Has a paper based on your ideas been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal devoted to those ideas?

@davidf yes, and I have requested the link is added to the article. Free download here http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/app5.164/abstract

Any use of nuclear fuel will take at least 10 years to get under way. We do not have 10 years to stop mucking about. It' back to coal and the complete destruction of the rent-seeking RET crowd, or nothing.

While I agree with most of this, I'm not sure we should rule in fast breeder reactors and slow breeder reactors out?

Given cheaper cleaner safer than coal thorium is preferred, consuming waste allows us to power industry for virtually free with a product other folk will pay us billions to store/use!

I prefer the SBR model packed into a space the size of a shipping container. enabling them to replace diesels in trains/shipping/large military industrial complexes?

Even there, there's a capacity to also use plutonium and other nuclear waste in walk away safe thorium molten salt reactors.

And we're not talking about fairy dust. But tried, tested and not found wanting, nuclear technology abandoned in the 70's due to the fact there's no weapons spin off!

Moreover, it's the most energy dense material in the world!

And the very reason, coupled to its widespread abundance, we should opt for it ASAP, without further time wasting prevarication!

I mean, it's child's play to recover and use as is, without any costly enrichment. FFS, it's less radioactive than a banana! [We have around 40% of the world's known reserves!]

Albeit, the waste products we would very safely use up in a FBR or a SBR aren't and adequate radioactive shielding would need to be included! As you would in any Xray department in any hospital and for very obvious reasons!

Meltdowns are virtually impossible in a molten salt reactor, given both the fissile medium and the transferring fertile material are designed to operate in a molten state!

Should there be a power failure for any reason, the only real danger is that the salt could once again crystallize inside the escape tanks designed for just such eventuality.

But never used in the five year long almost nonstop road test very safely concluded at Oak Ridge Tennessee! In that test bed thorium molten salt reactor. And there's been others! (See eminent scientist Kirk Sorensen on google tech talks!)

In conclusion, you'd be exposed to more rads during an international plane ride!
Alan B.

@Alan. B.

Note, our paper presents assessment of an alternate pathway, when I have made clear here and in testimony that we must be open to all the technological routes and the right answer is likely to be a blend, including the technology you speak of.

A liquid fueled burner reactor like the IMSR from Terrestrial, for example, may actually be a cheaper and faster pathway for destruction of existing plutonium and actinides if that is the priority.

The fast breeder reactor however does enable that ultimate efficiency of also using virtually all the u-238 as fuel too. That is a considerable plus.

Overall message I would make is that this paper is not intended to exclude other pathways. Actually, we are looking for more innovation and openness and using this as one assess-able example.

Thanks for leaving a comment, and please check out our site www.brightnewworld.org

ttbn, those who like you speak straight from the shoulder, should try doing it from a little higher up!

Moreover, it might help if you took the time to peruse the useful link Ben has provided!

And while "you" might struggle?

Google tech talks has a number of highly credentialed, highly regarded eminent scientists, one of who is apparently former straight shooter, special forces who'll educate and update you on the subject matter!

Always providing, you have an open mind, as opposed to a vested interest in planet and life destroying coal?

And while we're on that subject, we don't need to completely rule out coal and or NG, but can use the extracted methane in ceramic fuel cells to produce energy, with a World beating 80% energy coefficient!

Moreover, the exhaust product of said fuel cells is mostly pristine water vapor!

We should also be investing in new desalination technology, namely deionization dialysis, which produces 90% potable water for around 25% of current costs using current energy provision! Or 24 cents a kilowatt hour!

Imagine how much lower the cost of providing that (drought proofing) water could be if the energy cost factor could be reduced to just 2-3 cents per KH, with a still handsome profit margin left in!

Lastly, nuclear power makes it possible to extract Co2 directly from seawater, and even at sea, turn it into hydrocarbon based liquid fuel!

And using a catalytic assisted method, extract copious hydrogen from heat decomposed H2o, or convert currently flamed, in millions of tons of annual waste, methane into liquid, petrol replacing, methanol!

