China Is Building a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor - Here's Why It Matters
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- čas přidán 18. 06. 2024
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Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about an interesting development coming from China in regards to Thorium nuclear reactors
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I studied the nuclear industry in the late 70s and I came to the same conclusion Thorium is the safest and cleanest solution for the world energy needs but I agree politics have killed any such suggestion in my country Australia
Doesn't help the the frist one built was rushed then China kicked the professionals that built it off the project once completed and it's now leaking nuclear material and is being told by the people who built it and the professionals to shut it down...
Thorium is literally safe to be around after an hour. The reason it was never used in the US is because of rich, powerful people that were already invested into the systems we use now.
In the UK the left leaning press publishes opinion pieces arguing that we must return to pre-industrial revolution life styles alongside articles warning that "pro-nuclsar propagandaists" must be ostracised.
Ditto for all Western countries because of their piss ant enviros and political leaders.
@@robertcole7874 the one in Guangdong?
I did simulation work for a Thorium ADSR during an internship a number of years ago. I'm glad to hear more countries are putting more resources into developing Thorium reactors.
What happens when molten sodium comes into contact with water?
@@DJBillionator the same thing that happens when people ask smug leading questions because they didn't know the difference between an ADSR and a molten salt reactor and also erroneously believe that the term "molten salt" exclusively means "molten sodium chloride": nothing good 😉
@@DJBillionator Most of the molten salt reactors use fluoride salt. Some of the designs included lead or chloride. The only project that I know of that potentially would have used sodium (as a secondary coolant, primary being fluoride) was the US Aircraft Reactor Project.
Its sad that it's political in the US. The left side doesn't want any kind of nuclear power.
Except the CCP is completely incompetent, and will do ot in the most filthy way possible
I hope China is successful w this reactor…the whole world can learn from this…ive had experience in nuclear design during the 80s…I think this alternative design is best as well. Then we can follow…
What books do you recommended.
This technology can't be used for
weapon..... so it is abandoned for a long time!
I hope the entire world learns from this !
that would be the first that someone builds a copy of something made in china
@@ProjectEmily it was there but some problems on container alloy was making it not able to be use for long time. But it is achievable by to day technology on metallurgy.
Anton, I’ve recently subscribed. Regardless if you take the time to read these comments, I want to share that I appreciate your efforts to educate the general public. I think you are doing a fine job of tapping into viewers curiosity. With so much mind numbing repetition uploaded daily to CZcams, your videos reinforce the notion that learning should indeed be a life long pursuit.
Politicians' understanding of nuclear power comes entirely from The Simpsons.
Like in Germany, where fairly safe designs get shut down "because of Fukushima".
Replicating the Fukushima catastrophe in Germany would be literally impossible. But that doesn't matter to the politicians.
But everybody seems OK with importing electricity from French nuclear power plants at the same time...
@@daszieher
Thanks Japan for building a nuclear plant on a farking fault line
@@daszieher Australia would be the perfect place to start some monstrous nuclear fuel synthesis plant
Middle of Australia
@@redrichard9801
"it wasn't built on a fault line the earthquake did not cause the Fukushima problem the tidal wave did the work."
Lets look at the pacific fault lines
Look at Australia
Big difference
And the tidal wave was caused by the fault line
So as I said
No one had foresight on that one
In Slovakia, we joked about it,... In Japan, brewery explodes, Germany Closing all breweries....
I think the coolest part of molten salt reactors is the safety plug. It gets too hot, plug melts and drains the fuel. This feature is fully automatic and at the same time passive! Needs no power, no controller, no human intervention. Just works. You should mention this in video :)
Idiot-proof? :P
@@thhseeking nothing, NOTHING is idiot-proof.
@Sergio Ribeiro In any industry there's always somebody who eventually will think it's a good idea to start running a test to locate issues with unstable equipment at 3 am when it's nice and quiet and just before the next shift comes on. Possibly with a mind to also identify any faulty gauges.
@@SofaKingShit totally understanding what you're saying. I'm a maintenance technician and I can assure you that it is impossible to make anything idiot-proof. Idiots are extremely creative.
There's no reason for not doing this except government incompetence. Germany went totally batshit by closing down their nuclear plants after Fukushima, even compensating with fossil fuel generators. There is corruption in this. Certainly they can afford and have the know know to get thorium working.
The UK Nuclear Research facility at Winfrith in Dorset were also involved in the development of LIFTER (molten thorium salt ) reactors back in the early 60’s - I knew a German physicist who worked there as a young man. He told me that it was shelved more due to problems arising from lack of suitable materials for handling the molten salts at high temperatures as well as gamma shielding problems due to U233 production in the generation process.
Thanks Anton, learned a lot more on these reactors today.
I was always been a fan of Molten Salt Reactors for years now. I am glad to hear someone is going to do it, because this will prove it is safe and doable. Politics destroyed our chances and set us back many years.
India has been working on building a bunch of these for a few years now. I'm also glad it's picking up steam globally.
It always seems that way.
Jimmy Carter was on a nuclear submarine as part of its crew.
One of the big problems of nuclear energy are the corporations themselves.
Just look at Fukushima and the mess created by that business community.
Well said
Way past overdue.
You can burn 95% of uranium waste rod in a thorium reactor. This significantly shrinks our nuclear waste problem. And it generates clean electricity. It's a win/win :)
thank you! I just asked this question!!
brilliant idea!
of course we ( usa ) will be the last to do it 😢….😡
As it is great in many ways. Like burning almost any isotope existing. There is 1 little but.. If molten salt meets water, the bang is way Something.
To be specific, LWR spent fuel wouldn't be burnt up in a Thorium reactor, but a modified molten salt reactor that's designed for fast spectrum Plutonium-breeding (the majority of spent fuel is U-238 (fertile, doesn't split but accepts neutrons) which needs to be made into Plutonium 239 (fissile, can be split apart for energy) as a U-233 breeder reactor (fueled by Th-232) doesn't have the right configuration to allow it.
@bk_16 Sure, but the fuel efficiency of MSRs is so great that it'll likely take like... millennia, to completely go through the spent fuel cache, so it's not super relevant as a solution for "destroying nuclear waste" at least on our timescales
@@spacefacts1681 maybe not in our lifetimes but it's a start and makes use of existing waste.
My understanding has always been that the limitation of Thorium based reactors was short operating cycles (hours and days) followed by long periods of maintenance downtime (weeks). Last time I read up on the details, an Indian experimental reactor held the record for continuous operation and it was measured in hours. I would be very happy to hear that the problems of long term sustainability of operation have been solved.
Right,these Thorium reactors are far behind, better to burn Th in an IMSR,just a big pot you keep adding fuel to, nothing ever leaves so no messy pipes to leak.
@@paulbedichek2679 Massive radiation leaves, that is the biggest problem.
All Thorium and molten salt reactors to date have been research reactors.
These are run like the laboratory experiments they are.
Electric power is not produced from them, and the power outputs are all dissipated as heat. The heat dissipation systems usually aren’t very robust, and are only designed for short fission runs.
After the fission kinetics are logged during a run, key components are often removed for analysis or modification.
@@richardmccann4815 What a superstitious fellow you are ! Obviously not, no radiation ever impacts the environment, clean enery is the result. 10 grams of C02 per kWh instead of 800kg.
That can be easily solved by having more than one, so the other works during the downtime, no?
Amazing how the lack of destructive use means what could have been a revolutionary, safe, environmentally friendly and abundant energy source, never came to fruition. Imaging how different the planet could be right now. Says alot about the human race
scientist: we have invented a safe, abundant source of energy that can be used in many conditions
politician: but can u turn it into a bomb
scientist: no, that's why it's so good-
politician: funding CANCELED
The problem with the human race us that while most of us are OK, a large proportion of the people who have a drive to power are psychopaths or sociopaths...
@@therearenoshortcuts9868 Agreed.
It says a lot about liberals. They saw the China Syndrome over 40 years ago and decided all nuclear is bad.
@@scottm7341
What they think is irrelevant in the next decade China is going to build Molton salt nuclear reactors they don't have a choice.
Anton I just wanna say you’re an inspiration to me, you’re one of the people that keeps my fascination with the world going, even through tough times. I’m doing my masters in the Philosophy of Science, you’re one of the reasons I chose it over philosophy of mind.
