Thorium: the future of nuclear power?

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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by Remundo » 20/07/21, 08:44

it is not "new" in the absolute, but indeed, it seems that they are the only ones in the world to relaunch the adventure.

I have mixed feelings about this sector; It's still fission, so radioactive waste, even if there would be less and the reactors would be safer according to the promoters of the sector.
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by Christophe » 09/08/21, 19:50

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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by Christophe » 03/10/21, 15:46

China to test thorium nuclear reactor

If this experimental reactor is successful, it could lead to commercial exploitation of this technology and help the country meet its climate goals.


https://www.pourlascience.fr/sd/energie ... -22488.php

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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by izentrop » 26/10/21, 03:32

Yes China shows us the way of tomorrow's nuclear power. We missed the boat when N Hulot cut funding to the CNRS project
Thorium at a low cost, around € 250 per tonne, or € 000 / electric MWh. Compared to uranium, at around € 0,029 / electric MWh, thorium would be around 10 times cheaper per electric MWh produced.

It also has the potential to generate a much smaller amount of very long-lived radioactive waste than conventional reactors. The total volume could be about 35 times less than that of conventional reactors to produce the same amount of energy. The 99,99% of the waste would be stable in 300 years, instead of tens of thousands of years for current fuels.

There is another advantage: this type of reactor does not need to be built near waterways. The molten salts themselves serve as a coolant, unlike conventional uranium-fired power plants which require huge amounts of water to cool their reactors.

By this principle, reactors can be installed in isolated and arid regions, such as deserts.

Compared to water reactors in conventional nuclear power plants, molten salt reactors can operate at higher temperatures.

According to Nature.com, the Chinese reactor will use fluoride-based salts. They melt to a colorless, transparent liquid when heated to around 450 ° C. This salt is the equivalent of a coolant for the reactor core.

Additionally, rather than solid fuel rods, molten salt reactors also use liquid salt as a substrate for fuel, such as thorium dissolved directly in the core.

Molten salt reactors have a very high level of operational safety. The fuel is dissolved in a liquid and these reactors operate at lower pressures than conventional nuclear reactors. https://www.europeanscientist.com/fr/op ... de-demain/
...what is often avoided is any discussion of a reliable, carbon-free source that can evolve more than any other form of alternative energy: nuclear.

Investors concerned with sustainable development have had a difficult relationship with nuclear energy. The major drawbacks abound: the high costs and long delays in building power plants and handling spent fuel (nuclear waste) and the potential for proliferation.

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett
However, at a time of climate triage, nuclear energy is getting a makeover. The best known example is Bill Gates' advanced nuclear reactor company TerraPower, which has partnered with GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Berkshire Hathaway's BRK.B,
+ 0.84 %
power company, PacifiCorp, to eventually build a small next-generation nuclear reactor using new fuel technology.

The use of nuclear power to advance the goals of the Paris Agreement will likely be discussed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as the COP26 Summit, which begins on October 31 in Scotland. In its report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this year said nuclear has "the potential for an expanded role as a cost-effective mitigation option." https://www.crumpe.com/2021/10/opinion- ... -le-monde/
Projects are already ready to be marketed
The two-unit Braidwood Generating Station nuclear power plant in Illinois, which recently received a new license, generates 2 megawatts of electricity.

The TerraPower and X-energy projects are under an advanced reactor demonstration program, according to Gilbert, and could potentially be online in 2029 or 2030. A third advanced reactor, from NuScale, of around 250 MW, could also be ready at this time. These would be three companies producing electricity at the utility level.

But the first on the market could be a 4 MW microreactor from Oklo. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing it. Because of its small size, if approved, it could be built and brought online as early as 2025, Gilbert says.
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by GuyGadeboisTheBack » 26/10/21, 16:52

In fact, nuclear power has no future:

Why, however, uranium prevailed as a fuel before thorium is due to the history of atomic energy, so physicist Matthias Englert in an interview with Tech & Nature: “The origins of all these technologies emerged from there 'army. When the first reactors appeared (editor's note: for the production of electricity), the decision was taken to enrich uranium-235. Thorium was therefore irrelevant at all for a long time. "

Even though nuclear energy is often referred to as an energy source “without CO2, neither uranium nor thorium is. Because if you look at the entire life cycle of the two fuels, their degradation, transport and storage certainly lead to CO2 emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gives uranium values ​​between 3,7 and 110 g CO2 / kWh and gives a median of 12 g per CO2 / kWh.

