Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor - LFTR

[Que]

I prefer to read over watching video clips, but this was two hours well spent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sG9_OplUK8

The production is well done in the way a good article is written. The earlier parts give a very nice overview.

The first five minutes tells you why this is the future. The rest is just the fine details as to why.

My view is that the environmental wackos are wrong. Let's say they are correct. They should be demanding this.

No Co2, plentiful fuel. Cheap, clean energy. No "waste" the byproducts all have utility and tremendous value. No need to remove partial spent fuel, just keep adding more as needed.

Even the more modern fast-breeder solid-fuel steam-generating reactors are a much better option than anything that the "greens' advocate. This is all of those advantages, and none of disadvantages.

 

[Que]

Here is the most prominent debunk I could find. It was on junkscience.com\

“There are small boatloads of fanatics on thorium that don’t see the downsides,” said Dan Ingersoll, senior project manager for nuclear technology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. For one thing, he said, it would be too expensive to replace or convert the nuclear power plants already running in this country: “A thorium-based fuel cycle has some advantages, but it’s not compelling for infrastructure and investments.”

He also pointed out that thorium would still have some radioactive byproducts — just not as much as uranium and not as long-lived — and that there is no ready stockpile of thorium in the United States. It would have to be mined.

Overall, he says the benefits don’t outweigh the huge costs of switching technologies. “I’m looking for something compelling enough to trash billions of dollars of infrastructure that we have already and I don’t see that.”

Pretty weak reasoning. Current nuclear plants are being decommissioned faster than being built. In 20 years we won't have any to speak of. They have to be replaced with something.

He sure glosses over "some radioactive products" He neglects to mention you can't use U238 to make bombs. He neglects to mention the minuscule level of all byproducts compared to current technology.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Too complicated. Too many exotic materials. Too expensive to decom.

PWR reactors are the standard because they are simple and reliable.

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

Whatever happened to that Delaware sized radioactive garbage pile launched by Japan?

 

[cowslinger64]

Here is the most prominent debunk I could find. It was on junkscience.com\



Pretty weak reasoning. Current nuclear plants are being decommissioned faster than being built. In 20 years we won't have any to speak of. They have to be replaced with something.

He sure glosses over "some radioactive products" He neglects to mention you can't use U238 to make bombs. He neglects to mention the minuscule level of all byproducts compared to current technology.

Some pretty smart guys down there in Oak Ridge...of course they aren't "the smartest guy on a message board" kinda smart however. Maybe they're hiring...

 

[Que]

Too complicated. Too many exotic materials. Too expensive to decom.

PWR reactors are the standard because they are simple and reliable.

Thorium is found everywhere and far more common than uranium. It would put Mike Yates out of a job.

Except you do need some U233 to kick off the reaction. The thorium though when gifted a neutron becomes U233 so you don't need much.

They do not have to be decommissioned the way a steam reactor does, they do not have to have fuel removed the way a steam reactor does.

 

[Que]

Whatever happened to that Delaware sized radioactive garbage pile launched by Japan?

Despite the science learned in such documentaries as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Godzilla, and Empire of the Ants, the type of radiation that could survive long enough to make the trip is as harmful as the background radiation already in our lives.

Black sand beaches are naturally far more radioactive.

Coal plants emit radiation because coal contains naturally occurring thorium and uranium and it goes up in the ash.

I watched the movie "pandoras promise" a while back. I was shocked to learn people have returned to Chernobyl. I didn't know that the plant continued in operation after the accident as well. Expected cancer clusters have not materialized. All deaths were workers that bravely went in while it was "hot" and got fatal doses.

The ridiculously long half stuff, is not the stuff that kills you. It's the stuff that is gone too fast to hardly even observe.

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

I'm leaning towards reactors powered by helium3. From what I understand, an amount the size grapefruit could power a city the size Los Angeles for a year. No radioactive waste, just clean power. The only negative is that we would need to start mining the moon's surface since there is barely any on Earth.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

I'm leaning towards reactors powered by helium3. From what I understand, an amount the size grapefruit could power a city the size Los Angeles for a year. No radioactive waste, just clean power. The only negative is that we would need to start mining the moon's surface since there is barely any on Earth.