Try and remain calm and do a little helpful research.

Moreover, ensure brain is engaged before putting mouth into gear!

Confucious say, man who always dive into empty pool without ever looking, risk broken neck, or very hurt head!
Alan B.

It does seem as though some Asian countries are having considerable difficulties with nuclear waste. Japan for example sent used fuel to France and the UK for either reprocessing or vitrification, having concluded if I recall that a local mixed oxide plant (MOX) would produce fuel 4X as expensive as lightly enriched uranium. The MOX was used in both light water water plants and the discontinued Monju 4th generation reactor. Both approaches may not be revived and they are thinking of digging a 10 km tunnel under the sea to store radioactive material.

In comparison outback SA would be a cakewalk in physical terms though perhaps not politically. I think the correct approach is to start small in SA and let the public see what gives. This will take at least a decade.

Given the reported double meltdowns and other (six percent efficiency?) problems, some still to be disclosed?

I believe we need to entirely rule out liquid metal FBR's entirely!

And given molten salt reactors have yet to experience any such problem, I believe we need to both rule them in and begin now today to build a molten salt thorium reactor, given we know how to do that! And have plans available directly downloadable from the internet.

Why wait ten years! But use it reassembled as before, in 2018, to burn nuclear waste!

I'm just not that sure how well the old thorium based, stacked graphite block, molten fuel and molten salt heat transfer worked, but this even older FBR technology is preferred by others, ahead of molten metal FBR's as a back to the future step.

If a onetime world leading nuclear bomb building physicist, believed in and trialled thorium based SBR at Oak Ridge.

Then I believe we should start there and because you can't use it to make a bomb or bomb making material!

But instead, use it burn all the above, even if that takes the next thousand years and we have to power the joint with virtually costless risk free power in myriad small grid replacing factory built, mass produced modules, for said period!

It's a sacrifice I'd be willing to contemplate along with a world eventually completely free of nuclear bombs or bomb making fissile material!

And I'd not complain if the odd storm no longer took out my power, my air conditioning, my entertainment and the refrigeration!

Not everybody is as well placed as coal loving ttbn? Mate, you can keep your coal fired, foreign owned or controlled grid and the price gouging monopolies, it's created!?

How's the head? Hope it doesn't hurt too much?

Yes I know! But you'll get used to it?
It only hurts for a while and just at the beginning?
Alan B.

Now, we export a lot of coal! And more than anyone?

With the greatest lament of coal advocates, being the apparent lack of feasible clean coal?

Now, as somebody who once worked in the coal fired power industry in a science related occupation, I have an idea just how that might be done and with nature's own sequestration, zero emission!

First understand that algae absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2, and under optimized conditions double that same bodyweight every 24 hours! And that some types are up to 60% oil! And useful as is, without any actual refining as a superior diesel!

My optimized model would include effluent piped around large clear plastic pipes (kill two problematic birds with the same stone) and where suitably cooled and filtered smoke stack emission could be added to tower vacuumed and degassed water, which would then soak up the Co2 like a veritable sponge! No effluent? Seawater will suffice?

The entire emission load removal only dependant on the length of the pipe and the retained algae population!

With the excess filtered out, sun dried, then crushed to extract (child's play) ready to use green diesel, or jet fuel!

And yes it has been done elsewhere, albeit, more primitively, even where the lead time to maximized diesel production has been significant and the climate less than perfect/suitable.

Expert industry spokesperson has postulated, that even with a fuel excise component added, 44 cents per litre retail diesel is very doable?

Now, farmed algae only require 1-2% of the water of traditional irrigated crops, and therefore other outside the power industry options ought to beckon!

All that prevents import replacing locally grown diesel or jet fuel from getting a start up, is arguably vested political interest, ingrained willful ignorance? And consequent funding starvation!?

But no shortage of political hot air!? Don't just do something, stand there!
Alan B.

