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THE Thorium Thread (merged)

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: Miracle Energy source? Or Pie In the Sky?

Unread postby Dezakin » Thu 10 Mar 2011, 20:42:40

ian807 wrote:In the end, the only sustainable energy sources we have are captured solar in some form (panels, wind, hydro, wave, biofuels, ocean temperature differential) or geothermal. Like it or not, eventually the hydrocarbons run out, and ginning up fissionables has some serious downsides. Absent a very large leap in technology (e.g. sustainable fusion), this is how it's going to go eventually.

Say what? Fission is sustainable for millions of years, vastly more so than geothermal. If that isn't enough...
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Re: Miracle Energy source? Or Pie In the Sky?

Unread postby americandream » Thu 10 Mar 2011, 20:58:42

Dezakin wrote:
ian807 wrote:In the end, the only sustainable energy sources we have are captured solar in some form (panels, wind, hydro, wave, biofuels, ocean temperature differential) or geothermal. Like it or not, eventually the hydrocarbons run out, and ginning up fissionables has some serious downsides. Absent a very large leap in technology (e.g. sustainable fusion), this is how it's going to go eventually.

Say what? Fission is sustainable for millions of years, vastly more so than geothermal. If that isn't enough...


So what you going to make your plastic ducks from, a plastic duck plantation?
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Re: Miracle Energy source? Or Pie In the Sky?

Unread postby kiwichick » Fri 11 Mar 2011, 21:02:37

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Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby Graeme » Mon 12 Sep 2011, 19:57:13

Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire? Possibly.

Last week, scores of thorium boosters gathered in the United Kingdom to launch a new advocacy organization, the Weinberg Foundation, which plans to push the promise of thorium nuclear energy into the mainstream political discussion of clean energy and climate change. The message they’re sending is that thorium is the anti-dote to the world’s most pressing energy and environmental challenges.

So what is the big deal about thorium? In 2006, writing in the magazine Cosmos, Tim Dean summarized perhaps the most optimistic scenario for what a Thorium-powered nuclear world would be like:

“What if we could build a nuclear reactor that offered no possibility of a meltdown, generated its power inexpensively, created no weapons-grade by-products, and burnt up existing high-level waste as well as old nuclear weapon stockpiles? And what if the waste produced by such a reactor was radioactive for a mere few hundred years rather than tens of thousands? It may sound too good to be true, but such a reactor is indeed possible, and a number of teams around the world are now working to make it a reality. What makes this incredible reactor so different is its fuel source: thorium.

A clutch of companies and countries are aggressively pursuing Dean’s dream of a thorium-powered world.

Lightbridge Corporation, a pioneering nuclear-energy start-up company based in McLean, VA, is developing the Radkowsky Thorium Reactor in collaboration with Russian researchers. In 2009, Areva, the French nuclear engineering conglomerate, recruited Lightbridge for a project assessing the use of thorium fuel in Areva’s next-generation EPR reactor, advanced class of 1,600+ MW nuclear reactors being built in Olkiluoto, Finland and Flamanville, France.

In China, the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and a clutch of Chinese outfits began an effort in mid-2009 to use thorium as fuel in nuclear reactors in Qinshan, China.


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Last edited by Ferretlover on Mon 31 Oct 2011, 18:10:45, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Merged thread.
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby steam_cannon » Mon 12 Sep 2011, 20:52:02

Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire? Possibly.
Thorium reactors offer a lot of hope towards a sustainable future. There is a great deal of difficulty in making one though Thorium Reactors are a proven technology since the 1960's. According to Wiki there are several reactors being built right now, one is a Thorium reactor in Odessa Texas as well as a reactor being built in India which will use Thorium as their primary fuel. China is now officially looking into adding the technology to their energy portfolio and Candida presently has a reactor capable of utilizing Thorium as fuel.

As I understand it Thorium is initially more expensive, but with rising prices with Uranium, Coal and Oil coupled with the long lifetime of Thorium fuel, Thorium is looking to be a better and better option. Any port in a storm.
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby steam_cannon » Wed 14 Sep 2011, 10:38:15

On the other hand...

cephalotus wrote:The REAL problem with nuclear energy

GOT2BGREEN wrote:Actually the only real problem with nuclear energy is the wrong fuel was used from the beginning!
...
Both Chernobyl and Fukishima would never have occurred if they were fueled with Thorium instead of Uranium. India, Norway, and China are to be commended for their wisdom in choosing Thorium for their new generation of nuclear power.


