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THE Thorium Thread (merged)

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby Synapsid » Wed 04 Sep 2013, 16:04:09

Thorium reactors have a lot going for them, from what I've read. They shouldn't be presented as doing away with the chance of proliferation, though.
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Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby rollin » Thu 05 Sep 2013, 09:39:50

Tried the posted URL and got a virus attack. My anti-virus program refused to open the site.

I can see it now, a decade or two in the future, city lights still burning as they slowly starve because the farms and food transport are collapsing as petroleum collapses. We have to power our farms and transport before we power the cities. The cities are completely dependent upon external food sources. Otherwise, what is the point?
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Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby SteveO » Thu 05 Sep 2013, 11:09:54

a decade or two in the future, city lights still burning as they slowly starve because the farms and food transport are collapsing as petroleum collapses.


Ideally, we would use the power generated by Thorium to electrify the rail system and use that to cover the majority of the distance between field and city with battery powered trucks to cover the first and last few miles. Unfortunately, we are squandering the capital and fuel needed to implement this by struggling to continue business as usual.
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Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby rollin » Thu 05 Sep 2013, 15:50:38

SteveO wrote:
Ideally, we would use the power generated by Thorium to electrify the rail system and use that to cover the majority of the distance between field and city with battery powered trucks to cover the first and last few miles. Unfortunately, we are squandering the capital and fuel needed to implement this by struggling to continue business as usual.


I see where your going with this Steve and I agree in a perfect world all the subsystems would come on line to make things work with the conversion to electricity. I am sure that given enough capital and time most of the details could be worked out. Problem is that we can't even pursue a lot of our fairly simple projects, let alone massive ones. Some real changes in focus will have to be made, we might even have to give up war to afford the changes.

I do like the idea of a more localized grid system.
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Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby SteveO » Thu 05 Sep 2013, 16:37:01

we might even have to give up war to afford the changes.


That's the rub. We'll spend a trillion dollars on a war without having a serious debate, but when it comes to something that could assure our children's future...

Anyway, it looks like I'm preaching the choir. I'll shut up now.
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Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby Shaved Monkey » Thu 05 Sep 2013, 18:24:47

The Australian Conservatives aren't mentioning peak oil so as not to spook the shopping addicted sheeple but at least behind closed doors they are looking at thorium and alternative fuels for transport.
BAU is more important than Climate Change but what do you expect.
Mixed messages when all talk is of spending money on road infrastructure and crippling wind and solar.
I didnt expect miracles.
The Coalition on Thursday unveiled its new energy and resources document, which focuses almost entirely on fossil fuel developments, promising to restore coal-fired power stations to profitability, boost exploration for oil and gas, and to produce another “white paper” on energy.

Other proposals in the document prepared by opposition energy spokesman Ian Macfarlane include an investigation into the use of thorium as a potential energy source of the future, and support mechanisms for the use of LNG as a transport fuel.
Thorium, Australia possesses an estimated 18.7% (489,000t) of the world’s identified resources.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/s ... ssil-fuels
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Re: A Small Mod Thorium Reactor Design

Unread postby Rune » Fri 06 Sep 2013, 17:13:51

Obama Could Kill Fossil Fuels Overnight

I should have used this link in the OP instead of the Popsci link. Much better article.

"Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said.

Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium.

After the Manhattan Project, US physicists in the late 1940s were tempted by thorium for use in civil reactors. It has a higher neutron yield per neutron absorbed. It does not require isotope separation, a big cost saving. But by then America needed the plutonium residue from uranium to build bombs.

"They were really going after the weapons," said Professor Egil Lillestol, a world authority on the thorium fuel-cycle at CERN. "It is almost impossible make nuclear weapons out of thorium because it is too difficult to handle. It wouldn’t be worth trying." It emits too many high gamma rays.

You might have thought that thorium reactors were the answer to every dream but when CERN went to the European Commission for development funds in 1999-2000, they were rebuffed.
Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French because the French dominate the EU’s nuclear industry.

"They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology," he said.
Another decade was lost. It was a sad triumph of vested interests over scientific progress. "We have very little time to waste because the world is running out of fossil fuels. Renewables can’t replace them. Nuclear fusion is not going work for a century, if ever," he said.

