6 ms·

World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed

115 points by sasoon 12y ago

msandford 12y ago
I'm really glad to see that the concept is starting to take off. It makes me sad that it's not happening in the US. If some folks in the government and business don't get their heads out of their asses a growth industry is going to bypass us entirely.
- cstross 12y ago
  Note that you can breed U-233 from thorium and use that in nuclear weapons. The critical mass of U-233 is about 50% higher than Pu-239 but otherwise it's usable in implosion-type bomb designs; the main hazard is the presence of U-232 as a contaminant (which is a high level gamma emitter and makes it dangerous to work with) -- the real question is how they plan to reduce the U-232 contamination level enough to make weapons-safe U-233. As India is already a nuclear weapons power, this has no immediate proliferation implications ... but moving a nation of a billion-plus people onto an energy cycle that produces weaponizable material as a by-product might be considered unwise by some. Cf. concerns in the 1970s and 1980s about the implications of running a "plutonium cycle" fast breeder energy ecosystem.
  - msandford 12y ago
    If everyone in the world had enough energy to live a developed-world middle-class lifestyle -- and with thorium reactors this might be feasible -- might that not eliminate one of the driving forces behind global conflict? I'm not saying it's a slam-dunk win for sure. But I have noticed a lot of general apathy and aversion to violence in the developed world largely because people are just too busy living their lives; they have a lot to lose. > the real question is how they plan to reduce the U-232 contamination level enough to make weapons-safe U-233 I'm not convinced that anyone has this goal in mind. Maybe they just want to provide power to their countrymen and continue to lift India out of poverty. There might be nothing nefarious about this, unless you consider poor people getting less poor to be a problem.
    - Rapzid 12y ago
      In certain parts of the world, maybe. In other parts differences in religion is the driving force behind conflict..
      - tormeh 12y ago
        It never really is. It's always about resources and power. Sure, there's often a holy book involved, but it's just a way to divide people into tribes, like nationality, color etc. It's always we want our (un)fair piece of the cake, where we is some group affiliation and it doesn't really matter what the affiliation is based on.
      - madaxe_again 12y ago
        Disagree. Religion is the vehicle. Inequality is the driver.
        Tloewald 12y ago
        There were/are religious conflicts in communities where it's impossible to tell the belligerents apart -- ethnically, economically, you name it. "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." Inequality is definitely a contributing factor, perhaps even _the_ contributing factor, but don't count out religion.
        Jach 12y ago
        Inequality is the wrong diagnosis. As msandford pointed out, it's more likely to be a minimum standard of living issue and having enough to lose. If inequality was a main factor, you would expect Pakistan to have similar crime rates as Sweden, when in reality they're not even close. (PG has an essay on inequality being a boon to a nation's economy: http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html) You could also look at the religiosity of a country, but the trend there is that lower standards of living correlate with higher religiosity. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-...) I'm more inclined to think the causation goes from low standard of living --> religiosity rather than the other way around, given the United States. However there could be other deeper factors that give rise to a low standard of living, such as a nation's average IQ -- you're not going to see a nation with average IQ of 70 outperform let alone match a nation with average IQ of 100 in terms of standard of living.
  - madaxe_again 12y ago
    I don't understand the whole "it has to be capable of making bombs to be viable" thing. I mean, the local coal power plant can't make artillery shells, but we're not shutting it down...
    - luckyno13 12y ago
      Only an assumption here, but I would say its due to what to do with the waste. If the waste is useless, then we have to have a place to put it. If it has another use, then obviously we dont have to stick it in a hole somewhere. Again, totally non-researched, off the top of my head assumption.
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        Thorium reactors breed U-233, but not as a waste product. The U-233 is consumed to generate power. I'm not sure what the U-233 produces when it undergoes fission but I don't think the result is weaponizable.
stox 12y ago
Oak Ridge had a Thorium reactor in 1965. This is not the first.
- VLM 12y ago
  The situation is actually even worse, here's a wikipedia link to a list of fifteen Th fueled reactors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thor...
  - mdellabitta 12y ago
    I just went past one on the train to work. They're everywhere!
- AlisdairO 12y ago
  Oak ridge was a uranium MSR.
Gravityloss 12y ago
Note that this very different to the molten salt LFTR design. With solid fuel it is very hard to prevent protactinium capturing neutrons, which means problems for breeding and waste and probably operational constraints as well. The LFTR is such a beautiful consistent design but it is very different from ordinary reactors. Also the title is inaccurate as different thorium reactors have been designed, built and operated. See MSRE and THTR-300 for example.
- msandford 12y ago
  I wish I had dug in further. I am substantially less excited now.
- warfangle 12y ago
  The big problem with a molten salt LFTR is the materials necessary for the plumbing. Any metal will become brittle as it is exposed to the radiation emitted from the reactor core. And manufacturing ceramics into the precision pieces called for is not a solved problem. LFTR designs are fantastic, amazing, and solve a lot of problems. There is a lot of materials science to be done to make them viable, though.
  - JohnHaugeland 12y ago
