
Thorium Reactors - packetlss
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/11/is-thorium-the-biggest-energy-breakthrough-since-fire-possibly/
======
Bud
Leave to Forbes to write a massively hyped headline, and then deliver NO
useful information whatsoever on the topic at hand. I feel like I knew more
about thorium's potential BEFORE reading this.

Is it just me, or is Forbes doing this a lot lately?

~~~
_delirium
Somewhere around 2009 or so it feels like they made the switch from a highbrow
_Economist_ -style strategy, targeting upper-income discerning readers of the
print magazine, to a linkbait AOL-style strategy, making vaguely provocative
claims about economics.

~~~
mlinksva
I thought they made that switch somewhere around 1996-2000 when Steve Forbes
ran for U.S. president (and I still read the paper edition fairly regularly).
I haven't read it since, though they do have at least one good blogger these
days (who I subscribe to via their personal site's RSS feed, which they've
redirected to their Forbes RSS feed; I still don't visit the site).

------
marze
The news industry and the PR industry are about equal in size. Articles like
this shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with that fact.

Nuclear power is the future. Ideally, the reactor should be a long ways from
any valuable real estate, like at least 90,000,000 miles.

Fortunately, recievers that receive beamed power from the big fusion reactor
are dropping in price at a rate of 30% per year. That fact makes VC funding of
thorium reactor technology problematic.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
Uh, no.

Prices did go down 30%, but it took ten years, not one.
[http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solar-costs-dropped-30-over-
last...](http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solar-costs-dropped-30-over-last-decade/)

This is my problem with solar energy. It's getting better. It isn't price-
competitive with coal yet. There are already lots of niche applications. But
people can't maintain a healthy skepticism about it because it's such a feel-
good technology.

To wit, the US government loaned $535 million to Solyndra at about the same
time LBNL released that report. Now they're broke and the FBI raided their
offices a few days ago. Where else could a company borrow half a billion
dollars without ever showing a profit?

In comparison, the _entire_ projected cost for the solar updraft tower that
the Southern California Public Power Authority is building is under $30
million.

ETA - No replies yet, but plenty of downvotes. I hope to be corrected if I'm
wrong, of course. I tried to find credible sources for what I've said here. I
can't source my claim that solar power is an issue where people pay more
attention to feelings than facts. You can't prove something like that. But
people are downvoting, and they aren't answering...

links:

[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/02/solyndra-...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/02/solyndra-
obama-biden-stimulus-waste.html)

[http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fbi-raids-connected-energy-
fir...](http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fbi-raids-connected-energy-firm-
solyndra/story?id=14473051)

on the updraft tower (which is an awesome piece of engineering):

<http://www.scppa.org/pages/projects/lapaz_solartower.html>

[http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/enviromission-
se...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/enviromission-
secures-30m-hybrid-debt-equity-facility/)

~~~
SoftwareMaven
So you are saying solar power isn't reasonable, then point to a project using
solar power to generate power from solar energy cheaply? And, fwiw, I wouldn't
consider wind turbines to be using solar power (every non-nuclear source would
be if I did), but the tower is specifically concentrating the heat from the
sun to drive the turbines.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
My point was that people take an idealized view of solar power that causes
them to see it as purely good, rather than as it really is: a mix of good and
bad, like any real-world technology.

In response, you call me out for attacking solar power (pointing out bad
parts), and being inconsistent about it (pointing out good parts).

So this reply looks like an example of the black-and-white thinking about
solar power that I was complaining about above. I say "looks like" because I
don't understand your second sentence. I agree with the all the facts you
brought up, but I don't see the point of mentioning them. Please correct me if
I'm missing something.

------
ghostwords
"Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which
ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines>

~~~
stcredzero
Newsflash: Can headlines ending in a question mark be answered with "no?"

------
latch
Back in the day one of the reasons Uranium was picked was specifically because
it resulted in weapon's grade by-products. You got energy + you could build
nuclear stockpiles.

Also, I don't think this article does justice to just how far ahead India and
China are in this field.

And all that isn't even accounting of the arcane crystals!

~~~
jacques_chester
It's actually a great example of path dependency. After the Manhattan Project,
more was known about uranium than any other fissile material. It was known how
to make it react and how to manufacture it in industrial quantities.

From there it was a short step to naval reactors, and for the lessons of naval
reactor design to disseminate into civil use.

------
BenSS
This is NOT NEW. The basic reaction chain has been well understood for
decades. There are multiple issues to be solved with actually setting up a
reactor to deliver power that the article doesn't even consider. Hype.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Is there a good resource on the topic? I've read countless hype articles but
nothing good on the issues that need to be solved for it to actually happen.

