ITPH: Thorium Power

Archibald

Banned
Here's a thought. Could Jimmy Carter be turned on to MSRs instead of solar power? I don't know much about Carter, except that he opposed the LMFBR in part due to proliferation concerns, which are one of the MSR's big selling points. Could a chance meeting between the future president and Alvin Weinberg in, say, the late 70s yield results?

what was left of Oak Ridge supporters actually did their best to sell the MSR as a proliferation-proof reactor, until 1980.
But perhaps because they lacked a strong, well-known leader, their excellent work didn't go anywhere.

Now Weinberg, born in 1915, would be 65 - retirement age - in 1980. Perhaps he could have remained boss of Oak Ridge until then ?

I have to document over Carter (failed) atempts at killing the LMFBR. Perhaps I should try and tweak history so that Reagan can't bring the thing back after 1980. :)
 
what was left of Oak Ridge supporters actually did their best to sell the MSR as a proliferation-proof reactor, until 1980.
But perhaps because they lacked a strong, well-known leader, their excellent work didn't go anywhere.

Now Weinberg, born in 1915, would be 65 - retirement age - in 1980. Perhaps he could have remained boss of Oak Ridge until then ?

I have to document over Carter (failed) atempts at killing the LMFBR. Perhaps I should try and tweak history so that Reagan can't bring the thing back after 1980. :)

There's a book that just came out on this, Superfuel, that might be useful to you. I haven't read it yet myself - although it's next on my pile. That said, it's getting very mixed reviews from the nuclear blogosphere, mostly because he apparently calls the existing industry a bunch of stagnant stick-in-the-muds, and he made a few technical mistakes.

For the LMFBR, another book I haven't read but intend to is Plentiful Energy, which got very good reviews as far as I'm aware.
 
There's a book that just came out on this, Superfuel, that might be useful to you. I haven't read it yet myself - although it's next on my pile. That said, it's getting very mixed reviews from the nuclear blogosphere, mostly because he apparently calls the existing industry a bunch of stagnant stick-in-the-muds, and he made a few technical mistakes.

He calls them the nuclearati which starts to sound a bit childish as he repeatedly calls them that.

Interesting read but i didn't think he said much that isn't spread around the net already.

He seems in one line to be back-peddling a bit on the usual line that it was the need for weapons grade material that killed off attempts to use Thorium but Rickover gets a bashing.

One argument I can see against the 'need for weapons grade material' killing Thorium is that that shouldn't have stopped rich countries like Japan and Germany who are under the US nuclear umbrella further developing it.
 
Thanks Asnys

I'll definiutely give Superfuel a read. Interesting tidbit about Oak Ridge and Alivin Wienberg. Never would've known squat about MSR's or any of the other things if you hadn't mentioned them!
 
He calls them the nuclearati which starts to sound a bit childish as he repeatedly calls them that.

Interesting read but i didn't think he said much that isn't spread around the net already.

He seems in one line to be back-peddling a bit on the usual line that it was the need for weapons grade material that killed off attempts to use Thorium but Rickover gets a bashing.

One argument I can see against the 'need for weapons grade materi al' killing Thorium is that that shouldn't have stopped rich countries like Japan and Germany who are under the US nuclear umbrella further developing it.

I have a really hard time buying that the LMFBR won because of plutonium for weapons. In the 50s and 60s, maybe. But by the 70s, it's clear that the AEC/DoE can crank out as many nukes as the military can find missiles to put them on.

A more subtle issue is that LMFBRs do, as I understand it, have a significantly better breeding ratio than MSRs. And I know that selling excess fuel was expected to be a profit center for breeders of both types. So I could see this as a paper advantage, on the assumption that fissiles would stay at their 1970 price indefinitely. Or if you had some other use for shit-tons of fissiles, like Orion pulse propulsion units or nuclearizing the entire Navy. But that's a bit different.

Also, aren't there issues with Pu-240 contamination in LMFBR-bred plutonium? Not sure about that...
 
Enjoy tyour continuation and comments re: Superfuel

@ PMN1 As an interested layman, it doesn't take much to get really upset at the stangant state of nuclear power in the US. Not so much in France, of course, though the recent spectacle of Greens compelling a shutdown of all German nukes after Fukushima is a little distressing.

Caring passionately about something's nice, but when the vitriol overwehelms the critique into a rant, it cuts off communication outside the choir.
 
I'll definiutely give Superfuel a read. Interesting tidbit about Oak Ridge and Alivin Wienberg. Never would've known squat about MSR's or any of the other things if you hadn't mentioned them!

Alvin Weinberg has a memoir, The First Nuclear Era, which I cannot recommend highly enough. He only has a chapter or two about MSRs, but there's tons of great stuff about his whole career in nuclear energy - working on the Manhattan Project, being part of ANP, his work after ORNL - he was actually one of the first people to sound the alarm about climate change in the late 70s.
 
@ PMN1 As an interested layman, it doesn't take much to get really upset at the stangant state of nuclear power in the US. Not so much in France, of course, though the recent spectacle of Greens compelling a shutdown of all German nukes after Fukushima is a little distressing.

Caring passionately about something's nice, but when the vitriol overwehelms the critique into a rant, it cuts off communication outside the choir.