Alan B,

The Chinese are at the forefront of thorium research and they say that the earliest they'll have a demonstration plant will be 2024 with a commercial plant a decade after that. They also say there are still significant unresolved problems that may not be resolvable. So they only hope to meet the dates, but don't guarantee it.

Why do you ignore the views of the people who are at the forefront of thorium research?

Mhaze, I almost agreed with everything you said about the Chinese thorium program except this bit...

"They also say there are still significant unresolved problems that may not be resolvable. So they only hope to meet the dates, but don't guarantee it."

Please provide evidence?

In the meantime, China will mass produce another sort of breeder cheaper than coal in about 6 years.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/china-seriously-looking-at.html

The potential for thorium in Australia was best summarised by Curtin University's Nigel Marks here: https://theconversation.com/should-australia-consider-thorium-nuclear-power-37850

I hesitate to assume that any of the commenters here are more qualified than Professor Marks to rule any fuel cycles and reactor technologies in or out.

Foxy,

What is it that you do not understand about "Doctors warned."? British Medical Association, doctors: members-of. You seem so anxious to discredit anything I say, that you are coming up with rubbish. You recently said that you are are "too emotional" - I can't remember what you were responding to - but you seem to be getting back to the stage where your doctor warned you that your online activities were affecting your health (remember telling us that?). Give it a rest. You are not required to try take terrible, right-wing people like me to task all the time. You seem to be getting obsessed again. And I am much too thick-skinned to and 'mean' to be moved by your gentle nagging. Do yourself a favour. Don't take any notice of anything you don't like hearing.

Maximum,

"I almost agreed with everything you said..."

Please don't say you agree with me - it makes me think I must be wrong.

"Please provide evidence?"
Evidence for what? That an unresolved problem might be unresolvable? Logic 101 my boy.

Yes China is building more nuclear reactors. I can't imagine why when they only need to watch a few UTube vids to see how making a thorium reactor is child's play.

What dills, eh? Here they are building nukes and putting enormous resources into researching thorium in the hope that one day they might get it to work, and all the time the answer was right there if only they'd looked.

Sheesh

So Mhaze,
you don't have any source material or paragraph quotes from relevant news even to back your claim that the Chinese said there were potentially unresolvable problems?

The way you're getting your knickers in a knot right now only adds to the impression that you just made that up.

Maximum.

Oh I thought you'd been following the conversation but apparently not. I'll repeat for the slow:

I wrote this to Alan B earlier and have repeated it several times in the expectation that he'd address it:

"Here is what the gentleman in charge of the Chinese thorium research team (Professor Li) says about the development of a viable commercial thorium reactor:

"We are still in the dark about the physical and chemical nature of thorium in many ways. There are so many problems to deal with but so little time".

The Chinese hope (and its just a hope) to have a demonstration plant running by 2024, if the myriad problems can be resolved.

The head of the Bureau of Major Research and Development Programmes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has also opined:

* that one of the technical difficulties is that the molten salt produces highly corrosive chemicals such as fluoride that could damage the reactor

* that the power plant would also have to operate at extremely high temperatures, raising concerns about safety

* that researchers have limited knowledge of how to use thorium

Since the Chinese are a the forefront of thorium reactor research, I'm guessing they know a little about the subject. But they clearly don't have your extensive YouTube based research to fall back on.

Thorium might work and it might be the go-to technology in a generation or two. But shouting that the only thing holding it back is venal pollies is the most naive of notions."

There's plenty about this out there if you care to look. This link is but one example...

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1452011/chinese-scientists-urged-develop-new-thorium-nuclear-reactors-2024

Thank you Mhaze for sharing the source. I can see know why you didn't want to share it.

MHAZE WROTE:

"They also say there are still significant unresolved problems that may not be resolvable. So they only hope to meet the dates, but don't guarantee it."

MAY NOT BE RESOLVABLE. Really? That's not what I read! The article is about how RUSHED all the engineers feel, given the immense pressure to develop these reactors. So what does it say?

