A short talk on Thorium reactors. Could be promising.
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TEDxYYC - Kirk Sorensen - Thorium
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The reason why the US Government didn't endorse thorium reactors so much in the beginning is because the process in use today is very good at breeding weapons grade materials. Though now we have two very good reasons why to switch to thorium: 1) We aren't really building that many nukes these days (and there's plenty of material in the stockpile now), and 2) We'd like less chances of what happened in Japan to happen AGAIN, yespleaskthnxbai.
Why am I thinking now that some of the nuke reactors in Fallout are thorium ones.......
Cute talk, but not new. IEEE Spectrum had a discussion of recently-developed reactors that use all sorts of alternative systems than the current water-cooled solid-pellet reactors.
There's all kinds of ways to cook this bird. We just need to take a long, hard look at which achieves our objectives with a balance of safety, reliability, and ease of execution.
blackaeronaut Wrote:There's all kinds of ways to cook this bird. We just need to take a long, hard look at which achieves our objectives with a balance of safety, reliability, and ease of execution.It's that last one that's the sticker. Molten salt (esp around 1400 C) corrodes metal like crazy, so developing a system to pump that around is a fairly difficult engineering challenge. Quite simply, it hasn't been done outside of a lab yet. 
I thought they were using molten salt in some of the solar furnaces...
(comes back from wikipedia) yup, the solar power tower used a mix of salts (40% potassium nitrate, 60% sodium nitrate) as a heat transfer medium. -Terry ----- "so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today" TF2: Spy
I've done a bit of research, Paladin, and while there are indeed issues with corrosion, it's nothing that can't be surmounted. In fact, most of it is common sense chemistry stuff, like covering the salt with helium to prevent production of corrosive gasses, defueling the reactor prior to extended shut-downs, eliminating any chance of the fluoride salts coming into contact with water, and using lithium-7 instead of lithium-6.
If you know of any document that delivers irrefutable evidence that these reactors are not worth the risk, then please submit evidence.
Oh, I'm not saying that. I'm a Throium enthusiast. I'm just trying to relate why there needs to be a significant initial cost.
Essentially, it's the difference betweeen science and engineering. Designing a full fledged plant, and setting up a fabrication process are the big hurdles. Well, the big hurdles after getting regulatory approval (for using Uranium-233 to get things started)
Ahhhh, I gotcha. Although, I don't think it'll be too much trouble, given the new public concerns about light-water reactors. One of the nice things about how media works today is that people are a little more well informed about how and why these things happen (such as the nuclear accident at Fukushima). I'm sure that once word starts to spread around John Q. Public on how Thorium works you'll have people flocking to it. People will all-but demand we switch to thorium reactors.
I actually have to explain the details to a lot of people. Yes, they've heard something about Thorium Reactors and how they're not supposed to be able to melt down, but that's about all they knew.
I help enlighten them to the basics, and directed them to videos if they wanted to learn more. paladindythe Wrote:I actually have to explain the details to a lot of people. Yes, they've heard something about Thorium Reactors and how they're not supposed to be able to melt down, but that's about all they knew.Well, of course. They have a rough idea about how light-water reactors work now, thank God for mass media and the Internet. Thorium reactors, however, are alien territory simply because they aren't in popular use. |
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