Oak Ridge National Laboratory's made promising discoveries in the 1960 on a safer, cheaper, and environmentally friendly way to build nuclear power plants using the plentiful substance thorium and fail-proof low-pressure design (liquid fluoride thorium) that a makes accidental "melt-down" impossible. Their research was shut-down and the USA decided to develop only fast-breeder uranium and plutonium reactors instead, methods that are expensive, create radioactive waste products that take 100,000 years to decompose, along with dangerous weapons-grade substances that lead to nuclear proliferation risk.
Around 2011 Oak Ridge National Laboratory's old Thorium reactor research materials were digitized and many learned for the first time about this safer and cheaper alternative to conventional nuclear reactors - and even use the heat to create types of artificial gasolines.
relativism was introduced by the jew einstein fuck their crap
Adrian Scott
I’d love Thorium reactors if they weren’t such a fucked up engineering challenge. Until uranium runs out (i.e.the price for uranium spikes to massive levels), thorium just won’t end up being used.
thorium reactors don't produce weapons grade uranium, that's why they're not in use since their inception. new plasma physics was discovered in 2017 and whoever incorporates it in the next fusion reactor design will be at the forefront of net power generation
Wyatt Fisher
The advantage of using a 800C medium is that you can run a turbine on the heated air from the reactor giving you the ability to also have natural gas mixed in to meet peaking loads. The compressor will heat the air to 500C which is higher than any conventional water cooled reactor can get to due to the critical point of water at 374C. At 800C you can add to the heat of the 500C air and have a gas turbine. Clearly you also use the HRSG to capture your turbine exhaust waste heat. This also makes your reactor not dependent on water for cooling as you have an air cooled molten salt loop.
>It only worked sporadically. You say that them shutting the reactor down on weekend is a bad thing. Also test reactor; It was being used to test things not as a proof that it could run for years without interruption.
~
No matter what the future is with breeder reactors. Thorium or Uranium.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER That's a 500MW fusion reactor being built right now in France. Its successor (DEMO) is expected to produce actual electricity and then after that you have actual commercial power plants.
Zachary Green
Fusion power is possible. We know that. The question is whether fusion power can be done continuously and economically. With advances in High-Tc superconductors, we might get to the economical part after all with smaller tokamaks and maybe even Stellarators.
Oliver Smith
look bro this is 2018 now. Almost 2019. money needs to be used for nigger, refugees, and more dem programs maybe in the year 3000 we can try this
Josiah Martinez
Well when it works and makes power for less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour they have something. Until then we have the LFTR that's been proven viable for 40 years.
Brandon Sanchez
>SO WHAT'S STOPPING US FROM BUILDING THORIUM BASED NUCLEAR REACTORS!?!
It still needs quite a bit of research and there is zero funding.
The oil industry hates the idea (for good reasons) And the "green energy" crowds hate the idea (for terrible reasons) So there is barely any political drive.
If we put 1/10th the amount of funding into thorium as we put in fusion we would have had it by now.
Alexander Myers
Bump. I'm tired of the oil jew.
Leo Wilson
!! It's been so long since I've seen a thorium thread. I missed you, Jow Forums.
>and makes power for less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour
Which will never happen because fusion reactors require insane amounts of maintenance.
David Scott
Then it's kinda pointless. I'll give it a pass and let it double it's cost of operation up to 4 cents. But past the 4 cent mark it's just not worth it.
Connor Bell
Fusion reactors are a much bigger engineering challenge than thorium. Thorium mainly needs complex chemistry which we just haven't figured out yet, other than that it's quite simple.
Aiden Peterson
The Uranium nuclear industry shut it down, it was a threat to their bottom line, so they prevented it from usurping their energy agenda.
Blake Nelson
i'm hoping stellarators are viable for fusion, purely for aesthetic reasons.
look at this shit. it literally looks like some sci-fi magic.
That's exactly why the oil industry supports it. It will never be cheaper than fossil energy, never.
Lincoln Baker
We tried thorium since the 1950s, here in Germany we still try, Fusion really has only seriously been tried since the 1960s.
Matthew Davis
>Haven;t figured out yet We have made thorium reactors before. That's what Oak Ridge did. Just a lab scale one, but it worked.
Blake Perez
Not the uranium industry, the government. You can't make nukes with a thorium reactor, and that's at least half the point of having a nuclear programme.
Luke Diaz
China and Russia are massively investing in Thorium right now. Though Europe wasted, still is, to much money and effort on sun and wind energy, e.g. solar panels. They cost a shitload of money, still produce waste that needs to be chemically destroyed and produces almost no energy if you compare the space it needs with a nuclear powerplant.
