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Kirk Sorensen: A Detailed Exploration Of Thorium's Potential As An Energy Source
Kirk Sorensen: A Detailed Exploration Of Thorium's Potential As An Energy Source
Kirk Sorensen, NASA-trained engineer, is a man on a mission to open minds to the tremendous promise that thorium, a near-valueless element in today's marketplace, may offer in meeting future world energy demand.
Compared to Uranium-238-based nuclear reactors currently in use today, a liquid flouride thorium reactor (LTFR) would be:
- Much safer - no risk of environmental radiation contamination or plant explosion (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island)
- Much more efficient at producing energy - over 90% of the input fuel would be tapped for energy; vs <1% in today's reactors
- Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries
- Much cheaper - reactor footprints and infrastructure would be much smaller, and could be constructed in modular fashion
- More plentiful - LFTR reactors do not need to be located next to large water supplies, as current plants do
- Less controversial - the byproducts of the thorium reaction are pretty useless for weaponization
- Longer-lived - thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and treated as valueless today. There is virtually no danger of running out of it given LFTR plant efficiency
Most of the know-how and technology to build and maintain LFTR reactors exists today. If made a priority, the US could have its first fully-operational LFTR plant running at commercial scale in under a decade.
But no such LFTR plants are in development. In fact, the US shut down its work on thorium-based energy production decades ago. And has not invested materially in related research since.
Staring at the looming energy cliff ahead created by Peak Oil, it begs the question - why not?
As best Kirk can tell, we are not pursuing thorium's potential today because we are choosing not to - we are too wedded to the U-238 path we've been investing in for decades. Indeed, the grants that funded the government's thorium research in the 50s and 60s were primarily focused on weapons development; not new energy sources. Once our attention turned to nuclear energy, we simply applied the uranium-based know-how we developed from our atomic bomb program rather than asking: is there a better way?
This is an excellent and thought-provoking interview. I highly recommend you also visit Kirk's website [10] and its FAQs [11] to familiarize yourself with the thorium cycle, as I predict we will be revisiting the thorium story again in the future.
And we encourage our readers with engineering and nuclear expertise to share their insights in the Comments thread below. We are looking for ways to light the path ahead as we begin to descend down the global energy cliff. Will thorium shine brightly for us?
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Kirk Sorensen (36m:02s):
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You remind me of an idea from the seventies but updated in the twenties.
Build a huge worldwide electrical grid which is needed for renewable energy sources.
Build a very deep dry well in the mid Altantic.
Build a waterproof wall around the entire US.
Store all excess energy by pumping water from oceans into the US.
When needed, release water from the US into the deep dry well in the Atlantic via hydro-electric generators.
Everybody always seems to account for the fact of money right now not future money. We have an oil deficit of 250-300 billion dollars per year. It will destroy us because it is not renewable and is getting increasingly more expensive to find and expensive because of scarcity. Put the 1 trillion or more into your analysis to create renewable energy (which of course is never depleted), and tell me what the cheapest source is then. Plus its clean. You cannot tell me nat gas and coal can even compete other than they are cheap NOW. We might need them for future conversion to oil. These should not be wasted. A commodity almost always goes up in price, except nat gas, strange pattern? the sun and wind They never do. Solar panels are extremely durable and can last years 20 - 50 for a quality built one. Whoever is blackballing solar is screwing us all up. Maybe solyndra sucked, but First Solar is a viable business. Yes bla bla bla costs money in steel, aluminum transportation, but so does oil and coal. Nat gas might be pipelined, but we simply don't have enough of it only 11 years of it. Why they price is so low I have no idea.
I still think biomass needs to be used; algae farm etc.
This is the kind of insane government speak:
Though a backer of renewable power, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a 2009 bill that also would have required a third of power to come from such sources, saying he was concerned about costs.
Concerned about the costs when California is has the worst credit rating of any state? What is this man smoking? Nothing else seemed to matter, but our most important resource energy he's concerned about the cost? What good is that pension if you can't even turn on a light? Concerned about the costs when we wasted 1 trillion on oil deficits in the last three years? Would this cost more than your states oil deficit? Probably somewhere around 30 billion per year? Thats more than there own deficit in pensions or whatever the hell they are spending money on Is he insane? We need all cars to be battery powered now (speculating batteries will improve above todays standards ie Tesla's $10,000 replacement), and all renewable energy. It takes 80 barrells of oil to just to make a car. We need to do this now. Its the only way we will survive.