According to Reinhard Uhrig of the environmental organization Global 2000, this value is set too low, as several studies show. These would rather be of the order of 88 to 146 g CO2 / kWh. In the absence of technical implementation of the reactor concepts - the Chinese reactor would be the first in the world - the CO2 pollution of thorium has so far been difficult to assess. "Emissions from ore extraction to operation, however, will be of the same order of magnitude as those from uranium," Uhrig said. "Even though, with the best assumptions, one assumes fewer problems with the final disposal of nuclear waste - compared to modern renewables such as wind and solar, even thorium cannot compete here," said the nuclear energy expert at Tech & Nature.

Another problem that thorium reactors do not solve is disposal. German physicist Christoph Pistner of the German Koinstitut, who has studied new reactor concepts, concludes that even thorium does not offer a solution for final storage. Thorium does not radiate for long, "only" 300 years, which makes the fuel less risky in terms of storage time.

But the waste generated in thorium reactor designs is dangerous for another reason: it emits high-energy gamma radiation. This means that it is necessary to cool the nuclear waste in the repository, which again poses geological and technical questions for disposal. Research and approaches exist to reuse nuclear waste as an energy source, but this has not yet been possible on a large scale.

https://www-techandnature-com.translate ... tr_pto=nui

For further:
https://www.oeko.de/fileadmin/oekodoc/G ... Gen-IV.pdf
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by izentrop » 26/10/21, 20:24

[quote = "GuyGadeboisLeRetour"]In fact, nuclear power has no future:[quote] If it's a "political ecology" site that says so :P

We'll see who's right when the results are there https://www-nature-com.translate.goog/a ... tr_pto=nui
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by GuyGadeboisTheBack » 26/10/21, 20:40

izentrop wrote:We will see who is right when the results are there ...

We can already see the immense success of the EPRs ... with results that we have been expecting from Superphénix ... : Mrgreen:
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by sen-no-sen » 26/10/21, 20:58

The problem with molten salts is that they end up polluting each other, so it will be necessary to develop a filtration system that can operate at the same time as the reactor, which is no small task.
However, if such a task is carried out, it is a safe bet that MSFR-type reactors will set out to conquer the world. To the extent that they replace the current PWR-type reactors, that would be rather good news. in liquid fission reactors, the risk of an incident is roughly divided by 100! Unlike a PWR operation is at ambient pressure and the critical mass prevents an overheating effect as was the sad case in three miles island ,Chernobyl ou Fukushima.
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by GuyGadeboisTheBack » 26/10/21, 21:11

It is one of the rare interests of this kind of reactor. So afterwards, if what Reinhard Uhrig of the environmental organization Global 2000 claims, atomic power stations produce 88 to 146 g CO2 / kWh, I find it hard to see what they have left compared to wind and solar power, which except that they work 24 hours a day ...
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Re: Thorium: the future of nuclear power?




by sen-no-sen » 26/10/21, 21:39

GuyGadeboisLeRetour wrote:It is one of the rare interests of this kind of reactor. So afterwards, if what Reinhard Uhrig of the environmental organization Global 2000 claims, atomic power stations produce 88 to 146 g CO2 / kWh, I find it hard to see what they have left compared to wind and solar power, which except that they work 24 hours a day ...


To replace a nuclear MW with equivalent wind or solar power, approximately 50 to 100 times more resources are needed and as many on the surface.
To say that the nuclear industry produces "shadow C02"is fair, but it is much worse with the ENR!
Now opposed to nuclear power and ENR, without realizing it, they are embarking on a left / right political debate.
In reality, its two technologies are perfectly compatible and could be part of a logic Yin Yang.
The scam of EELV or Greenpeace is to make believe that we could do everything in ENR without profoundly changing our way of life ... : roll:

So the question is not to be pro or anti this or that, but to know in which world we want to live.
There is no longer any debate on the subject, because that would lead us to a potential exit door, which is prohibited by the doxa.
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