9 ms·

Norway is building thorium reactor

231 points by sasoon 14y ago

gregsq 14y ago
There's no insinuation in my posting this link, and it's not directly pertinent to Thorium reactors, but the free PDF downloadable from here is a good reference for these kinds of discussions, I think. Helped me with perspective anyway. http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html
henrikgs 14y ago
According to an article in a norwegian newspaper[1], there are much bigger challenges in extracting the thorium from the ore in Norway. The thorium in India is supposedly easier utilize. The technology today requires use of a lot of nasty chemicals to extract thorium. I think this is a big issue for the government in addition to running nuclear reactors. [1]In norwegian: http://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/Gigantisk-energikilde-i-Telemark-7055485.html http://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/Gigantisk-energikilde-i-Te...
patrickk 14y ago
Peter Thiel's class had an interesting part on Thorium: http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/23787022006/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-14-notes-essay http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/23787022006/peter-thiels...
zachshallbetter 14y ago
no way!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
pjscott 14y ago
This isn't one of the fancy liquid fluoride thorium reactors that people immediately think of. It's a scheme for incorporating thorium into the fuel mix in existing reactors. Still very cool.
- leeoniya 14y ago
  awww, i got all excited :(
  - dthunt 14y ago
    Still a step closer. I'm not a genuine nuke geek, but hopefully there are a few around who can shed some light into what sort of impact the commercial use of thorium as a fuel is on the viability of the fuel in the long-run.
    - forrestthewoods 14y ago
      A good starting point is Bill Gates TED Talk Innovating to Zero. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I
      - dthunt 14y ago
        Great talk. Gates's foundation has made a handful of bad investments (generally small) but I'm generally really impressed with the thought they put into where to invest and why. While it's a little bit scary that Japan and Germany are both trending (more than trending) away from nuclear, maybe that's not the worst thing in the world. Neither country will go for coal. Both countries will need to invest in other technologies (some basic, some consumer-oriented) in order to meet their emissions reductions goals. But I get scared about the possibility of additional countries backing away from nuclear.
        tehabe 14y ago
        I'm more scared about countries who start using nuclear power.
        da3da 14y ago
        I'm curious why that is? I remember a table that showed the deaths per terawatt-hour of each energy source [1]. Coal was the highest, and nuclear was the lowest (below all the renewables even). I don't know if this data is accurate, but assuming it is, I can't understand why nuclear doesn't have more support. [1] http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...
kayoone 14y ago
While germany is getting out of nuclear power altogether... their "Energiewende" plan is very ambitious but i wonder if its not better to invest into nuclear power to make it saver instead of getting rid of it completely. I dont know much about it though, what do experts think?
- tehabe 14y ago
  Is that an offer to pay all the external costs of nuclear power? I mean, all of them. From final deposit, over insurance policies in case of a meltdown to environmental consequences of the entire nuclear supply chain? Nuclear power is just too expensive for an economy. Nuclear power is limited, there is just not endless amount of uranium on the planet. Also globally nuclear power is pointless, IIRC nuclear power has a global market share of 6% for primary energy. Too believe it could solve our energy needs sounds weird to me. Also nuclear power is inefficient. Efficiency is usually way below 50%, since nuclear power plants are far away from anything you can't usually use the heat an nuclear power plant produce for anything productive, so it's lost. But of course there are new and better plants in development, they are safer and bigger and produce less waste. But the old plants still exist. You can't replace them within a few years, it takes decades. And the costs for such a programme will be very high. Since 2005, there is a nuclear power plant being build in Finland, called Olkiluoto III. The reactor was priced at three billion euros, currently the price increased to about six billion. The reactor might go online in 2015, a decade after the construction started. The reactor will provide 1600 MW of electrical power. For comparison, in 2011 alone wind power plants were build with the combined power of 9600 MW (Europe wide, Germany about 2000 MW, GB about 1300 MW). I know, this is not directly comparable but it gives you a hint, that you could have easily get the 1600 MW in ten years with renewable sources. Nuclear power might be an interesting technology, but for me it is just a steam machine, which leaves a huge pile of waste behind. Nobody knows how to handle it, and people got it wrong. Search for Asse II if you want to know more about it. For Germany it will be very hard to find a safe final deposit for all the nuclear waste.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    I think many nuke advocates go much too far in the "nuclear power will solve all our problems!" That said, the strongest arguments for nuclear power has always been as part of a balanced energy diet, not as the off the shelf answer to everything. So, how do we figure out where it's appropriate and where not? Properly price carbon, and remove all distorting subsidies to all forms of energy, from fossil fuels to solar to wind to nuclear. Then let the market do what it does best: figure out the best way to allocate capital to produce goods. Nuclear certainly needs proper regulation and safety requirements, but contemporary designs are much lower risk than the Fukushima reactor from the 1970s or the ancient design of Chernobyl: despite that, they're nearly impossible to build. I've heard it wouldn't even be allowed, in the current regulatory regime, to replace those old plants with new ones. Something's broken there.