That's nice science itself doesn't motivate you as strongly as a person does.
@@DJBillionator pretty big brain william
Honestly, either subfield is a good choice. Philosophy of Science (the focus of my undergrad minor) is basically useful RIGHT NOW for education, science communication, law, journalism, or pretty much any area where it is vitally important to prevent misinterpretation of science. I think it's also useful for discussions around how best to approach mysteries at the frontiers of physics; Sabine Hossenfelder is an excellent voice in this field right now. Philosophy of Mind is a less mature subfield in some ways, perhaps a generation or two away from becoming relevant to the frontier of technology, but I would be shocked if the growing sophistication of neural networks, human-machine interfaces, and end-of-life medical science don't turn what is right now mostly an academic curiosity (the nature of consciousness) into a vitally important practical question. I consider functionalism useful but painfully reductive; we're going to need to move past it soon.
thank you Azan, hope you go far!
If I were in charge of the Star Trek franchise, I would make sure Anton gets a cameo as often as he wants! :)
Someone’s probably mentioned this already but thorium reactors can produce plutonium, but in the form of Pu-238. And that’s actually useful for powering space probes and rovers, especially any that have to work in the dark or too far from the sun for solar power to be an option. Both Voyager probes used it, as do Curiosity and Perseverance on Mars. I wonder if China is looking at this and if their space agency is planning to use domestically produced Pu-238, or whether China will become an exporter to other countries’ space agencies.
238 can easily turn into 239, which can be filtered out, which would give china a lot of easy access to the most dangerous nuclear material, which will likely be sold to pakistan and north korea
great point! thank you for clarifying
@@mike4402 just great
@@mike4402 If that were the case other nations would of picked up Thorium nuclear tech a long time ago, the knowledge has been around for many decades, to circumvent the need for uranium based reactors to produced weapons grade plutonium 239 with "ease". In other words, it isn't as "easy" as you think it is to take a thorium reactor and convert its by-products into high grade material for nuclear weapons.
@@lmao7183 „would of” 🙄
It’s about damn time somebody started seriously making a thorium reactor it’s about damn time Way to go China!
I don't know if doing that is enough to cancel out everything they have done and are still doing. Wonder what happened to all those protestors and Hong Kong. Or them lying about the Olympics.
@@scorchinorphan1687 Can you see some positive news about China from your media？China will not do anything good in your news
@@cjzisgood I can and have, just the work camps and the killing of hundreds of people In them like this is the holocaust kinda make it seem like it's meaningless. Or the fact they keep fucking with other countries and show no interest in international law.
@@scorchinorphan1687 that's not the china I see, my friend. Don't be brainwashed by the western media who is causing all the chaos in the world and victimized china all along.
@@timall4her207 they literally have concentration camps, but I guess we forgot the Hong Kong Protesters because China gave them their freedoms and everything wanted and needed. Once again, they were still caught lying to their entire country saying they won the Olympics. It's like saying Western media brainwashed us to hate North Korea. They're bad counties, and you supporting it disgusts me. You don't care about the countless religious, Christians and Muslims included, people gathered up and put in work camps, or the fact it's been known China has been doing this for close to 2 years. They also continue to antagonize Japan, India, South Korea, and numerous other countries in the area by breaking international law, this isn't America they do it to, they do it to the countries all around them, and they have reported on it as well. Numerous of them have recorded sinking Chinese fishing vessels that had been watched and recorded going into other country waters to fish, then retreat into Chinese waters when caught/an attempt at calling them is made.
Thank you very much for your great video and giving an alternative (and very correct) view of the recent history with regards to Thorium.
I've been talking about this for years, and usually get called a conspiracy theorist lol. Thanks for doing a video on it! The West will definitely regret letting China get ahead on this one, thanks military industrial complex.
Yes, I keep waiting for the US to put some money and effort into this technology that was originally developed in the late 60s and early seventies. Many other countries have been busy copying this information for years.
Yeah I've been rambling on about how Thorium reactors are going to be a big thing. Its a shame the US stonewalled the technology so much due to competing older reactor technology. Honestly I hope China does figure it all out and reduces their pollution, even if the CCP is insidious, their not stupid.
Same here dude, I've been talking about Thorium reactors for years now, wondering why nobody's building one...
The problem was the whole, "Energy Too Cheap To Meter" thing.
I mean, it wasn't actually going to be that; there's still a huge infrastructure investment involved.
-But it was going to be waaaaay cheaper than oil, which would quickly shift power away from the Elites. (They're mostly all oil barons, after all.) The only way regular nuclear was 'allowed' was to come up with a way to make it cost equivalent with oil. -And dirty and scary and easy to make people hate it. The weapons thing was, I think ancillary. It's not like you couldn't build two kinds of reactor.
Imagine! Making people hate Genuine Free Energy.
The Chinese are building this thing for a while now, glad to hear it's working now.
Also, you can feed nuclear waste from existing nuclear plants into the process and work it down into shorter half-life substances. And a lot of the by-products are rare sought after elements. Even in a world of free fusion energy, there is a place for these.
Especially usefull for starting up a fusion reactor
Scientists are finding new and better ways to dispose of the waste i believe that they discovered some type of bacteria feeding on the waste grom the tragic accident in Fukushima
@@anti-liberal7167 nature always finds a way to balance, even if that means it has to eradicate us.
@@notsure1350 Absolutely I've made the same argument with those who are freaking out over climate change Earth would find a way to Eradicate us before we do her
@@notsure1350 when talking about nature it is not a 'us against them' discussion. We are nature as much as we are part of it. If we want to solve any problems we will have to accept this. But as long as governments say god bless and alluh akbar after each speech we are doomed to destroy ourselves indeed
Thorium reactors can be built very small, virtually on neighbourhood level, so rather than huge Sizewell size reactors more smaller reactors or energy plants could be built, this would allow further widespread use of EVs.
If all coal and oil powerplants worldwide are replaced with 4.gen reactors (like for instance msr reactors, which can use both radioactice waste like spent fuelrods from older nuclear plants and/or thorium) -There will be no need for EV`s as the worlds CO2 emissions would drop so significantly. EV`s is pretty much a dead end street and a bubble that will burst sooner or later as battery technology can only go so far. Sure, it`s fine in urban areas - but for long distances and cold weather use it will always have its shortcomings.
Thorium reactors, like electric cars, have been done in the US decades ago. Both are not pursued because of vested interests of the powerful industrial robber-barons. Another reason for the lack of interest in Thorium nuclear reactors is that its by products is not so readily weaponized.
Anton, the diagrams you used for conventional uranium reactors were for PWR. You mentioned the hydrogen explosion at Fukushima. Those reactors were BWR type, and there is no steam generator in this reactor type. Steam generates in the reactor and directly drives the steam turbines. I agree that thorium is the way to go for nuclear energy.
I tend to agree.
Thorium when properly developed and implemented seems to have the potential to fill the obvious gap between green energy and consumption untill we figure out fusion.
As someone who protested against any form of nuclear decades ago I'm convinced we need fission to meet climate goals.
This type of reactor seem to avoid the obvious danger of current fission reactors. Waste that stays dangerous for millennia with human nature responsible for it's safe keeping.
And of course the fact it's very hard to make weapons grade fission material with these reactors.
There are steam generators in PWRs (thats how you get steam for your steam turbine lol) it is just on another loop "behind" the heatexchanger. Nevertheless, hydrogen is produced both in PWR and BWr under normal operation all the time via Zircaloy clading and water interaction and water molecule dissasociation by neutron flux. But I agree Gen IV and especially liquid fuel is the way to go.
you're right, it was difficult to find all of the diagrams I wanted for this video for security/copyright reasons. I had to use what I could find and had permission to use unfortunately
@@whatdamath Doesn't matter, you're still a wonderful person.
The gamma rays split any moisture in the air to H & O so this must be recombined using a heating system or the like. Not a problem in normal operations - Fukushima had no power to run an exhaust fan for removal
"Right...So you're telling me that we can't use this stuff to obliterate a metropolis??? What a waste of money this is!"
Great Sarcasm my Friend!
Can't you just make a dirty bomb out of it ?
