Thorium Fuel Cycle Introduction

Flibe Energy intends to utilize a two-fluid molten-salt reactor design to implement the thorium fuel cycle. Neutrons generated by fission are captured in part in a blanket of thorium salt, transmuting the thorium to fissile uranium. This approach allows for unlimited energy production from a feed of natural thorium assuming the reactor is started with uranium-233, which is valuable and should be preserved for reactor use.

[paulk]

Brilliant illustration of the underlying principles of the Thorium cycle.

[BrainDamagedBob]

Recommend adding brief statements about how plentiful Thorium is and changing "endless" to "essentially endless"

[Kjaytothehizzay]

I'm so grateful for you Kirk and the work you, and your team of visionaries pursue

[scottdonnachie]

Great video. I would love to see such a video running though the chemical processing aspects demonstrating how the Pa is kept separate so as not to absorb another neutron and also showing the flow through the fluorinators and use of UF6 reduction. It would be a great compliment to this video. Well done Flibe.

[htannberg]

If only 10% of the money spent on Fusion would have gone to Thorium molten salt research we would have running reactors by now.

[SinisterMD]

I was wondering if you all were even still going. Huge fan of Kirk but seems everything went underground for a while but I'm relieved to see you're still at it.

[argonautis]

Very good presentation of the concept. Good work by Flibe and Kirk Sorensen. Seems possible to develop for marine propulsion applications and put an end to the emissions problems...! Go Flibe ... tell us more...!

[isakrynell]

The only future we have is a nuclear future.
Keep up the good work.

[smarttarts]

As with spacecraft, the "rocket science" part is usually pretty simple. It's the plumbing that causes the most challenges. I haven't seen anyone address how they plan to actually manage such a high temperature fluid (I'm also not sure of how reactive is a tetrafluoride). Pumps, piping, and containers must be immune to corrosion and erosion from the Thorium, Protactinium, or Uranium compounds.

[marc.sellgren]

Great video, only thing that bugs me is the endless energy part. While I agree we will probably never run out of thorium before civilization collapses or the sun consumes the earth, strictly speaking the amount of thorium we have is finite. It also has to be mined and processed, even though most of the mining might come for "free" and is miniscule compared to the mining required for wind and solar. I also acknowledge that nuclear can be considered renewable in the same sense wind and solar are, for the reasons mentioned earlier. However, repeating the endless energy phrase gave me the feeling you're talking about an perpetual motion machine, which might hurt PR.

Anyhow, keep up the good work! MSR's should have been commercialized decades ago!

[flotsamike]

What does the U-233 fission into. What takes the place of Ceasium, Strontium, tecnicium, Ruthenium Iodine, Krypton and so on? How much U232 is made in this process?

[chrisschembari]

I recommend that you add to this an explainer about the difference between a blanket salt and a fuel salt. I think the latter is probably obvious to most, but the former is not so much.

[yooper]

Good to see Kirk's team putting out something. His silence is deafening to the pro-LFTR folks. Most folks agree that FLiBE is a superior eutectic. I wish, however, that he could get away from graphite since it will need to be replaced frequently, maybe BE.

[CrackheadMagnate]

curious how you would monitor the uranium content in storage to overcome a critical mass event

[darylmorse]

The cycle shows the thorium going in, but what comes out?

[flotsamike]

Thorium 233 has a 27-day half-life so you'd probably want to hold it for a closer to 10 months instead of 1 month if you want to avoid exposing half of it to neutrons.
Even though U233 gamma rays are in the 1% abundance range there will be so much of it the gamma radiation in the storage area will still be nothing to sneeze at. Each step where an element transitions from one medium to the next isn't 100% efficient so how do you deal with the buildup in the salts and in the bismuth of the things you don't want?
I wonder what kind of alpha neutron reaction you'll get with bismuth and uranium or thorium. Over time, I can't imagine Fluorine not absorbing some stray neutrons and becoming sodium 22. or ionizing and giving off flourine gas. Just seems like this is highly simplified and more messy than it looks.

[sethapex]

Love the idea of the electrolytic separation of protactinium. Very graspable. Can uranium also be electrolytically separated from protactinium so that the residual protactinium that has not decayed can be recovered to increase fuel economy?

[laurencebernhardt]

In the words of the famous Chemist Walter White - "the Chemistry must be respected."

[Scientist]

good video & good luck with your important work.

[ricktan]

I love it. I wish this fuel cycle is already a commercial reality.

What is needed? Political will?