

Could thorium make nuclear power safe? - MrDunham
http://theweek.com/article/index/213611/could-thorium-make-nuclear-power-safe

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gamble
> If a town of 1,000 bought a 1-megawatt thorium reactor for $250,000, using
> 20 kilograms of thorium a year with almost no oversight, every family could
> pay as little as $0.40 a year for all their electricity...

Are they really arguing that thorium power would be too cheap to meter?

Uranium is a pretty small part of the cost of generating nuclear power. (<10%)
What makes nuclear power expensive is the tremendous upfront cost of building
a safe reactor.

Thorium reactors aren't magic; they're still nuclear reactors. They produce
plenty of radioactive waste. A thorium reactor might not be _as_ susceptible
to certain types of failure as a uranium reactor, but they're still dangerous
enough that it will be necessary to build them to a similarly high standard.

In some ways, thorium could be more expensive. Thorium reactors need a kick-
start from a uranium reactor, so they're inherently more complicated. Thorium
waste decays faster, but more intensely. Some tasks that can be done by hand
in uranium reactors would require robotics in a thorium plant.

Thorium may or may not be a good idea. But to assume that it will be cheaper
than uranium is a bit foolish after witnessing what a graveyard uranium
reactors made of such dreams over the past sixty years.

~~~
MrDunham
I believe their argument is more on the lines of "why aren't we doing this?
It's so damn cheap"

Like you said, cost of fuel is a small part of generating energy. Besides,
PG&E would mark up for the "privilege" of using their power. ;)

~~~
Adam503
No nuclear energy is cheap. It's a big lie.

The primary cost of nuclear power generation is decommissioning the reactor
after the power generation is over. The Federal Government has 1 trillion
dollars in nuclear reactor coming down the road. The nuclear power "industry"
is long gone at that point. The decommissioned reactors get spun off into
their own little corporation , and the parent corp has it declare bankruptcy,
sticking us with the cost of clean up.

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dstorrs
For the love of god..."make nuclear power safe"?

There have been...what, three nuclear plant failures EVER? Ignoring Chernobyl
(which was caused by political pressure on the operators of one of the
earliest plants ever built) there have been a few hundred deaths attributable
to nuclear energy. Compare that on a GW / fatality basis to coal mines, hydro
plants, etc, and nuclear power is clearly the safest option around.

As to Fukushima...the fifth most powerful earthquake ever recorded went off a
few dozen miles away with a total energy release of something like 600 million
Hiroshima bombs. This caused tidal waves up to 30 feet high that rolled almost
halfway around the world. Despite all that, the total effect was a thermal
explosion and some radioactive steam was vented. Yes, it's bad, but it's
hardly a good reason to give up the best and safest form of energy known.

~~~
morrow
I think similarly to planes and automobiles, people over-value emotional,
anecdotal evidence over scientific, verifiable evidence by a large margin when
it comes to unfamiliar events. As much as you are more likely to die on the
way to the airport, it's easier to visualize dying horrifically in a plane
crash than in the car, as one is much rarer and harder to understand than one
which you ride in every day without issue.

I think the solution to this could be to incentivize tolerance of nuclear
power (maybe tax breaks to live within N miles of one), and educate those
unaware of the difference, until it becomes familiar to people.

~~~
c1sc0
This. Policies invented to cater to the random irrational fears of the public
are going to do us in.

------
ams6110
There's an premise here that nuclear power is currently unsafe, which I think
needs to be placed in the context of the less scary but much more widespread
environmental impact of fossil-fuel based power generation.

~~~
Adam503
I would suggest human beings are unsafe. It's human beings that put all
Fukushima's 20 backup diesel generators in the basement, but put no backup
diesel generators a few stories above or on stilts raised above a flood. Two
backup diesel generator installed a few stories up, and none of this happens.

The Dutch have put their water pump generators up a few stories for a long
time. New Orleans had power for their water pumps raised a few stories pre-
Katrina.

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jpitz
It would be useful if TFA would acknowledge that their opposing opinion is
from a "nuclear analyst" employed by an organization which is founded on the
opposition of nuclear energy in general. Just sayin.

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kinofcain
There's a bunch of reasons why Thorium cycle reactors, specifically molten
salt reactors, haven't gained traction, but this is my favorite (via
wikipedia):

>It poses a business challenge, because reactor manufacturers customarily get
their long-term profits from fuel fabrication.

Glad to see razor blades, cell phones and printer cartridges aren't alone in
the world.

