Good News: Small Nuclear Thorium Reactors are Coming to Europe

Phasing out nuclear power is the dumbest thing the Germans have ever done. Each time I say this on twitter, people come and tell me that Hitler did a few things that were even dumber. I disagree. Hitler wasn’t dumb, he was evil, he knew full well what he was doing. I’m not at all sure the current German government knows what it’s doing, and that isn’t a good thing either.

The German opposition to nuclear power is especially curious as our next door neighbours, the French and Dutch have no hesitation to use nuclear power to its full potential. Indeed, companies in both countries recently teamed up to bring small thorium reactors to Europe. Let’s have a look at what’s new.

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00:00 What's New
04:28 Thorium Reactors

#science #technews #tech #sciencenews #nuclear

[soerenbundgaard]

In Denmark there is a company called Copenhagen Atomics. They have solved the problem with heavy corrosion in thorium reactors by purifying the salt used in the reactor.

[Pushing_Pixels]

We've been building nuclear powerplants small enough to fit inside a submarine for over 50 years, yet for some reason commercially available SMRs have been "just around the corner" even longer than fusion has been "10 years away". Obviously, there are very large hurdles in the way regarding efficiency and cost, that make them commercially unviable. Militaries can afford to pay through the nose for the power needed to run a submarine, because operating the submarine is the end in itself. Commercial power users don't have that luxury, as the cost of power directly impacts their ability to operate as a business. It's not enough for SMRs to be technically feasible, they have to be cost effective. Otherwise, they will only ever be used in limited numbers for niche purposes.

As for Thorium SMRs, you're basically taking two technically difficult technologies, both of which are yet to be perfected, and combining them. Best case scenario: you're aggregating the difficulties. Worst case: you're compounding them. I will get excited about Thorium SMRs (or any SMR) when steel plants start buying them and using them. This video is taking a press release announcing a co-operation agreement between two companies and presenting it as our best path forward. That's more than a little premature.

[xxportalxx.]

The biggest boon of this that you missed: brownouts and blackouts cause millions of dollars in damages in industrial settings. In a metal rollar mill the metal going through the rollers has enough innertia to rip the machines apart if they loose power, and in a semiconductor fab turbomolecular pumps will disintegrate when the power goes out and they hit atmosphere at 30k rpm. Following this you have repair costs, part costs, and loss revenue due to downtime. Having reliable on-site power is a big deal!

[leonbaas]

Hi Sabine,

long time viewer of the channel, i've worked for Thorizon in the past. So great to see the visuals and website i worked on in your video.

Small addition to your explanation. You show a general MSR design with a freeze plug as a safety mechanism. The Thorizon modules don't have that. In the Thorizon module works by pumping the liquid fuel up towards the critical zone. (the black area at 3:14). In the event of a loss of power, the pumps stop working and the fuel no longer reaches the critical zone, therefore the reaction stops. So no freeze plug, just a different way of reaching safety.

[CB-keeq]

The fact that your company is making THORium reactors and you decide to go with a radish over a Mjolnir is baffling to me.

[Cyberspine]

One of the most puzzling things to me about Germany is that they not only decided not to build new nuclear power plants, they decided to shut down all of the existing ones, while relying more heavily on polluting and toxic coal power. I always thought of Germans as practical and scientifically literate people.

[curtisblake]

I often notice when Sabine checks if we're listening, but now I have this dreadful fear that she checked once and I wasn't listening. Just kidding.

[floatthecreek]

I love to garden. Radishes are the first thing I plant in the Spring. I love to make a radish only salad with the leaves. They have a 'tangy' taste and are full of iron and other nutrients. Now if we could only get Thorium Reactors here in the States.

[locust]

Germany - Arguably one of the best countries in the world when it comes to engineering, machinery and safety standards. I fully agree with Sabine that exiting nuclear was the dumbest thing Germany could have ever done.

If anything, Germany should be leading the world in nuclear power technology and safety, but nooo. I think the German Green Party still feels guilty about WWII and wants Germans to attone for their "sins" by way of making life unbearably expensive for us.

[tomholroyd]

Daikon are also very very good. They are big asian radishes. They don't provide nuclear power but they are very edible.