The Norwegian group Aker Solutions has bought Dr Rubbia’s patent for an accelerator-driven sub-critical reactor, and is working on his design for a thorium version at its UK operation.

Victoria Ashley, the project manager, said it could lead to a network of pint-sized 600MW reactors that are lodged underground, can supply small grids, and do not require a safety citadel. It will take £2bn to build the first one, and Aker needs £100mn for the next test phase.

The UK has shown little appetite for what it regards as a "huge paradigm shift to a new technology". Too much work and sunk cost has already gone into the next generation of reactors, which have another 60 years of life.
So Aker is looking for tie-ups with countries such as the US, Russia, or China. The Indians have their own projects - none yet built - dating from days when they switched to thorium because their weapons programme prompted a uranium ban.
America should have fewer inhibitions than Europe in creating a leapfrog technology. The US allowed its nuclear industry to stagnate after Three Mile Island in 1979.

Anti-nuclear neorosis is at last ebbing. The White House has approved $8bn in loan guarantees for new reactors, yet America has been strangely passive. Where is the superb confidence that put a man on the moon?
A few US pioneers are exploring a truly radical shift to a liquid fuel based on molten-fluoride salts, an idea once pursued by US physicist Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee in the 1960s. The original documents were retrieved by Mr Sorensen.

Moving away from solid fuel may overcome some of thorium’s "idiosyncracies". "You have to use the right machine. You don’t use diesel in a petrol car: you build a diesel engine," said Mr Sorensen.

Thorium-fluoride reactors can operate at atmospheric temperature. "The plants would be much smaller and less expensive. You wouldn’t need those huge containment domes because there’s no pressurized water in the reactor. It’s close-fitting," he said.

Nuclear power could become routine and unthreatening. But first there is the barrier of establishment prejudice.
When Hungarian scientists led by Leo Szilard tried to alert Washington in late 1939 that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, they were brushed off with disbelief. Albert Einstein interceded through the Belgian queen mother, eventually getting a personal envoy into the Oval Office.

Roosevelt initially fobbed him off. He listened more closely at a second meeting over breakfast the next day, then made up his mind within minutes. "This needs action," he told his military aide. It was the birth of the Manhattan Project. As a result, the US had an atomic weapon early enough to deter Stalin from going too far in Europe.

The global energy crunch needs equal "action". If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke: if not, it is a boost for US science and surely a more fruitful way to pull the US out of perma-slump than scattershot stimulus.

Even better, team up with China and do it together, for all our sakes.

 
There's plenty of time to implement this - just one thing out of a list of good alternatives to fossil fuels
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CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby Rune » Sat 26 Oct 2013, 21:21:29

CERN Hosts Thorium Technologies Conference

CERN is to host the Thorium Energy Conference ThEC13 on 27-31 October, 2013. The Conference will address the scientific and technical advances offered by thorium in alternative nuclear technologies for energy production and for the destruction of nuclear waste. ThEC13 is organized by iThEC2 (international Thorium Energy Committee, Geneva) and IThEO3 (International Thorium Energy Organization, Stockholm).

Thorium is a silvery white metal four times more abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust. Its potential as nuclear fuel also offers an alternative for safer and cleaner nuclear energy production, reducing the volume and lifetime of existing nuclear waste.

Several nations have therefore embarked on ambitious plans aimed at the development of a new generation of nuclear power plants based on thorium instead of uranium, which could offer unmatched level of safety up to now. This technology would also allow for reducing present and future nuclear waste and is attractive in terms of non-proliferation and CO2 emissions.

“Energy is a major concern for society and I’m sure that this conference will show once again how fundamental research can help to address such an important challenge” said Rolf Heuer, CERN Director-General.

China and India are actively supporting several initiatives in this direction with important resources, and the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Norway are also evaluating this technology. The ThEC13 conference will be attended by scientists of 32 countries including all the major actors, to discuss the status of the field and define common project in a spirit of international cooperation.

"Thorium offers a route to safe, clean nuclear energy," said Jean-Pierre Revol, President of iThEC, "The number of renowned scientists coming to ThEC13 gives a clear signal that a truly international cooperation is forming to herald a new era in nuclear energy, with clear benefits for the world."