Germany started to build a Helium cooled Thorium reactor (THTR 300) in Hamm-Uentrop in 1970. After several delays it started to produce electricity in 1985.
This reactor had huge problems with its reactor core based on 675,000 Thorium-"spheres" and was shut down after leakage of radiation (which the operating company tried to hide, typical behaviour of every nuclear company, I assume ...) and massive protests in 1989.

The plant is still very radioactive and it is planned to finish deconstruction in the year 2027, roughly 40 years after shut down. Currently it costs 6,5 million Euro each year to maintain the power plant.

Overall costs exceeded 4 billion Euro so far for only 2,9 billion kWh.

The first 2,9 billion kWh of photovoltaic energy have been much cheaper in Germany.

Germany also designed another Thorium based reactor system and tried to export it to South Africa (which failed: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100223/ ... 1008b.html) and China, where a small power plant was built near Peking.

You can find more details at:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_THTR-300
(text in German, but some references are available in English)

My opinion:
If your really believe in cheap and "safe" thorium reactors just go ahead and try. "We" did several decades ago and failed, maybe the Indian and Chinese engineers will find better solutions or maybe the will deal differently with the risks in that technology.

Nuclear is only cheap if you ignore the risks and the follow up costs, if you do, the economics of this technology are very different.

PS: afaik Norway has stopped its plans to build a thorium reactor in 2009 after a study from Statens Strålevern calculated the costs and risks of that technology:
http://www.taz.de/1/zukunft/umwelt/arti ... e-loesung/
(sorry, I wasn't able to find any news about that in English)


Translated article from Norway:
Thorium is not a solution

von REINHARD WOLFF Norway gives up plans to build a thorium reactor, after a study has shown. Safe and clean nuclear power is not with the fuel of uncleavable REINHARD WOLFF

Now Norway is so far. The local Radiation Protection Authority Statens Strålevern allow all plans for the construction of a thorium reactor, a rejection. Both Environment Minister Erik Sohlheim and Economy Minister Sylvia Brustad at the close.

The red-green government in Oslo in 2007 had been at Statens Strålevern commissioned a study. At that time, the strong lobby of thorium had started a debate about the supposed benefits of this technique, the state power company Statkraft initiated, to indicate interest for a reactor. Norwegen verfügt vermutlich über die drittreichsten Thorium-Vorkommen der Welt. Norway has probably the world's third richest thorium deposits in the world.

The Norwegian parliament has banned the construction of nuclear power plants 30 years ago by law. And it should remain under the present ruling of the Radiation Protection Authority probably. In their report Statens Strålevern examined the entire thorium fuel cycle from extraction to nuclear waste storage. Result: "Conventional reactors, regardless whether they are based on uranium and thorium fuel, lead to radioactive contamination of air and water, in both cases there is a significant accident risk, especially with regard to uncontrolled chain reactions and at worst a meltdown."

Reactors, which operate with thorium were so similar adverse environmental consequences and a similar risk as those with potential uranium fuel. Of thorium supporters just before the supposed safety as a core melt is brought into the argument field. The minerals from the radioactive metal thorium extracted Thorite is not fissionable. Thorium as fuel must therefore be supplied from outside neutrons to start the chain reaction producing energy and keep going. If this is set, it also stops the reaction.

According to the Radiation Protection Authority but does not mean that there is no risk of accident to a nuclear meltdown. Also for the removal of residual heat-functioning cooling systems were needed: "The probability of a meltdown is to be judged on uranium or thorium fuel immediately."

A thorium reactor while producing less and less long-lived nuclear waste than a nuclear power with uranium fuel rods. This is also more stable than conventional nuclear waste. But he radiates stronger, which complicates transport and storage.

The decisive point, however, the study shows that the thorium technology does not solve the nuclear waste problem. It adds even during operation of the reactor, a much higher radiation levels. Even the safety-thorium-use offer little advantage: Although only small amounts of plutonium fell on, and this is also for the production of nuclear weapons is not particularly interesting. But in the hands of terrorists could also thorium reactor for "non-peaceful purposes" are used.

The verdict is not much better for the hitherto existing only on paper thorium-concept Accelerator Driven System (ADS), a combination of a particle accelerator and a lead-cooled reactor from. It is true that the risk of a meltdown here really low, they say. The 8,000 to 10,000 tonnes of lead metal of his cooling system could absorb the residual heat from the core probably. But such a construction due to the combination with a particle accelerator as a whole is vulnerable. At the same time it will come to a radioactive contamination of the entire cooling system. There's also a completely clear whether this technique could be implemented in 20 or 30 years to economically acceptable cost.