jfaucett 14y ago
It seems this has sparked some debates on nuclear vs renewable energy so I thought I'd add a ted talk that explains some pros/cons of each for those interested: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables.html http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_ren...
jc-denton 14y ago
Humm I find it quite an interesting article, but very imprecise. The only useful thing I found on the net about "Thor Energy" is this presentation http://www.docstoc.com/docs/63561509/Thor-Energy-companyoverview http://www.docstoc.com/docs/63561509/Thor-Energy-companyover...
gingerbreadman 14y ago
Kalpakkam, India has already been in works for years! The design for it according to wikipedia had been started in the 80's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor
allerratio 14y ago
The title is misleading. They only test thorium in an already built conventional reactor. Meanwhile in Germany they developed a conceptionally more safe reactor type powered by thorium, built a test reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor) and an industrial reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300). They're both shut down now, partly because of safety concerns: Water leaking into the cooling circuit can lead to explosions (which happened in small amounts) So I guess only time will tell if new reactor types really are better than current ones.
marvin 14y ago
If I am correctly informed (would love to hear from people who are involved in the project), this project is being done in spite of the Norwegian government's stance on nuclear energy. Thor Energy and its associated researchers have tried to stir up support for thorium reserach for years now, but there has been very little support and large amount of uninformed opposition ("nu-cu-lar is baaaaaad"). A number of physicists, notably Egil Lillestøl at the University of Bergen, have talked to official figures about this for a long time about this without getting any kind of traction. Thorium energy seems to be a very promising candidate for safe, clean and cheap next-generation nuclear power. If these researchers manage to develop something without official support, it would be impressive indeed. That the Norwegian government isn't willing to support clean energy research is really quite baffling, given that the energy sector is hands-down the largest contributor to the Norwegian economy. And Norway has the world's second-largest known thorium reserves. For all our supposed good policies, we are still subject to mob rule and completely uninformed detractors.
- konstruktor 14y ago
  Thanks for, without giving actual examples, telling us that the people opposing nuclear are uninformed and unable to form complete sentences. Without this enlightened information one might have listened to them and judged them based on their arguments. Edit: spelling
  - ThomPete 14y ago
    Perhaps you could introduce some arguments for this opposition instead of just do what you complain about.
- barry-cotter 14y ago
  For all our supposed good policies, we are still subject to mob rule and completely uninformed detractors. To democracy! All hail the will of the people!
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  > Thorium energy seems to be a very promising candidate for safe, clean Only for some definitions of clean. Forget the radiation, Thorium's toxicity profile is not pretty. Hell, the damn thing is pyrophoric. Hats off to the engineers if they can make a more sensible reactor out of it.
NatW 14y ago
For those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend this video on liquid-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P9M__yYbsZ4# https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...! I passed the video by my uncle who was an expert/engineer dealing with control and safety of water cooled reactors. This is what he had to say: "I found the video very informative technically, as well as being effective in countering many of the the arguments of those who profess to be against nuclear power in any form. I also found the details of the design of the liquid thorium fluoride reactor intriguing. To become an advocate for further investment in this concept, I would have to learn more about how the concept deals with the safety issues involved in the handling of fluorine gas and fluoride materials."
- politician 14y ago
  I just watched that video (2 hrs!), and I have to agree with NatW on his recommendation. Really, really well done.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ScotterC 14y ago
Interestingly this has already been done in the U.S. kinda. Back when I was working on Indian Point Units 2 & 3 I found a paper about Unit 1 where - about 30 years ago - they mixed in some of the fuel bundles with Thorium to see how well the neutron flux would turn it into Uranium and possibly breed more fuel. It was really fascinating but, although they had some success, there was really no need for it in the U.S. because Uranium is not in short supply and as this article points out, solid fuel reactors kind of dismiss all the advantages of thorium.
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  Even prior to that in the 1960s the US invented Molten Salt Thorium nuclear reactors at Oak Ridge. They were shelved not because of the abundant supply of Uranium, but rather because they could not be used to make weapons. http://energyfromthorium.com/history.html http://energyfromthorium.com/history.html
  - ScotterC 14y ago
    Yup. And we had a running MSR at shippingport PA for awhile.
Empro 14y ago
Awesome.
teeja 14y ago
"I think from a long-range standpoint--I'm talking about humanity--the most important thing we could do is start by having an international meeting where we first outlaw nuclear weapons and then we outlaw nuclear reactors, too." - Hyman Rickover, January 28, 1982
Andrea1 14y ago
A Liquid Fluoride Thorium Ractor is as safe a unit as is possible. Look it up online. Much safer, cheaper, and more versatile than a bulky CANDU. It can be throttled and scaled which is a huge advantage. There is plenty of easily accessable thorium worldwide. It also can generate radioisotopes that are extremely useful and much more readily extracted from the reactor than those currently used. Time to begin building these.

