Thorium: the future of nuclear power?

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moinsdewatt
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by moinsdewatt » 18/06/18, 19:39

The ThorCon company in the USA claims to want to make Thorium reactors:

Indonesia and ThorCon continue working towards thorium reactor

brian wang | June 14, 2018

Image

.............

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/06/i ... actor.html


The thorium reactor project on the ThorCon site: http://thorconpower.com/design
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by izentrop » 18/06/18, 20:25

It's been a while
ThorCon is designed by Martingale in the United States, while targeting early installations in forward-looking countries that support technologically neutral nuclear regulation and see the benefits of the test-based licensing process. ThorCon opens up the possibility of an almost unlimited, low cost, reliable, and carbon-free power supply by 2020. https://fissionliquide.fr/2015/01/07/ma ... -en-masse/
At home, no future, our dear Minister of ecological and solidarity transition said niet to experimentation https://fissionliquide.fr/2018/04/14/qu ... las-hulot/
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by izentrop » 22/07/18, 22:49

Thorium, the point on the part of myth and reality https://actualite.housseniawriting.com/ ... ium/23318/
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by sen-no-sen » 22/07/18, 23:20

A different story than Arte's pro-nuclear documentary ... 8)
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by izentrop » 22/07/18, 23:41

It is not anti-nuclear either, on the other hand, it also contradicts what the CNRS team says about the possibility of making a nuclear weapon with U 233.

This is amazing : Shock:
: the thorium energy would be so interesting that it would surpass nuclear fusion (the latter really keeps all its promises on the other hand). We used information from the Whatisnuclear website whose authors are mainly nuclear engineers and physicists to clarify the myths around thorium.
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by moinsdewatt » 23/07/18, 08:14

It's so amazing that it's bullshit.
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by izentrop » 23/07/18, 08:32

moinsdewatt wrote:It's so amazing that it's bullshit.
La sentence 8) It would be nice to develop.

2 technologies are experimental, we do not know which will come first ... or not.
The document is well sourced https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html (2014)

Interesting comments. This person seems well documented:
Fano 27 August 2017 to 11 h 17 min
Finally a well-researched article on thorium. In addition it gives me hope that in Europe, in 20 years, we will manufacture reactors with molten salts of thorium and we will not be dependent on China. It should be emphasized that molten salt reactors (fluoride and non-sodium fast breeder reactors) are temperature-stable whether they use thorium or uranium or, more likely, both, generation IV reactors. To my knowledge thorium stocks are today on all shelves in the world because it is a byproduct of rare earths, so no extraction problem. In my opinion the big interest of thorium is the absence of long-lived waste and on the contrary initially it can be used to "burn" the stocks of plutonium by giving a minimum of transuranic waste. Safety is linked to the technology of molten salt reactors. As stated in the article, this technology requires alloys resistant to corrosion at high temperature and therefore the need to use nickel and / or nickel alloys. It is perhaps this point that slows the development of this technology in China. Let's take advantage of this advantage!

For the possibility of making a nuclear weapon, I had read somewhere that the presence of U 232 made it difficult, so no CNRS did not lie and it is a pity that the European project is a little neglected at benefit of the Chinese.

Recent news:
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by Bardal » 23/07/18, 10:47

"Thorium, the point on the share of myth and reality https://actualite.housseniawriting.com/ ... ium / 23318 / "


Yes, bullshit, or more simply infantile naivety ... There is "myth" only for this person "chemist by training" employed in packaging and converted into a popular science officer ...

This text is astounding in its naivety as a child discovering the absence of Santa Claus; what did she think, at last, this young chemist, of this history of thorium? That it was enough to strike in his hands to magically solve all the problems?

We come out of this reading with the strange feeling of an analysis based on texts that are obviously not mastered, misunderstood, with translation errors showing not only a poor command of the language but above all a lack of understanding of the physical concepts used. What is most striking is the strange astonishment of the author to discover the limits of his own beliefs, based on the same ignorance.

It emerges from all this that the "myths" denounced are not errors but simply exaggerations, or bad interpretations, or qualities shared by other sectors; in short, nothing that is a matter of scandal or renunciation.

