
ThorCon Power - jf
http://thorconpower.com/
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CurtMonash
I took one nuclear engineering class, in 1975. It was clear then that
pressurized water reactors should be replaced as the predominant design,
either by gas-cooled or molten-salt. I'm sure the same is true now.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-high-
temperature_reactor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-high-
temperature_reactor) suggests that gas-cooled reactors tend to be pebble-bed,
and that the story gets confused because there's a molten salt version of the
pebble-bed reactor as well.

Anyhow, googling on HTGR (High Temperature Gas Reactor) will reveal more.

~~~
legulere
They can have their own problems. The THTR-300 for instance is one of the few
commercial HTGR we had. They had several operational problems like water
leaking into the primary circuit (which could lead to hydrogen and oxygen
buildups at that temperature). The decommissioning currently is a huge mess.
Sadly the English wikipedia doesn't have as much information as the German one
about it.

~~~
rmason
People have been trying for twenty years to find $300 million in government
funding to create a new reference design of a modern thorium reactor. TVA's
old reactor which ran until the seventies was based on forties research.

But the past three presidents have not made it a national priority. China and
India have funded research and so has one private individual, Bill Gates.

~~~
Russell91
It just vexes me that thorium research is not a national priority. How can a
technology that, by many estimates, has at least a 50% chance of being a
viable replacement of all energy needs over the next 1000 years not be worthy
of the US investment? We lose hundreds of billions of dollars per year in oil
imports. Why is that not worth avoiding?

~~~
perlgeek
I'm not familiar with Thorium reactors at all, so forgive me for asking: how
much long-lived nuclear waste do they produce? Because we have no viable way
to do with that.

~~~
dognotdog
The idea is that not only do they not produce long-lived waste, but some
designs can even recycle the 'spent' fuel from conventional reactors.

~~~
CurtMonash
Is this in models -- molten salt? -- where the fuel circulates in liquid form?

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baseten
So they've finally managed to solve the little problem of the extremely high
temperature AND highly corrosive nature of this fuel?

~~~
LarsJorgensen
The high temperature limits the materials we can choose from. We've elected to
stick with known materials (stainless steel) for the first generation to keep
our schedule short. As someone noted below highly corrosive depends on the
material you are in. The fuel salt is actually pretty modestly corrosive as
long as the chemistry is kept right. Specifically, we have to keep the fuel
salt reducing - we don't want any free fluorine running around. We keep a
balance between UF3 and UF4 (roughly 99% UF4). It's like keeping the chemical
balance in your swimming pool. Under those conditions the vessel will last a
very long time indeed (>60 years). But it takes a long time to prove this and
we have to swap out the graphite anyway so we swap out all critical components
every four years. They get disassembled, cleaned, and normally put back into
service with a new graphite load. This is kindof like your laser printer
cartridge.

~~~
jmcmahon443
Stainless steel. Could you go into more depth about who's making your pipes
and fittings? What surface treatments will you be using, etc? Will you be
putting a cooling jacket, insulation, or anything over the pipes? Very
interesting in the metallurgy you're using since it appears to be the BIGGEST
problem of the MSRE at Oakridge.

Also, what happened to that experimental reactor? Didn't Obama send it to
Norway or something?

~~~
LarsJorgensen
The challenge with metallurgy for MSRE was two fold. First was the neutron
interaction with nickle forming helium that migrated to the grain boundaries.
We avoid this problem altogether by having a single fluid design with a
protective shield of B4C absorbing neutrons before they hit the wall.

The second problem was with tellerium penetrating the Hastalloy and weakening
it at the grain boundaries. This isn't a problem with stainless steel.

The stainless steel planned is SS316 which is available from multiple sources.

The primary loop does not have insulation surrounding it but it does have a 1m
thick graphite reflector to bounce most of the neutrons back to the core then
a layer of B4C to absorb the rest before they get to the vessel.

The MSRE was shutdown decades ago and recently had its fuel salt removed. The
vessel and piping are still in Oak Ridge inside its concrete silo.

~~~
jmcmahon443
Great, grain boundaries are really what it gets down to.

I only have two things to say: 1.) Good luck testing and gathering data on
these ideas. You'll need it. 2.) Are you hiring mechanical engineers?

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green7ea
It seems that thorium reactors produce less nuclear waste than uranium
reactors:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Fission_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Fission_product_wastes).
Could someone with more knowledge on the subject give a rough estimate of the
amount of waste we would be talking about?

~~~
badloginagain
Uranium reactors use something like 2% of the total energy available in the
uranium. Molten-salt-reactors use something like 98% of the available energy.
Additionally, the 2% that is waste contain extremely rare derivatives that can
be used as cancer "smartbombs", metals pivotal to deep space NASA missions,
etc.

This has a pretty good overview:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4)

~~~
fordiman
A MSR breeder can potentially burn 98% of the available energy; ThorCon is a
converter, but not a breeder. From what I can glean from their website and
documentation, it looks like they get about 20% burnup.

