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Thorium US Benefits
Edited by Fordi
Updated - 29th Jun
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thorium
Posted by praoss
28th Sep
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DoE sellout
Forbes disclosed that China was hacking ORNL just a few years ago. Now we just give it to them. DoE is a sellout and needs to be investigated by Congress.
Posted by threeconsulting
27th Jun
+2
Votes
DoE sellout
Considering all work on MSR technology at ORNL was terminated in the early 1970s, I am glad to see it resurrected by anybody. The US has dropped the ball and China has picked it up, so at least now the US gets to look at what they could have done. Don't blame ORNL, blame CONgress for terminating the research in the first place. I think the US government is being incredibly stupid by refusing to pursue this technology.
Posted by Roy_H
28th Jun
+1
Vote
Don't Blame ORNL?
Roy I agree with you that ORNL was not to blame for the bad decisions of the 1970s. The decision to advance Plutonium producing reactors was at the hand of Nixon at the height of the cold war. Today the DoE, NRC and all of the National Labs stand as a unified front against all challengers to the LWR and other non-Uranium solid fuel reactors. Sure, they burn taxpayer money on things that will never work, but that is all part of their defensive strategy. A lot of dedicated people worked hard to change this policy over the last few years, only to have people at the National Labs and DoE undermine our efforts. Now they work for China???s interest.
Posted by threeconsulting
28th Jun
+3
Votes
"weapons grade waste" Arrgh!
"The U.S. under President Richard Nixon chose uranium over thorium in part because uranium reactors provided the weapons grade waste that was desirable during the Cold War. That set the stage for a uranium-based nuclear industry."
Please stop suggesting that spent fuel from power reactors is 'weapons grade'. It isn't. Weapons grade plutonium was made in reactors built and operated for that purpose, because it involves removing fuel rods after a few months. In that time, some of the U-238 atoms in the fuel absorb a neutron to become fissile Pu-239, but only a few (less than 7%) of those absorb a second neutron to become non-fissile Pu-240. Since swapping fuel rods means taking light water reactors off-line for several weeks, this is only done every 18 months or so.
Here's Kirk Sorensen explaining the history of the choice of the plutonium-burning liquid sodium reactor over the thorium-burning molten salt reactor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
Please stop suggesting that spent fuel from power reactors is 'weapons grade'. It isn't. Weapons grade plutonium was made in reactors built and operated for that purpose, because it involves removing fuel rods after a few months. In that time, some of the U-238 atoms in the fuel absorb a neutron to become fissile Pu-239, but only a few (less than 7%) of those absorb a second neutron to become non-fissile Pu-240. Since swapping fuel rods means taking light water reactors off-line for several weeks, this is only done every 18 months or so.
Here's Kirk Sorensen explaining the history of the choice of the plutonium-burning liquid sodium reactor over the thorium-burning molten salt reactor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
Posted by wwoods6
28th Jun
+1
Vote
Thorium US Benefit
After a very cursory look-up, it appears the US has lots of Thorium, perhaps exportable amounts if the EPA greenies let us get them (much like everything else). So, a US-China confab on this works for me.
Posted by cjkosh@...
Updated - 29th Jun
+4
Votes
Thorium US Benefits
"Whats not clear is what, exactly, the U.S. will get from the collaboration"
I saw a couple of mentions of US Thorium stockpiles - China has Th stocks, too mostly from their already lucrative rare earths business. So that's not it - though, if thorium is a salable commodity, it opens the US rare earths market back up.
Otherwise, I think the benefits to the US of a Chinese ThMSR are numerous.
First, there's that if China builds it, it gets built. There's a lot of resistance from the American nuclear industry to MSRs that the DoE may or may not be down with. FLiBe Energy is collaborating with the military to get a critical reactor by 2015 as well - but they're pretty much the only game in town so far as the two-fluid, continuously reprocessed design goes. Letting China in on it seems like insurance; we're working for it, but if China gets there first, the USDoE has a plausible prior claim to the IP that built it. They might just forward the design to American nuclear companies with design approval.
There are clear benefits to the US having a cheap, low pollution nuclear reactor. We get to start subbing in the new, smaller devices at existing nuclear sites; we can start dropping them into the process heat end of coal plants; they are several hundred orders of magnitude less prone to releases of radiation (it's literally impossible for a loss-of-coolant accident to result in an RoR, for example); they produce orders of magnitude less waste (~ 1/100 of that of conventional nuclear); their waste has a much shorter shelf-life (it's tapped in ~300 years, rather than ~250,000). They would be a silver bullet, if not for the stigma that comes with the nuclear moniker.
However, if China has them - well, let's just say the American politic has a jealousy problem. If China - filthy, filthy 2008 Summer Olympics China - is besting us on emissions because of these thorium thingies, well, doggoneit, why don't we have 'em? We invented the derned things!
