3 ms·

1) Untrue https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-hopes-play-leading-role-220307940.html https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-hopes-play-leading-role-2203... 2) Not in any

1) Untrue https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-hopes-play-leading-role-220307940.html https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-hopes-play-leading-role-2203... 2) Not in any way that is irreducible. 3) wrong. https://www.machinedesign.com/materials/article/21836993/uranium-extracted-from-seawater https://www.machinedesign.com/materials/article/21836993/ura... “Oh, that’s just proof of concept.” Yes, and even 5 grams is enough to disprove your claim it doesn’t exist. Reality is we won’t need it for an extremely long time, so why would anyone do more than proof of concept? 4) still on-net easily pays for itself energy-wise. Thinking otherwise usually shows you do not appreciate just how energy dense uranium is. Belly aching that existing reserves are small, well duh. Demand is small. No one pays massive amounts of money to “prove” reserves when demand is small just to win an Internet argument. But uranium and thorium themselves are super common and in fact there’s more energy in fissionables in a random chunk of the Earth’s crust than there is thermal energy in a chunk of coal. The only thing depressing about what you said is that so many people buy into such poor logic. Look, I’m not a nuclear bro. We will primarily decarbonize with renewables. But so many of these anti-nuclear arguments are terrible.

dahart 5y ago
Your news article link appears to state that China hopes to build a thorium reactor. It doesn’t seem say one is up and running, does it, or did I miss something?
- dodobirdlord 5y ago
  Wikipedia indicates that some test reactors are currently operational, and there are construction projects underway for commercial reactors. The article notes that in 1999 there were 0 operating thorium reactors anywhere on earth, but that no longer seems to be true. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
- jabl 5y ago
  Be as it may, a thorium reactor is in no way particularly special compared to a uranium reactor [1]. As humankind is able to make uranium reactors work, we can make thorium reactors work. Just like with seawater extraction of uranium, there's no particular hurry to commercialize the technology since uranium so far is plentiful and cheap. [1] There is the issue that thorium by itself is not fissile, so it's a breeding fuel cycle similar to the U-Pu breeding cycle with reprocessing etc. Which, again, hasn't been developed as quickly as hoped many decades ago, as the simple once-through uranium cycle has been cheaper and good enough.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  They’ve built one and plan to switch it on now, this month, and may have done so already. But the list of nuclear reactors that have used thorium as at least part of their fuel is surprisingly long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_tho... I generally discount arguments that are in the form of: “we cannot commercialize this because it has not yet been commercialized.” But do thorium fueled reactors exist? Absolutely.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
throwaway5752 5y ago
I have followed the nuclear for more than 3 decades and invested in junior E&P for more than a decade. Everyone, understandably, hopes for something to drop in and save us from the situation we're in with the climate and energy intensity. Nuclear will be a part of it, but everything I said in my post was true like it or not. Plans for a thorium reactor do not amount to a commercial thorium reactor. Also, 5 grams is useless and I do discount it - the seawater extraction tech is trivial, but doing it at scale and positive net energy is not. Everything I said can change. But let's not fool ourselves about the current state of tech. Part of the frustration is the "fake it til you make it" culture in tech being a terrible fit for nuclear, which requires thinking in centuries for site placement, staffing, and waste management.
- tim333 5y ago
  Yeah but reserves != resources so your problem isn't a real one.
  - throwaway5752 5y ago
    1P, 2P, and 3P reserve categories are something I'm quite familiar with and I have broadly invested in a long term increase in UO2 prices. Uranium is a fascinating basic material, and there are several ways to extract it. You have higher grade ore deposits that are directly mined. There are in situ leaching techniques, also. Increases in prices will make new techniques economically viable and 2P+ reserves will be reclassified to 1P. "My problem" is that there is a physical cap on this with fuel extraction: EROI. A trillion dollars a pound for ore will not matter if it takes more energy to recovery a resource than it takes to produce it. The seawater recovery part of this story is dubious at best at the recovery factors used in their calculations.
ortusdux 5y ago
Re: #3 & 4, I've toured that lab and seen that experiment in person, and it is extremely promising. Their original tests we able to produce yellowcake uranium at roughly 2x market rate, which is amazing for a domestic source. They are now working on scaling and unique applications to bring the price even lower. I believe that they are looking at post filtering desalination brine. The process extracts many heavy metals, which can make make for good alternate revenue streams, further decreasing the price.
- throwaway5752 5y ago
  The Stanford group? That's great news on the production prices. I still doubt the extraction rate assumptions in the articles, but I think renewables plus scaled down nuclear will be the path forward.