See folks, it’s real easy to develop technology and sell it to other countries. Let's take North Korea for example.
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Reports/Northkorea/Timeline.shtml
The comical part about this, the nuclear plants were about humanitarian efforts to provide services to a 3rd world country in poverty. Hmmm, who are these international governing bodies that oversee such programs?
Nothing is ever free in life. When someone gives you something, they will expect a favor in return. That favor may be more than you bargained for.
A contract was "signed," but was it ever delivered?
From what I recall all the noise from NK over the past decade or so was because this promise (made during the Clinton administration- likely to combat "communism") was reneged on (and oh how rare it is for the US govt to say one thing and then do another! </sarc>).
Seer: "but was it ever delivered?"
Nyet. Circle-Bar-W had the contract, built the vessels, politics intervened, Dear Leader didn't play ball, so the vessels are in tax-free storage in the "Live Free or Die" state where there are zero inventory taxes.
You'd also recall that exquisite qwm Madeline Allbright drinkin' and dancin' with Dear Leader, but they had a falling out.
Net benefit? BNFL (Britz), then owner of CE and (W) got to keep staff onboard. I might be a bit off on the timing, but these were (W) PWRs.
- Ned
Our defense department does need all of the resources possible to create destructive and toxic weapons for our future. The only toxins used in the production of hemp fuels are methanol and KOH or NaOH. Hemp fibers can be recycled over and over again so much so that a surplus of that product would materialize and those fibers could be processed into fuel pellets and presto logs. There are non-nuclear options for our energy needs. They are just being ignored. It is amazing actually.
I've understood over time (but, I must assure all, with no personal knowledge) that hemp fibers have little reuse in practice. They do emit certain stochiometric effluents and heat. After the event, anyone in the room does exhibit the total ignoring of what is going on. They are often quoted as saying: "duuude, this if fuckin' amazing."
- Ned
Now that my tin foil hat is on, let me tell you why we won`t have thorium reactors.
What would be of the petrodollar with abundant cheap energy?
I think we could do a lot better if we just tap and harness the hot air from Washington DC ... A contstant and infinite source
Way too dangerous, you simply can't control it and a shutdown will blow the whole world apart.
Too bad it's coming out the wrong end! Too much methane - much worse than CO2. Perhaps they need to be retro-fitted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Yawn.... if this was real instead of fantasy then there would be hundreds of companies making them. Big oil et al couldn't stop it. Even if it was half baked possible there are trillions of dollars of dumb money out there waiting to flow into the next pie in the sky idea. This is not a workable solution and will end up debunked just like cold fusion and perpeutal motion machines.
Is'nt Bill Gates or Bill Gates's foundation investing in this in China?
The "catch" is that it's too late and we will go through a net energy bottleneck, even if there is a crash Manhattan Project to set up thorium breeders. That said, it would require a massive diversion of current energy resources into the program; ie, a massive sacrifice of the current generations' energy usage into building enough reactors.
The benefits would largely be reaped those not even born yet. Since when do we invest in future generations?
No, we created massive claims on future production of the unborn for immediate gain instead. So in some respects, we have been gamed out of this future possibility by the financialization bubble. That has to be completely destroyed first to even think about the possibility.
for almost 75 years we have been lied to and propagandized (safe, clean, cheap) and they are still builing on the MSM and group-think mind games, even here, on zH today, same as they did following [march 2011] fuk_u, on zH a year ago lastSpring
they want MONEY and this is how they get it
they are gonna give you a fuking deal you can't refuse! L0L!!!
stop buying into the fantasies! why pretend it is ok to let them continue to rip everybody off and fuk up the whole planet under any conceivable circumstance at this point?
just the flim-flam man showing you a promise so you don't notice the radioactive MESS we call "gaia"
why not let them go to japan and clean up fuk_u and then build a thorium reactor there?
even i would go for that!
completely shutdown, dismantle and ship sanOnofre to safety; then go ahead and build! riiiight there!
chernobyl? just go to ground zero and BUILD any fuking thing ya want, ok?
The End
Credentials: PhD Electrical Engineering
Position: pro nuclear; renewable energy is a useful contributor, but not practical for base load generation. Only nuclear can supply the massive global energy requirements without CO2.