It's also really important not to oversell this technology. That's what happened to LWRs back in the 60s and 70s, and I do not want to see it happen to MSRs. It's a very clever reactor concept, but there's a long road between that and a thorium-powered economy, with plenty of opportunities to trip up along the way.

ETA: For that matter, there are a lot of other good reactor concepts out there too. As a layman, MSRs seem like the best of the lot, but we shouldn't ignore the others either.
 
@ PMN1 As an interested layman, it doesn't take much to get really upset at the stangant state of nuclear power in the US. Not so much in France, of course, though the recent spectacle of Greens compelling a shutdown of all German nukes after Fukushima is a little distressing.

Caring passionately about something's nice, but when the vitriol overwehelms the critique into a rant, it cuts off communication outside the choir.

Interested layman here as well and I didn't twig on the mistakes Asnys says look to be in it, will have to have another look.

According to the search function on the Kindle Richard Martin calls them the nuclearati 13 times, now you need a collective description for those in the industry but like I said it does start to sound a bit childish after the first few times.

Interestingly Japan looks to be restarting at least some of its nuclear stations as reality hits home.
 
I have a really hard time buying that the LMFBR won because of plutonium for weapons. In the 50s and 60s, maybe. But by the 70s, it's clear that the AEC/DoE can crank out as many nukes as the military can find missiles to put them on.

I'd have to look back at Kirk Sorenson's 'Energy from Thorium' website which is where i wandered into when i first looked at thorium to see when the need for weapons grade material was pushed as a reason but as you say it doesn't really make sense.
 

Archibald

Banned
A more subtle issue is that LMFBRs do, as I understand it, have a significantly better breeding ratio than MSRs. And I know that selling excess fuel was expected to be a profit center for breeders of both types. So I could see this as a paper advantage, on the assumption that fissiles would stay at their 1970 price indefinitely. Or if you had some other use for shit-tons of fissiles, like Orion pulse propulsion units or nuclearizing the entire Navy. But that's a bit different.

Also, aren't there issues with Pu-240 contamination in LMFBR-bred plutonium? Not sure about that...
I agree. As a breeder the MSR had issues the LMFBR had not. The bottom line, however, is that in the 80's breeders as a whole were found to be unuseful... because uranium reserves were larger than thought.
Once breeders out, back to "classic" nuclear power; generation III, III+, and IV.
As breeder, Molten Salt Reactors have technical issues which partially explain why they lost to LMFBR.

The real loss is Oak Ridge MSRE, which was not a true breeder, but, as a competitor to LWR and PWR is far superior to them.

Thorium, breeders and MSR are somewhat three different things.
 
If you have your first generation of reactors using the uranium cycle and producing weapons grade material with elecricity as a useful by product, how much pressure is there going to be to close them should the apparently safer thorium cycle reactors start getting built?
 
If you have your first generation of reactors using the uranium cycle and producing weapons grade material with elecricity as a useful by product, how much pressure is there going to be to close them should the apparently safer thorium cycle reactors start getting built?

None, at least for decades. And even tthen the antinuke protesters will want closing of all plnts, not jusst the uranium ones.
 
Can anyone elaborate this?

Anti-nuke protesters, often environmentalists, often don't have a great deal of...technical understanding of nuclear power, and tend to conflate different types of nuclear power together due to that. They would likely lump thorium, plutonium, and uranium plants, of any cycle, together as nuclear plants and therefore needing to be shutdown. Regardless of their technical differences.

I mean, you see some anti-nuke people protesting ITER because it's nuclear...okay, so it's D-T and therefore not lily white like p-B11 would be, but still...
 
Anti-nuke protesters, often environmentalists, often don't have a great deal of...technical understanding of nuclear power, and tend to conflate different types of nuclear power together due to that. They would likely lump thorium, plutonium, and uranium plants, of any cycle, together as nuclear plants and therefore needing to be shutdown. Regardless of their technical differences.

I mean, you see some anti-nuke people protesting ITER because it's nuclear...okay, so it's D-T and therefore not lily white like p-B11 would be, but still...

There are some radicals in what's called the "Deep Green Movement" who don't like the idea that we can provide clean energy as a model for the future. I can remember a discussion on PoliticalBetting.com a few years ago in which one a UK Green Party member said he was opposed to the development of fusion power because "It doesn't fit with our agenda." There are some radicals who think the answer is to go back to a mythical pre-industrial type existence instead of moving to a carbon free economy while still maintaining economic growth. So to them nuclear power in all its forms is the incarnation of everything they oppose.
 
There are some radicals in what's called the "Deep Green Movement" who don't like the idea that we can provide clean energy as a model for the future. I can remember a discussion on PoliticalBetting.com a few years ago in which one a UK Green Party member said he was opposed to the development of fusion power because "It doesn't fit with our agenda." There are some radicals who think the answer is to go back to a mythical pre-industrial type existence instead of moving to a carbon free economy while still maintaining economic growth. So to them nuclear power in all its forms is the incarnation of everything they oppose.

As somebody who spent two years living in Uganda, the idea of turning back the clock to a pre-industrial existence horrifies me. Even if nuclear energy was as dangerous as Greenpeace says it is, it would still be better than that. Fortunately, the vast majority of anti-nuclear people are more sensible than that, they just have a lot more faith in solar and wind than I do.
 
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