Connor Green
>here in Germany we still try
How many people? What's the level of funding.
Here in the Netherlands there are exactly 2 scientists working on it, with no funding whatsoever apart from the university wages.
Ayden Butler
The reactors themselves aren't the problem. The problem is purifying the molten salt so you can use it continuously.
It requires a very simple reactor with a very complex chemical plant.
Christopher Sanchez
>China and Russia are massively investing in Thorium right now. source?
Jidf pls go and take your memeflag with you Thorium reactors and thorium batteries are the cheap energy of the future
Mason Cruz
Have you ever heard the history?
They killed the thorium project because it doesnt produce fissile material. It was burried. Literally.
Only some guy cleaning out a closet before destroying the contents found the original material and being a scientists knew what it meant. Pure luck.
He put it on a disk and proseletized, even interviewed the original guys if they were still alive. It tooks years of effort to get it where it is today.
But thats the reason they dont exist. They dont make material for nuclear weapons.
Aka mikitary industrial complex killed it. I think the guy made a documentary talking about it.
Michael Reed
I remember reading about this a while back. Got memory holed for some reason. Think there was a pretty massive flaw in the creation process that made it possible only in power point presentations by it's advocates who ignored this flaw. I can't remember what it was though.
But to compare: ITER costs 5 billion euro's and Wendelstein 7-X 1 billion euro's. So it's still less than half of what Europe has been spending on the fusion meme over the last 2 decades.
Wyatt Flores
ITER’s price tag is now 30bn.
Cooper Allen
Oh yeah, forgot about the price multiplication that always happens on tax funded projects.
Carson Rivera
Why does this reactor look so fucking retarded? Serious question. It looks like it was made by an autistic 14 year old.
Idk how much energy that will produce, but the current investment costs (globally) for sun and wind energy are estimated 140 trillion and it will only cover up 34% of the world energy supply by 2040. This means every country in Europe will have to pay billions anyway. Imo it should be put in thorium, not this natural energy. Both have to be build anyway and mainly we don’t choose for nuclear because the public and leftist opinion is that nuclear energy is bad and hippie, nature sounding (garbage) energy is good.
Computer optimized shape based on 7 main input factors. Mostly, charged plasma particles in a magnetic field end up flying alongside field lines but interact with each other. The coils try to maximize the containment.
David Richardson
I read a lot about this shit one night. They stopped fucking around with it for some reason. I assume nothing has changed.
David Wright
Cool, thanks user. Now that you mentioned a computer designed the shape of the field, it makes sense.
>we don’t choose for nuclear because the public and leftist opinion is that nuclear energy is bad and hippie, nature sounding (garbage) energy is good.
True, but likewise America's opinion is that nuclear is bad and conservative, manly sounding (garbage) fossil energy is good.
No matter what we and China will do, America will keep using oil and coal to the last drop and lump.
Brody Nguyen
This. Computer optimized topologies/sytems/etc always end up a weird black box that "just werks" but almost nobody has any real idea as to how it "just werks."
Modern reactors were all designed to create weapons not harness energy. No government wants to go backwards on that.
Brandon Barnes
>SO WHAT'S STOPPING US FROM BUILDING THORIUM BASED NUCLEAR REACTORS!?! Literally whites in charge of research, Thorium reactor can't be used to produce nukes
Austin Brooks
Who will run it in 20 years after Algerians have murdered the technicians?
Christopher Lopez
From what I understand the plasma flows like that just to maintain the same speed.
In a simple donut shape would flow faster on the outside than on the inside because the outside is longer than the inside. But in this complex shape every orbit has the same length and can thus travel at the same speed.
Ian James
tinfoil bullshit the real reason is because the reactor lining corrodes too quickly and it's an insurmountable problem
Henry Martin
Except China, apparently.
Joseph Myers
Typically you can't just up and create a NUCLEAR REACTOR of any kind, then start selling electricity. Theres probably a few dozen government agencies that do background and safety checks on you (and your company) before you're even allowed to build it. Fair enough. But then you have to find suitable sites to do it, which nobody else wants any more nuclear reactors built because nukes are scary. Then you have to get around the nuclear club of getting all that shit certified to get up and running. The existing (expensive) stuff in place doesn't want to lose all that money on either having to sell electricity at cost, or spending a shitload of money on converting.