The cost of transporting any scavenged He-3 from the moon would negate almost any savings over using another fuel. I can see possibly using it to power a moon base, but not being shipped back to Earth.

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

The cost of transporting any scavenged He-3 from the moon would negate almost any savings over using another fuel. I can see possibly using it to power a moon base, but not being shipped back to Earth.

I don't know about that. The hard work is the initial set up. Multiple remote-controlled mining lunar vehicles would do the brunt work. Two to four trips a year to pick up the helium3 loads and ferry it to the Space Station to be returned each time they swap out astronauts.

Savings could be made up in different ways that would make it feasible in the long run. There would probably be a lot more electric vehicles so there would be much less environmental pollution which would achieve health savings. Fewer people with problems like asthma. Fewer wars necessary over oil achieves Military budget savings. Etc...etc.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Thorium is found everywhere and far more common than uranium. It would put Mike Yates out of a job.

Except you do need some U233 to kick off the reaction. The thorium though when gifted a neutron becomes U233 so you don't need much.

They do not have to be decommissioned the way a steam reactor does, they do not have to have fuel removed the way a steam reactor does.

My inner chem geek wants to scream about how overly simplistic that is put....but GB so.

Yea the LFTR looks very interesting...possibly worth a better look.

 

[Balladeer08]

My inner chem geek wants to scream about how overly simplistic that is put....but GB so.

Yea the LFTR looks very interesting...possibly worth a better look.

I would be shocked to learn anyone on the GB is remotely qualified to evaluate different types of nuclear reactors.

YouTube is not peer-reviewed, so I don't consider it a trustworthy source of science information.

 

[Kitty]

I had to take chem 3 times just to pass with a 71.

 

[rosco rathbone]

I would be shocked to learn anyone on the GB is remotely qualified to evaluate different types of nuclear reactors.

YouTube is not peer-reviewed, so I don't consider it a trustworthy source of science information.

There was a nuke engineer used to poast here name of breakwall.

 

[Que]

My inner chem geek wants to scream about how overly simplistic that is put....but GB so.

Yea the LFTR looks very interesting...possibly worth a better look.

The dude in the video reminds of Christopher Lloyds character from back to the future, crossed with a friend of mine that insists we will have hover craft when they perfect super-conducters (carrying around the liquid nitrogen seems a bit inconvenient, but I digress)

I heard a little in dribs and drabs about these fort of reactors, but never have I seen an entire presentation that made me think, Ok, I could build one. (hypothetically)

I was aware that one of the reasons we have the more dangerous (relatively) reactors we did is we wanted the weapons grade by-products. Whenever the whole "nuke waste makes nukes a no-go" argument comes up My go-to is the killing of the fast breeder reactor program being killed.

What I didn;t know prior to watching this was that there was a much earlier branch on the tree and that these liquid salt reactors were not some new idea, rather a great old idea that simply was never put into production. HIs presentation is compelling that we took the wrong branch.

I am sure there are developmental and technical hurdles to overcome, but this process just dies if you don't feed it. Mo melt-down possible, not superheated steam explosion, no water separated into hydrogen and oxygen explosion.

Lot of upside, so I am left with ...huh?? Because I tend to not by arguments about "they" don't want....."

Remember when the price on copiers and also printers came down to nothing? It was because the figured they would screw you on consumables.

Exactly what the nuke industry does with the uranium solid fuel reactors. They build they fuel arrays and are delighted that they degrade and have to be replaced on the regular.

Pretty interesting stuff.

 

[Que]

I would be shocked to learn anyone on the GB is remotely qualified to evaluate different types of nuclear reactors.

YouTube is not peer-reviewed, so I don't consider it a trustworthy source of science information.

I am by no means a nuclear engineer, but I did have an inordinately high score on the navy's nuclear science test. I'm rusty, but this guy's math and science are in the ballpark.

I am completely unimpressed with the entire concept of peer review. There is a legitimate, peer reviewed paper on how often peer reviewed science is made up from phony data and has ridiculous conclusions, There was a paper writing program that was used as an experiment to see if it could get into peer-reviewed journals and it did, like 30 times.