During the 1990s, CERN has been pioneering thorium technologies research with experiments instigated by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia, testing the basic concepts of a thorium-fuelled reactor driven by a proton accelerator.


Since many nations have independent research organizations pursuing energy from Thorium, there might as well be a thread for it. It looks like there probably will be news emerging on the subject pretty regularly.

The Chinese, of course, have the best political atmosphere for researching and developing Liquid Flourid Thorium Reactors. They announced a $350 million R&D program earlier this year. They want to be world leaders in the technology by the early 2030s.

India too.

India Is About To Start building Its Thorium-Fuelled Nuclear Powerplant
The thorium dream is an alluring one, as any member of its devoted band of disciples will tell you. The jury is still out as to whether this beloved alternative brand of nuclear power is feasible, though thorium is more abundant and less radioactive than uranium, and its advocates argue that thorium plants are much safer than conventional nuke plants.

Hope so; it looks like the world’s about to get a real-live thorium test run in India.

The Deccan Times reports: “Over the next five years, India plans to start building a safe nuclear reactor that can be installed in the heart of Delhi or Mumbai without posing danger to people and environment. The 300-MWe advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR), whose construction will start in the 12th plan period, would be so safe that it can be erected in the heart of any city, said S A Bhardwaj, director, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd.”

Construction on the actual thorium reactors will commence in 2016.

Norway Begins Four-Year Test Of Thorium Nuclear Reactor
But is thorium really cheaper, cleaner and more efficient than uranium? And if so, do the added benefits really warrant the cost and effort to make the switch? Data is still pretty scarce, but at least one report is urging us to not believe the hype.

Through their National Nuclear Laboratory the UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change released a report in September that stated: “thorium has theoretical advantages regarding sustainability, reducing radiotoxicity and reducing proliferation risk. While there is some justification for these benefits, they are often overstated.” The report goes on to acknowledge that worldwide interest in thorium is likely to remain high and they recommend that the UK maintain a “low level” of research and development into thorium fuel.

The place where thorium is proven either way could be China. The country is serious about weaning itself off of fossil fuels and making nuclear power their primary energy source. Fourteen nuclear power reactors are in operation in China today, another 25 under construction, and there are plans to build more. And in 2011 they announced plans to build a thorium, molten salt reactor. So whether it be Norway, the UK, China, or some other forward-thinking countries, we’ll soon find out if thorium reactors are better than uranium ones, at which point more countries may want to join the thorium chain reaction.


The nuclear political atmosphere in the United States is poisoned for anything nuclear. But activists for thorium nuclear energy are vocal. Probably Kirk Sorenson of Flibe Energy is the best known.

Dr. Jamse Hansen of NASA recommended Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors and Integrated Fast Reactors to the Obama Administration as the best means to combat global warming while reducing (if not eliminating) proliferation risk.

This nuclear energy could burn up 99% of the existing stockpiles of radioactive spent materials. Nuclear waste from Thorium would need to be stored for only about 300 years.

NPR: Pro and Con - Is Thorium A Magic Bullet For Our Times?

No doubt, we will be hearing more news about the use of Thorium. So any decent news I find will go here in this thread.
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Re: CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby diemos » Sun 27 Oct 2013, 10:56:53

But why do we need thorium with all of it's icky nuclear waste is we already have LENR?

You haven't lost faith with LENR already have you?
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Re: CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby dissident » Sun 27 Oct 2013, 11:43:30

diemos wrote:But why do we need thorium with all of it's icky nuclear waste is we already have LENR?

You haven't lost faith with LENR already have you?


What?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

According to some toxicity studies,[14] the thorium cycle can fully recycle actinide wastes and only emit fission product wastes, and after a few hundred years, the waste from a thorium reactor can be less toxic than the uranium ore that would have been used to produce low enriched uranium fuel for a light water reactor of the same power. Other studies assume some actinide losses and find that actinide wastes dominate thorium cycle waste radioactivity at some future periods.[15]


Reference 15 is not as ominous as implied in the text above.