"The debate should now be thorium is a closed chapter," Nils Bohmer, believes nuclear expert at the environmental organization Bellona, "Hopefully, the policy now busy with real solutions to the climate problem."
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby Graeme » Wed 14 Sep 2011, 19:45:06

Steam, Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. Just saw this by chance, and looked for others.

Thorium Powered Cars

Those are the only options for transportation fuels most folks know about. They haven't heard of thorium-powered cars, for which a few people are working on prototypes.

Cadillac unveiled such a concept two years ago. And now Charles Stevens of Massachusetts-based Laser Power Systems has unveiled one as well.

According to the website txchnologist.com, owned by GE:

A 250-kilowatt unit (equivalent to about 335 horsepower) weighing about 500 pounds would be small and light enough to put under the hood of a car, Stevens claims. And because a gram of thorium has the equivalent potential energy content of 7,500 gallons of gasoline, LPS calculates that using just 8 grams of thorium in the unit could power an average car for 5,000 hours, or about 300,000 miles of normal driving.


energyandcapital

Future Tech: Tiny block of thorium could run your car forever

The Technology

World is moving towards more zero emission vehicles. Therefore, a lot of development is occurring in the field of electric vehicles. However, they do have the major problem of battery drainage and thus, its frequent recharging. People are reluctant to buy these because of their fear of being on a remote road with no power sources to charge their car batteries. A R&D company in Connecticut, USAF has come with the laser turbine technology to tackle this problem. The car powered with this technology can run throughout its life with only 8 gm of thorium. The technology combines thorium and laser plumbing technology that powers a steam turbine. They are claiming to build their first prototype by 2014.

What's new?

USAF revealed this brand new technology very recently. The technology will not employ any radioactive reactor. It is a high-energy generation by lasing thorium. The fission reaction delivers more energy than this technology, but thorium does not belong to class of fissile material. It needs a lot of processing before it can sustain any fission reaction. Moreover, the laser technology does not employ any neutron bombardment, thus it makes fission nearly impossible. It is also a cheap technology due to abundance of thorium. The IC engine will not require nuclear fission grade safety thus, making it cheaper


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Do you have any comments to make about thorium cars?
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby papa moose » Wed 14 Sep 2011, 23:40:54

He posts a nicely detailed refutation of Thorium power plants and you then need to ask what he thinks of the idea of sticking some thorium on the back seat of his VW and puttering around the autobahn at 160 kph waiting for a truck to rear end him?
I'll save you the wait, he'll be against it.
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby dutchcyclist » Wed 05 Oct 2011, 18:23:36

I dont know if its the biggest breakthrough since fire, but i do know it is the safest nuclear power option available. And as such it should be part of our solution to the peak oil problem.
But only in the form of LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactor) it is this save; THTR has already proven itself to be unsave.
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby Cog » Wed 05 Oct 2011, 18:34:11

I'm having a problem finding any thorium based commercial reactors in operation. Perhaps Graeme could help me out here on this miracle cure to our energy problems.
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Fri 07 Oct 2011, 01:39:55

I don't think "Breakthrough" is a good word to describe something that will require decades of expensive R&D. Is nuclear fusion also a "Breakthrough", or assorted solar tech.

How about the Chevy Volt? I was just reading Consumer Reports, it seems you would "Breakthrough" on fuel cost vs. a Honda Civic if you drove the $40,000 Volt 1,000,000 miles.
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby GoIllini » Tue 11 Oct 2011, 10:02:11

I used to believe this Graeme, but until we find a way of storing spent fuel safely without any active intervention by civilization, I'm not as big of a fan of nuclear as I used to be.

We need to get cracking on fusion ASAP. Let's get that ITER finished and figure out a way to block the neutrons from embrittling the TOKAMAK walls.
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby peripato » Wed 12 Oct 2011, 00:42:18

I'm still banking on chocolate as a solution to our energy problems! :-D Hmm, chocolate. Is there anything it can't do?
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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby Graeme » Sat 29 Oct 2011, 00:07:57

Don't believe the spin on thorium being a greener nuclear option

The pro-thorium lobby claim a single tonne of thorium burned in a molten salt reactor (MSR) – typically a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) – which has liquid rather than solid fuel, can produce one gigawatt of energy. A traditional pressurised water reactor (PWR) would need to burn 250 tonnes of uranium to produce the same amount of energy.

They also produce less waste, have no weapons-grade by-products, can consume legacy plutonium stockpiles and are meltdown-proof – if the hype is to be believed.