The money had been spent by the navy to make PWRs for subs (and later) for ships. Westinghouse simply scaled it up. Nixon wanted to keep the technology in California, so he shut down the Weinburg MSRE project. Three Mile Island meltdown came a few years later and PWR costs went ballistic.. Weinburg was right all along.
@@DisplayLine6.13.9 The dirty bomb idea isn't really going to work because the salt fuel (like any irradiate fuel) is crazy radioactive. But unlike solid fuels, the salt mixes the various isotopes making it even harder to refine the required materials than it would be to build a bomb factory from the ground up. That's why it was never used in bomb factories.
@@davidelliott5843 Ehh just to be on the same page a dirty bomb is not something actually doing a nuclear reaction. It's a conventional bomb with radioactive material around it. The explosion scatters the radioactive material into the environment. Irradiating the area of the explosion. Even radioactive wast material can be used this way.
I've been yelling for 10 years already that we need to realize MSR!
The special interest is strong.Common sense DOES NOT prevail.
Well China heard you alright.
The fossil fuel industry will do everything they can to bury this technology. Even using "extra-legal" methods. They have done it for decades, they will continue to do so for as long as they can. Count on it.
Angela Merkel, and by her to extend Germany, has ruined the nuclear transition in Europe. Closing down all nuclear power plants after Fukushima and instantly putting fear back in people. Along with all the pro-climate and green parties in the European Committee, and member state governments, we'll never ever see a step to nuclear energy. The EU is very happy with having to go import energy from Russia, China and the Middle East in 20-50 years from now. The only country in Europe that really gets it is France, but the very few and small reactors they are building will not be enough. The lobby for wind and solar energy in Europe is way to strong and way to backed up by wealthy political families that they'll cut down the whole Polish primeval forest to build windmills before considering the real alternative.
Me too. Glad I wasn't alone. If widely realized this will both save and advance our society!
Really respect your videos, your knowledge and your explanations.
Also i hope this video ages well with all the "super safe" stuff in it :)
Let's hope there's some good news in the near future about Thorium Reactors and the general energy problems
I bet a lot of American politicians had a personal/financial interest in the oil industry as well.
I bet a lot more are currently making money off of renewables. Lots of money in Green Energy, if you get to make the rules.
@@michaelputnam2532 Na the boomers control all that and there completely lockrd into the fossil fuel industry.
This was how the war machine captured the US nuclear electric market.
@@michaelputnam2532 The push for renewables by politicians is linked to the fossil fuel industries. Look at countries like Germany or States in the US like CA, the less nuclear and the more renewables, the more coal plants that have to be turned on to compensate for the duck curve and inconsistencies of renewables for large scale power grids. Pushing for renewables over Nuclear is just a way to delay the death of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy production.
@@michaelputnam2532 It's the fossil energy companies' way to keep fossil energy alive. Look at Total campaign "Commited to Renewables, Commited to Gas" on this subject
Molten salt reactors are not limited to only thorium, they can also use uranium and even the very dangerous, long-lived, transuranic waste generated by current reactors.
@Peter Rabbit It's deeper then politics, we cannot do anything truly interesting anymore, cultural malaise, and a risk averse society more interested in managed decline then any kind of greatness.
the point is that thorium reproduces.
it's called milking the thorium cow, and its biproducts can be used to treat cancer patients.
you CANNOT do this with other nuclear elements.
@@erikchristian3894 This dude got triggered over nothing. lol
@Peter Rabbit Yes, I caught the reference, I just find the red team/blue team stuff boring and unhelpful. Both teams are full of corrupt parasites.
@@A_piece_of_broccoli You can breed plutonium (which can also be used a fuel) with a uranium fueled molten salt reactor.
Kinda reminds me of a reactor I once read about so ex Navy captain creating where the uranium wasn't in rods but instead encased in graphite balls akin to a pool balls. The balls were poured into a chamber and the reactors top temperature was not determined by extracting control rods, but instead it was determined by how many balls were in the chamber at any one given time. You would pour in balls to raise the temp and pull them out of the bottom of the chamber to cool it down and to inspect the balls for damage. It was supposed to be immune to meltdowns because the pellets could only get so close together due to their graphite shell so they could only generate so much heat, and as such, it could never get hot enough to actually melt down like a fuel rod that was suddenly exposed to many of is neighbors when control rods are suddenly yanked out of the way.
My best friend in the Navy was electrician who went to nuke school, and he said that the older reactors looked absolutely terrifying because the control rods were originally raised by things like block and tackles which weren't exactly percise and if a control rod seized up and got stuck, they'd have to yank on it by hand. The danger of that being that if you yank it out an inch or 2, the reactor hits a thousand degrees. But if you pull to hard and the rod flies out 6 inches, the temp explodes, and shoots the rod through you and the ceiling as the reactor starts spewing radioactive steam all over the place
That said, I don't know if anything ever became of the graphite ball reactor or if one was ever built, but I thought it was a pretty brilliant idea. Kinda reminds me of a cross between a reactor and an RTG like the one that was on Cassini. It also sounds like the kind of nuclear technology that may have diverted interest away from Thorium Salt, because unlike TS, you wouldn't have to preheat it or deal with any leakage if the chamber or piping were to rupture. If a graphite ball reactor were to rupture, the radioactive material would still be contained inside the graphite and clean up would amount to picking up the balls, disposing of the the damaged ones and and cleaning up after any that were completely breached by whatever damaged the chamber.
Like always great vid Anton, you wonderful person you.
About graphite ball reactor - those are called pebble-bed reactors and Germany had several working on thorium-uranium fuel mix, before they've decided to start cutting their nuke program.
Thorium reactors can be used to make nuclear weapons. But the cost and effort required is so great, it would literally be cheaper, faster and easier to build purpose built uranium reactors. Since even if you go through all the hurdles of using Thorium reactors to make weapons grade material. Thorium reactors create so little, so slowly and if you are not careful the reactor will destroy said material, that there is literally no point.
When thorium is bred into U233 a small amount turns into U232 which puts out extremely dangerous gamma rays. In a reactor, those gamma rays are shielded. But you can't adequately shield them in a bomb so that a bomb can be safely handled. Separating the U232 from the U233 is extremely expensive. So that is why no U233 bombs were produced. They did make one or two U233 bombs but their yield was very low. That further killed any notions that U233 bombs made any sense.
I love these longer, nearly 20-minute long videos -- and it's about thorium reactors! I love it!
Indeed 🤔 i love thorium molten salt technology
I agree. I really like these longer videos. I never heard of this technology before - great content!
One of the main problems that stopped the nuclear powered plane was was the weight, and size of shielding for the nuclear reactor. Although the Russian flew one without the shielding, contaminating the crew and the environment.
One of the main problems is Tellurium embrittlement and the need for graphite of which doesn't have the safest track record and makes it expensive to build and maintain.
There have been a few nuclear powered planes. A Russian bomber and a few US black projects. Also a defunct VTOL (vertical takeoff landing) plane from the 1950's.
Never did solve the shielding problems (as far as i know.)
I understand that the Soviet version eventually killed the pilots…not enough safety due to weight of sheilding
@@paulmobleyscience the graphite problem, known as Wigner energy, doesn’t exist in a LIFTR because they run hot enough the displacements can return to the lattice. That’s how these were “resolved” in Windscale, by heating the graphite up enough to release the energy.
Another big problem with nuclear aircraft is in the event of an accident. Like 70% of airliner accidents are at take off or landing, and airports are directly next to populated areas for convenience. A nuclear accident would condemn the whole airport and would be huge risk to the neighboring city.
Nuclear aircraft really only make sense for specific military applications (SR-69) or space applications ;) While hydrogen or electric aircraft make more sense for civil.
The animated visual aids you used are awesome brother Anton... Wonderful
These videos are really great. Thanks so much for making them.
So you're saying, the reason we can't have Thor reactors is that they don't make good cold war bombs? Crazy.
Only in 'Murica!
Well the government bureaucracy also stands in the way.. It goes like this.. "I'd like to build a thorium reactor". response from Govt "You cant build one because we dont have any data on them." They always demand something that can't exists until one is built and tested.
@@AIM54A Except, the reason we don't have the data on them (now) is that we have already sold the documentation, from ORNL Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, to the Communist Chinese... go figure!
@@surlyogre1476 it was open sourced not sold.
@@AIM54A lol that's not the reason it wasn't done. The reason it was never done is 100% coz the military wanted the biproducts of uranium enrichment.