Screw the planet with fossil fuels or have some waste that disappears on the timescale of 300 years. That is the choice for humanity. At the rate that wind and solar are being deployed we are guaranteed to be screwed. The current growth rate in alternative "clean" energy is down to 35% from the often cited 50% and the rate is falling as subsidies are reduced. Considering the tiny fraction of the global energy that is provided by alternatives this is really bad news. Time to get over the nuclear phobia stoked by special interest groups and assorted sensationalists.
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Re: CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby Rune » Sun 27 Oct 2013, 13:52:22

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152026805 ... y-problems

The two authors interviewed here are both worth reading for those who are actually interested in clean energy.

It seems clear that both approaches to solving the dirty fossil fuels problem can be and will be taken.And both approaches ARE being pursued all over the world.

The problems associated with nuclear energy do not disappear with the use of thorium. There are definitely technical challenges to overcome, but these are not brick walls.

It seems kind of silly to me that people will go on and on about how we are going to fry ourselves with CO2 emissions and then complain about the relatively modest risks that nuclear energy entails.

In the meantime, we are still waiting for the peak of oil production.
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Re: CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby Rune » Sun 27 Oct 2013, 14:36:24

The CERN Thorium Conference doesn't seem ke some sort of light-weight run-of-the-mill get together. Here's the program minus all the coffee breaks and lunch breaks. It looks like a serious conference.

Program

Monday, 2013-10-28

09:00 - 09:15 Welcome
09:15 - 09:45 Introduction to ThEC13 by representative of iThEC (Claude Haegi, Former President of Geneva Government)
09:45 - 10:20 A Future for Thorium Power? (Carlo Rubbia, IASS, Potsdam, Germany, GSSI, L'Aquila, Italy)

Session 1

National & International Thorium Programs

11:00 - 11:30 Towards Sustainable, Secure and Safe Energy Future: Leveraging Opportunities with Thorium (Anil Kakodkar, India)
11:30 - 12:00 Thorium Energy R&D in China (Hongjie Xu, SINAP, China)
12:00 - 12:30 The Japanese Thorium Programme (Toshinobu Sasa, JAEA, Japan)
12:30 - 13:00 Thorium Fuel Cycle activities in IAEA (Uddharan Basak, IAEA)
13:00 - 13:30 Overview of European Thorium Research Activities (Didier Haas, Belgium)

Session 2

National & International Thorium Programs (Cont.)

15:00 - 15:30 Overview of the Thorium Programme in India (Pallippattu KKrishnan Vijayan, BARC, India)
15:30 - 16:00 The UK's Strategy on Thorium Nuclear Technologies (Robert Arnold, Department of Energy and Climate Change, London, UK)
16:00 - 16:30 The Feasibility and Desirability of Employing Thorium Fuel Cycle for Power Generation (Bal Raj Sehgal, Nuclear Power Safety, Sweden)
16:30 - 17:00 MYRRHA: A Flexible and Fast Spectrum Irradiation Facility (Hamid Ait Abderahim, SCK-CEN Mol, Belgium)

Session 3

Innovative Thorium- Reactor Concepts (incl. Industrial Programmes)

17:30 - 18:00 The Thorium Cycle: Past Achievements & Future Prospects (Dominique Grenèche, ex-CEA, France)
18:00 - 18:30 Thorium Molten Salts, Theory and Practice (Paul Madden, Queen's College, UK)
18:30 - 19:00 Flibe Energy LFTR Development Strategy (Kirk Sorensen, Flibe Energy, USA)

Tuesday

Session 4

Innovative Thorium- Reactor Concepts (incl. Industrial Programmes) (Cont.)