~~~
packetlss
Google TechTalk about it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8>

------
aasarava
The concept of Thorium-fueled reactors is not new. In 2005, I wrote an article
for Wired News about some of the market issues impeding Thorium adoption.
TLDR, at the end of the day, it seems the cost is too high when compared to
uranium. <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/07/68045>

------
phasetransition
\--Providing HN the details about Thorium that the Forbes article lacks--

tl;dr - Read Dr. Alvin Weinberg's book from the late 1990s. Amazon link here:
[http://www.amazon.com/First-Nuclear-Era-Times-
Technological/...](http://www.amazon.com/First-Nuclear-Era-Times-
Technological/dp/1563963582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315794920&sr=8-1)

-Background- I discovered liquid fueled nuclear reactors, and the thorium subset thereof, as a consequence of the chemistry minor I undertook in grad school at Georgia Tech (my background is materials engineering). One of the classes I took was taught by Dr. Jiri Janata, and it was functionally a class in analytical radiochemistry. Dr. Janata's expertise is in chemical sensors, and he worked for an number of years at Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) on methods to detect the spread of radiation in the environment. Dr. Janata exposed our class to the liquid fueled reactors.

-LFR- To read in Dr. Weinberg's book, Oak Ridge was left out in the cold when it came to reactor design. This despite the fact that Weinberg and Eugene Wigner wrote "The Physical Theory of Neutron Reactors," as the definitive first text on reactor physics. Wigner and Weinberg dreamed up many dozens of potential power reactor design concepts in the 40s.

Oak Ridge National Lab managed to procure funding to pursue reactors that
might power airplanes. Weinberg is candid about how the concept of nuclear
powered flight was nearly fiction, but any grant in a storm! Any grant in a
storm is still alive and well, btw.

Out of that work came the liquid fueled reactors, of which thorium could be
one of the fuels. The liquids were composed of multi-component molten halide
salt solutions that had some partial solubility for certain radionuclide
salts. Much of the molten salt chemistry details we have today come as
consequence of the research into their behavior from Oak Ridge.

Liquid fuels for reactors have many advantages: 1\. They operate at
atmospheric pressure (1 atm), so there's no pressure vessel to worry about
bursting in an accident. 2\. Molten salts have very little vapor pressure, and
therefore don't volatilize as readily. 3\. The molten salts allow very high
operational temperatures for better Carnot efficiency, in part because of 2.
4\. The systems is single phase, liquid only. This is in contrast to 2-phase
behavior of something like BWR reactors 5\. Waste fission products (e.g.
iodine) can be scrubbed from the molten fuel during operation. The fuel
composition can be monitored and changed as needed during operation. 6\.
Neutron reflectors are needed to obtain criticality in the system. The molten
salt with nuclear material in it is subcritical by nature.

For a liquid fuel reactor, there is no loss of coolant accident, as the fuel
is in the working fluid. The amount of decay heat from fission products
remaining in the fuel can be lower if there would be scrubbing in place. As
the world sees now, decay heat is the tiger in the room for reactor safety.

-Brief Accident Scenario- If an accident occurs, and power is lost, the molten fuel drains back into a core sump vessel which then is cooled to deal with the decay heat. Because the fuel is dispersed, and there are no high pressures to deal with, passive cooling of the decay heat in the molten fuel sump is greatly simplified. Further, natural convection can be stimulated in the sump to help circulate the fuel and remove heat.

-Follow Up(?)- There are some downsides, of course, but this is already crazy long. If the OP is still around in the morning on the East Coast, I'll discuss some of the negatives in another comment.

-phil

~~~
mnemonicsloth
I wouldn't pick this nit if my link wasn't so awesome [1].

Nuclear-powered aircraft are workable if you don't care about shielding. Who
in their right mind would design a flying, unshielded nuclear reactor? A Cold
War weapons designer who wanted to build:

 _... a locomotive-size missile that would travel at near-treetop level at
three times the speed of sound, tossing out hydrogen bombs as it roared
overhead._

The article at the other end of the link is the most tooth-curling engineer
porn I've ever read. It's horrible. But also strangely awesome:

 _Pluto's designers calculated that its shock wave alone might kill people on
the ground. Then there was the problem of fallout. In addition to gamma and
neutron radiation from the unshielded reactor, Pluto's nuclear ramjet would
spew fission fragments out in its exhaust as it flew by. (One enterprising
weaponeer had a plan to turn an obvious peace-time liability into a wartime
asset: he suggested flying the radioactive rocket back and forth over the
Soviet Union after it had dropped its bombs.)_

[1] <http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html>

~~~
phasetransition
Wow, I was totally unaware of this project, or how far along they got. The
folks at Oak Ridge had hypothesized a horse and carriage type device where the
fuselage would trail the unshielded reactor engine. The part about the company
that is now CoorsTek is also interesting. CoorsTek still makes lots of
important high tech ceramic bits.