Problems with thorium reactors:
1. Not fissile by itself (will not natural sustain a chain reaction) so must be supplied with U235 or Pu239 to supply the neutrons. In some cases up to 20% of the fuel is U235 or Pu239.
2. Overtime the reaction will produce U233 which is almost as good as Pu239 for bomb making (all current nuclear weapons use Pu239 for efficiency). This will come out during fuel reprocessing, presentation a nuclear weapon material delimma.
3. Fuel reprocessing is complex and there are long life byproducts that must be handled; thorium does not completely eliminate the problem of long lived radioactive byproducts. Reduces yes, eliminates, no.
Developing thorium reactors is not being held up solely because of a political conspiracy, but because there are complicated technical problems.
That said, I believe thorium reactors should be developed, but we should be realistic about the technical challenges as well as the potential benefits. Thorium isn't a silver bullet to all of our energy problems, but it has the potential to be a significant improvement. It won't completely solve the radioactive waste problem, but it will reduce it. Plus it will eliminate much CO2 from the atmosphere. (Yes, CO2 contributes to a warming climate but no, renewable energy won't solve the problem by itself.)
Having been involved with many projects of my 25 years as an engineer, I can guarantee that there are many problems that haven't been thought of yet that will make thorium reactors more expensive than estimated, but we should still pursue them. This is inevitable for any large engineering project; humans just aren't that good at predicting chain problems (A causes B which causes C). We may predict A and sometimes anticipate B, but hardly ever C.
Reference article 1 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers article:
http://goo.gl/B8Ulm
Thorium fact sheet: http://goo.gl/mzv6v
edaguy: good summary.
Worth your while to look at heating effects from wind, e.g.:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2005/1012-wind_farms_impacting_weathe...
and solar (IR absorbtion, albedo change, i-squared-r losses and physical work all resolve into heat)
And what's the problem with more plant food?
- Ned
Did you ever consider that the initial assumption that we must continue to make calculations based on current base load targets could be wrong as they are generally encouraged and oriented to maximize corporate profits. Why don't you start from the beginning, where your brainwashing occured in your childhood. Think about it, if no one watched TV, how would they be brainwashed into thinking that the current model was necessary or beneficial. What would happen to your baseload if MSM didn't sell them all that useless crap? Try to comprehend the entire model Engineer. The elevator is in freefall from the 20th story with you in it, and you're concerned with the loss of energy that is not being generated...
engineertheeconomy well, you have "engineer" in your handle, but also "economy". Jury b out, I'd say.
But if you have any science, why don't you refute some assumptions. List 'em. Let's see whatcher got.
- Ned
I just did. Reread what I said. The rest of it is self evident or self explanitory. I can not change your comprehension level
I understand your situation. Less "engineer", more "economy" and being able to calculate NPV in all of its forms ain't "engineering."
- Ned
edaguy,
Kudos from this Naval Nuke and Amateur Polywell Fusion Engineer. Some reality injected into the subject. BTW Polywell is still in development. So far neither proved nor disproved. My engineering calcs are based on theory.
edaguy, your fact sheet don't cover the MSR design. Your arguments, however, mostly are found in that fact sheet, so they may not exactly be suited for refuting the LFTR design talked about in the article above.
"1. Not fissile by itself (will not natural sustain a chain reaction)..."
Incorrect. Once Th-232 is exposed to a neutron flux, it will quickly mutate to Th-233, which beta-decays to U-233, which in most cases undergoes the neutron-producing fission. So once a critical level is reached, it can be selfsustaining in MSR design reactors.
"2. Overtime the reaction will produce U233 which is almost as good as Pu239 for bomb making (all current nuclear weapons use Pu239 for efficiency). This will come out during fuel reprocessing, presentation a nuclear weapon material delimma."
Here our concerned scientists shoot themselves into the wing. Exactly that U-233 is desired to keep the fission going, so removing it at high cost to add it at a later stage would be counterproductive to running any MSR.
"3. Fuel reprocessing is complex and there are long life byproducts that must be handled; thorium does not completely eliminate the problem of long lived radioactive byproducts. Reduces yes, eliminates, no."
