Thorium...why not?

[Metal Minister]

While listening to the radio recently, I heard someone call in to a radio program, and make some rather wild claims about Thorium. He made the claim that it created less waste, more power, and the waste that it did create, could be reused to help make crude oil from garbage. I decided to look into it, and found this site:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Thorium/

While they do not mention the above "garbage to oil" claim, I was wondering, if this seems to have so many benefits, why is it slow to be used? I'm not looking for a political response such as "its the ebil erl cumpnies man!", I'm looking for a more scientific approach. Please, don't just drop links to articles, but a brief summary of what an article says, with the link is ok. Thanks!

 

[CabVet]

How easy is it to extract and process?

 

[Metal Minister]

How easy is it to extract and process?

From what I understand, far easier than uranium.

 

[Seipai]

I will have to check again, but last time I looked no one had developed a working Thorium reactor. A lot of the miracles of thorium are theoretical only, just as the miracles of atomic power were in the 1950's.

 

[Seipai]

Hmm, it should not be too difficult to make a reactor. The problem is that Th232 does not "fizz". It will not undergo fission until it absorbs a neutron from an existing fission source and then react to form U233. So a breeder reactor of some sort must be built. Now is the nuclear waste from the fission of U233 any different from the nuclear waste from 235? I have my doubts. It is a bit safer than a breeder reactor that makes plutonium supposedly. There is much more thorium than uranium. It does not look like the world will run out of it.

 

[Davian]

"In the United States, the LFTR concept is gaining momentum, if more slowly. Sorensen and others promote it regularly at energy conferences. Renowned climatologist James Hansen specifically cited thorium as a potential fuel source in an “Open Letter to Obama” after the election. And legislators are acting, too. At least three thorium-related bills are making their way through the Capitol, including the Senate’s Thorium Energy Independence and Security Act, cosponsored by Orrin Hatch of Utah and Harry Reid of Nevada, which would provide $250 million for research at the Department of Energy. “I don’t know of anything more beneficial to the country, as far as environmentally sound power, than nuclear energy powered by thorium,” Hatch says. (Both senators have long opposed nuclear waste dumps in their home states.)

Unfortunately, $250 million won’t solve the problem. The best available estimates for building even one molten salt reactor run much higher than that. And there will need to be lots of startup capital if thorium is to become financially efficient enough to persuade nuclear power executives to scrap an installed base of conventional reactors. “What we have now works pretty well,” says John Rowe, CEO of Exelon, a power company that owns the country’s largest portfolio of nuclear reactors, “and it will for the foreseeable future.”

Critics point out that thorium’s biggest advantage — its high efficiency — actually presents challenges. Since the reaction is sustained for a very long time, the fuel needs special containers that are extremely durable and can stand up to corrosive salts. The combination of certain kinds of corrosion-resistant alloys and graphite could meet these requirements. But such a system has yet to be proven over decades."

Uranium Is So Last Century - Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke | Wired Magazine | Wired.com (2009)

 

[variant]

We originally researched uranium because we were making weapons out of the byproducts.

Estimates of R&D spending are about 5.5 trillion dollars.

Thorium has less R&D than the uranium we've used for so long so the infrastructure and research needs to be built and developed to use it.

It'll come into it's own in the next 50 years or so because the usable thorium is ubiquitous compared to uranium.

The fuel is cheap, thorium reactors are safe and can't melt down, we know it works.

But there are definitely engineering problems associated with it that aren't quite worked out yet.

 

[gungasnake]

I was wondering, if this seems to have so many benefits, why is it slow to be used?

Nobody wanted to hear about thorium in the 1950s because you can't make bombs out of it. Everybody wanted to make bombs then. Thorium is hundreds of times more efficient for making reactors than uranium, burns to nearly nothing, is much more plentiful, and has no down sides. It's the perfect reactor fuel. It doesn't even need sea water for cooling, you could build a thorium reactor on top of a mountain, safe from anything like Fukushima.

