I'm not looking to debate. Virtually everything that's posted in a thread like this I have seen before, some things many many times.
If a thorium reactor relies upon such a simple process, which was understood in the 1960's, then thorium should already be a significant power source. It's not, and no matter what current research is active, it's still questionable. It's not a magic bullet, though I have often seen it referred to as such.
If you're posting your comments here you're debating.
And as I explained the reason that thorium based MSRs weren't developed had nothing to do with their physical characteristics which are plainly superior to PWRs, LMFBRs and most other nuclear reactor types with the possible exception of the DMSR which is a slightly simpler but less efficient design.
The reason LFTRs weren't developed is due to the politics of the Cold War era they were first developed in. The thorium fuel cycle produces very little plutonium which is the main source of fissile material in nuclear weapons. One ton of thorium completely consumed in an MSR would only give you about 15 kgs of plutonium at the end of the cycle. The uranium fuel cycle in an PWR would give you close to 1/3 of a ton of Pu-239.
PWRs are highly inefficient, using up about 0.7% of available fuel before the fuel rods degrade and have to be replaced. A two fluid LFTR would consume almost 100% of the fuel load. With a uranium oxide fueled PWR you'd need to start with about 200 tons of unenriched uranium processed to about 35 tons of 20% U-235 enriched fuel to compare with the same energy produced by one ton of Th-232. At the end you have about 35 tons of spent nuclear fuel with the uranium powered PWR with large amounts of long lived waste, with the thorium MSR you end up with one ton of waste, most of it fissile products that are safe within ten years.
As I've said, MSRs because the fuel is already in a molten state can't melt down as with a PWR, there is no water to disassociate into free hydrogen to create an explosion risk, the MSR also isn't under high pressure as with a
Pressurized Water Reactor, meaning there's no need for massive primary containment vessels. Reactor vessels for current PWR can weigh 600 tons or more and take up to half a year to manufacture, most countries don't even have the capability to do so any longer. This means you can build your reactor facilities much smaller and less expensively with a thorium based MSR.
Also with the higher temperatures of MSRs the thermal efficiency is much higher meaning you can turn more heat into electricity, it's about 38% for PWRs and close to 50% for MSRs.
To shut down an MSR you turn off the circulation pumps, there's no ackward control rods and the coolant is the molten salt itself so there can be no loss of coolant accidents. In the event of an emergency the core fluid is simply drained into sub-critical containment under the reactor, which is what the ORNL team did with their MSRE reactor for maintenance. It's a very simply and safe design. In comparison a PWR is like a bomb that needs to be enclosed in a massive concrete building to contain the pressure from a primary reactor vessel failure. If you punched a hole in an MSR it would drain your core molten salt/fuel mixture into the same sub-critical containment vessel, all the radioactive material safely contained in the salt and cooled by passive conduction in the drain tank.
It's a superior technology that didn't get utilized when it was originally developed because it didn't get the political backing it needed. People like Milton Shaw who came up through the Navy Reactor Department under Hyman Rickover weren't interested in safer, more efficient reactor designs when they has adequate PWRs that were suited for use in naval vessels and produced large amounts of Pu-239.
Milton Shaw: And the decline of the American Nuclear Establishment
During the interview Weinberg was asked to comment on Milton Shaw. Weinberg responded, “Milton Shaw had a singleness of purpose. In many ways I admired him, and in many ways he drove me nutty. He had a single-minded commitment to do what he was told to do, which was to get the Clinch River Breeder Reactor built. My views were different from his. I think the Commission decided that my views were out of touch with the way the nuclear industry was actually going.”
When Milton Shaw went to the AEC in 1964 he already had a well-formed set of beliefs, attitudes and professional skills. His entire working career had been spent with the Navy, first as a junior officer, and then as a young engineer who had pioneered the modern nuclear fleet under Rickover. Almost all of Shaw's reactor experience had been with naval ship propulsion. That was almost entirely with the light-water reactor. Rickover and Shaw had adapted Navy management systems to the running of shipboard reactors. Every system on the reactor was duplicated. If one system failed, another was ready to take its place. Duplicate systems meant that if a system needed to be shut down for maintenance another was available to take its place. Thus reactors could be run continuously. Crews were highly trained. Every operating procedure was elaborated in detail in technical manuals. Officers and men were expected to always follow manuals to the letter.