India certainly has faith, with a burgeoning population, chronic electricity shortage, few friends on the global nuclear stage (it hasn't signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty) and the world's largest reserves of thorium. 'Green' nuclear could help defuse opposition at home (the approval of two new traditional nuclear power reactors on its west coast led to fierce protests recently) and allow it to push ahead unhindered with its stated aim of generating 270GW of energy from nuclear by 2050.

China, Russia, France and the US are also pursuing the technology, while India's department of atomic energy and the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council are jointly funding five UK research programmes into it.

There is a significant sticking point to the promotion of thorium as the 'great green hope' of clean energy production: it remains unproven on a commercial scale. While it has been around since the 1950s (and an experimental 10MW LFTR did run for five years during the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US, though using uranium and plutonium as fuel) it is still a next generation nuclear technology – theoretical.

China did announce this year that it intended to develop a thorium MSR, but nuclear radiologist Peter Karamoskos, of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), says the world shouldn't hold its breath.

'Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.'


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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby Anvil » Sat 29 Oct 2011, 01:57:34

The problem is that fossil fuel industries are more powerful then ever and will stop at nothing to destroy cheap clean and inexpensive alternatives like Thorium. Why do you think its development was put on hold when the first reactors were laid out in the USA more than 50 years ago.
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Re: THE Thorium Thread (merged)

Unread postby Graeme » Wed 02 Nov 2011, 17:50:52

India plans 'safer' nuclear plant powered by thorium

India has announced plans for a prototype nuclear power plant that uses an innovative "safer" fuel.

Officials are currently selecting a site for the reactor, which would be the first of its kind, using thorium for the bulk of its fuel instead of uranium – the fuel for conventional reactors. They plan to have the plant up and running by the end of the decade.

The development of workable and large-scale thorium reactors has for decades been a dream for nuclear engineers, while for environmentalists it has become a major hope as an alternative to fossil fuels. Proponents say the fuel has considerable advantages over uranium. Thorium is more abundant and exploiting it does not involve release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, making it less dangerous for the climate than fossil fuels like coal and oil.

In a rare interview, Ratan Kumar Sinha, the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, told the Guardian that his team is finalising the site for construction of the new large-scale experimental reactor, while at the same time conducting "confirmatory tests" on the design.

"The basic physics and engineering of the thorium-fuelled Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) are in place, and the design is ready," said Sinha.


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Re: Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire?

Unread postby JRP3 » Fri 11 Nov 2011, 09:36:31

steam_cannon wrote:On the other hand...

Those don't appear to be LFTR technology.
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A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby Rune » Tue 03 Sep 2013, 23:33:38

Development of Tiny Thorium Reactors Could Wean the World Off Oil In Just Five Years

Thorium nuclei would absorb the excess neutrons, resulting in uranium-233, a fissile isotope that is not found in nature. Moderated neutrons would produce fissioned U-233, which releases enough energy to power the particle accelerator, plus an excess that can drive a power plant. Rubbia says a fistful of thorium could light up London for a week.

The idea needs refining, but is so promising that at least one private firm is getting involved. The Norwegian firm Aker Solutions bought Rubbia's patent for this thorium fuel cycle, and is working on his design for a proton accelerator.
The Telegraph says this $1.8 billion (£1.2 billion) project could lead to a network of tiny underground nuclear reactors, producing about 600 MW each. Their wee size would negate the enormous security apparatus required of full-size nuclear power plants.


Thorium also solves the non-proliferation problem. Nuclear non-proliferation treaties (NPT) prohibit processes that can yield atomic bomb ingredients, making it difficult to refine highly radioactive isotopes. But thorium-based accelerator-driven plants only produce a small amount of plutonium, which could allow the U.S. and other nations to skirt NPT.


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Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby Synapsid » Wed 04 Sep 2013, 13:17:58

There is still a proliferation problem: U233 can be used in a bomb just as U235 can. The US tried that in the 1950s but went with U235, partly because decay chains from Th232 led, in addition to U233, to daughter products, including U232, that were intense gamma emitters and the radiation caused premature ignition and reduced yield.

In the 6 December issue of Nature four British nuclear engineers describe methods for removing protactinium 233, the parent of U233, from the contaminating U232 (much easier than trying to separate the two uranium isotopes). The Pa233 will then decay into pure U233. The methods described are standard ones.
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Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby Rune » Wed 04 Sep 2013, 14:18:24

Sure. But the idea as stated in th article was that the low levels of plutonium created would allow the US to skirt the NPT -- which otherwise might prohibit private development -- a political consideration.

Thorium has a lot of vocal proponents.
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