"Researchers working on the project said they were under unprecedented "war-like" pressure to succeed and some of the technical challenges they faced were difficult, if not impossible to solve in such a short period."

I read that as MAY NOT BE RESOLVED IN THE TIME ALLOWED, not your rather final MAY NOT BE RESOLVABLE!

Do you see why I like to check the sources, and don't really believe a lot of what you say? You don't quote honestly! The article was NOT saying that the challenges of working with thorium may not be resolved EVER, as you tried to twist it to.

Personally, I think they should mass produce AP1000's and just take their time with thorium, until they can get it right.

Maximum,

Again, its obvious that you've walked into the middle of the conversation and have, as usual, rather misunderstood. Go back and read all the related posts. I certainly can't be bothered to bring you up to speed since in the end you really aren't interested in evidence but instead the defence of a prejudged attitude.

By definition if a problem is unresolved despite years of work on it, there is a finite chance that it can't be resolved.

"By definition if a problem is unresolved despite years of work on it, there is a finite chance that it can't be resolved."

By definition, when Mhaze (a climate-science denying anti-scientist) is claiming something, there's a chance it can't be resolved with the real world.

How many 'years of work' have they invested in it? What knowledge base are they building on? Not the various experimental reactors, some of which ran successfully for years, mentioned in this wiki?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

The original scientists involved thought the MSR was a brilliant concept, and just thought it would need a few decades of R&D to iron out the wrinkles. Video's show them eating lunch with Kirk Sorenson, and Kirk asking them how they dealt with certain problems.

Can you name one of those problems? Just one? As for the chemistry of the corrosive liquid fluoride, they've already got some solutions for certain temperatures, but not for super high.

"Molten salts can be highly corrosive and corrosivity increases with temperature. For the primary cooling loop, a material is needed that can withstand corrosion at high temperatures and intense radiation. Experiments show that Hastelloy-N and similar alloys are suited to these tasks at operating temperatures up to about 700 °C. However, operating experience is limited. Still higher operating temperatures are desirable – at 850 °C thermochemical production of hydrogen becomes possible. Materials for this temperature range have not been validated, though carbon composites, molybdenum alloys (e.g. TZM), carbides, and refractory metal based or ODS alloys might be feasible."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Oak_Ridge_National_Laboratory_molten_salt_breeder_reactor

The overwhelming thrust of the article you referenced was the TIME LIMITS, not the TECHNOLOGY LIMITS. They did not say they would NEVER be able to solve whatever technical problems they were thinking of, just that it was difficult in the limited time available. They didn't like the research time being cut in half.

That is all.

Maximum,

I appreciate that your motivation here is to try to salvage a degree of self-esteem (having been so badly humiliated on so many other occasions we've crossed swords) by finding errors, no matter how slight, in anything I write.

But if you'd bother (and I know you won't) to go through the whole conversation over a series of threads over the past two months, you'd see you're barking up the wrong tree.

In the end you're playing semantic games over the world "may" in regards to the most inconsequential portion of that discussion. If you bothered you'd see that my main point to Alan was about timing. I never disputed that the problems may be resolved, (although equally they may not), but only that Alan's assertions that we can adopt thorium now are not based on any empirical facts.

But keep trying. Its always fun. The way the Roadrunner has fun with Wily E Coyote.

"I appreciate that your motivation here is to try to salvage a degree of self-esteem (having been so badly humiliated on so many other occasions we've crossed swords) by finding errors, no matter how slight, in anything I write."

As a fan of MSR's, I was genuinely interested and a little troubled by the way you phrased what you said. The MSR / LFTR is my favourite rector. So I definitely wanted to read about any intractable, unsolvable problems with the technology! I *had* to read your source material, capiche? When you finally contributed your source and I read it I was quite relieved. I was also confirmed in my view that we just cannot trust you to quote sources objectively, as you always have a spin to put on it.

I was only pointing out that the article *you* quoted did not actually say what you tried to make it say.