Supposedly these thorium reactors don't require gigantic cooling towers, don't need as much land or water, and the plant itself is much smaller. I really haven't heard of any downsides to the thorium reactors, so surely there is another barrier to market entry.
Matthew Adams
>But in this complex shape every orbit has the same length and can thus travel at the same speed. Beautiful
Jaxson Richardson
White people the government protects. Think of South Africa. Had they not been raycist and destroyed their arsenal before the apes took over we'd be in a very dire situation right now. That being said, there's a lot of (conspiracy theory) tinfoil surrounding said weapons, as they were developed in partnership with a certain middle eastern nation.
Blake Clark
>downsides to the thorium reactors They can't be used to make weapons.
Dylan Long
you're not wrong.
From my personal research, a majority of nuclear power development is centered around Uranium. This is due in part to the fact that nuclear energy derived from the desire to re purpose technology developed at the end of WWII. The cold war saw Russia, The United States, and another hand full of nations to go hardball into developing nuclear deterrents. Thorium was researched during this time, but the funding for it was overshadowed by Uranium, which we had a better understanding of at the time. A lot of R&D surrounding thorium is antiquated and from decades ago. Reviving it would cost a lot of money, not to mention that reactors in general are very expensive to build--you'd also have to consider the fact that this would also mean having to replace existing reactors which are fueled by Uranium-- and that's on top of hiring and maintaining a staff that meets credentials.
Simply put, development costs a lot of money--oy vey-- and you can't make nuclear weapons with the depleted material, so there's also a reason in precedence
Jack Hill
Nuclear fusion will never be harvested as an energy source. The very premise it's based on is still a theory. It entirely relies on the faith (lack of understanding) that the sun is a self-sustaining fusion reaction. It is not.
Adrian Sanchez
France has nukes too. What happens when the government is no longer run by wypipo?
Charles Martinez
Breeders are incredibly intricate. This shit is even more incredibly intricate. It's unfeasible, just like fusion. We should focus on solar, it's our only real hope.
Jaxon Evans
Exactly. Like OP even needs to ask.
Nathan Long
The only problem I have with nuclear energy is nuclear waste. It may just be my (admitted) ignorance, but that seems like a valid concern, and I really haven't seen it addressed.
Anthony Fisher
No, we should dig into what Tesla was working on and tap into the aether.
Can I get more info on this "artificial gasoline"?
Austin Parker
Which is fine for them, until a certain point. The story of CO2 emissions warming the globe is bs anyway. The idea is rather that these investments result in an independent energy source for each country (although it fucks the civilians for not being able to get energy elsewhere), less CO2 is just a bonus in the way we will be inhaling less of it in cities. Thorium will run out eventually as well; will turn into fossil energy in the future. Best would be to create energy out of something which produces a lot and has no waste, which every household could produce themself, but that’s just a nerdy wet dream for now.
Adrian Barnes
This is the biggest nuclear meme. It just doesn’t work well
Hunter Brown
I'll never understand the tesla cocksucking. Sure, he was a great man, but some of the things he attempted were wrong. For that matter I'll never understand the Edison shitting either. Sure he was a piece of shit, but he did accomplish relevant things.
Levi Barnes
>i'll never understand Not with that attitude.
Julian Cooper
Not Jews mostly, more like a mish-mosh of various evil factions who can more or less be described as Pseudo-Satanic.
Sporadic ...? >"The MSRE operated for 5 years. The salt was loaded in 1964 and nuclear operation ended in December 1969" >"Checkout and prenuclear tests included 1,000 hours of circulation of flush salt and fuel carrier salt." >"After two months of high-power operation, the reactor was down for three months because of the failure of one of the main cooling blowers." It turns out making a new type of nuclear reactor is has a learning curve, and things needed to be tweaked... not so unreasonable I think, since it's pretty much the pinnacle of human engineering IMHO. >"by the end of 1966 most of the startup problems were behind. During the next 15 months, the reactor was critical 80% of the time, with runs of 1, 3, and 6 months that were uninterrupted by a fuel drain."
Jackson Cook
user are you okay? What happened to your flag?
Levi Brown
Oh of course I entirely forgot about harnessing pure bullshit
Hunter Taylor
holy shit a mere mortal human isn't infallible lets disregard everything he has done please great one tell us more of your big braininess
Jackson Turner
That's not what I meant. I mean cocksucking in the sense of thinking every single one of the man's drawings was a functional machine/principle/theory, like bringing down bridges with a dildo, or harvesting energy from air.