[wngimageanddesign]

Sorry, no one seems to be researching that molten salt systems are a major failure at commercial scale. Kindly peruse the problems that eventually shut down the solar furnace project in California's desert. They focused sunlight with mirrors onto the central tower to heat molten salt to transfer the heat energy to create steam. The critical problem discovered was the molten salt was corroding and damaging the systems designed to hold and transport it. Basic Chemistry 101. The cost of replacement and repairs caused so many cost overruns and down time, the project was deemed a failure.
If you are dealing with radioactivity....molten salt system failures will be a greater safety issue. At least the solar installation could be shut down without such dangers.

[poneill]

I think the real advantage of Thorium molten salt is that they operate at high temperature and low pressure, as opposed to the current pressurized water reactors that work at low temperature ad high pressure. Their low pressure nature is the reason why they are so much smaller and cheaper to build than current systems. And the high temperature provides much higher thermodynamic efficiency than the steam based current systems.
The full utilization of the fuel is nice and all, but it wouldn't be enough in itself to overturn the status quo because the Uranium fuel cycle is mature. One of the main reasons Thorium systems were not persued was that the uranuim fuel production infrastructure was already developed (for weapons)

[xcrockery]

The French energy situation is actually extremely bad.
Right up until about 2020, Germany was a net exporter of electricity, with cheaper wholesale electricity *AND* it collects 3x more tax from electricity than France does which means more money for energy investment.
French reactors are ageing and losing reliability and uptime. Replacing them is going to cost France a bomb - and their current nuke construction project at Flamanville has gone almost 400% over-budget so far and is running a decade late.
The "Thorium is abundant and safe" sales-pitch has been going around since the 1960s.
Germany built a commercial Thorium plant. It was an economic catastrophe. The German taxpayer is still paying for the remediation of the site.

[nohphd]

One thing Sabine didn’t mention is the ability of MSRs to burn actinides. This ability could dramatically reduce the high level radioactive waste problem contained in all those light water reactor fuel rods sitting in cooling pools and casks.

It’d make some sense to put one or more MSRs at the site of each current LWR just to help with the high level waste treatment. No offsite transport…

[jayb]

Companies/governments have been working on small thorium reactors since at least 1965. Many companies have set timelines for commercial reactors. None have hit those timelines (and to date, only a few experimental reactors exist that are not commercially viable). Two companies that have aspirational target dates on their reactor projects signing an agreement to work together does not mean that "Small Nuclear Thorium Reactors are Coming to Europe". It's possible, but 60 years of trying and failing to make anything that is commercially viable means it's probably not likely. Hopefully, something totally unexpected will happen this time.

[cookymonstr]

I got the message. I eat radish leaves from now on.

[robertmanella]

That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard!!
Scientists are people who can't find regular work!!!

[stevehorne]

Maybe Germany was thinking of the nuclear waste dumping in the Asse II mine, Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, which was apparently done from the 1960s to the 1990s to "test" nuclear waste handling and storage. In the early years of testing, waste was stored in an orderly way allowing easy inspection. Later on, barrels were just rolled down a slope and then covered over with salt while performing the "just get it dumped and get out as quick as possible" research method in order to minimise workers exposure to radiation. Because obviously exposure is only about the barrels you're dumping right now, not the waste leaks from yesterdays damaged barrels. Yes, barrels often started out damaged from the rolling and, in any case, the salt has caused and is still causing rapid rusting of the containers. Of which there are over 125, 000 of low-level waste and nearly 1, 300 of medium-level waste. Because it wasn't a cost-cut commercial operation, oh no, it was research. The mine is losing stability, water contamination has already happened and there's a strong risk of it getting much worse, and IIRC the technology still doesn't exist to clean up after this "test" or even properly inspect most of it. But then again, what does collecting data have to do with research?

Of course if Germany build new reactors and deal with waste from them properly that problem at least isn't made any worse, but nuclear in Germany hasn't exactly had a spotless record. At least they didn't spray all that waste into the atmosphere, though, and even if they did it would probably have caused less damage than burning fossil fuels.

[vt]

I never understood the hysteria about nuclear power. Germany's stance on environmental issues is extremely controversial precisely because of their nuclear policy. They seem headless and dogmatic. The French act more rationally.

[oalessandroo]

WRT Germany's nuclear woes, Italy has a similar problem: we rejected nuclear twice with a referendum: guess where we are buying our energy from, and how they produce it.