    You're confusing issues from pressurized reactors with LFTRs. The reason manufacturing ceramics for pressurized reactors is hard is the pressure and size involved. LFTR can be run at normal pressure at small scale; you can use a kiln as the pressure vessel if you want to. Also, no, not any metal gets brittle; inconel and hastelloy handle radiation quite well for decades at a time, as does good old fashioned nickel. Beyond that, most reactor pressure vessels are a layer of metal then a layer of something that's really good at radiation, then the real pressure vessel, so that the interior layer's brittleness isn't very important. We built and ran LFTRs commercially in the 1950s in New York State and Pennsylvania, before computers became a commercially realistic thing. They provided our grandparents no significant technical challenge. The actual big problem with LFTR is primarily regulatory. The design hasn't been vetted to modern safety standards, which costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and the entities who are nuclear-aware and have that kind of money to throw around tend to be the existing nuclear companies, who can't switch to any other technology because they're deep in the Gilette Razor model, and anything that took out their existing fuel contracts would immediately bankrupt them. There is /zero/ materials science needed to make a LFTR. I don't know where you got that idea. They're substantially easier than what we make today. The average auto body shop can pull it off.
Aardwolf 12y ago
Nice specs! Where does the Thorium come from and how abundant is it?
- beedogs 12y ago
  "Thorium is three times more abundant in nature than uranium. All but a trace of the world’s thorium exists as the useful isotope, which means it does not require enrichment. Thorium-based reactors are safer because the reaction can easily be stopped and because the operation does not have to take place under extreme pressures. Compared to uranium reactors, thorium reactors produce far less waste and the waste that is generated is much less radioactive and much shorter-lived." http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thin...
  - rwcarlsen 12y ago
    Thorium is not a fissile isotope - meaning it can't be used for fission directly. It needs to be transmuted by neutrons into uranium 233 (which is fissile). By this measure, thorium isn't any better than Uranium 238 - which is 99.3% of naturally occurring uranium. So "All but a trace of the world's thorium exists as the useful isotope" - can be applied to uranium also. Uranium 238 is also a fertile isotope - and doing a completely fair comparison, uranium doesn't need to be enriched either... Except the only way we have to convert fertile isotopes to fissile isotopes is to expose them to a sustained, high neutron flux which is typically only economically achievable using enriched uranium (via the naturally occuring U235 isotope). Thorium breeder reactors need enriched uranium as much as uranium breeder reactors. So while thorium has some advantages, I wouldn't say that natural abundance or supply are particularly significant. [Edit] corrected use of "fissile" -> "fertile"
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      Or, if you're doing research in the UK, you use a particle accelerator to convert it on the fly. Once it starts you're good to go (you can keep it going using neutron flux in the reactor) so you have the particle beam starter engine :-)
prestadige 12y ago
This is great news. I've read about so many great nuclear projects in the past few years. Three thorium initiatives in China, India and Norway. ITER in Europe. Bussard Electrostatic Fusion. Travelling Wave Reactors. General Fusion's Steam Hammer Design. And there are many more. So it looks like an increasingly bad bet to say that they will all fail. Which is good, because we're going to need lots of energy in the future.
linohh 12y ago
I went to school next to THTR-300 which was built from 1971 on and is now defunct thanks to incompetence and huge failures in crisis management. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  That, and incredibly unfortunate timing. I dare say that had the incident happened two weeks earlier, or several years later, there would have been no uproar - but for it to happen several days after Chernobyl, and for them to then try to cover it up... couldn't be worse.
spenrose 12y ago
The problem with nuclear power is not the primary fuel; it's the economics, especially the economics of big engineering: http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/11/21/why-official-nuke-plant-cost-estimates-are-like-campaign-promises/ http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/11/21/why-officia... http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2014/02/20/why-the-economics-dont-favor-nuclear-power-in-america/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2014/02/20/why-the-...
- seanflyon 12y ago
  Dealing with waste is also a major problem with most kinds of nuclear reactors. Safely dealing with spent fuel is expensive. For example, the largest meltdown in Fukushima was in a spent fuel storage pool.
  - DennisP 12y ago
    Fast reactors and liquid thorium reactors would produce about one percent as much waste for the same amount of energy.
- DennisP 12y ago
  From the first link: "In those decades parts of plants were built, ripped out and rebuilt because of design and regulatory problems, leading to ruinous costs." I've read about this before. Companies start building plants based on existing regulations. Along the way, the NRC changes the regulations, requiring tear-down and rebuilding. Meanwhile interest on the loan keeps building up. Add further delays due to political resistance and it's no wonder costs escalate. It's not just the economics of big engineering causing the problem here. I think matters have improved somewhat in the U.S., but it's still going to be interesting to see how AP-1000 costs in the U.S. compare to those in China. Incidentally, there are some arguments that liquid thorium reactors, and some other GenIV designs, could have significantly lower capital costs than conventional reactors. A big reason for that is that the basic physics of fuel and coolant provides substantial passive safety, rather than relying on lots of redundant active systems.
  - 12y ago
acd 12y ago
Fast breeder Thorium reactors and electric cars to the people! Cheap energy and clean cars.
JohnHaugeland 12y ago
On what planet is this the world's first thorium reactor? We had running thorium reactors in the 1950s.