From Shaw’s viewpoint nuclear safety was a done deal, and further research on it was a waste of time. Shaw viewed light-water reactors as a mature technology. From his perspective, all that was required was to build in sufficient redundancy, write the technical manuals, and make sure that the workers were well-trained and that rules were followed.
Shaw believed that reactor safety was largely a matter of good engineering. Once the principles of proper reactor design were understood, good judgment and adherence to sound design principles would always assure that safety would be maintained. The belief of Weinberg and others that scientists like George Parker should continue to working on safety issues was discounted by Shaw who thought that further research was a waste of effort. Shaw believed that emergency cooling for reactors was a wasted effort, if the reactors were well-engineered to begin with. This belief was to cost the reactor industry billions of dollars and was to have serious consequences at Three Mile Island.
Scientists began to believe that Shaw was vindictive, and that he would punish people and institutions that failed to adhere to his dictates. As scientists (some late in their professional careers) began to be laid off from national labs, a belief set in that Shaw had instituted nothing short of a purge of AEC research programs. Morale plummeted at AEC facilities, and chaos reigned.
By 1970, concern about nuclear safety was spreading. The scientific community as a whole was aware of what was happening at places like ORNL, where the safety concerns of scientists like George Parker were being ignored. Weinberg went to bat for his scientist, and was told that he was out of touch, and that if he continued to speak out about safety, there was no place for him in the nuclear industry.
The scientists at ORNL who developed the thorium based MSR were interested in safety and efficiency that would have long term applications for civilian nuclear power production. People like Milton Shaw who was head of the AEC reactor design department at the time were interested in maintaining the status quo with uranium oxide fueled PWRs which they considered more than safe enough for civilian use. Then we had Three Mile Island and other incidents and reactor design and construction in the US mostly came to a halt due to lack of support. Nixon backed the development of the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor that also used the uranium fuel cycle and would produce even more Pu-239 as the thermal spectrum PWRs and eventually over $8 billion dollars was spent without producing a working design...and the thorium MSR was forgotten. Not because it wasn't superior for the task of producing safe and economical power for civilian use, but because most of the men backing it had been fired or transferred to other programs and because further development of civilian nuclear power technology stagnated.
One ton of thorium bred and burned in an LFTR can fuel a 1,000 MWe power plant for a year, safely and economically. There are currently 3,200 tons of thorium stockpiled in the US and one average rare earths mine can produce about 5,000 tons a year, enough to meet the energy demands of the entire planet. We're failing to not exploit this energy source not because it isn't preferable to what we have, but because most people are ignorant of it.
Where does thorium come from? Great big open pit mines like the oil sands?
How will you get past the environauts?
Maybe nobody wants a thorium mine in their backyard polluting their food air, rivers, and streams. How do you plan on transporting the thorium?
Will the earth last another 15-20 years that it takes to design and build and clear a reactor even if the process were known?
Where will the reactor building materials come from stuff like all the minerals for the stainless steel needed to build reactors?
How much energy would it take to replace the entire pile of power plants worldwide and build shiny new thorium reactors?
GE and the green movement they created has yet to raise the money needed to shut down coal and go with NG turbines where the Hell will the money for thorium reactors come from?
Thorium is almost always found with rare earths which are currently being mined for use in high tech applications.
Rare Earth Elements Explained
As we're already mining rare earths and thorium is being treated as radioactive waste, we should instead use it for power.
http://scitizen.com/future-energies/rare-earth-elements-and-thorium-power-_a-14-3643.html
Thorium is present in the ores of rare earth elements rendering the processing-waste radioactive. Rather than burying it underground in concrete thorium could be bred into a nuclear fuel and most simply used in a liquid fluoride reactor (LFR). The technology can also be used to destroy plutonium and other radionuclides and is less readily employed than uranium/plutonium in perpetrating acts of terrorism..
We're already investing massive amounts into building fossil fuel electrical generation, in the coming several decades it's planned to spend over $1 trillion dollars alone on building new coal fired power plants.
The mining of thorium has an order of magnitude(ten times) less impact than uranium mining which in turn has much less impact than coal and oil sands mining. It's one of the most efficient and responsible sources of energy on the planet.