If you pay attention to politics for more than 5 minutes, you figure out pretty quickly that the military industrial complex calls the shots.
Politicians are just the tools
What ‘went wrong’ was we turned towards nuclear weaponry as our focus all these decades. Like space-planes and smarter space travel was neglected for ballistic missile technologies. Such a deal.
Exactly correct.
The operators on the Thorium reactor at Los Alamos were bored. It was too easy to run. Never any problems.
But, compared to Uranium reactors, the isotopes Thorium reactors produce are massively inconvenient for weapons. Not impossible, mind. But seriously massively inconvenient. So we got Uranium.
bingo
No. People chose not to invest in it. You for example could have, you didn't. I am assuming you aren't a prisoner atm. You can go out tomorrow and start work on one.
@@chrisallum9044 huge complex problems like "the system" aren't solved by a "gung ho pull your bootstraps up" attitude. that shit gets nobody anywhere. at some point we're gonna have to look at ourselves (not you alone, us collectively) in the mirror and own up to actually solving problems instead of expecting one super genius to just show up with all the solutions cuz he "worked really hard at it".
@@chrisallum9044 And have FBI and nuclear regulatory commission and fcc at my door detecting any emissions during transfer. I’d like to work on one but the legallity involved is harder than getting space launches approved
Anton, this is an awesome development and excellent reporting from you. Great vid! All good wishes.
I’m always surprised when I learn that there have been safer nuclear reactor technologies available in the past, such as what you show in this video and the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) in Idaho that in 1986 proved that it could suffer a complete cooling system shutdown due to the way it was designed and still cool down on its own. However, instead of utilizing these safer technologies, governments around the world have stuck with more risky technologies, and they wonder why they’re facing a PR battle. I won’t be surprised if the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which could have been avoided by these better technologies, has a grave impact on the entire planet at some future date given the problem of long term storage of all the contaminated water coming out of there as they attempt to keep it cool. And In April the Japanese government approved the dumping of radioactive water from that power plant into the Pacific Ocean over the course of 30 years. Like that’s a good idea. 😳 Sounds like a good topic for a future video. 😉
To be fair, the overall contamination will be very low.
@@etuanno yeah didn't the volunteers that helped clean everything up experience insignificant levels of radiation, I imagine then the overall effect is extremely safe
@@glacialimpala That's when the radioactive elements weren't diluted yet.
This is the best explanation of thorium vs uranium reactors i could find. No politics, it is also up to date, with added sources for further reading. We couldn't ask for more. China is on right path, hope other countries will learn from their lesson about producing energy for civilian use.
It is a uranium reactor. It coverts Thorium-232 which is non fissile to U-233 which is fissile.
@@Narukosaki Rhodium has nothing to do with thorium reactors, except for maybe being found in traces.
Yes, U233 is fissionable fuel coming from neutron bombardment of Th232 which then becomes Th233. Through beta decays it becomes U233, being fissionable it is used as a fuel in this kind of reactors.
@@codaalive5076 I apologize I did not see my phone's autocorrect Miss corrected of course it's thorium
I though so. What's important is people realising we won't survive in the long term without going full nuclear. At this point it doesn't even matter if PWRs are starting point because we might already be too late. Sun and other stuff is a joke made for rich to exploit poor.
@@codaalive5076 or new form of generating energy is developed
Anton, you wonderful person. I love your videos and am so glad you’ve done one on Thorium MSRs. But since I know a bit about this topic I see a few things that need minor corrections.
1. Graphite Rods aren’t used to slow the reaction down. They are actually used to speed it up. Their function is to slow down the neutrons born in fission. Slow neutrons have a higher probability of fissioning other nuclei than fast neutrons. So, more probability of reaction means more reactivity. This also explains why the dump system works so well on an MSR. When you remove the liquid fuel from the moderator graphite, the reaction stops. Water serves this moderator purpose in most other reactors. This makes a reactor need less fissionable material and therefore less enrichment. Most reactors today use these slow neutrons, also known as the thermal spectrum. Some reactors do not slow down the neutrons and are know as “fast” spectrum reactors which need much more fissionable material and higher enrichment. These “fast” reactors have other advantages and disadvantages.
Back to the point on control rods, any MSR “control” rod would have to function the same as any other reactor control rod by absorbing neutrons completely and thus slowing the reactor down. MSRs have an advantage here because the can be designed to operate at just barely critical levels since being liquid fueled they can add new fuel as needed. Solid fueled reactors cannot add fuel while operating so they depend on control rods more heavily since they are built with a great deal of excess fuel and possible reactivity so they can operate for an extended time. Hence fewer control rods needed in MSRs and less danger from excess fuel as well.
2. Thorium isn’t a Nuclear fuel. It is a precursor. Kind of like wet wood isn’t good fireplace fuel. It needs to be dried first. The actual nuclear fuel in a thorium MSR is Uranium isotope 233. This is created by thorium 232 capture of a neutron to become thorium 233 and then through atomic decay turning into Uranium 233. This process is known as “breeding” wherein a “fertile” isotope is “bred” into a “fissile” isotope to become your fuel. This is the same process used to breed Uranium 238 into Plutonium 239 in other reactors that rely on Uranium 235 as fuel. In this traditional fuel cycle, the majority of your Uranium in the reactor is 238 but a small percentage is the fuel of 235. Usually about 3 to 5%. The Plutonium can be bred on purpose for other uses such as weapons or fuel, but it won’t be bred at a positive ratio in the thermal spectrum. Thorium’s advantage is that it can be used to breed at a positive ratio in the thermal spectrum where Uranium cannot. Since fast reactors can be tricky, a nuclear fuel that can be bred in the thermal spectrum is a big deal.
Hence, any thorium reactor concept is inherently a Breeder reactor where thorium is ultimately consumed but Uranium is still the nuclear fuel.
This also explains why thorium reactors waste doesn’t last as long as uranium reactor waste. Any time a fissile isotope fissions, it’s daughter products half life’s are actually short. The long lived isotopes of Plutonium that include Pu239, 240, 241 and the other transuranics that are bred in traditional reactors are the long lived waste problems that are spoken of so frequently. Since Thorium starts clear down at 232, once it captures a neutron and becomes fuel it’s chance of capturing a neutron without fissioning is very low. And even if it does, it has to pass through becoming Uranium 235 which also readily fissions. This means the vast majority of the fuel fissions without any chance of becoming a long lived radioactive transuranic. And hence less radioactive waste from thorium reactors.
3. Although generally it is far more difficult and nonsensical to build a nuclear weapon using Uranium 233 from a thorium reactor, some physicists would correct you and say it can be done. It would be correct to say it is far less likely though.
4. Lastly, A molten salt reactor doesn’t mean only thorium and thorium isn’t only workable in MSRs. You can actually use Uranium and Plutonium in MSRs and you can breed Thorium into Uranium 233 in Solid fueled reactors. In fact, both companies you mentioned (ThorCon and Terrestrial Energy) are building Uranium MSRs. They see the Uranium fuel cycle as easier to license with the possibility of thorium MSRs in the future. The US company most prominently working on a true Thorium MSR is Flibe energy by Kirk Sorenson of CZcams and TEd talk fame. The sad thing here is that after years of pushing this concept, it looks like China is going to beat Flibe to the market. Especially sad considering that much of the initial research was conducted in the US only to be given freely to the Chinese later on, partly through the efforts of Kirk Sorenson to publish Oak Ridge’s information online.
In any case, thank you for your excellent videos, and sorry for the book I just wrote to you correcting things.
Thank you for your "book" it made good reading.
@@Martin-se3ij
Glad I wasn’t too boring
Thanks for sharing. You really know your stuff. I learned much from this. 👍🌻🌻
Best comment this week!
Thanks for commenting. Anton's video reminds me of my own journey stimulated by the promise of Thorium fuelled MSRs. Actually for me, this knowledge formed the gateway to more awareness of nuclear power technology by stimulating my curiosity as to why this promising tech was shelved. That led me to a deeper understanding of everything related to energy and electricity power production especially the realization that existing nuclear power technology is already the safest power production technology known to mankind.
Indeed I see MSR designs as the future way forward due the cost savings possible by major reductions in safety systems needed by pressurized water reactors. In other words the promise is NOT for increased safety, rather for major cost reduction.