115 points by sasoon 12y ago

I'm really glad to see that the concept is starting to take off. It makes me sad that it's not happening in the US. If some folks in the government and business don't get their heads out of their asses a growth industry is going to bypass us entirely.

cstross 12y ago
Note that you can breed U-233 from thorium and use that in nuclear weapons. The critical mass of U-233 is about 50% higher than Pu-239 but otherwise it's usable in implosion-type bomb designs; the main hazard is the presence of U-232 as a contaminant (which is a high level gamma emitter and makes it dangerous to work with) -- the real question is how they plan to reduce the U-232 contamination level enough to make weapons-safe U-233. As India is already a nuclear weapons power, this has no immediate proliferation implications ... but moving a nation of a billion-plus people onto an energy cycle that produces weaponizable material as a by-product might be considered unwise by some. Cf. concerns in the 1970s and 1980s about the implications of running a "plutonium cycle" fast breeder energy ecosystem.
- msandford 12y ago
  If everyone in the world had enough energy to live a developed-world middle-class lifestyle -- and with thorium reactors this might be feasible -- might that not eliminate one of the driving forces behind global conflict? I'm not saying it's a slam-dunk win for sure. But I have noticed a lot of general apathy and aversion to violence in the developed world largely because people are just too busy living their lives; they have a lot to lose. > the real question is how they plan to reduce the U-232 contamination level enough to make weapons-safe U-233 I'm not convinced that anyone has this goal in mind. Maybe they just want to provide power to their countrymen and continue to lift India out of poverty. There might be nothing nefarious about this, unless you consider poor people getting less poor to be a problem.
  - Rapzid 12y ago
    In certain parts of the world, maybe. In other parts differences in religion is the driving force behind conflict..
    - tormeh 12y ago
      It never really is. It's always about resources and power. Sure, there's often a holy book involved, but it's just a way to divide people into tribes, like nationality, color etc. It's always we want our (un)fair piece of the cake, where we is some group affiliation and it doesn't really matter what the affiliation is based on.
    - madaxe_again 12y ago
      Disagree. Religion is the vehicle. Inequality is the driver.
      - Tloewald 12y ago
        There were/are religious conflicts in communities where it's impossible to tell the belligerents apart -- ethnically, economically, you name it. "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." Inequality is definitely a contributing factor, perhaps even _the_ contributing factor, but don't count out religion.
        Jach 12y ago
        Inequality is the wrong diagnosis. As msandford pointed out, it's more likely to be a minimum standard of living issue and having enough to lose. If inequality was a main factor, you would expect Pakistan to have similar crime rates as Sweden, when in reality they're not even close. (PG has an essay on inequality being a boon to a nation's economy: http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html) You could also look at the religiosity of a country, but the trend there is that lower standards of living correlate with higher religiosity. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-...) I'm more inclined to think the causation goes from low standard of living --> religiosity rather than the other way around, given the United States. However there could be other deeper factors that give rise to a low standard of living, such as a nation's average IQ -- you're not going to see a nation with average IQ of 70 outperform let alone match a nation with average IQ of 100 in terms of standard of living.
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  I don't understand the whole "it has to be capable of making bombs to be viable" thing. I mean, the local coal power plant can't make artillery shells, but we're not shutting it down...
  - luckyno13 12y ago
    Only an assumption here, but I would say its due to what to do with the waste. If the waste is useless, then we have to have a place to put it. If it has another use, then obviously we dont have to stick it in a hole somewhere. Again, totally non-researched, off the top of my head assumption.
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      Thorium reactors breed U-233, but not as a waste product. The U-233 is consumed to generate power. I'm not sure what the U-233 produces when it undergoes fission but I don't think the result is weaponizable.