08:30 - 09:00 And Industrial View on Thoirum: Possibilities, Challenges and Paths Forward (Luc Van Der Durpel, AREVA, France)
09:00 - 09:30 Global and Turkish perspectives of Thorium fuel for nuclear energy (Muammer Kaya) (Osmangazi University, Turkey)
09:30 - 10:00 Opportunities and Challenges for Thorium in Commercial MSRs (Tony Donaldson and Joel Turner, Rolls-Royce, UK)
10:00 - 10:30 Current Czech R&D in Thorium MSR Technology and Future Directions (Jan Uhlir, Research Center Rez, Czech Republic)

Session 5

Innovative Thorium- Reactor Concepts (incl. Industrial Programmes) (Cont)

11:15 - 11:45 Thorium Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation (Hans Blix, ex Director General of IAEA, Sweden)
11:45 - 12:15 The Road to Enablement for a Liquid-Fuel Reactor Fuelled by Thorium (Laurence O'Hagan, Weinberg Foundation)
12:15 - 12:45 Thorium in LWR:s First Results from Ongoing Irradiation Campaign in the Halden Reactor (Øystein Asphjell, SCATEC, Oslo, Norway)

Session 6

Thorium- Fuel Cycle - Transmutation

14:30 - 15:00 Utilization Potential of Thorium in CANDU Reactors and in Fusion-Fission (Hybrid) Reactors (Sümer Sahin, Atılım University, Turkey)
15:00 - 15:30 Introducing the thorium fuel cycle (Daniel P. Mathers NNL, UK)
15:30 - 16:00 Recycling Challenges of thorium-based fuels (Piaray Kishen Wattal, BARC, India)
16:00 - 16:30 Aqueous and Pyro-reprocessing (Sylvie Delpech, CEA, France)
16:30 - 17:00 PSI Studies on Advanced fuel cycle options for Fast/Therman MSR Utilizing Thorium (Jiri Krepel, PSI, Switzerland)

Session 7

Thorium- Fuel Cycle - Transmutation

17:30 - 18:00 Nuclear Data Development Related to Th-U Fuel Cycle in China (Haicheng Wu, CIAE, China)

Conference banquet talk delivered by M. Pascal Couchepin
Former President of the Swizz Confederation

Wednesday

Session 8

Thorium- Reactor Physics

08:30 - 09:00 Nuclear Data Development Related to Th-U Fuel Cycle in India (Srinivasan Ganessan, BARC, India)
09:00 - 09:30 Nuclear Data for the Thorium fuel Cycle and Transmutation (F. Gunsing, CEA, France)
09:30 - 10:00 Fast Reactor Physics (K. Mikityuk, PSI, Switzerland)
10:00 - 10:30 Introduction to the Physics of Thorium Molten Salt Fast Reactors (Elsa Merle-Lucotte, IN2P3 CNRS, Grenoble, France)

Session 9

Accelerator- Driven Systems

11:00 - 11:30 ADS Physics and Motivations (J.P. Revol, iThEC/CERN, Geneva)
11:30 - 12:00 Review of Accelerators for ADS (A.C. Muller, CNRS-IN2P3, France)
12:00 - 12:30 Cyclotrons for ADS (P. Mandrillon, AIMA, FR)
12:30 - 13:00 Euratom MAX Program: the MYRRHA Accelerator Experiment (Frederic Bouly, LPSL Grenoble, France)
13:00 - 13:30 Accelerator development for ADSR (Roger Barlow, Huddersfield University, UK)

Session 10

Accelerator- Driven Systems

14:45 - 15:05 Spallation Target Developments (Michael Wohlmuther, PSI, Switzerland)
15:05 - 15:30 MEGAPIE: the world's first high-power liquid metal spallation neurton source (Christian Latgé, CEA, France)
15:30 - 16:00 Thorium Target Design for Accelerator Driven-Molten Salt Reactors (Laszlo Sajo'Bohus, Universidad Simon Bolivar, Venezuela)
16:00 - 16:30 Virginia ADS Consortium (Ganapati Myneni, Virginia Tech, USA)

Session 11

Accelerator- Driven Systems

17:30 - 18:00 KURRI Thorium-loaded ADS Experiment (Cheolho PYEON) (Kyoto, Japan)
18:00 - 18:30 A Status and Prospect of Korea ADS (Jong-Seo Chai, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea)

Thursday

Session 12

Accelerator- Driven Systems

08:30 - 09:00 The Troisk ADS Project (Stanislav F. Sidorkin, INR-Troisk, Russia)
09:00 - 09:30 China ADS project (Lei Yang, IMP CAS, China)
09:30 - 10:00 Accelerator Driven Systems for Thorium Utilization in India (S. B. Degweker, BARC, India)
10:00 - 10:30 The iThEC Strategy (Y. Kadi, iThEC/CERN, Geneva, Switzerland)