Ha ha ha, but oh man, dude: *you're* the anti-science climate denier. That's a whole world of tinfoil hat right there. But as to crossing swords? Yours is nerfed, as the following posts demonstrate.

You cherrypicked the Working Group to try and disprove any extreme weather events.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18419#327516

You smugly dismissed the Working Group’s SPM (which summarises the data findings *and* forward projections) while pretending in the previous post to respect the Working Group.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18419#327522

Crossing swords? Yeah, right, you just tell yourself that. Every time you misquote a source it just adds to your bad rep

Poor Maximum,

If you won't read the source material.....

You presume I hadn't linked to the SCMP because of some nefarious claims. But I have in fact provided that link on several occasions in previous threads trying to get some realism into Alan's thinking. But having joined the conversation half way through you remain clueless on that.

You might also note that I didn't quote but paraphrased and if you think that my paraphrasing was wrong that has more to do with your comprehension skills than my summarising. Actually we both know that neither is true but that instead you are just trying to play semantic games on the most minor point of my post in order to achieve what you think is a victory. Oh dear!

As to your other links, do you really want to re-litigate that issue having been so badly humiliated last time around?

"You presume I hadn't linked to the SCMP because of some nefarious claims. But I have in fact provided that link on several occasions in previous threads trying to get some realism into Alan's thinking. But having joined the conversation half way through you remain clueless on that."

OK, look, I didn't read the other threads where you were chatting with Alan. I'm prepared to calm down and admit that sometimes it is difficult to write concisely and exactly in every single post online. Maybe this is a case of what welfare people call communication 'noise'. We have a history that has made me suspicious of your intentions, and maybe I'm being a bit overly harsh in this case. I agree with you that the MSR is *not* yet ready to roll off the production line. I remain hopeful that in a few decades it will roll off the production line as some of the cheapest power the human race has ever produced, but until that time we should produce AP1000's.

Now if only you would agree that climate science was legitimate, and that the SPM is merely an abbreviated, concise version of the IPCC's findings, and that extreme weather events will increase with global warming, we'll be roughly on the same page.

There's already too much debt and apathy in South Australia and too many local and interstate anti-reactor + anti-waste dump protesters to sink all of Ben Heard's schemes.

Reprocessing + dumping would cost the Australian taxpayer $10s of Billions

This is noting that commercially successful nuclear reprocessing plants have proven failures in all countries - except countries that cross subsidize reprocessors from more expensive nuclear weapons schemes (+ Japan with a hugely inefficient taxpayer funded multi-$Billion plant) see all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#List_of_sites

Pete

Plantaganet, you do realise that all industrial processes we take for granted today at one stage were in their infancy, and were barbaric caricatures of what we've since developed? Just watch any 1980's movie and see the leaps in the technology around telecommunications.

What you are referring to were often test reactors.

But I note you haven't been able to condemn the EBR2, which forms the basis of the S-PRISM reactor nearly ready for commercialisation today. The PRISM is based on the physics of the EBR2, and GE are ready to build a *commercial* test (not physics test) in the first country that will have them. That is a reactor so cheap that it could become equivalent to or cheaper than coal, and that includes the reprocessing!

AlanB,

While I am a fan of liquid salt thorium reactors, there are serious technical issues with the long term safety of the reactor that are presently being resolved, and as the cost of uranium is going to be insignificant compared the capital and running costs of reactors for many decades, I don't see LSRs being viable for a long time. However, in the interim a tremendous amount of work has gone into reprocessing and recycling spent fuel rods to create MOX and REMIX rods that are being used in existing light water reactors to reduce the final waste by >90% and burn up the plutonium that can be used for weapons.

There is a vast amount of money to be made in this recycling that
France is using successfully, the USA is starting, and Japan and the UK are expanding.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/mixed-oxide-fuel-mox.aspx

There is also discussion of using uranium / thorium fuel to greatly extend the life of a fuel rod (thorium is converted to fissionable uranium)

EBR2 and S-PRISM equal HOPE plus $10 Billions of Federal Money which South Australia expects.