stox 12y ago

Oak Ridge had a Thorium reactor in 1965. This is not the first.

VLM 12y ago
The situation is actually even worse, here's a wikipedia link to a list of fifteen Th fueled reactors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thor...
- mdellabitta 12y ago
  I just went past one on the train to work. They're everywhere!
AlisdairO 12y ago
Oak ridge was a uranium MSR.

Gravityloss 12y ago

Note that this very different to the molten salt LFTR design. With solid fuel it is very hard to prevent protactinium capturing neutrons, which means problems for breeding and waste and probably operational constraints as well. The LFTR is such a beautiful consistent design but it is very different from ordinary reactors. Also the title is inaccurate as different thorium reactors have been designed, built and operated. See MSRE and THTR-300 for example.

msandford 12y ago
I wish I had dug in further. I am substantially less excited now.
warfangle 12y ago
The big problem with a molten salt LFTR is the materials necessary for the plumbing. Any metal will become brittle as it is exposed to the radiation emitted from the reactor core. And manufacturing ceramics into the precision pieces called for is not a solved problem. LFTR designs are fantastic, amazing, and solve a lot of problems. There is a lot of materials science to be done to make them viable, though.
- JohnHaugeland 12y ago
  You're confusing issues from pressurized reactors with LFTRs. The reason manufacturing ceramics for pressurized reactors is hard is the pressure and size involved. LFTR can be run at normal pressure at small scale; you can use a kiln as the pressure vessel if you want to. Also, no, not any metal gets brittle; inconel and hastelloy handle radiation quite well for decades at a time, as does good old fashioned nickel. Beyond that, most reactor pressure vessels are a layer of metal then a layer of something that's really good at radiation, then the real pressure vessel, so that the interior layer's brittleness isn't very important. We built and ran LFTRs commercially in the 1950s in New York State and Pennsylvania, before computers became a commercially realistic thing. They provided our grandparents no significant technical challenge. The actual big problem with LFTR is primarily regulatory. The design hasn't been vetted to modern safety standards, which costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and the entities who are nuclear-aware and have that kind of money to throw around tend to be the existing nuclear companies, who can't switch to any other technology because they're deep in the Gilette Razor model, and anything that took out their existing fuel contracts would immediately bankrupt them. There is /zero/ materials science needed to make a LFTR. I don't know where you got that idea. They're substantially easier than what we make today. The average auto body shop can pull it off.