Traditional fuel reprocessing is done on solid fuel reactors fuel, like from the LWR types. MSR are operating with a continuous fuel, which can be used till exhausted and dumped right with the containing salt at comparatively low risk at a protected site. Only a basic processing is needed, much of it of chemical type. RadWaste will still be there, of course, so I agree with the 'reduces yes, eliminates, no.'
"Developing thorium reactors is not being held up solely because of a political conspiracy, but because there are complicated technical problems."
Them largest technical problems being the corporate structures controlling the entire LWR fuel cycle and never wanting to let any caught utility prey out of it again. The Navy is in advanced research and may (or does already) use a LFTR on one of her boats shortly.
"Having been involved with many projects of my 25 years as an engineer, I can guarantee that there are many problems that haven't been thought of yet..."
True here, and especially so in a globalized world, where yesterday's donkey drivers are required to do advanced calculations out of a Bombay backoffice to save some expenses for a properly trained own engineer.
"Solar Will Power the World in 16 Years" . . .
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-i...
. . . coinciding pretty well with the time when the world's disastrous nation-states will have run out of their power.
America is dead. Long live America.
Meanwhile, the state can kiss my ass.
There are no solar energy production factories powered by solar energy. That is a clue.
No, that is merely the present, as those wanting the benefits of solar are willing to pay a premium for them. But when the cost premium declines to zero, solar energy will power solar energy factories. And eventually everything else.
Meanwhile, the state can kiss my ass.
What is the land cost per kwh? 24/7 - Summer vs winter.
So much ignorance on this thread so little time.
Stick to moving FRNs guys. Because I have yet to see any one on this thread capable of running the engineering numbers. Or handle logistics. And LENR? Might be good for hot water heaters.
But I love all the wishful thinkers who have never run a nuke plant.
Why isn't Iran building a thorium reactor as we speak?
For the same reason as everyone else...
Too many sanctions on molten salts...
Thorium power pales in insignificance to this http://www.slideshare.net/tylervan/lenr also see: https://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1433865 and https://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1433866
engineertheeconomy has had too many bong hits, or is just naturally over the top. Thanks for the rational commentary above, Cooter.
He's given this some serious thought since this came out.
http://we.got.net/~davidbu/davidbu/pedgen/hph_cover_small.jpg
About 80% of the plant cost is in the steam plant. Even if thorium cost was zero it would only reduce the cost of the plant by 20%.
Second - fission products are radioactive. If they get into the environment before they cool off it is not good.
All the rest is true but relatively unimportant.
Polywell Fusion - if it can be made to work - is a whole different ball game. The "plant" is direct conversion. No steam generators which are problematic in any fission plant.
I have some more thoughts on nukes in the comments here:
http://www.ecnmag.com/articles/2012/07/full-steam-ahead-navy%E2%80%99s-c...
This is kinda old news. There's a better way meanwhile:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/feb/09/accelerator-nuclear-reactor
I am convinced Rossi is the real deal. Early September a first conference in Zurich;
http://www.borderlands.de/Links/Kongress080912E-e.pdf.
www.we-cat.com
I find it difficult to believe that 60 years ago, they couldn't spot that every single country would be going full-bore for nuclear power and weapons grade materiel. And hide it behind 'energy for the people'
In which case, why weren't they offering clean thorium to the world as the new sterlized energy source?
It is one thing to have a conspircay theory for everything, but quite another to have one, where everyone involved is stoopid. (Walker/Bush family the exception to the rule)
Molten salt reactors. Very cool concept, very cool.
Our only problem to obtaining Thorium is the complete lack of it. It's obtained through rare earth element mining you see. You think strip mining practices are bad now? Wait until some idiot manages to get their hands on more than ten pounds of after scraping the size of california up with a bulldozer.
It's a canard unfortunately. With our current diesel stockpiles with NG etc we do not have the amount of energy required to dig up that energy in any meaningful way.
We are talking about a situation right now where there are only three more years of sweet light crude, after that...tar sands/bitumen...liquifying rock/shale...oh well.
Thorium is abundant and widely distributed across the planet. It is 4 times more common than Uraniun.
The efficiency of LFTR combined with the abundance means that we have lots of Thorium.
You are correct that it is a waste product of rare earth mining. Widespread adoption of Thorium for energy production may make rare earth mining economical again.
Before Fukishima, there were two LFTRs about to come on the market,
one Japanese and one coming out of one of our national labs. (Los Alamos?)
