Posted on 05/22/2011 6:04:55 PM PDT by neverdem
These are also referred to as LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor), in case you want more information.
4 out of 5 dentists recommend it.
Bump!
I’ve read quite a bit of positive info on thorium salt reactors. They’ve been around for decades. There has to be some serious drawbacks. I’ve read none (major). Nuclear energy is worldwide, someone should have had to taken that route by now. Strange. I feel I’m missing something regarding the drawbacks of an operational system.
If this works as described, why hasn’t someone put one online and sold the generated power?
Generating 300x the amount of today’s reactor would yield big money
We have been FOOLISH not to pursue this technology!
Ping to you.
If you design a better mousetrap, the government won't let you build it? (threatens their status quo buddies, their cash cows)
OK. That’s the good news. What’s the down side?
Two big drawbacks - engineering for molten-metal-coolant reactors of any kind is a b*tch, and (IIRC) there is no reprocessing.
Neither one is insurmountable, but the other thing is that without the uranium cycle reactors, you cannot make nuclear weapons.
The comparison of gigawatt hours per metric ton is versus natural uranium, which is 0.7% U235, the fissile isotope. The U238 can be cooked to form Pu239, however, that is also bomb material.
This reactor turns Th232 into U233, another fissile isotope of uranium. There would still need to be some U235 fission involved to get things going, unless the initial fuel load has U233 in there.
Unlike what the article says, control rods are needed.
There would also need to be an auxiliary heating plant for startup and for outages to keep the salt liquid. With a 600 degree melting point, using superheated steam (pipes, jacketing) might be feasible - however you do not want the steam to come in contact with the salt.
Here’s a good article on Thorium andy why we didn’t pursue it.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/science//stories/2010/03/07/thorium-art-gc67nvgb-1.html?sid=101
Is there any of these built as a real world test?
Because you can’t have a weapons program using Thorium. A dirty little secret about Uranium fueled reactors and their duality of purpose.
Very simply, because it was decided to work the Uranium-plutonium cycle as you got both power and weapons-grade fissionables out of it. The Thorium cycle is not conducive to making nuclear weapons. .
Assuming we still have a large supply of weapons grade uranium (big assumption these days) there should be no reason not to put a few of these online now
1. Thorium is far more abundant than fuel-grade uranium.
2. The fuel for a LFTR doesn't need to be made into pellet form and then formed into fuel rods at considerable expense.
3. You can use plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons and even spent uranium fuel rods as fuel for a LFTR.
4. LFTR's by its design are essentially meltdown-proof.
5. The radioactive waste from an LFTR is a tiny fraction of the waste from a uranium reactor--and the radioactive half-life is only a few hundred years. That means the waste could be dumped safely into a disused salt mine or salt dome for permanent disposal at very low cost.
So what are we waiting for?
I have been looking into this every since the Japan Disaster.
Here is a real good source of info on it and there are always updates:
http://www.facebook.com/EnergyFromThorium
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