Thorium Problem - Why it may never Happen

Thorium is a great idea but lacks execution. In this video I discuss the reasons it may never happen.

[tonywilson]

ENGINEER HERE{ The real technical problem that is rarely being mentioned is operational experience with Molten Salt Reactors. Being honest this was something I had missed until it was pointed out recently by James Krellenstein on an interview he did with Decoupled Media here on YT.

After they did the MSR experiment at Oak Ridge in Tennessee back in the late 1960s and Early 1970s the entire MSR concept basically was shelved with zero work being done until Kirk Sorenson re-discovered it as part of a project he was doing looking at powering a Lunar base.

With the exception of nuclear fusion we literally have millions of hours of operational and maintenance time with all the other forms of nuclear power - gas cooled, liquid metal cooled, pressure water, CANDU.... etc. By comparison we have almost nothing with respect to any of the molten salt types. None of them were ever put into service so NOBODY actually knows what the ongoing operational or maintenance issues actually are.

This is one of the most fundamental issues with all technologies. Its one thing to build something its another thing to operate it and yet another thing to maintain it AND EVERY technology goes through a learning phase that never really ends. Think about how much experience we now have with cars and aeroplanes and other technologies.

[louismechler]

In france, the most common molten salt design use NaCl (yeah table salt) to dissolve U238 and plutonium 239.
The corrosion issue is resolved through ceramics coating.
working with a fast spectrum vastly reduces the transUranic generation, while allowing to work with used Mox fuel. It also allows to work as a burner for long life waste.

[ultradimensions]

Most people don't understand nuclear power plants are safer than coal or oil.

[strangereyes]

Another thing is, that all the liquid salts inside and outside the reactor are insanely corrosive at that temperatures. Although there are materials to deal with that, it remains a big headache when it comes to maintenance since every part of the system is contaminated, making any work on the system as a whole a pretty hazardous adventure.

[MrRolnicek]

The chemical process for Kirks LFTR specifically (which is what we're talking about here) does NOT look like what you describe here.
There is no fluorine injection, it's basically electrolysis. You put a relatively small voltage across and Protactinium moves from one salt into the other salt while the other electrode is made from Thorium which by this electrolysis dissolves into the salt to replace the Protactinium. The two salts are in separate tanks connected by liquid Bismuth at the bottom which acts as one of the electrodes and allows the Protactinium to travel from one salt to the other.

That purely chemical process is possible too like you say but I believe the electrochemistry wins out by simplicity and lack of maintenance needed. The only parts involved are a liquid metal which is not spent and being liquid no structural damage and the Thorium electrode which is destroyed but that is your refuelling process. The only thing you really need to worry about is keeping the voltage of the process at the right level which is in the modern day VERY easy to do. If you only use the voltage which corresponds to the binding energy of Protactinium you only pull out Protactinium, if you use a higher voltage you pull out things with higher binding energy too. The downside is that the process is probably a LOT slower than the purely chemical approach but should be easily able to keep up with the reactor.

Flibe Energy YouTube channel has a nice introduction video of the "Thorium Fuel Cycle"

[SonnyPlayz-wojx]

I literally was looking for your channel yesterday to see if you had posted any new cool videos, and I was so sad there hadn't been for a year. BUT TODAY HE HAS RETURNED, WE HAVE BEEN BLESSED

[makisekurisu]

You forgot to mention that you can run a lifter like molten salt reactor for urainium also.You can pretty much use any fissile or fertile material in there.

[manojkumar_]

Chinese and indian researcher is quite advanced in thorium tech.
India will commission its Prototype Fast breeder reactor in 2024 for our 2nd stage of nuclear programme.
In third stage we intend to using Thorium which is present in abundant supply in India instead of nuclear fuel which is imported

[winstonsmith]

As pointed out by LFTR advocate Kirk Sorenson, the current, conventional Cro-Magnon technology reactors work on a razor/razor blade profit model. The money is not made by building the plant. It is made by supplying the custom fuel elements/modules. Thus, I will extend that point to say that there is a lobby against reactors like LFTRs where the "fuel elements" can be supplied in drums and/or bags that anyone can make and are not proprietary. Thus, I predict that thorium reactors will originate in China where there isn't a lobby against that.

[kallekangasmaki]

At around 5 minutes, it was mentioned it takes a month to refuel a power plant after 18 months of usage... Depending on the plant, the outage might only last less than a week, with refueling only taking a few days. Other maintenance is way more time consuming in general, from my experience. Usually during refueling all the other work is done, too, taking up most of the outage time

[UnbarablePain]

Coming as someone who works with typical U-235 LWRs, my biggest question with Thorium is what do you do to start back up the plant when it inevitably shuts down?

You can't run it forever, equipment (especially pumps) will need maintenance overhauls at some point or some sensor fails and brings you offline.

Is molten salt really going to allowed to solidify in the piping? If so how will you unblock these solid masses of salt to get flow again? I assume a massive amount of heat tracing but haven't seen a commercially viable answer to this.

[RovingTroll]

New to the channel and your voice was so nice and clean, i started getting paranoid about ai voice bs. Went through your archive to make sure, and i gotta applaud your consistency of narration, while also improving in your oration

[drmsig.r]

YESSS!!!! AN ACTUALLY VIDEO UPDATE AGAIN! I know these videos are expensive to produce subject zero but I love and im very happy you made another of these its been a while sense u uploaded here!

[-Sophia-]

Great video! Very informative and well written! Always love your animations and visuals!

[linasjuozenas]

We have missed you
Your channel should have atlast 5mln subscribers to start with

[prjndigo]

Shutting down a conventional rod reactor every 18 months isn't as bad as having to replace flow structures in a molten salt reactor sometimes as often as every 200 days. The cool thing about water being the moving part in conventional reactors is that unless things go way way off the rails the water is stupid safe and doesn't tear up the pipes. Molten salt reactors just add an absurd step of ALSO moving the fuel around. If you think liquid salt fuel that is liquified by the radioactive fissile action internally is somehow going to "cool off" when it isn't moving through a cooling system or especially if the cooling system fails and you end up with elephant feet inside the reactor system I'll be more than happy to take seed money for my new outlet expander that doubles the amount of power available from 15A to 30A on a conventional household outlet!

[charlesjohnson]

One of my favorite channels. Glad to see you!

[jamespayne]

Love the videos brother, keep making and I'll keep watching!!!

[nikhilfagwani]

Good to see you back Sir😄.
Try to keep animations simple & easy to render in order to make your production process faster and focus more on the core topic of the video sir.
We would love to see more from you🙂.

[nsa_surveillance_orb-b]

Thanks for the Thorium review, good to see your video. Material Science has come a long way, though I understand maintance on a corrosive system like that will be problematic. I hope it comes about some day, would be nice to have safer energy being produced, at least until we figure out how to tap Zero Point energy like the other cool fantasy aliens do....