Posted on 07/27/2013 2:59:13 PM PDT by ckilmer
Bill Gates Is Beginning to Dream the Thorium Dream
By Brian Merchant Image: Wikimedia
Mention thorium—an alternative fuel for nuclear power—to the right crowd, and faces will alight with the same look of spirited devotion you might see in, say, Twin Peaks and Chicago Cubs fans. People love thorium against the odds. And now Bill Gates has given them a new reason to keep rooting for the underdog element.
TerraPower, the Gates-chaired nuclear power company, has garnered attention for pursuing traveling wave reactor tech, which runs entirely on spent uranium and would rarely need to be refueled. But the concern just quietly announced that it's going to start seriously exploring thorium power, too.
“We’re thinking about it and trying to work on it and we have a few proprietary ideas that we’re cooking up,” John Gilleland, TerraPower's CEO, said in an interview with the Weinberg Foundation. “We like to work on an idea for a while before we run out and tell about it – so we have some ideas which we’re trying to ferret out how good they are.”
He wouldn't say more, but Gilleland was talking about molten salt reactors, which are considered by many to be safer than the conventional pressurized water reactors currently operating in the United States—especially when they run on thorium. Gilleland said that their "big bet" remains on the traveling wave technology, but that thorium was definitely receiving some renewed attention.
The American thorium dream—which the United States government pursued in tandem with the uranium-fueled reactors we're familiar with now throughout the 60s—was more or less entirely burst in 1973. This despite the successful testing of a thorium-fueled facility, built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and some evidence suggesting that thorium was a safer, more abundant fuel. Research was halted, and uranium-fueled reactors emerged as the standard.
Yet estimates place the amount of accessible thorium at around four times as much as uranium, and it's less radioactive, too. Furthermore, thorium advocates point to the molten salt reactors that harness it—they use, as nuclear expert Mark Halper notes, "use liquid fuel that cannot melt down and that harmlessly drains into a holding tank in the event of an emergency."
For the above reasons, the alternate nuke juice is again drawing interest in the energy world as the search for reliable carbon-free power sources intensifies. China is currently studying thorium power, using US-pioneered research as a jumping off point. India is about to start building its own thorium nuke plant. And Norway just recently announced that it's doing intensive testing at its new thorium facility this summer. Investors as diverse as Toshiba, Thor Energy, and South Africa's Steenkampskraal Thorium Ltd are financing the project. Now Bill Gates, and his bottomless coffers, will begin funding the thorium dream, too.
Gates has been interested in energy innovation for years now; in a widely-shared TED talk, he spoke about his traveling wave reactors, and the lack of experimentation in energy tech. He's previously funded research into molten salt reactors, but this is the first time his team has explicitly stated that they're getting into thorium.
Last year, TerraPower hired a man named Jeff Lakowski to be its new Director of Innovation, and he started showing up at national thorium conferences (which are typically small but spirited affairs). Now he's made clear that Gates' team is seriously pursuing the tech. It's not clear if any patents have been filed, or what innovations TerraPower is pursuing. Gilleland did say that they're not harkening back to the Oak Ridge model, as most ongoing thorium projects do—he said their plans have "considerable departures" from the old thorium standard.
What those departures may be remain to be seen—and in the meantime, they'll no doubt have the small legion of fervent thorium fans dreaming of a cleaner, safer nuclear technology with resurgent vigor.
Greenies worship dirt.
Dirt has trace amounts of Thorium in it.....hey greenies, put that in your pipe and smoke it!!!!
My understanding is that the French pebble bed uranium reactors are totally walkaway safe. Pellets of uranium are encapsulated in ceramics (think space shuttle tiles) that both keep the pellets at a uniform distance and also prevent meltdown should the water evaporate.
Have you read it? If so, how is it? Worth the $10?
I have not been able to find a review.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Yeah, I read it. It gives a lot of details on why Gates should shift over to lftr—including links to detailed ongoing discussions between many physicists over the years that show how they shifted in favor of lftr; also a link to a paper written by Edward Teller—father of the H-bomb. In his last years —around 2004—at age 91— he wrote a paper which supported thorium reactors. I’m not quite sure what reactor design he specified. But the link to Teller’s paper is part of the report. Then there’s stuff like how to get across the valley of death —and around federal regulations...actually the US military wants to buy portable reactors for their bases in the USA so that they can get off the vulnerable grid—so they provide away around regulations as well as a first buyer.
There’s also some interesting stuff on desalination. Thorium lftr reactors promise to cut the cost of electricity to 1/10 current lowest cost coal produced electricity. This has profound effects on the cost of desalination—including the grand possibility of making desalinized water cheap enough for desert agriculture.
The ebook also mentions something the oil industry has since picked up on. Lower electricity costs will make insitu mining for oil shale in the green river basin (and in israel and elsewhere)....competitive. (because more than half the cost of insitu mining is the cost of electricity.) That’s the reason they have been involved in recent events that have promoted lftr companies like transatomic power. This would have been particularly galling for gates because one of the young MIT students who formed the company worked for Gates company and walked away to form TerraPower.
Those are the stories that stand out most to me. But there are a bunch of others. Including many that relate to water desalination. Its a good read with a good grasp of technology history and...if you’re into future history...that sort of thing too.
My understanding is that the French pebble bed uranium reactors are totally walkaway safe
.........
Walk away safe is only part of the reason that thorium lftr reactors produce such excitement. The biggest parts are that there is an unlimited supply of very cheap thorium; the thorium reactors can be used to burn up uranium wastes, thorium itself has a half life of only 300 years. Thorium can’t be used for atomic bombs.
Last bu not least however, is that thorium reactors will collapse the cost of electricity to 1/10th the cost of the cheapest coal based electricity.
getting electrical power for 1/10 the cost of current cheapest cost electricity ... will set off a new industrial and agricultural revolution as big as anything seen in the 19th or 20th centuries.
This would have been particularly galling for gates because one of the young MIT students who formed the company worked for Gates company and walked away to form TerraPower.
........
I didn’t write this quite right. This should read....
This would have been particularly galling for gates because one of the young MIT students who worked for Gates company called TerraPower .... walked away to form Transatomic Power.
You have my interest. What is the best source for me to read up on thorium?
There are a couple references up the thread. Also just google “thorium reactor” or lftr or Flibe thorium or transatomic power.
What makes this ebook interesting that was published last summer http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B0089Z7V6Y
is that two of its recommendations have already been implemented: gates to shift to thorium. the oil industry should shift to thorium or lftr.
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