Aardwolf 12y ago

Nice specs! Where does the Thorium come from and how abundant is it?

beedogs 12y ago
"Thorium is three times more abundant in nature than uranium. All but a trace of the world’s thorium exists as the useful isotope, which means it does not require enrichment. Thorium-based reactors are safer because the reaction can easily be stopped and because the operation does not have to take place under extreme pressures. Compared to uranium reactors, thorium reactors produce far less waste and the waste that is generated is much less radioactive and much shorter-lived." http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thin...
- rwcarlsen 12y ago
  Thorium is not a fissile isotope - meaning it can't be used for fission directly. It needs to be transmuted by neutrons into uranium 233 (which is fissile). By this measure, thorium isn't any better than Uranium 238 - which is 99.3% of naturally occurring uranium. So "All but a trace of the world's thorium exists as the useful isotope" - can be applied to uranium also. Uranium 238 is also a fertile isotope - and doing a completely fair comparison, uranium doesn't need to be enriched either... Except the only way we have to convert fertile isotopes to fissile isotopes is to expose them to a sustained, high neutron flux which is typically only economically achievable using enriched uranium (via the naturally occuring U235 isotope). Thorium breeder reactors need enriched uranium as much as uranium breeder reactors. So while thorium has some advantages, I wouldn't say that natural abundance or supply are particularly significant. [Edit] corrected use of "fissile" -> "fertile"
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Or, if you're doing research in the UK, you use a particle accelerator to convert it on the fly. Once it starts you're good to go (you can keep it going using neutron flux in the reactor) so you have the particle beam starter engine :-)

prestadige 12y ago

This is great news. I've read about so many great nuclear projects in the past few years. Three thorium initiatives in China, India and Norway. ITER in Europe. Bussard Electrostatic Fusion. Travelling Wave Reactors. General Fusion's Steam Hammer Design. And there are many more. So it looks like an increasingly bad bet to say that they will all fail. Which is good, because we're going to need lots of energy in the future.

linohh 12y ago

I went to school next to THTR-300 which was built from 1971 on and is now defunct thanks to incompetence and huge failures in crisis management. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300

madaxe_again 12y ago
That, and incredibly unfortunate timing. I dare say that had the incident happened two weeks earlier, or several years later, there would have been no uproar - but for it to happen several days after Chernobyl, and for them to then try to cover it up... couldn't be worse.

spenrose 12y ago

The problem with nuclear power is not the primary fuel; it's the economics, especially the economics of big engineering: http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/11/21/why-official-nuke-plant-cost-estimates-are-like-campaign-promises/ http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/11/21/why-officia... http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2014/02/20/why-the-economics-dont-favor-nuclear-power-in-america/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2014/02/20/why-the-...

seanflyon 12y ago
Dealing with waste is also a major problem with most kinds of nuclear reactors. Safely dealing with spent fuel is expensive. For example, the largest meltdown in Fukushima was in a spent fuel storage pool.
- DennisP 12y ago
  Fast reactors and liquid thorium reactors would produce about one percent as much waste for the same amount of energy.
DennisP 12y ago
From the first link: "In those decades parts of plants were built, ripped out and rebuilt because of design and regulatory problems, leading to ruinous costs." I've read about this before. Companies start building plants based on existing regulations. Along the way, the NRC changes the regulations, requiring tear-down and rebuilding. Meanwhile interest on the loan keeps building up. Add further delays due to political resistance and it's no wonder costs escalate. It's not just the economics of big engineering causing the problem here. I think matters have improved somewhat in the U.S., but it's still going to be interesting to see how AP-1000 costs in the U.S. compare to those in China. Incidentally, there are some arguments that liquid thorium reactors, and some other GenIV designs, could have significantly lower capital costs than conventional reactors. A big reason for that is that the basic physics of fuel and coolant provides substantial passive safety, rather than relying on lots of redundant active systems.
- 12y ago

acd 12y ago

Fast breeder Thorium reactors and electric cars to the people! Cheap energy and clean cars.

JohnHaugeland 12y ago

On what planet is this the world's first thorium reactor? We had running thorium reactors in the 1950s.