Whether using the Uranium-235 fuel cycle or a Thorium-232/Uranium-235 fuel cycle (note that a Thorium-232 fuel cycle would by very complex due to significant neutron flux density reduction) the key factor is the use of molten salts as both a fuel carrier and heat transfer agent. The ultimate fuel economy would be possible using MFRs (molten salt fast reactors) which would continuously fission all those Actinides that present such a waste dilemma to those who fear the current nuclear reactor spent fuels and resist any sequestration efforts.
Outstanding video. Well researched. Well presented and very reasonable. Thank you!
Been following you for a while now anton and I have to say mate that, the enjoyment I get from watching you when you explain some new scientific breakthrough or awesome news that is obviously a personal favorite topic of yours makes the experienced much more enjoyable and more eager to learn from a quick as impassioned as yourself. I wish I had a teacher like you when at school in the 90s and pray my children come across a tutor like you throughout there school years. I myself left school with no qualifications anton but sciene/ physics and math are the very few subjects I have fallen in love with the 25 yrs since leaving school and it seems we both very much enjoy certain topics over others. I say this as I see you become excited, animated, and very enthusiastic talking about this new nuclear power station. I do so much very hope you get the go ahead for the walk about in the powerstation for a future video, how cool would tat be eh!!!!! Thank you my friend for the awesome video and I already can't wait to show my boys when I have them over for the weekend. Thank you very much anton for the many Mary hours of brilliant entertainment and knew knowledge gained through you and your work.
You should feel very proud mate for all the people out there you help and the sheer quality of your content.
This was a very well organized and interesting summary of this technology.
Im so glad you liked it, thanks for watching
Lol
Yes, that is Anton's style. He is doing a great job.
Except he forgot the dark side of the topic...
@@eagle1de227 Which is...?
Well Anton is one of the brightest scientist in the world today.
Thank you Anton. So many YT channels are dumbing down the entire internet, yet you are a shining beacon of reason, awareness, science. Thank you.
Love your videos and content. Please consider editing your raw green screen footage first and then adding the background loops as a second step to prevent jerky video cuts. This improvement will increase production quality and reduct jarring cuts substantially
That’s what Holland must do. A molten salt reactor. Very good.
How to make the USA do something - say China is doing it 😂
Years ago China would do things because US was doing them.
But the fact is that what the United States has done or is doing now is propaganda: China is doing such a thing (and the United States has not done it).
As for what China is doing (correct), the US propaganda must do such a thing, but the result is only for political vote hype, and everything is suspended after the election.
THe only reason China is doing it is because India has already made a few and most importantly they are starved for power and they lack Uranium to make a normal nuclear reactor (something the US has no issue with, we have the largest reserves of uranium in the world) which is more efficient and lacks the constant upkeep since molten salts are highly reactive and destroy their containment.
True…. And how to get rid of trump.
- tell him Obama could hold his breath for 10 minuttes
But by then it will be too late. At least they have Elon. Perhaps he could take all politicians to Mars.
I have always wondered if the lack of thorium reactors for power generation was because directly after WW2 and the Cold War uranium nuclear was needed for plutonium. Afterwards it was, well we have the technology so why bother with thorium
it's harder to separate the bomb material (U233) from high gamma emitters (U232) that's why U238 was preferred to Th232 for breeder reactors.
@@csehszlovakze We take that as an affirmation that the primary driver was weapons development.
The world needs more clean energy, not more super-weapons. It's just so insane that we keep going along with this.
It was always politics as to why thorium was never done for commercial use.
According to other sources, Nixon killed the ORNL molten salt program because of lobbying from HPLW reactor manufacturers. Also the ORNL TMSR operated several thousand hours over a multi year period.
There were no real benefits in creating a whole new idunstry based on Thoruium.
Thanks as always for your creative and informative videos. I think you may have misunderstood the use of the rods in the thorium reactors, in conventional reactors the water is a cooling element but also a moderator that effectively turns the reactor on and rods turn it off. In thorium since there is no water, the graphite turns the reaction on when the fuel is in the reactor and the lack of graphite outside the reactor turns it off. This not only prevents a runaway reaction outside the reactor but makes the reactor load following. When the salt is less than its target heat level it is denser and pulls more thorium into the reactor to make energy, when the load drops off the salt isn’t cooled as much and becomes hotter and less dense, expanding and allowing less thorium into the reactor thusly reducing the energy reaction. You also missed that since the boiling point of salt is so much higher it removes the threat of a steam explosion that requires the pressure vessel that is a major expense to build and maintain and point of failure in conventional reactors.
Yes, you're correct that Anton missed that. I noticed that at the moment he spoke it, but then lost that in the next topic. A good thing you picked that up, but it remains unacknowledged. . . . Also, the dump receiver shouldn't be a single tank which, by having a great central volume, would increase the reaction rate, where ideally one would wish it to be minimized.
Really well presented thorium reactor material, Anton. Congratulations on yet another intellectual facility creation. You make learning easy and even entertaining. My prayers with you and your wife and that you have the confidence and courage to try again. May the fruit of Easter bless you both.
There's something really sad about the fact that we invented this 70 years ago, and never took advantage of it to make a clean energy source, and now someone else has to come along and push it to the finish line....
And meanwhile we are blowing billions of dollars on wind and solar when we could spend a similar amount of money and power an entire country and reduce energy costs. I’m so confused at the world we live in.
We could use both. Wind and solar could work well with an upgraded electric grid including battery storage. Thorium may be safer but an national education campaign explaining it would be necessary to overcome existing opposition to conventional nuclear power.
At least India has a couple of Thorium reactors.
@@dahleno2014 To understand you need to get "woke"... Lack of sleep is dangerous
@@MrKDW1 this is hardly an excuse for reason not to do it, much less a valid one… if the best solution requires educating the masses, then that should be path. Not doing it is not only cowardice, it is tantamount to world treason.
The oil cartel has so much power in the US, we could have had gas and diesel free vehicles and fossil fuel free energy long ago. People have developed things like this have disappeared before.
If there was money to be made someone would do it. Rich people know only greed. They have already formed Big Lithium (and the prices are going up). Thorium has promise but watch a real nuclear scientist talk about it, its not all roses.
Batteries are the real issue. Hard to go on road trips when it takes a long time for the battery to charge. Hybrids are the best of both worlds in that regard.
@@peterroberts4415 They are talking about Nikola Tesla's vision of the future. Not the car manufacturer.
But I hear ya on your point. I'm sure better minds than ours will figure that problem out one day.
Do you really think there were free energy? Are you a troll?
Thank you for the information! Highly informative and inspiring indeed.
That is really interesting. I've been hoping someone would build a molten salt reactor.
yanks had it for 18 mths. no good for military,so canned. 1956
I think India has been working on one too.
I've been interested in Thorium reactors for over a decade. Three aspects stood out to me from day-one: global abundance of thorium(vs uranium & no 'conversion' needed), less-hazardous post-use waste, requiring excitation (so not for weapons) thus less to 'melt down' soon after that is turned off and esp with the overflow system(s). btw, I suggest that despite uranium's entrenchment in the West thorium reactors will likely prevail until we can harness fusion vs fission.
The "waste" is actually useful materials that are very high dollar and can't be created any other way that we know of.
I see this mistake a lot. Thorium is just a fuel. It's entirely possible to build solid fuel thorium reactor, but it would be even more impractical than the solid fuel reactors we have now. Also, despite claims to the otherwise, a nuclear weapon can be made using the Thorium fuel cycle. It is substantially harder than either enriched Uranium or weapons grade Plutonium, but it is possible.
What you mean is reactor designs that dissolve the fuel into a high temperature liquid, whether that be some variety of molten salt or metal. There are some pros and and cons as to which fuel is used (Uranium, Thorium, reactor grade plutonium), but those pale in comparison to their advantages over the water moderated reactors that have been in use since the 1950s.
@@jsn1252 Uh no.
@@jsn1252 The US built a Thorium reactor back in the early 50's, and it doesn't produce anything that can be used in a weapon, unlike the Nuclear factories we have now.
You have ZERO IDEA what you are talking about.
