Are Thorium Nuclear Reactors Finally Here? - Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Dr. Ben Miles

[Plotatothewondercat]

No kidding on Fukushima. Not only was the location they selected - directly by the coast, as opposed to a couple dozen more meters away - not very safe, but if they'd taken the regulatory suggestions about updating their safety systems or increasing the height of their seawall seriously once in the 40 years they'd been getting them for, even that crappy location wouldn't have given rise to an accident. There were many other reactors along that coastline that got hit harder than Fukushima Daiichi but didn't melt down because they did their due diligence long before the natural disaster.

[NeroKoso]

"Are Thorium Nuclear Reactors Finally Here?" -No.

[TeraChad]

The original video popped up on my feed the other day and i thought "Tyler Folse is gonna love this video" 💀

[Arthion]

Tyler, I love nuclear power, but please read up a bit more about Tepco (the owners of Fukushima Daiichi) before calling them a good operator. They were warned numerous times that flooding protection was insufficient. They were critizied by engineers as early as when the first reactors were built for not changing the location of the backup generators from the basement to somewhere safer from flooding but they prefered to stick 100% to the original design as used in the US without any modifications to better protect based on the location to keep costs down. They were warned as 2006 and 2008 by their own employees running simulations that a wave 10-13m high would knock out all power but did absolutely nothing as a response but stuck to their official "max estimate" of 5.7m waves.

[boringpolitician]

Well, I didn't wait for your reaction to this video - I didn't think you'd find this one interesting. Glad you did! And now I am looking forward to listening to your thoughts!

RE: the guys pushing the buttons, today there's all sorts of training and exercises for all sorts of cases, also the type of situation that the Three Miles people found themselves in. But without that training it's stress, cloudy "mind vision", more stress about each and every choice there is (what if it isn't right and we make it worse?). I don't blame them, I blame the lack of training for all sorts of events.

[ShadowDragon]

The advantage of a top-down authoritarian system: you can _crush_ and ignore ignorant public objections to deployment of technologies for the public's benefit; the NIMBY Karens can be _silenced_ with the power of the State.

The _disadvantage_ is that _well-founded expert objections_ can and inevitability will _also_ be crushed and silenced with the power of the State.

[RentableSocks]

As far as I understand, the molten salt fuels rely heavily on the geometry of the reactor vessel, so by spreading it out, you're no longer breeding more fuel, and fission stops. If you could call the molten salt "melted down" at any point, spreading it out on the floor would un-melt it.

edit: oh you got to it later

[Songfugel]

Glad to see you point out exactly all the same points with all the same arguments I did on this video, nice boost to myself to know I was indeed making correct observations :D

btw. You might want to re-edit the video a bit, there are multiple points where you forgot to edit out re-takes of some lines/comments

[LogicalNiko]

The negative side the Molten Salt are:

Leaks can be dangerous. Exposure to liquids is not good. And a lot of normal construction materials react very badly either combusting or corroding quickly and violently. That being said, we have the ability to select the proper coatings and materials, they just cost more. And leaks in ANY reactor are dangerous in their own ways.

Preheating systems can be complex. If you let molten salts cool down you cannot just flip on the reactor, you have piping that has to be evenly heated back up in such a way that you don't get plugs of solids surrounding liquified sections. You also just can't activate your pumps as any solid bits can easily damage or clog the pumps causing issues. Again this is not impossible, just difficult.

Because of the higher operating heats inspections are much harder to do. This is less a problem now because of robotic cameras systems can be used to get close to hotter environments than could be done when we first attempted molten salt systems.

Just as leaks can be a problem any impurity in the molten salts can be very very bad. Not too hard to control, but the supply chain needs very high quality controls. A random impurity in other types of reactors is still a major deal, but it has less opportunity to become a disaster.

The big upside are that it is an abundant fuel that is slightly easier to refine, it takes advantage of some thermal efficiencies, and it just slightly more contusive to small modular reactor designs than many others. But yes when it comes down to it all nuclear reactors are much better than other sources and depend greatly on the people and companies that run them. The safety differences, complexities, risks, costs, and engineering required are all in the same general ballpark when compared to non-nuclear power solutions.

[garner]

Would you ever consider reacting to a thunderfoot video? I know I know....I just what know what you think about his thorium ideas.

[christopherleubner]

I'm pretty sure that China did a thorium reactor to use it to generate plutonium indirectly. It could be done with beryllium lined zirconium tubing that UF6 gas is pumped through. The plutonium would simply snow out of the gas as a very fine fluoride powder. The isotopic purity would be extremely high as well as being in the form that is easily processed into metal by reaction with magnesium. Any 90Sr or 137Cs would end up in the MgF2 slag. The tubing channels would also do double duty as the neutron reflector multiplier assembly to maintain the reactivity of the thorium salt core. The hot UF6 gas could also be used as the heat transfer medium to a 3rd heat exchanger that heats up a more inert eutectic salt mix that generates the boiler heat.

[robinx]

I already waited for your reaction to this video. Thanks

[Etheoma]

Just btw the author of the original video messed up, thorium reactors are thermal spectrum because you only get on average a little more than 2 neurons from the fission of U-233 so there isn't the spare neutrons to go fast spectrum, I know T.F. knows this next part, but fast neutrons have a very small cross section meaning it's unlikely they will actually "hit" another atom to fission it, so to do a fast spectrum reactor you need to have lots of neutrons released every time do achieve a fission like plutonium 239.

The reason fission doesn't take place in any other place than the core is because the core has graphite in it which is a moderator which slows down your neutrons which allows them to be captured much more easily so it doesn't matter than you only have I think it's around 2.5 neutrons per fission of U-233 because the likelihood of a fission occurring is much higher than in a fast reactor, however you also need 1 of those neutrons to be captured by Th-232 to be turned into Th-233 which will with a high probability decay into protactinium 233 which after about a month 90% will have decayed into U-233.

Also @T. Folse Nuclear current molten salt reactors do not plan to use control rods as such as you can control the power by the flow rate because of the natural strong negative temperature coefficient, so if you slow down the flow the core will get hotter reducing the power, there are rods to shut down the reactor though, but because you don't use them actively during operation so they are technically not control rods, they are the same physical thing even if they don't serve the same propose though.

Also you don't need to worry about the core getting to hot because your fuel will automatically go to the dump tanks if it gets too hot even if your "shutdown rods" don't engage somehow.

[dennisestenson]

Every time we buy a rare rarth magnet or motors with rare earth material from China, we're increasing their stockpile of thorium. It's part of the ore they "throw away".

[tristanfarmer]

I don't get trying to ban nuclear power to prevent bombs. We already have thousands of bombs, the bombs are the scary part yeah, but it's a very different process to create right?

[denverbraughler]

The video is correct. The radioactive material is dissolved in the salt coolant.
Therefore, if there is a leak, the ratio of coolant to material remains constant.

[denverbraughler]

Natrium is the Latin name for sodium. That’s why the element abbreviation is Na.

[tomato.mp]

You always review the exact videos that I wanted you to review yay 🎉

[Canthus]

Also, isn't this essentially what David Hahn did? Bombarded thorium with alpha particles to get U-233? He just used a very primitive process. I know he got some uranium samples, but they weren't good enough for seeding a reactor. He made a neutron 'gun' with americium from broken smoke detectors and lead shielding to direct a neutron beam at the thorium he scrounged up. Dude wasn't that far from creating a full on reactor when he got caught.

[deepwinter]

My Nuclear Education comes from extensive study of the Simpsons over almost a decade.