This is noting the Turnbull Government has already thrown $10 Billions of ship/submarine building money at South Australia.

Unfortunately South Australia have rusty industries that are the:

- least innovative
- high cost misconceived through renewable energy reliance
- most inefficient, and
- most full of a sense of entitlement

in Australia.

Let the Canberra money to South Australia Cargo Cult* keep on rolling.

* Cargo cults are marked by a number of common characteristics, including a "myth-dream" that is a synthesis of local and external government elements; the expectation of help from charismatic leaders; and lastly, belief in the appearance of an Abundance of Goods and Money.

PLANTAGANET,
"Cargo cult" might be misnaming it given it's not just hope, but documented history. You got the wrong H word there pal. History, not hope.

The EBR2 ran well for 30 years, demonstrated the physics, and shut itself down in a DRAMATIC safety test WORSE than the Fukushima power outage!

"In controlled testing in 1986, with the EBR-II reactor running at full power and the emergency shutdown systems disabled, the reactor's supply of electricity was intentionally turned off, causing the coolant pumps to stop. This is a worse scenario than what happened in the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. (At Fukushima, which began operation in 1971, the emergency shutdown system turned off the reactor as soon as it detected the earthquake. However the tsunami destroyed the electric generators powering the coolant pumps, which needed to continue running after the reactor shutdown. Subsequently, the core overheated and meltdown occurred.) EBR-II, in contrast, handled the event without creating a dangerous situation. EBR-II had a negative thermal coefficient of reactivity that shut down the reactor when the temperature increased due to loss of the coolant pumps; the time required to heat the large pool of sodium surrounding the reactor provided a sufficient time buffer for the passive decay heat removal system to prevent the EBR-II reactor from melting down. The safe shutdown of the EBR-II relied only on the laws of physics and did not require operator or control system intervention."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II

Fast breeder reactor projects usually run over budget, don't meet deadlines, then are closed down. Here is the sorry record of fast breeder reactors - most opened with shiny new technolical claims then shut down after chronic underperformance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Development_and_notable_breeder_reactors

Reactors of any size would take 2+ decades plus of government decision-making, planning, protests, reviews, environmental studies, and more protest stages - only to be vetoed by the standard requirement for Total Aboringinal (before whites) landowner consensus.

Coal fired power stations seem to be the only quickly achieved and substantial baseload solution.

Take, as an example, Japan's Monju sodium-cooled, MOX-fueled, fast reactor. Monju is a cautionary tail for Australian reactor spruikers. Monju cost US$12 (twelve) Billion to build and test but provided no grid power.

Monju has been inoperative for most of the time since it was originally built, and was last operated in 2010. The Japanese government in December 2016 decided to close it.

Construction of Monju started in 1986 and the reactor achieved criticality for the first time in April 1994.
- An accident in December 1995, with a sodium leak caused a major fire, forced a shutdown.
- A subsequent scandal involving a cover-up of the scope of the accident delayed its restart until May 6, 2010,
- In August 2010 another accident, involving dropped machinery, shut down the reactor again.
- the reactor has only generated electricity for short periods since its first testing in the 1990s

Headline 2 months ago:

"Japan scraps ‘Monju’ fast-breeder nuclear reactor after pouring [US]$12B into project over 22 years"
- December 21, 2016 see http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/japan-scraps-monju-fast-breeder-nuclear-reactor-after-pouring-12b-into-project-over-22-years

Yeah, I mean you should look at the history of aircraft development. We should definitely shut down all modern airlines because of the Hindenberg! I mean, just READ what happened to that thing!

I mean, if man had been meant to fly we would have been born with wings! (slaps hand to forehead)

It's called cherrypicking. The EBR2 ran well for *decades* and GE's PRISM plans are based on it. But hey, we can just build today's Gen3 passive safety reactors until the Chinese sell us all the breeders we want in a decade or so. China will mass produce breeder nukes cheaper than coal in just 6 years!
http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/china-seriously-looking-at.html