@@jsn1252 & wtf do you mean "solid" thorium fuel reactor? Like not a mirage? What are you even saying lol
This guy just seems like a genuinely nice person. I wanna be his friend 😂
I fantasize that he's not a professional scientist with a PhD but a well-read amateur who works as a fry-cook.
@@KutWrite 😂😂😂
I’d like to share a beer with him!
@@KutWrite Makes Piroshki as a day job :P
That's how gay stuff starts off ... and then... well you end up in the chocolate factory
Well explained, thanks .
Yes,could be done long ago,good safe way to produce electricity.
Very clever China
Excellent presentation of a complex topic thank you!
I typically do not like the Chinese government, but credit where credit is due...it's nice to see someone FINALLY do it.
What do you mean finally doing it, its been in development for decades. US, UK, France. Same shit as Fusion.
@@gwyn. No, most places have been reluctant to build it because you can't weaponize it, unlike plutonium or uranium.
China has ever increasing power needs, beyond anyone else right now, so they're more willing to actually build, not just theorize.
people ususally dont like the Chinese government because they dont live in China and are fed A SHIT TONE OF LIES everyday.
I came to live here for 4 years now and its 400% different from what TV tells you ...or facebook..or youtube
The Chinese leadership has engineers in it. Our leadership has lawyers, professional politicians, and financiers. 🙄
@@RED--01 Or people actually from there?
I wrote to my local MEP, when we had such things, about LFTR as it's something I've been interested in for years now. Her response was typical, she said that the EU was "looking at it" but that they felt it wouldn't be a viable technology for another 70 years. That's what vested interests sounds like.
In a Democracy you have to accept that you won't always get your way. Public perception matters greatly, considering the public elects representatives. But the fact is that, if China succeeds, other countries will follow suit.
I don't think it's exactly "vested interest". If my interest is in helping the people but I'm unelectable, then I won't really succeed at much. We also have the issue of national ego in which we always want to be the first to do stuff.
Saying: "we don't think this technology will be viable for a while" just sounds like the usual, classically expert, cautious approach of the EU and I'm personally all for it: "let's mostly used tried and tested methods and if some other country wants to go gung-ho we'll copy them after they succeed or learn from their mistakes if it leads to disaster"
That is, at least in my opinion, a great approach. But as said, it doesn't feed the national ego of always wanting to be #1 in the new exciting thing. As a side note, EU based groups make up some 30% of all peer reviewed works (globally), so I wouldn't say we're in any way lacking in Scientific efforts. At least they wrote back, which is better than representatives in either the US or China would usually do.
Unfortunatly your MEPs response is typical. They really have no clue about such things with the odd outlier who has worked in the energy sector. It also does not help that many green groups have also turned to chasing the money rather whats best for the planet.
In the UK WTE plants have been constantly rejected while other countries like Germany have manage to do away with landfills. Are they perfect , no but it's better than landfill the tech is here and relativly cheap. Also means we would not have to ship our rubbish to places like India away from oversight reducing energy costs and not making toxic places in other peoples countries.
At the same time the gov gives grants to 'power stations' that generate no power and have no facilties to, at least they have not done the 'solar roadways' snake oil yet.
Better than hearing 10-15 years away every four years.
@@TechTehScience _>In a Democracy you have to accept that you won't always get your way._
Fully agreed. Democracy is an obstacle we must overcome!
@@nickkorkodylas5005 oh, in Germany it was tried, and with a certain degree of success.
The collateral damage, however, was admittedly slightly on the high side. As long as we haven't come up with systems that work better than democracy in practice, I guess we're "stuck" with it.
Your content is excellent! Thanks for your lucid and simple explanations. If I may offer feedback: Some of your background videos are distracting because they loop a bit too fast…. maybe slow them down instead of looping them?
Several years ago I found some video of Nixon announcing he was canceling the funding for ORNL. Mulitiple teams were working on different prototype reactors and Nixon represented the area where light water uranium reactors, as we have now, were being developed. The military had already pumped a lot of money and scientists into developing that system for navy vessels and Nixon wanted to win political points with his constituents, so he canceled all other programs despite multiple unexpected problems with operation and safety with light water uranium reactors. The ORNL had performed the best of all with virtually theoretical model performance.
I've been advocating Thorium reactors for years. Finally, the world is waking up to them.
There’s a reason why thorium reactors haven’t replaced classic uranium plants and that’s because of significant costs compared to the already costly uranium nuclear plants, that’s why bill gates/terra power and nuscale are still using uranium for their SMR tech. it’s not as simple as saying thorium is the better material because if that was the case, they would be absolutely everywhere and replace uranium plants
🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
@@sadrat4703 if china succeeds, the price goes down, they make everything for everyone 🤷🏽♂️
Another boondoggle to dump money into.
Enough extra energy to last a few decades (with exponential growth). Then we will run into more energy problems. We are energy addicts.
🤔 I find it ironic that the millitary saw no use for thorium, when as a portable power source it could power exoframes, lasers, rail guns, and other millitary grade toys.
The military did, but thought it was a pointless investment. Why research better weapons when you can invest in a one-time bomb you can use to threaten everyone into doing what you want?
My god you are both so....stupid! Did you miss a CZcams turn or something?
@@LordZordid your comment, being completely void of anything even resembling meaning, is laughably dismissable. Why did you bother?
@@LordZordid I'm open to suggestions on how I can add wrinkles to my brain. If you have none, then stfu.
@@patrioticwhitemail9119 You are correct that they tested the above mentioned. They have tried and tested everything. What it boils down to is cost and availability. Your comment is infantile when the technology clearly isn't there and you're not taking the political landscape back then into account. It's not like they put all their eggs in one basket. The millitary applications of today is clear evidence of that.
Well, that's about 75% correct. There are some big howling errors though, that you could have avoided by wider reading.
▪it was Nixon who closed the MSR programme at Oak Ridge
▪no, the reactor doesn't expand if it overheats. The salt expands so it can't self-react as much.
▪the graphite rods are there to slow down neutrons so they can be absorbed by the thorium atoms. If the fuel drains out to the drainage tanks, there's no graphite so the absorbtion stops and the reaction ends.
▪the "corrosive salt" issue was one suggested by uranium physicists when interviewed by journalists about thorium. Salt isnt corrosive at 800°C; only salty water is corrosive. It's not acidic, it just causes rust.
▪the Chernobyl Event was an unauthorised military experiment that went wrong. It was a steam explosion. Nobody except the USSR has ever built reactors like that.
▪Fukushima was a hydrogen explosion caused when politicians overrode the safety protocols and prevented venting hydrogen to the atmosphere.
▪even with uranium reactors, we've been able to burn "nuclear waste" as fuel for modern reactors for decades.
Thank you for this clear explanation of the past and present situation. The main reason for not developping the Thorium Molten Salt reactor is most likely the influence from the oil and coal companies, both producing the most pollution in the world. They see this development as a threat to their business. And the many people who work in those industries and the shareholders will do everything in their power to stop or at least slow down this development.
Nobody invests more money in alternative power supplies than American oil companies. They build wind towers solar cells, weel beyond what they do else where. If you really believe in man made global warming look to your socialist buddies in communist china where they build 5 coal fired plans for evryone we de dactivae.
And China uses underage slaves, treats human like garbage and trash the environment anyway they can,. They use he cash saving to put fine American companies building quality in the US or Europe out of business and put American out of work.
@@libertarian1536 Maybe because we all buy things that are made in China as apple phones and Teslas
I was a nuclear mechanic onboard fast attack submarines. Uranium 235 reactors are extremely safe the way ours were designed.
Uranium reactors have really gotten better over de decades, but molten salt ones are still safer IMHO. I could be wrong thou.
You can build a uranium reactor to be as safe as technology can be. Catastrophic failure of a working reactor is highly unlikely as long as the operators know what they are doing. That's right.
But you can not get rid of the waste problem. The waste from a uranium reactor must be stored safely for more than 10000 years. That's at least twice the age of the pyramids. 10000 years ago the world was just recovering from the ice age. Earth's surface has changed dramatically since then and the only civilization that existed back then and survived into our times is the Aboriginal Australians. Nobody knows what will be 10000 years in the future. If the amount of change in human civilizations and environment in the next 10000 years will be anything close to the change of the last 10000 years, it is impossible to find a place where nuclear waste can be stored safely and nobody so far in the future will be able to read our languages.