Session 13

Round Table Discussion

11:00 - 13:00 Introduction: 7 times 5 minute presentations by session chairs:
– National & International Thorium Programmes (Session 1 and 2; Anil Kakodkar, Alex Mueller)
– Innovative Thorium Reactor Concepts (Sessions 3, 4, 5; Egil Lillestol, Sylvie Delpech)
- Thorium-Fuel Cycle and Transmutation (Sessions 6 and 7)
– Thorium-Reactor Physics (Session 8; Robert Cywinski)
– Accelerator-Driven Systems: The accelerator (Session 9; Mike Seidel)
– Accelerator-Driven Systems: the spallation target (Session 10; Yacine Kadi)
- Accelerator-Driven Systems: National projects (Session 11 and 12; Andreas Pautz, Karel Samec)

Discussion: Critical vs subcritical systems for thorium - relative merits; next steps in thorium technology developments; international collaboration framework

12:30 - 13:00 Conference Summary and a Look into the Future of Thorium Technologies (Jean-Pierre Revol, iThEC, Geneva, Switzerland)
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Re: CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby rollin » Mon 28 Oct 2013, 06:42:10

The potential reduction of current radioactive "waste" products is the most attractive benefit of the thorium cycle. This would be a world changer if it can be made practical.
It also appears to be necessary to bring on additional electric power sources to assist in the transistion away from fossil fuels.
If PV advances at 30 percent gain per year for the next 20 years, it will reach peak power equivalent to current world power production. It's average power output would be about 2/3 of current world electric use. Even with improved efficiency in panels and end use, that will not be enough. Developing countries want electric power and since a large portion of the energy from fossil fuels will be substituted by electricity, other sources will need to be brought on line, at least until solar, wind, and ocean electric power grows fully. Thorium reactors look like a likely candidate for this additional transistion power.
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Re: CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby kublikhan » Mon 28 Oct 2013, 11:43:21

dissident wrote:The current growth rate in alternative "clean" energy is down to 35% from the often cited 50% and the rate is falling as subsidies are reduced. Considering the tiny fraction of the global energy that is provided by alternatives this is really bad news.
According to the IEA, Renewable energy is the fastest growing power sector and will pass natural gas by 2016.

Renewable energy is growing fast around the world and will edge out natural gas as the second biggest source of electricity, after coal, by 2016, according to a five-year outlook published Wednesday by the International Energy Agency.

Developing countries are building more wind, solar and hydro-electric power plants to meet rising power demand and combat local pollution problems. And the costs of renewables are falling below the cost of traditional power sources such as coal, natural gas and oil in some markets with high-priced power.

Renewable power, including hydropower, is the fastest-growing power generation sector and it is expected to increase by 40 percent in the next five years. By 2018 it will make up a quarter of the world's energy mix. "The rapid growth of renewables continues to beat expectations and is a bright spot in an otherwise bleak assessment of global progress toward a cleaner and more diversified energy mix," the report concludes.

The IEA estimates that worldwide subsides for fossil fuels are six times higher than incentives for renewables.
Renewable Energy Growth Is Rising Around The World, IEA Says

rollin wrote:The potential reduction of current radioactive "waste" products is the most attractive benefit of the thorium cycle. This would be a world changer if it can be made practical.
It also appears to be necessary to bring on additional electric power sources to assist in the transistion away from fossil fuels.
If PV advances at 30 percent gain per year for the next 20 years, it will reach peak power equivalent to current world power production. It's average power output would be about 2/3 of current world electric use. Even with improved efficiency in panels and end use, that will not be enough. Developing countries want electric power and since a large portion of the energy from fossil fuels will be substituted by electricity, other sources will need to be brought on line, at least until solar, wind, and ocean electric power grows fully. Thorium reactors look like a likely candidate for this additional transistion power.
Thorium is an even more nascent technology than PV is. It cannot replace current power needs within the next 20 years. There still needs to be much groundwork done to get a thorium power industry up and running at the commercial level. Thorium might have many advantages over Uranium, but unfortunately Uranium has first mover advantage and an entire industry built around it already. It is going to take a lot of money and effort for Thorium to even catch up to Uranium, let along replace fossil fuels. Current enthusiasm for Thorium seems tepid. certainly nothing like the Messmer Plan.

