Forget Fusion: We have Thorium for Unlimited Energy

The father of the hydrogen bomb said thorium was the nuclear fuel of the future; yet it was abandoned for the uranium nuclear power plants we see today. Did we make a mistake by ignoring a cleaner, potentially unlimited source of nuclear energy with thorium? Or were its challenges too difficult to overcome? Several companies are betting big on thorium coming to take uranium’s crown in nuclear power.

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Why cost isn't everything? Explained in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) video:

00:00 A Mistake!
00:21 What is Thorium
02:05 What went Wrong
04:51 Thorium Resurgence
08:04 Thorium Pros
09:18 Thorium Cons
10:19 Thorium's Future

[johno]

Nuclear physicist Victor J. Stenger, for one, only first learned of the possibility of utilising Thorium it in 2012:
"It came as a surprise to me to learn recently that such an alternative has been available to us since World War II, but not pursued BECAUSE it lacked weapons applications".

[powerupminion]

The reason they thought uranium was more fun than thorium is quite simple:
Uranium can turn into plutonium for use in nulcear weapons. Thorium can't be used directly or indirectly in nukes.

[hughmanwho]

Interesting thing about that Tritium is that it's needed for Fusion... assuming they get Fusion working and it seems like some are getting close, could use that Tritium 'waste' for Fusion. The two could work together nicely.

[jbdelphiaiii]

Neutron embrittlement was a thing everywhere in the early 70s, most reactor designs and their cold-shock shutdown hazards are due to embrittled welds in the high pressure plumbing, so it's not just the molten salt designs, which don't deal with the high pressure.

[markdavis]

It went wrong when Dr Weinberg was fired from his job as director of Oak Ridge. He finished 5 years operating the molten salt reactor experiment, and then submitted a proposal for the molten salt breeder reactor. Dr Weinberg was also the inventor of the pressurized water reactor use by Rickover in the Nautilus, Enterprise and Shipping Port, not to mention 3/4 of all nuclear power plants operating today. His breeder reactor was designed to convert Thorium 232 to Uranium 233, which is far more efficient than U235. The issues with the MSRE presented were repeated from Wash 1222 which was an effort by the AEC to justify firing Dr Weinberg. All these issues were solved during the MSRE, but are still regurgitated by anti-nuclear activists. BTW: Costs given for wind and solar do not include the back up gas fired plants needed to run when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. There is a lot of mis-information when it comes to energy.

[adamstele]

I am glad other engineers are working on Thorium. I did my senior thesis on I a few years back and I was afraid I was gonna have to become a nuclear engineer.

[satishramteke]

India has already started using Thorium in it's Fast breeder reactors in 2nd stage of its 3 stage nuclear program and India has the largest reserves of Thorium in the world. India's nuclear program is designed around Thorium obviously beacuse of huge Thorium reserves.

[Captain_Draco]

The main reason Thorium was abandoned was because the Air Force was the main entity interested in it for the possibility of having bombers operating like submarines of the sky that can stay airborn for months waiting to drop their atomic payload, but with the ICBM and mid-air refueling the need evaporated and it got back burnered.

[NightRunner]

Boy I swear, Thorium is the political arena of all things energy production. Half the time I'm hearing that there's no point in pursuing it, the other half it's the savior of mankind.

[braggarmybrat]

Tritium is a very needed component in the ongoing research into viable fusion reactors. It is rare and difficult to obtain, so this seems like a win-win in the production of energy. Currently we could be using TSRs and stockpiling the resulting tritium in our attempts to research and get fusion online.

[Smok]

1:45 The main reason there's less waste from Thorium isn't the efficiency of the process itself, but that the byproducts have a much shorter half-life. Uranium-line byproducts' half-lives are often so long that the end-to-end result is that we need to store it for longer than has passed since the dinosaurs went extinct. Thorium-line byproducts' half-lives add up to a chain of thousands of years, not millions, and because it's shorter, it's also hotter: You would most likely be able to use crystallized waste's heat for something.

[duanenavarre]

LFTR MSR converts 90% current nuclear waste to usable fuel, it also creates more Pu-238 for RTG power units for space missions.

[mostlynew]

Best explanation of Thorium nuclear power I’ve seen. Should be required viewing by policy makers

[highpointsights]

According to the reading I have done in the past. Thorium reactors can be built so that they are "walk away safe" If some kind of disaster occurs and no one can get to the unit or if it is abandon it will simply shut it self down. That is a feature that i like lot!!

[goreobsessed]

Been hearing about thorium for like a decade I want them to do something with it already

[christopherseverett]

My fundamental issue with fission reactors is the use of water and low boiling point. The thorium reactors in your video were molten salt with a much higher boiling point and safety profile making a melt down much less likely if ever. I still think fusion reactors are the future if we can crack the science to make it work.

[robfer]

Thorium is the future of power and it will save the world! If nuclear energy from Thorium had the same time, money and resources put into it as fusion has had and still has we would already be well on our way to Thorium nuclear energy!! With the full utilization of our advanced modern technology, engineering, material science, safety measures understandings and designs, computer technology and robotics we could make it happen.

[iseedrunkpeople]

Yo, I think Molton Salt Reactors strongest use case is using up fission nuclear waste. It is called waste burning MSRs and it is closest to commercialization. It uses the same modular design and permitting process as Thorium Reactors would use.

[chuckdenure]

There was a thorium/U233 reactor used as the final core in the Shippingport PA commercial reactor called Light Water Breeder Reactor (LWBR). It was designed to be a nearly 1:1 swap replacement in a conventional uranium reactor designed to operate without the need for Heavy Water and would breed U233 to sustain a perpetuating fuel cycle. It worked, exceeded design specifications, but it was too expensive to be used commercially. It was the last core to be used at Shippingport and it was a joint venture between the Navy, who was very concerned about the access to Uranium, and Westinghouse who was a major contributor to the naval nuclear propulsion program. It was one of Rickover's dreams.

[TheSmokingMustache]

Just the title was enough to make me happy, I literally educate people on this almost daily.