That's the one major thing that makes a thorium reactor so much better.
@@franciscofernandez8183 you can make molten salt reactors that are fueled with uranium, too. There are at least two that are pretty far along in development: Terrestrial Energy and Moltex. There are a bunch of others that are less far along.
At about 90 Mw containing the steam isn’t as big a problem as for a reacter in the range of 300 to 450 Mw as shown at Fukushima.
@@Itsjustme-Justme Within the next two generations nuclear reactors will be capable of running on spent fuel rods, thus dealing with the waste of earlier generations.
I have been waiting for news on this after reading about them. Great job as always!
U excited for how much this will strengthen their concentration camp's.
@@dont-touch-mepg1392 No the technology that might give us clean power. Go troll elsewhere.
Yes, clean energy From China, The same country that builds fake solar panels and fake wind turbines, the same country using the dirtiest coal power plants.
@@Shuffledudee I forgot there are internet experts everywhere that know all... Your "what about isms" are not furthering the discussion in a positive manner. Go troll somewhere else.
@@Shuffledudee you don’t belong to science channel
Very informative video. Thanks.
Fascinating history. Thanks 100x for this well presented explanation.
You should read the real story about how the homogeneous reactor experiments failed.
A nuclear power airplane is a joke.
I recall watching a short doc on this subject some years ago. One of the engineers working on it mentioned a small group of Chinese guys requesting and getting a tour of the site. Well, here we are and I'm not very surprised.
Well someone might as well use it. Most of the US population is too afraid of it or too stupid to understand why we need nuclear power. The other issue is Politics/lobbyist from coal, oil etc industries. I am sure though that once china has it working and as long as there are no problems, we will eventually have them here after we change regulations on nuclear power.
@@nemesiswes426 military supported uranium because thorium bombs ,yes you can make bombs using thorium, it breeds up to a different isotope I forget the number pu234 or something. They have a higher radiation signature that's hard to hide emits higher energy radiation that needs to be heavily shielded. But there are civilian downsides to thorium reactors on the technical side the liquid used is highly corrosive. they run at lower temps so less power but don't meltdown. You still have to process the thorium just like uranium which is the important part. The main thing to overcome is the corrosiveness of the liquid and seperation.
And it's a good thing that they got access to the project. They're actually doing something with the information, Unlike America for the last 50 years.
@@nemesiswes426 Those were my thoughts pretty much. I would hate for such research to go to waste.
@@willwill3364 nobody ever succeeded in producing weapons from thorium. The u233 produced is too heavily contaminated with u232 to be usable. The USA, USSR and India have all attempted U233 bombs and all fizzled
Well if they actually used "spent fuel" until it was actually spent, the safety issues wouldn't be the problem they currently are. The thorium sounds good. No wonder governments didn't want it... It actually works and safe.
It’s probably the fossil fuel industry that doesn’t want it. The same folks who push wind and solar as alternatives they know are doomed to fail.
If we used the spent fuel till it was actually spent, we could also burn all that depleted uranium and have about 10000 years of energy. It is called the closed fuel cycle and some countries are trying to achieve that goal. Thorium has its issues, it is low in spare neutrons, any design to use it pure has to be very neutron efficient. It also takes time to breed the U233 required to start the process and manage the Pa233 by product.
@@ValExperimenter thanks for explaining it better than me.
The reactor has to maintain a desired output to generate the heat and pressure needed for the system. Once the rods have been used for a few years, they are no longer profitable to keep in the reactor. The problem for those reactors is we don't recycle and re-enrich the uranium. There's also another type of nuclear reactor, fast breeder reactors I think, that could use up that spent fuel and have relatively safe final outputs, but someone has to make and get working one of those.
@@lightdark00 msre is a thermal breeder, IMO it’s got a far better safety profile than any solid fuel reactor design, we should be building thousands of them and using up the spent fuel rods and all our stored thorium ASAP .
Another outstanding video, Anton. In a world ordinarily running a deficit of hope, you, my friend, are a breath of fresh air, perhaps, even literally.
Yay you mentioned ORNL! Damn straight we were working on that stuff.
Thanks for always explaining things so well that someone like me can keep up with the sciences I love.
go to collge
@@augustsmith9553 pay his college
@@augustsmith9553 You should go to scool.
Plus, China now has its uniqe Super high voltage electricity transfer tech, so that the location of such reactor far away from cities does not cause significant power loss during transfer.
Super high voltage doesn't necessarily make the transmission line cost competitive until the distance is well over 1000 km, probably 2000 km.
The super high voltage tech you talk about is probably from Siemens or ABB; neither are Chinese.
@@acmefixer1 chinese voltaje tech is Chinese lol
@@acmefixer1 ignorant
@@acmefixer1 China has a 3 thousand plus kilometers super high voltage power line in operation and is constructing more. Guess we can't keep up with new developments.
Why do you want an SMR to be "far away"? It makes no sense.
Thank you for saying what I've long believed, that molten salt reactors were abandoned in favor of reactors to produce weapons grade plutonium.
I think it's a little more complicated than that from the poking around that I've done on this subject. I think the reason the more "conventional" reactor designs are better at producing weapons-grade material is also the reason that they're easier to get working. So it's a combination of ability to produce weapons-grade material and just get working when nuclear technology was fairly new and not well understood.
China just announced they’re quitting coal. It worked.
U.S. Government: "So, what makes this thorium so special."
Engineers: "Well, it works just as well as uranium, it can't be used to make weapons..."
U.S. Government: "Yeah, we're not interested. We only fund things that go boom here."
Funny but inaccurate, it couldn’t be scaled down to fit in a sub & it is very proficient in “nuke cooking”
@@braindamaged1700 interesting 🤔, would it have been about losing money, if it was made eventually, for use in cars etc?, just thinking aloud, as i know nothing about it, and you seem to know more than i do 😂
It wasn't about that. It was about long-term profit made from the solid fuels. For instance, GE could build your reactor at cost, but you're locked in to buying fuel rods from them for the life of the reactor. This doesn't (and can't) happen with MSRs. MSR/LFTR fuel is literally just salt mixed with thorium and some uranium, and not much else. Almost anyone can make the fuel, unlike the proprietary fuel rods that are necessary for a regular, uranium-fueled nuclear reactor.
@@davegrenier1160 I mean it’s not table salt, it’s thorium fluoride, so it’s going to have a bit of a manufacturing process. But yeah it’s not going to be proprietary or extremely expensive like solid fuel.
Maybe 50 years ago. Today the US (and Russia as well as UK) is under treaty obligation to destroy quite a bit of their excess weaponsgrade Plutonium, and noone really knows what to do with it. These reactors (fast spectrum reactors) could use it as part of their fuel.
they've been using molten thorium salt on hot cheetos for years
Lol
Ha!!!
Nice! You need to eat only once every ten years, I suppose. 😀
I have been a huge supporter of the LFTR for years now. This is so cool! The whole world needs to invest in this we will never run out of thorium and it’s found it everywhere it is one of the most common elements in the universe
I would love if you could do a guided visit of the salt reactor plant. That would be extremely informative to see it in action. Best wishes to you
Woe🤯 what a coincidence, I've recently been researching thorium reactors last 3 days, wondering why there's still no push forward in using them... Got into a few debates on Twitter with pro nuclear reactor ppl.
This was really interesting, but a "moderator" is something that slows down fast neutrons so they can be absorbed by fissionable material. A "poison" is what absorbs neutrons so they are no longer able to cause more fission reactions.
?? He SAID "Moderator", and it showed on the screen in print!
issue here is in that reaction there are 60% less delayed neutrons wich increases the chances of criticality incidents. Very Bad!
@@leonardpearlman4017 I know., That's why I corrected him. He had moderators confused with poisons.
Super! I can now imaging, more planes, trains, ships using this MSR. Thanks Anton, you are a wonderful human specie.
I think the real problem with molten salt reactors is that they other advanced reactor designs people are developing. There is not enough manpower to develop all these designs quickly to make regulators happy.
There is no such thing as a perfect design. Each design has its pros and cons. The US is pretty committed to High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors. The version the US is making is called the Very High-Temperature Reactor which uses a Helium coolant with an entirely ceramic fuel (TRISO particles). It is designed to remove decay heat with emissive properties of the reactor vessel in case of a loss of coolant. We have more operational and research experience for HTGRs than MSRs, but it is still a challenge to satisfy the regulations. INL will build a VHTR demonstration plant in the near future.