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sremani
India has very rich monzanite deposits. If the claims published are real,
India has found one awesome solution to address the present energy crisis.

~~~
ajaimk
Problem for them is the time and non-Thorium resources needed to enrich the
thorium. They're set for 50 years from now. Not today.

~~~
LarsJorgensen
The design choices have been specifically made to allow for a short
development cycle and rapid deployment. There is no need to enrich thorium as
virtually all thorium in the world is Th232.

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novalis78
Looks like an expert crew and quite thought through design. Now all it needs
is an Elon Musk to push it into existence in record time.

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sosuke
Are they already in production, is it being sold, do they need funding, are
they going to do a Kickstarter? (half joking, I can imagine it happening) This
tech sounds cool, but the site doesn't say anything about implementations.

~~~
audiodude
I think it's mostly just designed to raise awareness. There's no "Get
Involved" link, but I'm not sure how your average citizen gets involved with
nuclear tech in general...

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driverdan
> ThorCon can produce reliable, carbon free, electricity at between 3 and 5
> cents per kWh depending on scale.

How does this compare to traditional nuclear power and other forms of power
generation?

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LarsJorgensen
We expect to be around 1/8th the capital cost for the reactor itself. We plan
to use off-the-shelf turbines&generators marketed for coal so those costs are
pretty well known. You still have to add in the switch yard and transmission
lines which we won't provide any advantage in. Overall, though we expect to
come in below the cost of coal and natural gas including the cost of capital.
One can always use the regulatory system to drive up costs like has been done
in the US.

~~~
ScotterC
Hey Lars. Thanks for working on this! I used to work at Westinghouse and had a
very similar concept of using thorium as the primary system and hooking it up
to existing coal secondary systems. I really hope you find a way to easily get
the material for the initial core.

Instead of shipping containers, my thought was on using the existing rail
systems, although that's very US centric.

What's the next step? What can the HN community do for you?

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batemanesque
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you guys need to redo yr site - a
lot of the design cues make it look like a one-man fringe project which
(assuming that's not the case here) is unfortunate

edit: more specifically, it's not about making it look more
expensive/complex/modern but moving away from the specific aesthetic it has
right now

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pm90
OK, so here is an idea for disposing nuclear waste that might sound
outlandish: with the current progress in putting stuff in space, couldn't be
compactify all that waste and throw it at the sun?

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ScotterC
Nuclear waste is extremely dense and therefore extremely heavy. It would cost
an incredible amount of money to launch it into space, let alone the sun. The
corollary is it's also really valuable since it still contains an incredible
amount of energy, our current reactors only burn 5% of it where as future
reactors will be able to burn all of it. An analogy I often use is we're
burning just the kindling and our 'waste' is the hard oak that's harder to
burn.

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audiodude
Is there an ELI5 version?

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badloginagain
Its a nuclear generator factory.

It uses molten salt as the catalyst for nuclear reaction, using thorium as the
fuel.

The molten salt allows passive safety measures, significantly reducing the
negative effects of a meltdown. It also significantly reduces the size of the
reactors housing.

The use of thorium allows for significantly cheaper nuclear fuel, which
happens to be very difficult to convert to weapon-grade nuclear fuel. By very
difficult, I mean very difficult for a nation state, let alone a small group
of bad actors.

~~~
throwaway90446
So basically, they are better on every possible front, and the technology has
existed for a while?

Yet, LWR is still the dominant design. So, what's the catch? There's clearly
_something_ preferable about Uranium LWR that causes their dominance, no?

~~~
badloginagain
When nuclear research was first being developed, it was for the specific
purpose of building the bomb. When the war ended, and the industry switched to
civilian applications, they decided to go with Uranium because they had
already worked out many of the issues.

Still, the US Airforce wanted a nuclear-powered bomber shortly after the Navy
showed their nuclear sub and before ICBM's deprecated "end-of-days" long-range
bombers. A water-contained reactor wouldn't work in an airplane, so they
funded the development of the MSR (molten-salt-reactor).

Unfortunately, when they shuddered the project after the implementation of
practical ICBMs, industry politics discredited MSR's in favour of the reactor-
types we have now.

After fukushima, a grassroots campaign has been undertaken to resume research
of MSR's as a replacement of fossil fuels for scalable carbon-free energy
creation. If you are interested, you can get a great overview here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4)

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r00fus
> Unfortunately, when they shuddered the project after the implementation of
> practical ICBMs, industry politics discredited MSR's in favour of the
> reactor-types we have now.

So essentially what you're seeing is the result of decades of regulatory
capture of the NRC by the nuclear industry.

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angersock
I think the missing factor is that there are massive regulatory hurdles in the
way of testing new designs, no?

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fennecfoxen
... well, yeah: placing massive hurdles in the way of potential competitors
and their technologies is about half of the premise of regulatory capture...

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tracker1
Is it just me, or did anyone else expect to see plans for a convention based
around the Norse god / Marvel character?

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joshuaheard
I wasn't sure if the link was to some new technology or a cartoon character.

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pkaye
They should call it the "Thorium Brotherhood".