 

[Michael]

Nobody wanted to hear about thorium in the 1950s because you can't make bombs out of it. Everybody wanted to make bombs then. Thorium is hundreds of times more efficient for making reactors than uranium, burns to nearly nothing, is much more plentiful, and has no down sides. It's the perfect reactor fuel. It doesn't even need sea water for cooling, you could build a thorium reactor on top of a mountain, safe from anything like Fukushima.

You nailed it perfectly IMO. The goal of the 1950's generation of nuclear power plant was typically designed around the idea of processing and producing uranium and plutonium. They are *far less* safe in terms of their ability to "melt down" than thorium based reactors, and the current nuclear power plant technology is now over six decades old. It's time for a nuclear upgrade, and specifically to a safer long term design.

 

[Seipai]

Nobody wanted to hear about thorium in the 1950s because you can't make bombs out of it. Everybody wanted to make bombs then. Thorium is hundreds of times more efficient for making reactors than uranium, burns to nearly nothing, is much more plentiful, and has no down sides. It's the perfect reactor fuel. It doesn't even need sea water for cooling, you could build a thorium reactor on top of a mountain, safe from anything like Fukushima.

I am a nuclear energy proponent, but it would be over simplifying the problem to make your claims.

To start with it is nowhere near "hundreds of times more efficient". Nor doe it "burn down to nearly nothing". You will still have lots of radioactive daughter products from fission. The waste can be safely stored, but no one wants it safely stored in their state.

 

[[serious]]

While listening to the radio recently, I heard someone call in to a radio program, and make some rather wild claims about Thorium. He made the claim that it created less waste, more power, and the waste that it did create, could be reused to help make crude oil from garbage. I decided to look into it, and found this site:

Thorium

While they do not mention the above "garbage to oil" claim, I was wondering, if this seems to have so many benefits, why is it slow to be used? I'm not looking for a political response such as "its the ebil erl cumpnies man!", I'm looking for a more scientific approach. Please, don't just drop links to articles, but a brief summary of what an article says, with the link is ok. Thanks!

From that link:

The use of thorium as a new primary energy source has been a tantalizing prospect for many years. Extracting its latent energy value in a cost-effective manner remains a challenge, and will require considerable R&D investment.

 

[Michael]

I think the biggest downside of nuclear energy is the "fear factor". Most people hear "radiation" and they immediately panic, as though they aren't personally experiencing it on a daily basis, and the slightest exposure to it will immediately give them cancer. In fact we're all exposed to radiation every day of our lives. It's a question of quantity.

IMO our nuclear industry is way overdue for a redesign, and some reinvestment in terms of public funds. Wind and solar energy aren't 100 percent reliable in terms of being able to simply add electricity to the grid when necessary. We will require reliable sources of power indefinitely, and IMO a safer nuclear industry is a good investment in our long term future.

Thorium reactors would require a substantial investment, but they are less prone to full meltdown scenarios, and that feature alone is worth the long term investment IMO. Carbon based power plants pump carcinogens into the atmosphere on a daily basis. I'd much rather live downwind from a 21st century designed thorium reactor than from a coal burning power plant. Over 20-30 year time frame, the likelihood of an accident at any given nuclear power plant is nearly zero, whereas the carcinogens from a petroleum burning power plant are pumped out 24/7.

 

[Seipai]

It is hard to say how badly a non-existing nuclear reactor would react to some unknown emergency. Take Fukushima as an example. It did not undergo a meltdown the reactor had already been "SCRAM"med before the event. The earthquake had caused the nuclear reactor to SCRAM. Any nuclear reactor has quite a bit of heat in it and continues to generate heat even after rods are dropped into the reactor. It won't melt down but you can get some superheated coolant and that tends to leak. A tsunami crashing into your reactor does not help much either. The tsunami caused the cooling abilities to fail and the reactor over heated and vented coolant that was high in decay products. If somehow the containment vessel for a thorium reactor was breached I can easily see the same sort of event happening.

