Posted on 06/08/2010 6:30:56 PM PDT by george76
Craving reliable energy that doesn't come with a big side order of carbon, the United States is taking a new look at nuclear power.
some engineers also are urging a new look at an alternative to the uranium fuel those plants will inevitably use.
Thorium, they say, provides all the carbon-free energy of uranium - about 300 times more, actually - with almost none of the guilt.
Thorium plants cooled with molten fluoride salt would leave a fraction of the nuclear waste compared to the uranium-fueled, water-cooled plants in use today. In addition, thorium plants can't melt down and don't produce reliable fuel for bombs.
"What's not to love?" asked Kirk Sorensen, a NASA rocket scientist in Huntsville, Ala., who is earning his doctorate in nuclear engineering.
Sorensen has taken up the cause of thorium reactors, an idea conceived in the 1950s and last researched in the United States in the early 1970s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
And compared to coal?
So why aren't there thorium reactors all over the country?
(Excerpt) Read more at dispatch.com ...
I know it was a big deal when they removed the liquid sodium from the experimental fast neutron reactor near here. Once it was removed, it couldn’t be reloaded.
Obama is backed by Uranium power interests like Exelon (Ayers family) and others and will be predictably advocating for it as his “clean” fuel after GoM BP debacle.
He should be countered by those of us advocation Thorium technology.
Surely some other (phase-change) material can be used for a coolant.
India will lead the charge to thorium, imho.
Probably within 10 years.
If memory serves Lithium bromide Solution was used as the heat
transfer medium with water vapor being the Refrigerant in the Servel Gas Air conditioners. They operated at high vacuum, and worked well until they got a leak, then the LiBr would corrode the unit. You couldn’t get them serviced since every one knows that you can’t take fire and make cold, you need a magician for that.
They did not mention which Br salt, Also wasn’t Chernoble a Liquid Sodium cooled unit
barbra ann
g 776, the “salt” used, is Sodium. It will combust spontaneously in air and is potentially explosive in water. It is quirky stuff for some other reasons too as I recall. All and all an extremely hazardous item in an area where stability is premium. Fine for small deep space power sources. Never going to replace PWR / BWRs
Rab
I can’t confirm or deny what the Russians did (or did not do!) in their nuclear research programs.
The USS Seawolf was the second nuclear-powered submarine (after the pressurized water reactor Nautilus). Its first reactor worked (it was liquid metal cooled, substantially smaller, lighter-weight, more powerful (power per cubic foot, power per ton basis) than the simpler, less expensive Nautilus.
It ran, it worked, but maintenance delays and maintenance and shutdown problems and complexities (you can’t run a sub’s reactor all the time!) proved to Rickover that the easier to run, easier to build, easier to refuel, easier to maintain pressurized water reactor was the right choice.
And, in the 50’s, it probably was the right choice.
A thorium reactor MUST be prototyped and run for several years to establish best protections and best practices.
No, Chernobyl was a carbon moderated (solid blocks of pure carbon were piled up around the core and fuel to moderate the fast neutrons and encourage the production of plutonium from uranium. But, once the coolant was lost, the overheated uranium and fuel debris blew out the core's “pressure head” and destoyed the building's roof (which was NOT a containment dome!) but was nice and flat and covered with tar paper.
So the overheated Plutonium and uranium fuel and fuel debris by-products caught the tons of carbon moderator on fire, the building on fire, and the roof on fire. THAT fire lifted the radioactive atoms into the sky up high enough that they didn't settle down locally. In the end, winds aloft blew the radioactive poisons all over Europe and Siberia.
Detectable over here, but only by instruments. Nothing was surface contaminated too bad.
I believe that the Seawolf (SSN 575) was a US Nuclear Submarine with a liquid sodium core.
Problems, problems, problems.
Something about keeping it liquid all the time, interaction with water, bad zoomies, etc.
They replaced the sodium core with a regular naval nuclear core and the sub had an illustrious career doing the Blind Man’s Bluff thing.
Thanks Robert
More importantly, is the inventor from Chicago?
Well not exactly, more like 500+ but much less than the half-life of Pu-239 which is about 24,000 years and the 700 million year half life of U-235. Separate it, and burn it, don’t bury it.
Yes.
I can confirm and cannot deny that I worked on the Seawolf nuclear plant (the new one) during those Blind Man's Bluff years at Mare Island - which I can neither confirm or deny actually happened. 8<)
Didn’t a kid make a bomb out of Thorium from lantern mantles a few years back?
The future of nuclear is cold fusion.
Re-Analysis of the Marinov Light-Speed Anisotropy Experiment
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2270920/posts
Friday, June 12, 2009 11:25:41 PM · by Kevmo · 27 replies · 1,027+ views
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0612/0612201v2.pdf ^ | Reginald T. Cahill
The Suppression of Inconvenient Facts in Physics
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2266921/posts
Sunday, June 07, 2009 7:50:26 PM · by Kevmo · 78 replies · 1,626+ views
Suppressed Science.Net ^ | 12/06/08 | http://www.suppressedscience.net/
The End of Snide Remarks Against Cold Fusion
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2265914/posts
Friday, June 05, 2009 5:56:08 PM · by Kevmo · 95 replies · 1,770+ views
Free Republic, Gravitronics.net and Intrade ^ | 6/5/09 | kevmo, et al
‘Cold Fusion’ Rebirth? New Evidence For Existence Of Controversial Energy Source
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2212864/posts
Monday, March 23, 2009 12:42:14 PM · by FlameThrower · 35 replies · 1,586+ views
Science Daily ^ | Mar. 23, 2009 | American Chemical Society
I was a nub MM/ELT on the Patrick Henry at Mare Island. I had to get some TLD’s from the Seawolf.
No, you can’t come aboard. We’ll git ‘em for ya!
From BING....
“Liquid-fluoride-salt heat transfer fluids are proposed to raise the heat-to-electricity efficiencies
of solar power towers to about 50%. The liquid salt would deliver heat from the
solar furnace at temperatures between 700°C and 850°C to a closed multireheat Brayton
power cycle using nitrogen or helium as the working fluid. During the daytime, hot
salt may also be used to heat graphite, which would then be used as a heat storage
medium to make night-time operations possible”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/opinion/story/0,12981,1261144,00.html
The Radioactive Boy Scout:
The true story of a boy
and his backyard nuclear reactor,
by Ken Silverstein
“The molten salts are tricky, difficult to work with.
It CAN be done, but they are harder to work with.
(So at least, why don’t START by making a pilot plant to work out the technology? Gee. I wonder.)”
LOL see Westinghouse.
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