They were factory producable and shippable on two semi-trailers.
Does anyone recall those, and have links to the stories?
The beauty of google and the web, you can never go back to where you were.
Or is it another conspiracy for those stories and the projects to disappear?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
He explains on the "whys" here. It's a great idea but it requires lots of changes...changes to how we use water, human and livestock breeding (seriously never even considered as an input,it's why we fail), how products and industry must adhere to sustainable practices.
Basically it's never going to happen because it's a "free" technology, anyone could in theory safely set one up in the their backyards for under 10k and provide power to a dozen homes indefinately (respective to the human conditions.). Whenever we decide to really travel in space because we'll need to recycle the fuel to get anywhere. Thorium allows that to happen unlike nuclear reactors which are sloppy garbage makers....dangerous energy pigs to boot as well.
Okay, not the subject, but for outer space missions, currently RPGs using PU-238 do pretty well.
Socialism cannot sell plenty, it requires artificial scarcity to trick people into slavery. The idea that the government might itself develop this source is absurd. Try to name a single beneficial thing provided by government to the country. Their interest in energy is to gain and maintain a stranglehold on it so that any who want it must trade political favors in order to get it. This is why (in addition to the druidism of our elites) we don't get plenty of cheap oil and gasoline and natural gas and coal, etc., etc. This is why we are required to supply our Islamic enemies with huge ransoms to use their energy, and this is why the absurdity of solar and wind still exist at huge expense. The solution is what it always is, get government and its proixies out of the damned way!
Got to agree with Comrade Clark here. A free Fukushima for everyone!
Thorium. It ends the global warming hiatus and you can't build nukes with it. Plus if frees the population from high / unstable engery primary souces so will disrupt monopoly capitalists.
IT WILL NEVER GET BUILT
Thankyou Chris & Kirk,... and Tyler
A pack of lies. Thorium turns into U-233 was used to make several fission devices during the 50s'. The by-products are gamma ray immiters making spent fuel impossible to handle with current technology. A number of the byproducts are toxic heavy metals that are water soluable and travel readily through aquifers. During the first three hundred years the radioisotopes produced by thorium reactors are more dangerous than current reactors but after 300 years they are less. It still produces radio isotopes that must be quarantined for 250 thousand years.
Why are these lies being propagated? The nuclear industry wants to use Thorium but not the way it is stated here. The current state of the art for Thorium is to mix it with U-235 which could make for useful fuel though dirtier that what we have now. The reason for this is that we are at a point where there is not enough extractablenatural Uranium to keep the nuclear industry going.
You are wrong on every single count.
U-233 have only been used for a single documented nuclead device. That was the MET blast during operation teapot. While we don't know a whole lot of details about it, what is known is that the device was supposed to use a plutonium core, but an unknown fraction of U-233 was included. The result of the test was underwhelming, only delivering 2/3 of estimated yield.
The gamma emitter that causes problem handling spent fuel comes from the production of U-232, and it is not in any way impossible to handle. If using solid oxide fuel as in current reactors there is indeed difficulties, but the technology exists for remote handling and fabrication, though it's quite expensive.
In a molten salt reactor, which is what Kirk is talking about, U-232 is of no concern. The U-232 is created in the blanket around the reactor as a byproduct, and it follows along with the U-233 to the core where it fissions. This is performed on-line using a two-step chemical process inside the hot cell where the reactor resides.
That some of the fission products are water-soluble mean absolutely nothing because, when using a molten salt reactor, they will be locked up as extremely stable fluoride salts, and won't react with air nor water. And there is no meaningful difference in the danger of the actual fission products themselves. 83% of will have decayed after 10 years, Cs-137 and Sr-90 will take about 300 years, and after that the rest is as radioactive as natural uranium ore.
The major difference is that the thorium cycle produces vastly less amounts of transuranics, and what is produced is all in the form of Pu-238, which is what now powers the Curiosity rover on Mars.
The nuclear industry doesn't actually want to use thorium any more or less over uranium. What hinders thorium todays reactors is the cost of developing the entire chain of supply for the thorium fuel cycle, and the handling of it afterwards. Since the cost of raw uranium is not even a percent of total O&M costs, there is no real economic incentive to incur all those costs and move to thorium when there is still enough uranium cheaply availible now and in economically extractable reserves.