China is also working on HTGRs too. I think China is just hedging its bets to get a lead in nuclear energy.
i hope we can get these up and running globally soon, this would really be a big step in the right direction
Once china shows the way, there's going to be no stopping these reactors from becoming the main power generators for this planet. So laughably simple in construction, there's nothing that can compete with it on price. It's actually cheap enough that smaller cities and larger towns can pool their money together and build one to supply the city with power in the same way that people pooled their money together and built water mains back in the day. This is like that, only for power.
India already has a few; the US did as well (having invented it) but then abandoned it.
If this deliver, half the step for climate change are done.
I want to see somewhere harvest the heat in citys and roads, cooling towns and making power
wrong direction, solar and wind turbines, is the right direction, it supports battery technology to grow
I wonder if the fossil fuel industry might have played some part in keeping the thorium reactor from being developed.
Bingo. They will fight to keep petro killing us for decades to come.
i wonder how many scientists in the field have met an early death?
The oil lobby is everywhere for sure. Anything they can do to delay the reducing demand for fossil fuels will be done.
Unlike many of the worlds other obstructionist rants (mostly based on racism and political power to one type of human) the petroleum obstructionist are actually very smart people. So if there is a way they can delay progress they will find it and do it very effectively.
Ever wonder why Hydrogen is getting a lot of media attention lately? Because the petroleum companies want to make it using methane or coal, so we keep burning their products for energy and transportation but think we are being green because the endpoint is "emission free".
Military power only because the wanted more nukes!.
No. The thorium breeder project at ORnL never had more than a shoestring budget. All the “official” reactor development funds were being gobbled up by the fast breeder reactor project at Argon.
Of course, Bill Clinton killed the fast breeder “because we didn’t need it”, and now we don’t have either a thermal or a fast breeder.
We’ve been using the warmed over 1950s PWR ever since.
Now it heavily subsidized “renewables” that are the major threat.
So, basically we didn't focus on Thorium back then was because we were more concerned with how to kill each other?
I can never understand and will always be astounded by the lack of foresight throughout human history.
One more important detail to note here is that China is able to build thorium reactors relatively far from population centers - where most of the electricity would be needed - due to the maturity of its ultra-high voltage (UHV) power grid infrastructure. UHV power lines reduce the amount of electricity transmission loss that takes place across long distances, & thus make it economical to build all kinds of power plants (be it solar, wind, thorium, etc.) farther away from the point of electricity consumption. W/o this infrastructure, the PRC would've had less flexibility in terms of thorium reactor locations.
How about the benefit of using plutonium and uranium wastes as additional fuel in thorium reactors? As a high school science teacher, I have been preaching about this type of reactor as the saviour of humans for almost 20 years. It’s great to see Anton (and China) promote thorium to the world. Let’s hope rational minds prevail.
Yes, absolutely right. This is another advantage of the MSR cycle. It is already proposed by Kirk Sorensen and others that this be done. Another advantage is that Thorium decays into useful isotopes having various medical uses, and which are currently in short supply. There are other videos on this here on CZcams.
@@gcljohn forgive me for my ignorance but that sounds metal as hell.
USA had a fully functional Thorium reactor in the 60's or so and it was shut down by an administration.
@@GrzegorzDurda It didn't produce plutonium. Therefore it was useless.
My fission knowledge is a little rusty, do you mean enriching the molten salt with uranium and plutonium waste?
One of the reasons they gave up on nuclear airplanes was the reactor shielding. The original design had an un shielded core. You still need to overcome the problem of adding radioactive fuel over time and changing the core every few years. I can’t see it being using for planes but it’s a perfect solution for powering ships.
It is a good idea for boats but one has to consider the frequency of freak/rogue waves out there in the ocean, not to mention the possible radiation contamination if it does sink, but to be honest you can argue the point back and forth, both sides have very good points which is why it has been such a slow progress for this type of technology. Hopefully as more discoveries are made in certain areas, we can hopefully speed up the progress cause honestly with how the world is going with climate change (don’t @ me if you don’t believe in climate change, there’s clear signs everywhere….*sigh*) we kinda need this, granted again there are loads of points for both sides, such as waste issues for nuclear power being a prominent one, but as said hopefully as more and more advancements are made these issues can be greatly reduce to hopefully in the long run correct the current climate decline 🙏🏻 stay safe everyone.
@@sssleon3320 A nuke instructor once stated the obvious to the class, which needed to be stated nonetheless: if you're going to have a nuclear accident, a submarine is the best place since it can be scuttled very quickly and with the least impact. Still, it's better to have a reactor that can't have those same problems even on its worst day ever. I've always loved the Th and similar reactor designs and I'm glad to see they're getting a lot more attention now. If these take off in a big way, I can't wait to watch the climate and environment at least approach some measure of recovery.
@fumanchu168 There's still the matter of weight since thorium is only a few nucleons lighter than traditional fissionable materials. I really would love to hear how whisper quiet one of those aircraft would be. What a nice trip that would be.
@@GlenHunt it would be louder than regular planes. Maybe not as loud. Think blow dryer, drones, anything with a fan capable of moving an aircraft will be loud. Vacuums cleaner, yah they are loud.
@@GlenHunt agreed man 🙌🏻
Hope it works out!
In my opinion there are a lot of corrosion concerns that will be discovered during operation, on top of high levels of tritium production, and large amount of online maintenance needed to keep the chemical processing going. We'll see... all that glitters isn't gold.
A research/non-power reactor is one thing, but when it comes time to actually produce megawatts is when operational concerns are discovered (e.g., look at all the corrosion issues discovered for light water reactors in the 70s and 80s).
👍👍👍
You are Always on Point for average person to comprehend.
Thank you
You do seem like the kind of person who visits nuclear reactors for fun
I actually did back when they let us look down into the pools full of spent fuel rods. It was awesome.
Wait you wouldn't?
Nuclear reactors are spotlessly clean as opposed to oil turbine installations which are filthy.
Finally at least someone is even talking about Thorium. Saw one documentary about this amazing energy source like 8-10 years ago. It's totally safe and seemed amazing. EU is idiotic for not using it!
EU is US colonie they can't do anything major without approval from the master.
For real we can't even agree on our gender lol good for china for building a thoroum reactor
@@altergreenhorn So was Trump crying about European defense spending and trade policy, just a show for rubes at home, when he could just have given the order.
Totally safe? There's no such thing. Turn it into a gas and spray it into the air. You can cut ya finger with a bit of paper. :)
@@klausluger7671
Not sure what you are:
-very naive
-plane stupid
-paid troll
Tout à fait d'accord. La filière du Thorium a été abandonnée du fait qu'elle ne permet pas le développement de bombes nucléaires. C'est le cas aussi en France ou Degaulle n'était malheureusement intéressé que par la production d'armes.
Most practical early nuclear power development was done by the US Navy under Admiral Rickover to power submarines. Submarine constraints caused Rickover to choose the uranium-based pressurized water reactor (PWR) approach. Commercial nuclear electrical power generation spun off of that early work. Later on, GE switched things up a bit by introducing lower pressure boiling water reactors (BWRs), which still used uranium fuel. Even later, thorium molten salt reactors were studied, and recognized to be superior for commercial power generation purposes, but by then, almost everyone in the industry was either a PWR or BWR guy, and a great body of safety work had already been done on PWRs and BWRs.
Thx Anton for the amazing explanations every time!
The Oakridge Thorium Reactor did exist, was successful, operational, ran years before being shut down for political reasons.
The heavy watergate scenario keeps repeating its self by the looks of it.
Yeah, one of the biggest political reasons was the protection of the environment and health of the USA.
I think one also powered the army arctic research base too.. little havana or something.
Democracy, really not worth it after all 😜
Oakridge has not built a thorium reactor, why are so many people peddling this nonsense? They have built reactors cooled by molten salt, lots of them, but none fueled by thorium and the coolant is not the fuel.
Anton thanks for this very thorough and thoughtful Thorium video. Thorium is so super available in a hand full of beach sand there is enough Thorium to power several homes. It will be interesting to see the near future on Thorium Liquid Salt Reactors
very good video, easy to follow