------
merraksh
See also

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723675>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009869>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1763472>

------
unwind
Quite surprising to see a columnist/article in Forbes use "b-f-d", at least to
me. Isn't language like that ... kind of frowned upon, by typical mainstream
media in the US?

Not saying _I_ was offended, at all, just thought it was interesting.

------
dmfdmf
Maybe thorium is better, maybe it isn't but its probably too late now... first
mover advantage and all that with light water U235 enriched or MOX fueled
reactors.

Moreover, I'd discount any claims to thorium, pebble bed, etc being safer
because we have actual 50+ years of operational experience with light water
reactors which swamps any marginal technical advantages wrt safety.
Operational experience is a major unknown for new designs and a real factor in
safety for current designs.

The current designs are safe enough, we need to start building reactors now,
not 20 years from now.

------
tokenadult
pg has thought about this before:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/ladder.html>

"After all, projects within big companies were always getting cancelled as a
result of arbitrary decisions from higher up. My father's entire industry
(breeder reactors) disappeared that way."

My comment is that any Baby Boomer who read about physics as a kid (like me)
heard about thorium DECADES ago, and is amazed that the blog writer has
apparently never heard of anything that was written about before he was born.

------
tambourine_man
_“And what if the waste produced by such a reactor was radioactive for a mere
few hundred years rather than tens of thousands?It may sound too good to be
true…”_

A few hundred years is a helluvalot. It may all in all be better than fossil,
but definitively not too good to be true.

~~~
ScotterC
It's all context. Nuclear waste (as in from commercial plants) has yet to kill
anyone in the U.S. and it decays to lead eventually. However, mercury, which
never decays, is a byproduct of many processes (not to mention coal burning)
and kills/maims many.

------
niels_bom
Bill Gates gave a talk on Thorium reactors at TED last year.
<http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html>

~~~
niels_bom
Scanning the video again: I'm not entirely sure if Gates is referring to
Thorium reactors..

------
TruthElixirX
Same Thorium hype as usual.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
unlike the vast majority of things, thorium deserves all the hype it gets.

------
justatdotin
reminds me of the good advice, that: maybe we should learn to appropriately
manage fire in the landscape, before we start messing with nuclear fission.

you can't have your yellowcake and eat it too : if the propeller heads want to
feed uranium-cycle waste to thorium reactors, there's an implicit WMD risk,
both the risk of diversion for weapons production as well as providing a
rationale for the ongoing operation of dual-use enrichment and reprocessing
plants. Thorium fuelled reactors could also be used to irradiate uranium to
produce weapon grade plutonium.

And the use of thorium as a nuclear fuel alone doesn't solve the WMD
proliferation problem. Irradiation of thorium indirectly produces uranium-233,
a fissile material which can be used in nuclear weapons. The US has
successfully tested weapons using uranium-233. France is suspected of it.
India's thorium program prolly has a WMD component - given they refuse to
allow IAEA safeguards to apply.

but the worst threat of the thorium reactors is that we'll be fooled into
judging the real threats and impacts currently posed by the uranium fuel cycle
on the ambitious standards promised by the thorium advocates. The nuclear
industry has been over-promising and under-performing for too long - we can't
afford to allow their promises for tomorrow to deter focus from today's bitter
realities.

~~~
sliverstorm
You're honestly suggesting we abandon one of the most promising sources of
fuel in history because you're afraid someone might be able to weaponize it?

I got news for ya bud. There's weapons everywhere, and governments have the
resources to make them, thorium reactor or not. Extremists have the drive to
source them, thorium or not. Hell, Brevik proved that. Should we ban
fertilizer too?

~~~
justatdotin
not quite what I said; no 'might be able to' about it. As I described, the
nexus between fission power (including thorium) and nuclear WMD is well
defined. There's enough examples of thorium-based nuclear WMDs, and the
perversion of civilian power programs to further nuclear weapons programs, to
justify extreme caution. No, I'm not aware of fertilizer WMDs that leave
behind sacrifice zones of contaminated wastelands.