In short, things that will astonish only those who draw their scientific culture only in reading the covers of France-Soir or Paris-Match; so:

- yes, it is theoretically possible to bomb the Ur233, the problem is that the military grade Ur233 is much harder to produce than Ur235 or military grade Plutonium; if what this lady tells was true, all the A bombs would be at the Ur233, but there is none ... No one has ever said the opposite.

- yes, the Thorium-molten salts chain produces a few transuranics, but 1000 to 10000 times less than the current methods, which is not nothing ... In addition, it is capable of "incinerating" most of the transuranics currently produced, which, again, is not nothing. No one has ever said anything else.

- yes, you need a "detonator" of fissile products to start a TMSR, but it is only Pu or Ur235 for the 1st reactor, and in very small quantities after 30 years, there is none left much. No one has ever said the opposite.

-yes, Thorium in the earth's crust is 3 or 4 times more abundant than Ur; in seawater, it is something else, but for the moment, uranium extracted from seawater, it is anecdotal. 3 or 4 times more, used at 100%, compared to a "fuel" of which we use at best 3%, it's still not so bad. As for the "liquid metal fast reactor" (I suppose it is a liquid sodium cooled fast neutron reactor, a route chosen by the CEA), it will be necessary to explain in a more convincing way its intrinsically safe operation. .

- on the other hand, coming to affirm that the Thorium sector "would surpass nuclear fusion" makes absolutely no sense today: we are very far from mastering nuclear fusion, we do not even have an approximate date for this deadline; such a statement is childish. Undoubtedly another statement misunderstood by this neophyte ...


Bad, a very bad article, well representative of the nonsense and nonsense currently circulating on nuclear energy; but it is true that at this moment, all French a little green feels able to explain just about everything in this area to atomic engineers who design and operate nuclear power plants ... Here, we have only one confused reinterpretation, and sometimes funny, of what a journalist of the Franco-French controversy between the uranium and thorium filiary sector (to roughly map between the official thesis of the CEA and some CNRS theses) has heard; the documents cited some posts above (see the link https://fissionliquide.fr/tag/msfr/ in particular) are otherwise more informative and rewarding.
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by sen-no-sen » 23/07/18, 14:11

bardal wrote:Yes, bullshit, or more simply infantile naivety ... There is "myth" only for this person "chemist by training" employed in packaging and converted into a popular science officer ...


And yet our nuclear engineers seem to share the same points of view ...

- on the other hand, coming to affirm that the Thorium sector "would surpass nuclear fusion" makes absolutely no sense today: we are very far from mastering nuclear fusion, we do not even have an approximate date for this deadline; such a statement is childish. Undoubtedly another statement misunderstood by this neophyte ...


We can already invalidate this statement, because even if we do not master the thermonuclear fusion for the production of industrially exploitable energy, we understand relatively well the physics that has underpinned, and the finding is without appeal, the fusion reaction is significantly more energetic than fission.
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by Bardal » 23/07/18, 16:13

Is that so ? Which engineers and where? It seems to me especially that this text without much coherence is alluding to real debates at the atomistic engineers and the researchers, but that these debates were misunderstood and completely distorted in forms hardly comprehensible by the readers.
We do not allow ourselves to comment on reasoning that we do not master, and even less to make it a "popularization" towards the general public.

It is also visible at every turn in the text, sometimes as if we had made cuts, at certain other times with obvious contradictions ("this myth is ultimately not a myth"), still others with elisions that make the reasoning incomprehensible ...

In fact, this article only makes sense for those who are already familiar with the issue of the sectorUr-sectorTh conflict in France, which is fairly well recalled by the videos cited on page 23 of this thread, and which can be summed up from the the following way: the CEA bet everything on the Ur breeder sector, counting on the enormous stocks of uranium 238 and on the plutonium in reserve, which led to Phénix, SuperPhénix and Astrid (and to the use of sodium as a coolant). ); opposite, various researchers and engineers, minority although some belonging to the CNRS, rather offer a thorium-molten salts sector. The "official" (or "standard") thesis is largely on the side of Uranium, because of the investments already made and the know-how acquired; it is also the one that N. Hulot uses in his answer at the start of the year.

The battle is fierce (and the debate is real, he) and it seems to me that this article cited is nothing but a bad resucée very redacted a com operation of one of the two camps (guess what). This adds nothing to the debate and further blurs the cards.
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