The French prime minister, Pierre Messmer, outlined the pro-nuclear case in a speech on national television on March 6, 1974: 'France has not been favored by nature in energy resources. There is almost no petrol on our territory, we have less coal than England and Germany and much less gas than Holland ... our great chance is electrical energy of nuclear origin because we have had good experience with it since the end of World War II ... In this effort that we will make to acquire a certain independence, or at least reduced dependence in energy, we will give priority to electricity and in electricity to nuclear electricity.' The Messmer Plan, as it became known, involved a huge and sudden swing toward nuclear dependence, foreseeing the launch of 13 nuclear power plants, each with a capacity of 1,000MW, within two years.

The Messmer plan succeeded in turning France into a nuclear-powered country. In the six years to 1979, nuclear energy's share of EDF's total output rose from 8 percent to 20 percent. By 1983 it had jumped to 49 percent, and by 1990 nuclear plants were providing 75 percent of EDF's electricity. By contrast, the share produced by stations burning oil or coal fell from 53 percent in 1973 to 24 percent in 1983, and down to just 11 percent in 1990.
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Re: CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby Rune » Sat 02 Nov 2013, 13:27:20

BBC

Nuclear scientists are being urged by the former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix to develop thorium as a new fuel.

Mr Blix says that the radioactive element may prove much safer in reactors than uranium.

It is also more difficult to use thorium for the production of nuclear weapons.

His comments will add to growing levels of interest in thorium, but critics warn that developing new reactors could waste public funds.

Mr Blix, the former Swedish foreign minister, told BBC News: "I’m a lawyer not a scientist but in my opinion we should be trying our best to develop the use of thorium. I realise there are many obstacles to be overcome but the benefits would be great.

"I am told that thorium will be safer in reactors - and it is almost impossible to make a bomb out of thorium. These are very major factors as the world looks for future energy supplies."

Hans Blix says the world should try its best to develop thorium

His enthusiasm is shared by some in the British nuclear establishment. Scientists at the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) have been encouraged by the government to help research on an Indian thorium-based reactor, and on a test programme in Norway.

China is going for a revolutionary approach, devising a next-generation reactor which its supporters say will enable thorium to be used much more safely than uranium.

When a uranium reactor overheats and the fuel rods can’t contain the chain reaction, as happened at Fukushima, the crisis continues. If something happened to a thorium reactor, technicians could simply switch off the stimulus which comes from uranium or plutonium in a small feeder plant and the thorium reaction would halt itself.

Prof Carlo Rubbia from Cern previously told BBC News: "Thorium will be able to shut itself off without any human intervention... You just switch off the beam.”

"There are also no long-lived waste products... We estimate that after something like 400-500 years all the radioactivity will be dissipated away."

These advantages, if they were realised, would be huge. But thorium still has many technical problems to overcome. What is more, countless billions have been ploughed into uranium-based research and development, and in the words of Mr Blix, uranium has a very deep furrow, backed by vested interests.
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Re: CERN Hosts Thorium Nuclear Technology Conference

Unread postby Rune » Sat 02 Nov 2013, 15:22:50

My Radical Plan for Small Nuclear Fission Reactors – Taylor Wilson

He is known as The Boy Who Played with Fusion and Forbes questioned Is This the Bill Gates of Energy?

Excited, he described it as a big announcement, although it might be a little bit of a surprise to those who knows his background.

His molten-salt reactor is designed to have specific parameters. It is small enough to be produced in a factory and transported to installation site. When it is fueled and sealed it runs for 30 years without refilling fuel. Its high temperature makes it possible to increase the efficiency to 45-50%.

Earlier we wrote that he has taken the step from fusion to fission. Next, he might reveal the potential of adding some thorium! Indeed, “Inside this reactor is a molten-salt, so anybody who is a fan of thorium will be really excited about this… because these reactors happen to be really good at breeding and burning the Thorium fuel cycle” Taylor explained.