dahart 5y ago

Your news article link appears to state that China hopes to build a thorium reactor. It doesn’t seem say one is up and running, does it, or did I miss something?

dodobirdlord 5y ago
Wikipedia indicates that some test reactors are currently operational, and there are construction projects underway for commercial reactors. The article notes that in 1999 there were 0 operating thorium reactors anywhere on earth, but that no longer seems to be true. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
jabl 5y ago
Be as it may, a thorium reactor is in no way particularly special compared to a uranium reactor [1]. As humankind is able to make uranium reactors work, we can make thorium reactors work. Just like with seawater extraction of uranium, there's no particular hurry to commercialize the technology since uranium so far is plentiful and cheap. [1] There is the issue that thorium by itself is not fissile, so it's a breeding fuel cycle similar to the U-Pu breeding cycle with reprocessing etc. Which, again, hasn't been developed as quickly as hoped many decades ago, as the simple once-through uranium cycle has been cheaper and good enough.
Robotbeat 5y ago
They’ve built one and plan to switch it on now, this month, and may have done so already. But the list of nuclear reactors that have used thorium as at least part of their fuel is surprisingly long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_tho... I generally discount arguments that are in the form of: “we cannot commercialize this because it has not yet been commercialized.” But do thorium fueled reactors exist? Absolutely.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

throwaway5752 5y ago

I have followed the nuclear for more than 3 decades and invested in junior E&P for more than a decade. Everyone, understandably, hopes for something to drop in and save us from the situation we're in with the climate and energy intensity. Nuclear will be a part of it, but everything I said in my post was true like it or not. Plans for a thorium reactor do not amount to a commercial thorium reactor. Also, 5 grams is useless and I do discount it - the seawater extraction tech is trivial, but doing it at scale and positive net energy is not. Everything I said can change. But let's not fool ourselves about the current state of tech. Part of the frustration is the "fake it til you make it" culture in tech being a terrible fit for nuclear, which requires thinking in centuries for site placement, staffing, and waste management.

tim333 5y ago
Yeah but reserves != resources so your problem isn't a real one.
- throwaway5752 5y ago
  1P, 2P, and 3P reserve categories are something I'm quite familiar with and I have broadly invested in a long term increase in UO2 prices. Uranium is a fascinating basic material, and there are several ways to extract it. You have higher grade ore deposits that are directly mined. There are in situ leaching techniques, also. Increases in prices will make new techniques economically viable and 2P+ reserves will be reclassified to 1P. "My problem" is that there is a physical cap on this with fuel extraction: EROI. A trillion dollars a pound for ore will not matter if it takes more energy to recovery a resource than it takes to produce it. The seawater recovery part of this story is dubious at best at the recovery factors used in their calculations.

ortusdux 5y ago

Re: #3 & 4, I've toured that lab and seen that experiment in person, and it is extremely promising. Their original tests we able to produce yellowcake uranium at roughly 2x market rate, which is amazing for a domestic source. They are now working on scaling and unique applications to bring the price even lower. I believe that they are looking at post filtering desalination brine. The process extracts many heavy metals, which can make make for good alternate revenue streams, further decreasing the price.

throwaway5752 5y ago
The Stanford group? That's great news on the production prices. I still doubt the extraction rate assumptions in the articles, but I think renewables plus scaled down nuclear will be the path forward.