical connection to the Can. So this vertical movement is unrestricted and the drain line at Can temperature is free to expand independently of the primary loop."
He's abandoning the Holy Grail of breeding, striving to leverage the proven portions of salt technology into a system that can be built and scale today. [p.16] "ThorCon is a thorium converter, not a breeder. ThorCon requires periodic additions of ïssile fuel. And the ïrst generation ThorCon is not a particularly eïfcient converter. Only about 25% of its power comes from converting thorium to 233U. ThorCon derives its ability to produce power cheaply not from its use of thorium, but from all the other advantages of liquid fuel."
He points out that the FLiBe salts neces
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Thanks.
Saw that in the article and totally brain-farted while typing.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Actually it is the opposite. You benefit preaching doom and gloom.
If your advice is taken what ever the worry can not happen because you stopped it. If good things that could have happened didn't no one will really notice.
If your advice is not taken you just take the "it is only a matter of time" and keep your true believers scared. Any failure no matter how small is a victory for you.
If your advice is not taken and something bad happens you where right all along.
You can not really fail being an anti.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
That's Boron, I'm pretty sure, not Barium.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Current nuclear reactors are strong enough to survive a 747 impact against its secondary containment. That's the result of having to build a containment structure capable to surviving 150 atmospheres of pressure from the inside.
It nuclear reactors were weak, terrorists would have already hijacked one aircraft to blow one up.
But the fact is a nuclear reactor needs a direct hit from a comet, asteroid or heavy military bomb to destroy its secondary (outward) containment.
Anyhow, this topic isn't about water cooled nuclear reactors which have always been a kludge as far as nuclear fission is concerned. We never moved away from water cooled fission cause that's what NATO's Navies want for nuclear subs and surface ships. They paid for the initial R&D costs and follow on improvements.
Take a look at the MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) basics. LFTR is an advanced form of MSR reactors. Even the most KISS for of MSR, the DMSR achieves 6x the utilization of uranium mined from the earth. With this efficiency plus a handful of fast sodium reactors mankind could convert all of our depleted uranium into MOX fuel and power the world with Uranium+Plutonium+Thorium fueled DMSR. LFTR is a way to get rid of the Uranium+Plutonium route and go 100% Thorium.