4 ms·

Thorium 'the green nuke' powered plants produce 1/1000 as much waste as uranium powered ones. They're also virtually impossible to melt down though to be fair

• dredmorbius 6y ago
  Thorium plants also have the unfortunate characteristic of not existing in deployable commercial form (and only very barely in experimental form).
  • arcticbull 6y ago
    CANDU reactors support mixed Uranium and Thorium fuel. "CANDU can also breed fuel from the more abundant thorium. This is being investigated by India to take advantage of its natural thorium reserves." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
    • dredmorbius 6y ago
      Thanks, noted.
      • arcticbull 6y ago
        I think the reason they don't go the Thorium route is that Uranium is just so abundant -- and so incredibly energy dense -- there's not a hugely compelling reason to switch to Thorium.
        • pfdietz 6y ago
          Thorium reactors are breeders. The Th gets converted to 233U. But breeders of any kind are uneconomical.
          • dredmorbius 6y ago
            Why is that?
            • pfdietz 6y ago
              They require an extra separation step (removing newly bred material from spent fuel, or removing fission products from molten salt). This is more expensive than just doing nothing to the spent fuel. In the past, the idea was that nuclear would be cheap, but would run into uranium supply constraints, so breeding would save money. But that's not how it turned out. Nuclear was expensive not because of fuel, but because of the cost of the power plants. Uranium prices remain low. Also, the move to gas centrifuges reduced the energy consumed in uranium enrichment by a factor of 50.
              • dredmorbius 6y ago
                Thanks. My understanding is that uranium supplies remain constrained --- fewer than two decades if supplying 100% of total global generation, say. Price doesn't tell you much about total resource stock.[1] That's based on terrestrial sources. Seawater U separation in theory would extend resources considerably, but remains unproven at scale. Thorium, other disadvantages notwithstanding, is at least more plentiful. I'll note I'm not generally a fan of nuclear, though don't rule out any contributory role. ________________________________ Notes: 1. I'd argue generally that nonrenewable natural resource pricing theory, dating to Ricardo, but especially Hotelling, is entirely flawed. Much of it under suspicious circumstances.
                • pfdietz 6y ago
                  Yes, but the "supplying 100% of global generation" doesn't have any bearing on current reality. Anyway, this argument for thorium isn't something customers would care much about. It's basically "thorium would not suck as much as uranium-fueled burner reactors do if uranium gets much more expensive" rather than "nuclear power is more attractive now if we use thorium". The customer response to "nuclear as currently implemented fails badly if uranium runs out" is going to be "use something other than nuclear".
  • legulere 6y ago
    There was a commercial thorium reactor in Germany, which was a financial disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300
    • MertsA 6y ago
      That was also a pebble bed reactor. The kind of reactor generating all of the latest hype is a molten fuel salt breeder reactor. There's a really substantial difference between the two and the MSRE was basically a mock up of the core running on Uranium fuel salt that would have been generated in a fertile Thorium blanket salt around the core and been reprocessed into the fuel salt. Pebble bed reactors have tons of drawbacks that don't apply to most modern Thorium reactor proposals. The biggest drawbacks to proposals like e.g. LFTR is corrosion risks which were largely addressed by the MSRE ages ago, and the chemical reprocessing equipment which again is mostly a chemical engineering problem more so than a nuclear engineering one.
  • belorn 6y ago
    To place it in the context of this compressed energy storage, when does the plant expect to be commercial viable through the method of buying energy cheap, storing it, and selling it expensive? As far as I can find information, this plant is built on 30 millions given from the government. They have also got 17 millions from an equity round and 20 millions from a asset manager that supports building out clean-energy infrastructure. In order to be commercial viable they need a significant overproduction in the energy grid from wind and solar which enable the company to buy cheap energy during peaks and sell it expensive during lows, and the difference need to be significant enough to pay both the energy loss, the operation cost and the investment costs. Wind and solar will also not over saturate the market beyond what is commercial viable for them, putting a short-term limit on how cheap the price can go during peaks.
    • bobthepanda 6y ago
      The tens of millions is a pretty cheap deal compared to nuclear power, which needs billions to get the ball rolling (and that's if it completes on budget)
      • belorn 6y ago
        Its only a good deal if it produce profits. I rather have the government take a billion dollar cost in the energy sector that later turn a profit than a millions dollar cost that don't. If neither can make a profit then that says something about the energy market. Turn off the fossil fueled alternative (or incrementally add a carbon tax until fossil fueled become commercial nonviable) and let see if the market price adjust to the point where the profitability of either goes into the green.
        • nicoburns 6y ago
          > I rather have the government take a billion dollar cost that later turn a profit than a millions dollar cost that don't. Surely that ought to depend on how much profit it generates. If it only generates a few millions in profit you're still down on your money.
• roelschroeven 6y ago
  > The Netherlands just brought the first thorium powered plant online since the fifties. Just to be clear, because one might get the wrong impression from how that was formulated (at least I know I did): what they have is a small test reactor, not a commercial electricity generating plant.
• pfdietz 6y ago
  Thorium produces just as much fission product waste as uranium. And any thorium reactor is going to have to include 238U in it, or else the effectively high enriched 233U it DOES contain would be an unacceptable diversion risk (even with 232U contamination). That means it's going to produce more plutonium than you are letting on.