The guy from Oak Ridge I would give weight to, except he is entrenched in the current mindset, says as much in his comments. As if the current way we do nuke does not have serious problems and is not much changed from 1950. He has to know that the by-product is not the dangerous U237, but the scarce and highly desirable (and safe) U238, and he just glossed right over that like one of these Japanese radioactive tide alarmists.

I am willing to buy the you-tube guy might be better writing science fiction than physics, but I dunno. I was buying what he was selling, and I usually don't.

The Chinese believe this is the future. Maybe they are wrong, too. If they are right and this turns out to be as cheap an energy source as it might be...they are really going to eat our rice bowl.

 

[Kitty]

Is Query some kind of genius.

 

[BotanyBoy]

The dude in the video reminds of Christopher Lloyds character from back to the future, crossed with a friend of mine that insists we will have hover craft when they perfect super-conducters (carrying around the liquid nitrogen seems a bit inconvenient, but I digress)

Pretty interesting stuff.

The energy world is a colossal cluster of political/greedy bullshit.

It's like a cure for cancer, HIV or Beetus...no one in the pharmaceutical or HC industry REALLY wants it except the grunts on the front line and the patients they work with.

Prettey much everyone above that pay grade/position knows the money is in treatments...not cures and is just fine keeping it that way.

If some brilliant fuck came up with the ultimate energy solution, bitch would be dead by sunset and all his/her research would vanish into never never land.

 

[Que]

The energy world is a colossal cluster of political/greedy bullshit.

It's like a cure for cancer, HIV or Beetus...no one in the pharmaceutical or HC industry REALLY wants it except the grunts on the front line and the patients they work with.

Prettey much everyone above that pay grade/position knows the money is in treatments...not cures and is just fine keeping it that way.

If some brilliant fuck came up with the ultimate energy solution, bitch would be dead by sunset and all his/her research would vanish into never never land.

I have always heard that, and it makes for great conspiracy plot bunnies, but some things are tough to keep caged.

Korea has a bomb as does pakastan and neither country did we want them to use the information that was basically in the public domain, to make a bomb. hard to put the genie back.

I can see a lot of people...for example, GE makes hue money on solid fuel. The want to keep doing that, I could see them having a pet congressman lean on the NRC and make life hell for a sector that doesn't need GE fuel.

But one of the great things about communists, be they russian, venezuelan, cuban or chinese, they dont have to make a profit, they have to do things that profits their society.

If this stuff is real. the will build it, for sure. and prosper like you cannot imagine.

It takes 2000KWH per person per ear I think it said for a society to flourish. Imagine if the chinese or the indians or even the cubans had that and it was cheep once you got it up and running.

 

[Balladeer08]

I am by no means a nuclear engineer, but I did have an inordinately high score on the navy's nuclear science test. I'm rusty, but this guy's math and science are in the ballpark.

I am completely unimpressed with the entire concept of peer review. There is a legitimate, peer reviewed paper on how often peer reviewed science is made up from phony data and has ridiculous conclusions, There was a paper writing program that was used as an experiment to see if it could get into peer-reviewed journals and it did, like 30 times.

The guy from Oak Ridge I would give weight to, except he is entrenched in the current mindset, says as much in his comments. As if the current way we do nuke does not have serious problems and is not much changed from 1950. He has to know that the by-product is not the dangerous U237, but the scarce and highly desirable (and safe) U238, and he just glossed right over that like one of these Japanese radioactive tide alarmists.

I am willing to buy the you-tube guy might be better writing science fiction than physics, but I dunno. I was buying what he was selling, and I usually don't.

The Chinese believe this is the future. Maybe they are wrong, too. If they are right and this turns out to be as cheap an energy source as it might be...they are really going to eat our rice bowl.

I've been watching it, pausing it to check facts and figures as I may, and it does seem very interesting.

I'm hoping they get into a discussion of how small and cheap you could make a demo reactor.

Visions of building an LFTR on a boat in International waters, to keep it cheaper and from being aborted by being buried in regulatory reporting.

 

[Que]

Is Query some kind of genius.

Technically, I am more idiot than savant.

 

[Balladeer08]

I have always heard that, and it makes for great conspiracy plot bunnies, but some things are tough to keep caged.

Korea has a bomb as does pakastan and neither country did we want them to use the information that was basically in the public domain, to make a bomb. hard to put the genie back.