~~~
jacques_chester
Uranium is the dominant technology for the same reason that we use Linux.
There might be better OS designs, but unices are well-established, well-
understood and are tied deeply into the economic system as a whole.

The technology to turn uranium into energy is a spinoff of the nuclear weapons
firmament. Swords into expensive ploughshares and all that.

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neutronicus
It's hard to respect an article that doesn't even mention that _Thorium isn't
fissile_.

Myself, I expect serious development of thorium reactors to come after spikes
in the price of oil and uranium, not before. Uranium and fossil fuels are just
too cheap right now to justify the additional effort associated with the
Thorium fuel cycle.

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dhughes
Last year or maybe two years ago a bunch of Redditors, physicists and
engineers, were talking about getting together and actually making a LFTR or
doing _something_ along those lines.

~~~
greyfade
It would be interesting to get an update on their work, if any.

~~~
dhughes
I submitted a self post asking for an update on the Reddit LFTR project but no
bites.

Found this
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/a8v7q/reddit_tho...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/a8v7q/reddit_thorium_reactor_part_two_pushing_private/)

------
Symmetry
Thorium, Uranium, whatever. Just make sure that whatever new reactors you make
have negative void coefficients, so they shut themselves off if they get too
hot. There's no reason civilian power reactors to make the same design trade
offs that let us cram a nuclear reactor into a submarine.

~~~
ams6110
Or are designed to get hot. Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTR) such as the
pebble bed reactor design are much simpler than current designs and cool by
natural circulation, the don't rely on control rods, coolant pumps, or other
active systems that can fail. China are prototyping them, and research is
going on elsewhere as well.

~~~
Symmetry
Yes, pebble beds are an example of a reactor with a negative void coefficient,
since as they get hotter the substance in the outer shell of the pebble
expands increasing the distance between the radioactive elements.

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aidenn0
Another day, another LFTR post. I'll be excited when any company not in China
starts the ball rolling on actually building one.

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powertower
Google Tech Talks on: The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8>

~~~
whatusername
And a Dr Kiki (TwiT show) interview on it:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEpnpyd-jbw>

------
blahblahblah
Forget thorium. Work on getting hydrogen fusion technology far enough past the
break-even point to be practical and profitable instead.

~~~
jpitz
I disagree, but only because I distrust predictions that viable fusion power
is 15 years out.

~~~
blahblahblah
The Manhattan Project started as something purely theoretical and produced a
working, practical technology in less than a decade. Apollo 11 put men on the
moon 8 years after JFK committed the country to that goal.

Both projects succeeded because they were made high national priorities, were
well funded, and a "critical mass" of the best and brightest were recruited to
get the job done. I don't think there's any reason to doubt that we could have
practical nuclear fusion power technology in a similar time frame if the
political willpower is there to give it the same high priority status that the
Manhattan Project and Apollo had.

~~~
jpitz
Salient points, but for the international collaboration and billions ( well! )
spent on fusion research and decades of promises thats its 10-20 years away.
It's a tougher nut to crack than fission. Come on - you can get a pile to
start a chain reaction pretty much accidentally. Fusion is fundamentally
harder. Kinda hard to replicate a star.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
It's not replicating a star. As a quote from wikipedia:

    
    
         The power production by fusion in the core varies with distance from the solar center. At the center of the Sun, theoretical models estimate it to be approximately 276.5 watts/m3,[41] a power production density that more nearly approximates reptile metabolism than a thermonuclear bomb.[note 2] Peak power production in the Sun has been compared to the volumetric heats generated in an active compost heap. The tremendous power output of the Sun is not due to its high power per volume, but instead due to its large size.
    

Fusion generators seek to harness this power where temperatures exceed
millions of K. And then we use magnetic "bottles" to hold fusion in. The main
problem is how to insert more material without breaking containment. As far as
I can tell, it's always going to be 50 years away. I'd say that micro-
singularity reactors are 'closer' than fusion.

~~~
jpitz
I apologize for over-generalizing. I realize it isn't replicating a star.

The nifty thing about being a star is that you have this massive gravitational
force available as your containment.

No matter how we do fusion, we'll likely need containment, and it's a vastly
harder problem than "put enough fissile atoms close enough together to sustain
a chain reaction." Let's face it - the big reason that fission reactors are
dangerous is that stopping a reaction is as difficult or often more difficult
than starting it.