Further, if successful, it means China's energy fleet will run on non-weaponable nuclear; it would further depress the cost of Chinese rare earths - which would be a boon to both of our economies. It would depress the cost of Chinese electricity, which would boost their economy, and keep their prices low - which keeps ours low.
There are a lot of reasons it's a good thing China's in this game. It indicates bad things about the state of American research politics - but knowing where you stand is awesome.
I saw a couple of mentions of US Thorium stockpiles - China has Th stocks, too mostly from their already lucrative rare earths business. So that's not it - though, if thorium is a salable commodity, it opens the US rare earths market back up.
Otherwise, I think the benefits to the US of a Chinese ThMSR are numerous.
First, there's that if China builds it, it gets built. There's a lot of resistance from the American nuclear industry to MSRs that the DoE may or may not be down with. FLiBe Energy is collaborating with the military to get a critical reactor by 2015 as well - but they're pretty much the only game in town so far as the two-fluid, continuously reprocessed design goes. Letting China in on it seems like insurance; we're working for it, but if China gets there first, the USDoE has a plausible prior claim to the IP that built it. They might just forward the design to American nuclear companies with design approval.
There are clear benefits to the US having a cheap, low pollution nuclear reactor. We get to start subbing in the new, smaller devices at existing nuclear sites; we can start dropping them into the process heat end of coal plants; they are several hundred orders of magnitude less prone to releases of radiation (it's literally impossible for a loss-of-coolant accident to result in an RoR, for example); they produce orders of magnitude less waste (~ 1/100 of that of conventional nuclear); their waste has a much shorter shelf-life (it's tapped in ~300 years, rather than ~250,000). They would be a silver bullet, if not for the stigma that comes with the nuclear moniker.
However, if China has them - well, let's just say the American politic has a jealousy problem. If China - filthy, filthy 2008 Summer Olympics China - is besting us on emissions because of these thorium thingies, well, doggoneit, why don't we have 'em? We invented the derned things!
Further, if successful, it means China's energy fleet will run on non-weaponable nuclear; it would further depress the cost of Chinese rare earths - which would be a boon to both of our economies. It would depress the cost of Chinese electricity, which would boost their economy, and keep their prices low - which keeps ours low.
There are a lot of reasons it's a good thing China's in this game. It indicates bad things about the state of American research politics - but knowing where you stand is awesome.
Posted by Fordi
Updated - 29th Jun
0
Votes
What, exactly, the U.S. will get from the collaboration
our military corporations sell or give or military technology to the Chinese. Our auto industry builds factories There (not here). The Chinese demand every country build there and develop ideas there and leave those ideas and technology there.
So are you now clear, Mark? What planet have you been living on anyways?
So are you now clear, Mark? What planet have you been living on anyways?
Posted by affordablecomputerguy@...
13th Jul
0
Votes
Nixon did not choose nuclear reactor fuel
"The U.S. under President Richard Nixon chose uranium over thorium in part because uranium reactors provided the weapons grade waste that was desirable during the Cold War."
That statement is ridiculous. We were building commercial nuclear power plants with uranium fuel long before Nixon became president. They were based on the design chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for nuclear-powered submarines. The submarines needed a very dense, highly-enriched core, so they could operate for decades without refueling. I don't think thorium would have worked for that purpose. In any case, we did not have the technology to make compact, highly-enriched submarine cores with thorium in the early 1960s. I don't think we can even do that today.
That statement is ridiculous. We were building commercial nuclear power plants with uranium fuel long before Nixon became president. They were based on the design chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for nuclear-powered submarines. The submarines needed a very dense, highly-enriched core, so they could operate for decades without refueling. I don't think thorium would have worked for that purpose. In any case, we did not have the technology to make compact, highly-enriched submarine cores with thorium in the early 1960s. I don't think we can even do that today.
Posted by rswayne@...
31st Aug
0
Votes
control a competitor
This is one way to control a competitor. Hopefully this brings peace and prosperity.
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Posted by aflemo
15th Sep
0
Votes
thorium
What I fail to understand is all this insisting on thorium reserves. They mean virtually nothing. While uranium supply could turn problematic for thermal LWRs, all world yearly power needs could be covered by several thousand tonnes of Th. For China's 1 TWe by the middle of century, it's only 1000 t p.a. At such rate, the cost is irrelevant. Even if your encircle China by new Great Wall and occupy Mongolia, it could extract it from several dozens of million tons of ordinary clay. At insane cost of $1000/kg it's less tha $1 per capita. The problem is reactor technology, not fuel supply. Some penny-picking is OK, but do not make it into problem.
Posted by praoss
28th Sep