Now overall nuclear reactors are still safer than the alternative. And yes, people do react very badly to the boogieman of nuclear radiation. Thunderf00t made a hilarious video in response to this overreaction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qwOc3ytqaw

 

[gungasnake]

I am a nuclear energy proponent, but it would be over simplifying the problem to make your claims.

To start with it is nowhere near "hundreds of times more efficient". Nor doe it "burn down to nearly nothing". You will still have lots of radioactive daughter products from fission. The waste can be safely stored, but no one wants it safely stored in their state.

That's the gist of most of what I've read, e.g.

Nobel physicist: Thorium trumps all fuels as energy source - SmartPlanet

Thorium Energy Alliance Portal

A thorium-fueled nuclear reactor generates hundreds of times the power of a uranium or coal power plant but produces essentially no waste. A thorium power plant would produce much less than 1% of the waste that a uranium plant of equal magnitude produces and, of course, would produce no carbon dioxide. More importantly, while the waste of a uranium power plant is toxic for over 10,000 years, the little waste that is produced in a thorium plant is benign in under 200 years.

There is no down side.

 

[Loudmouth]

It is hard to say how badly a non-existing nuclear reactor would react to some unknown emergency. Take Fukushima as an example. It did not undergo a meltdown the reactor had already been "SCRAM"med before the event. The earthquake had caused the nuclear reactor to SCRAM. Any nuclear reactor has quite a bit of heat in it and continues to generate heat even after rods are dropped into the reactor. It won't melt down but you can get some superheated coolant and that tends to leak. A tsunami crashing into your reactor does not help much either. The tsunami caused the cooling abilities to fail and the reactor over heated and vented coolant that was high in decay products. If somehow the containment vessel for a thorium reactor was breached I can easily see the same sort of event happening.

Pebble bed reactors are also an interesting design that do not have the same safety risks as the Fukushima style reactors.

Pebble-bed reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As of now, nuclear reactors have lost the PR battle. Hopefully, the US can have a rational debate about the real pro's and con's of nuclear power, and where to go next.

 

[Seipai]

That's the gist of most of what I've read, e.g.

Nobel physicist: Thorium trumps all fuels as energy source - SmartPlanet

Thorium Energy Alliance Portal



There is no down side.

First off none of them supported your claim that it is "hundreds of times more efficient". They did not even get close to claiming that. Second they do claim that the waste product of thorium reactors would break down in 200 years where they say it take 1,000 years for the spent fuel of uranium reactors to do so. They did not give a reason why they claim this.

Since the daughter products of fission are not two specific atoms but a range of atoms, and I think all of them would be radioactive due to the high number of neutrons in the parent product, and they are spread across a rough bell curve I don't see why the daughter products from a thorium reactor would break down any faster than a uranium reactor's daughter products.

Neither of your claims were supported in any substantial way.

 

[gungasnake]

First off none of them supported your claim that it is "hundreds of times more efficient".

One of the two links specifically used the term "hundreds of times" and I quoted that directly. Learn to read.

 

[Seipai]

One of the two links specifically used the term "hundreds of times" and I quoted that directly. Learn to read.

Yes, you did. They did not justify the claim in any way at all so it is still an unjustified claim. You can find a website that claims almost anything. I can find websites that claim the Earth is flat. Would that make my claim justified simply because I linked them?

So again, you gave no real evidence that supports your claim.

 

[gungasnake]

Yes, you did. They did not justify the claim in any way at all so it is still an unjustified claim. You can find a website that claims almost anything. I can find websites that claim the Earth is flat. Would that make my claim justified simply because I linked them?

So again, you gave no real evidence that supports your claim.

I don't do other people's homework for them, have at it:

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=thorium+"hundreds+of+times"&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

 

[Seipai]

I don't do other people's homework for them, have at it:

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=thorium+"hundreds+of+times"&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Wrong.

You made the claim, therefore the burden of proof lies upon you. If I state something is a scientific fact and am challenged upon it I am the one that must support my claim. So I am asking you to do your homework.