Adrian Bennett
They already have free energy technology, people lost their lives over it. It is locked up deep in vaults, and it will take hand of god to bring it out to people.
Nathan Sanders
>switch to thorium >deliberately deny yourself all the useful radioisotopes you can breed in a uranium reactor This is what losers who can't into nukes would do.
Jeremiah Smith
>It requires a very simple reactor with a very complex chemical plant. The chemical plant is what allows the reactor to be a breeder reactor. Having to remove impurities is the strength of the reactor not a negative. The most important part of the cycle is that you can chemically separate thorium and uranium with a reversible chemical process that is massively easier than isotopic separation.
Noah Bailey
>implying you can't also have purpose-built reactors specifically for producing medical isotopes
Connor Kelly
It looks like a dunkin donuts sampler pack in the thumbnail
Juan Hernandez
Not to the degree where it would sustain our arsenal.
Jeremiah Collins
Nixon "nixed" it. Allegedly in order to spend the money on buying votes in California by funneling the necessary funds into a "works program" Dominant companies like GE and Westinghouse, likely in "cooperation" with some military dudes who quite liked the "enriched" byproducts of inferior, energy inefficient, heavy waste generators, pressurized light water reactors with vulnerable active cooling systems which have demonstrated extreme hazard numerous times. The Molten Salt Reactor prototype developed in Oak Ridge, and its passive self-adjusting nature, and automatic shutdown feature could have, and should have, revolutionized power generation. ( and it probably will in the not too distant future... by the nations not hampered by "BigNuclear" lobbying spineless ignorant politicians like Nixon)
Lucas Wilson
>so surely there is another barrier to market entry. The current nuclear industry that is about 20% of the electrical generation. They operate like printer manufacturers. They sell the reactor (printer) at cost and make the profit off fuel (ink). A 1GW LFTR costs about $10,000 a year in fuel. Thorium is a byproduct of the electronics industry more to the point rare earth mineral production.
The US has a super fund site in Chicago they have been dumping money into for decades due to the refined thorium that industrial process separated out. The scientists said you can clean up the 'nuclear waste' by digging a shallow hole like 16 inches and burring it because it's just not that dangerous. But the EPA and USNRC flipped their ship over the 'nuclear waste' and have been justifying a lot of jobs for years for a harmless metal.
It's self sustaining as it is currently through sheer virtue of size and "relative" ease in fusing what it has currently as a fuel source in terms of physics. There will be a time when it can't function anymore and it dies. So in that sense it only self-sustains for a while.
From what I gather your interpretation is that Nuclear Fusion, as viewed by researches, is expected to be self-sustaining off substantially more limitations and limited fuel or something? Do they expect to throw X amount of Hydrogen into it, have it running without interruption, and get X amount of Uranium from it in a few weeks or some literally crazy shit? The logistics behind fusing hydrogen is questionable enough as it is let alone expecting to master nuclear fusion of much larger elements.
I mean in a sense you could theoretically maybe have Fusion and Fission plants working together to fuel one-another, but that's pure theory and probably hundreds or thousands of years away.
James Stewart
You do know they work right? We just havent produced unity yet since these are just experimental proof of concept designs.
Gavin Ramirez
/thread
Jaxson Clark
>waste a ton of resources to develop reactors that are less useful that the ones you already have I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying it hasn't been done because it's dumb.
Easton Rodriguez
>hasn't been done
We have exactly that in The Netherlands. (Petten).
Matthew Parker
Worth a look
Brody Sullivan
Bretty gud.
Brayden Martin
Fpbp
Zachary Myers
It would've create more jobs + even more money
Cameron Rodriguez
>busywork.
Jonathan Howard
Thorium reactors have been running for decades. That is sadly not the case for Molten Salt Reactors though, which may be what you meant, but I believe mankind would greatly benefit from improving / updating / reviving the Oak Ridge type reactors. Several companies are fighting the established overregulated legislation in the US such as Flibe and the Energy from Thorium organisation who seems to get a growing amount of attention. Then we have the Chinese, who have been throwing money and manpower onto this challenge for several years now, after a delegation of high ranking people (such as the former presidents son) visited Oak Ridge, and apparently got a copy of all the research papers from the mid to late sixties...
Mass produced, the thorium reactor would all but end our planet's energy shortage, destroying basically every existing energy industry in the process. The fallout would be so severe for the wealthy cabals that they've stalled, though legal chicanery to outright murder, non-fossil fuel energy research at every opportunity for decades.
Profit drives the world, and there's no profit in energy when the supply vastly exceeds the demand.