I can see a lot of people...for example, GE makes hue money on solid fuel. The want to keep doing that, I could see them having a pet congressman lean on the NRC and make life hell for a sector that doesn't need GE fuel.

But one of the great things about communists, be they russian, venezuelan, cuban or chinese, they dont have to make a profit, they have to do things that profits their society.

If this stuff is real. the will build it, for sure. and prosper like you cannot imagine.

It takes 2000KWH per person per ear I think it said for a society to flourish. Imagine if the chinese or the indians or even the cubans had that and it was cheep once you got it up and running.

I need to go back and hear the beginning again. Did he say one of the waste products was directly usable as diesel fuel?

Lower the price of diesel fuel, you lower the price of everything in the country, because it all gets delivered by trucks.

 

[Que]

I've been watching it, pausing it to check facts and figures as I may, and it does seem very interesting.

I'm hoping they get into a discussion of how small and cheap you could make a demo reactor.

Visions of building an LFTR on a boat in International waters, to keep it cheaper and from being aborted by being buried in regulatory reporting.

It sounds like its about a billion to build one. Probably.

One thing that someone piped up from the back suggested that one could use a part of this process, for example to manufacture extremely valuable U238 even if you were not running it with all the parts like the turbines and such would be pricey.

I dunno. that part made me start to think scam, because the guy piping up was saying why not do pieces of it and use that to finance the rest. That sounds the way a bunko artist would do it right? Not sell you on the billion dollar idea, but the one he can get started if he "only" had a couple hundred thousand.

I liked the guy and his pretty good handle on all objections, which seemed practiced...the part about him having worked for NASA turned me off, because so, what? NASA has plenty of drones that are not actually rocket scientists.

He did give a ted talk. I don't think that was about just this process, but rather the need for energy as it relates to bringing third world cultures up, or something like that. I would like to hunt down that talk.

 

[BotanyBoy]

I am by no means a nuclear engineer, but I did have an inordinately high score on the navy's nuclear science test. I'm rusty, but this guy's math and science are in the ballpark.

I am willing to buy the you-tube guy might be better writing science fiction than physics, but I dunno. I was buying what he was selling, and I usually don't.

The Chinese believe this is the future. Maybe they are wrong, too. If they are right and this turns out to be as cheap an energy source as it might be...they are really going to eat our rice bowl.

Maybe it's spot on....maybe it's a giant crock of shit. It's hypothetical till they have a working model.

I have always heard that, and it makes for great conspiracy plot bunnies, but some things are tough to keep caged.

Oh for sure, and I did go up to 11 on that..they wouldn't be dead but there would be a massive shit storm thrown at them by the petro/coal/solar/wind energy fankids. At least in this nation...

If this stuff is real. the will build it, for sure. and prosper like you cannot imagine.

I don't think we will...I think the more social societies will. I think we will have BILLIONS being poured into banning this from every other current energy source being sold for massive profit here in the US and in all likelihood be crushed to nothing before ever being allowed to try.

It takes 2000KWH per person per ear I think it said for a society to flourish. Imagine if the chinese or the indians or even the cubans had that and it was cheep once you got it up and running.

Yep...Can you imagine what will happen when they have it and we don't? Because solar/coal LvR bullshit won't allow it because freedumb and socialism like LFTR energy is freedumb crushing evoll is coming out of both camps?

Sure it's negative but it wouldn't be the first time US of A put profit over people...wouldn't be the last. Partisan pride + greed could easily = No LFTR in the US.

I need to go back and hear the beginning again. Did he say one of the waste products was directly usable as diesel fuel?

Lower the price of diesel fuel, you lower the price of everything in the country, because it all gets delivered by trucks.

Even international products, the mega cargo ships punch through a pretty penny in fuel too.

 

[Que]

That was easy to find: http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel

Not actually a TED talk. It is a TEDx To your earlier point of peer review, when you are invited to an actual TED event, chances are good you are tops in your field. This is more, hmm, lets let this guy ramble because it is good intellectual fodder.

I remember reading similar interesting pieces on cold fusion (which I do not believe is possible) Still interesting to read about what people want to try, even if I don't think it will work.

He is less polished in this clip from two years ago.