He graduates high school in May and decided he was going to commercialize these technologies he has developed. He has since developed a team with some of the most incredible people he has ever had the chance to work with and he is really prepared to make this a reality.

Oh, and a final point, he aims for the same price as gas or cheaper![/quote]

Is This the Bill Gates of Energy?

Taylor Wilson, an 18-year-old nuclear energy entrepreneur. A Nevada-based scientific prodigy who built a nuclear fusion reactor in his parents’ garage at the age of 14, Wilson held court on the fringes of the conference, confidently dispensing wisdom on everything from nuclear terrorism to the future of the world energy industry. Named the Intel Young Scientist of the Year in 2011 and the recipient of a $100,000 fellowship funded by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, he already has a lot to be confident about and sports an extremely-young-man-in-a-hurry manner that reminds some of the early Bill Gates.

A strong proponent of nuclear power, he is unfazed by last year’s meltdown at Fukushima that has proven so costly for the Japanese power industry. He points out that the Fukushima disaster resulted from a particularly unlucky concatenation of circumstances. “The Fukushima reactors were forty years old, and built to an early GE design that was one of the worst outside Russia,” he says. “Even so, these reactors actually withstood one of the biggest earthquakes in history. What caused the disaster was the tsunami which shut down their back-up power system. I am not a fan of old reactors but new ones can be built that have no meltdown risk.”

Wilson is betting that so-called fracking, the supposed wonder technology that is being touted as a  new lease on life for fossil fuels, will have  burnt itself out by the 2030s. Thereafter we are back to square one and that, in Wilson’s terms, means nuclear. He thinks that in the long run – say, after 2050 – new nuclear fusion technologies currently in the early stages of development will transform the world energy industry. In the meantime he is touting a  genre known as small modular fission reactors. So small that they can be built in factories rather than on-site, they will be dispatched by train or even truck to their final destination. Wilson is developing a new version that will not need refueling – an advantage that will help minimize safety risks. They will be installed underground and will run for about 20 years before being shut down and sealed up. He is seeking about $20 million in venture capital to push the idea forward.

In the meantime the possibilities of small modular reactors have not gone unnoticed elsewhere. Among major corporations developing similar concepts are not least Tokyo-based Toshiba (in partnership the Westinghouse nuclear business which it now owns), Babcock & Wilcox, General Electric, and Fluor Corporation’s NuScale subsidiary.


Brains!
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Re: THE Nuclear Power Thread pt 6 (merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Sun 03 Nov 2013, 10:37:32

The Future is now (I hope)!

http://youtu.be/uK367T7h6ZY
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: THE Nuclear Power Thread pt 6 (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sun 03 Nov 2013, 17:00:59

If you want to use Thorium as a fuel just duplicate the Shippingport experiment http://atomicinsights.com/light-water-b ... en-system/

http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublication ... 664750.pdf

You don't need a new untried design, we already have proof this one works and you can use it with existing systems instead of building all new ones.
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Re: THE Thorium Thread (merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 05 Nov 2013, 16:52:37

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnjYe1ve560
Baroness Bryony Worthington is a patron of the Weinberg Foundation, is an officer of the Thorium all-party parliamentary group in UK House of Lords.

Bryony Worthington encourages thorium proponents to work with existing environmental organizations, emphasizing the need for renewable energy until LFTR is ready for deployment.


Short but sweet, the LFTR is getting some serious political support.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: THE Thorium Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Wed 06 Nov 2013, 19:38:22

Heck when I was growing my High School library touted that anti-nuclear propaganda book We Almost Lost Detroit as being fair and accurate. For the most part things are not that bad any longer, the internet has made I easy for people to learn stuff the schools never told us in the pre computer era.

Just ask yourself this one question anti nuclear activists, how much worse would global warming be today if the USA had not been getting 20% of its electricity from nuclear fission for the last 30+ years? For almost all of that time col would have been the fuel of choice. Would we have 444 ppm of CO2 today if not for nuclear? Or maybe even higher?

Think about that the next time a global warming advocate gets up in your face about the horror of nuclear power.
II Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
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