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Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
- Thread starter Niniux
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I'm not a big fan of Bill Gate's time as president of Microsoft, but I'm a big admirer both of his work on his foundation and on his overall intellect and ability to adapt.
Watch his TED presentation on energy, and you'll see he doesn't really believe in wind and solar as a real solution, he doesn't state it outright, but considering he's willing to pour over a hundred millions on the travelling wave reactor, and zero on wind and solar, that speaks volumes.
The number of reputable people that came out and said that wind and solar are not the solution, plus all information I read about how a stable/reliable electricity grid must be, agrees.
Germany coal burning has only increased since they shutdown the first few nukes. I'm still waiting to see proof they have been able to even offset those nukes 100% with wind and solar, just return to the same levels of emissions when they initially shut them down.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Most people don't appreciate how much the energy world has shifted in the last ~5 years. Gates gave that speech nearly 4 years ago... solar was almost 3x as expensive as it is now. He DID mention solar as 1 of 5 solutions and other than nuclear it's the ONLY source capable of scaling to the levels that we need. The 3 challenges he brings up are cost, transmission and storage. The cost has largely been solved and transmission/storage solutions will be deployed as needed. Power supplies are still tightest during daylight hours... so obviously storage won't be an issue until this shifts.
Yikes. I had to go to the source to understand nwdiver's chart. Here is the caption cited:
Vast potential: First and foremost, the solar energy resource is very large (Perez et al., 2009a). Figure 1 compares the current annual energy consumption of the world to (1) the known planetary reserves of the finite fossil and nuclear resources (those are the circles to the right of the diagram), and (2) to the yearly potential of the renewable alternatives (the ones looking as though they're coming out out of the sun). The volume of each sphere represents the total amount of energy recoverable from the finite reserves and the annual potential of renewable sources.
Vast potential: First and foremost, the solar energy resource is very large (Perez et al., 2009a). Figure 1 compares the current annual energy consumption of the world to (1) the known planetary reserves of the finite fossil and nuclear resources (those are the circles to the right of the diagram), and (2) to the yearly potential of the renewable alternatives (the ones looking as though they're coming out out of the sun). The volume of each sphere represents the total amount of energy recoverable from the finite reserves and the annual potential of renewable sources.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Yeah... I know this thread is supposed to be about LFTR... but here's an image of how "little" solar we would need. If nuclear power wants a future they need to start working on Marine reactors. That's really the only market that's going to be open to them... AND cargo ships could sell power to the grid while docked.
I'm still waiting for the first Hawaii sized island/country operating 100% on solar and wind (with similar per capta electricity usage). Actually, I'd be happy with just no fossil fuels. I hear they've done on a tiny Pacific Ocean island (that probably doesn't consume much electricity per capta).
At 30% efficiency, solar PV is 420W/square meter on a good day. That's about one square mile to produce 1,1GW in a good summer day, then add a wind park with another 5GW (100 huge turbines) so that at night and in the winter if the turbines work at 20% efficiency you can make up for the solar that isn't producing. Then add 3,3GWh of batteries to store the excess production late in the night to make up for windless nights. Add that up, even projecting another 20% drop in prices and it's still much more expensive than current expensive light water nuclear reactors, which over produces electricity in the night, that could be stored for peak utilization periods (like having 10% more power available) using the same batteries.
Yes, the sun is a very powerful fusion reactor, but tapping that is very inefficient. So is Wind.
That Uranium on your lovely chart is U-235 from proven high yield Uranium reserves. And using low efficiency light water reactors (that waste 99,3% of the total uranium energy). We have solutions to use 99% of the remaining energy.
Th-232 (natural Thorium) is about one thousand times more prevalent than the easy to use U-235 isotope. There's no such thing as Thorium enrichment, as it's all Th-232. Thorium is 3 times more common the Uranium overall.
5000 tons / year would power the whole world's electricity using LFTR.
There are dozens of mines in the world that each one alone would produce that much Thorium / year !
And the Thorium is free. It's a "problem" for the miners, since they must spend lots of money to dispose of it due to EPA regulations (Thorium is actually the least radioactive of all radioactive substances, with over one billion year half life, you could put a pellet of pure thorium in your pocket for the rest of your life without any issues, but I digress).
5000 tons of Thorium is just 3 maritime shipping containers !
One bowling ball of Thorium has the energy content of an Oil supertanker.
Using an IFR reactor, one bowling ball of depleted Uranium has the same energy content (but it would use another type of reactor, an IFR).
We could mine uranium from coal ash piles, recovering far more energy with an IFR than the original coal had chemically.
We could mine so much uranium from filtering sea water, it's tens of thousands of years worth of our needs.
The are enormous reserves of Thorium deep underground, without Thorium decay we would be dead (no magnetosphere = solar winds would have already stripped away our atmosphere, making the earth be like Mars).
That chart only makes sense if you reject any advances on nuclear energy and are really creative with expected solar improvements.
It's 100% unrealistic to think that we'll use even 1% of the world's surface for solar.
The other simple fact is in order to provide just 1/3 of our electricity with solar PV, the resources that have to be mined to produce that many solar panels are far more than the very modest total materials required to make the equivalent number of nuclear power plants.
Nukes are expensive due to:
1 - Extremely low manufacturing scale
2 - Low investment into making nuclear cheaper
low production scale prevents investment into making nuclear cheaper, expensive nuclear prevents adoption of nuclear
3 - Overregulation of nuclear by the NRC and other regulatory institutions, due to infiltration by radical green and fossil fuel interests (no linear threshold nonsense for starters)
Nuclear is much like Elon's statement about SpaceX and rockets. Even if rockets were single use, but only 200% over material costs, rockets would still be an order of magnitude cheaper. It's the lack of interest in making nuclear cheap plus the not in my backyard syndrome that makes it impossible.
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It's 5 (almost 6) years later. Lots of new Youtube content about thorium reactors. Any knowledgable comments of the viability of LFTR thorium reactors vs solar, in either the Western or Eastern world? On Mars?
example (he gets to thorium at 11:37 but the first 10 minutes are worth watching IMO)... (60) Thorium and the Future of Nuclear Energy - YouTube
example (he gets to thorium at 11:37 but the first 10 minutes are worth watching IMO)... (60) Thorium and the Future of Nuclear Energy - YouTube
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nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Prediction: In 10 years there will be a lot more YouTube content about Thorium Reactors and the number of commercial Thorium Reactors will more than Triple.
From 0 to 0 x 3 to.... 0.
I was in the Navy for 8 years and operated the Steam plant. We used stream from water heated by something in the 'box' next door. Not sure what heated the water... that wasn't my job, my job was to take the steam and make the ship move, make electricity and make fresh water. Might have been magic.... any who... the point is that regardless of the heat source the process of converting heat into electricity is complicated, inefficient, maintenance intensive and expensive compared to converting photons or wind into electricity.
IMO any technology that needs to make heat then use that heat to make electricity is not even remotely worth investing in for commercial electricity generation... which includes LFTR.
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