231 points by sasoon 14y ago

There's no insinuation in my posting this link, and it's not directly pertinent to Thorium reactors, but the free PDF downloadable from here is a good reference for these kinds of discussions, I think. Helped me with perspective anyway. http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html

henrikgs 14y ago

According to an article in a norwegian newspaper[1], there are much bigger challenges in extracting the thorium from the ore in Norway. The thorium in India is supposedly easier utilize. The technology today requires use of a lot of nasty chemicals to extract thorium. I think this is a big issue for the government in addition to running nuclear reactors. [1]In norwegian: http://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/Gigantisk-energikilde-i-Telemark-7055485.html http://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/Gigantisk-energikilde-i-Te...

patrickk 14y ago

Peter Thiel's class had an interesting part on Thorium: http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/23787022006/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-14-notes-essay http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/23787022006/peter-thiels...

zachshallbetter 14y ago

no way!

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

pjscott 14y ago

This isn't one of the fancy liquid fluoride thorium reactors that people immediately think of. It's a scheme for incorporating thorium into the fuel mix in existing reactors. Still very cool.

leeoniya 14y ago
awww, i got all excited :(
- dthunt 14y ago
  Still a step closer. I'm not a genuine nuke geek, but hopefully there are a few around who can shed some light into what sort of impact the commercial use of thorium as a fuel is on the viability of the fuel in the long-run.
  - forrestthewoods 14y ago
    A good starting point is Bill Gates TED Talk Innovating to Zero. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I
    - dthunt 14y ago
      Great talk. Gates's foundation has made a handful of bad investments (generally small) but I'm generally really impressed with the thought they put into where to invest and why. While it's a little bit scary that Japan and Germany are both trending (more than trending) away from nuclear, maybe that's not the worst thing in the world. Neither country will go for coal. Both countries will need to invest in other technologies (some basic, some consumer-oriented) in order to meet their emissions reductions goals. But I get scared about the possibility of additional countries backing away from nuclear.
      - tehabe 14y ago
        I'm more scared about countries who start using nuclear power.
        da3da 14y ago
        I'm curious why that is? I remember a table that showed the deaths per terawatt-hour of each energy source [1]. Coal was the highest, and nuclear was the lowest (below all the renewables even). I don't know if this data is accurate, but assuming it is, I can't understand why nuclear doesn't have more support. [1] http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...

kayoone 14y ago

While germany is getting out of nuclear power altogether... their "Energiewende" plan is very ambitious but i wonder if its not better to invest into nuclear power to make it saver instead of getting rid of it completely. I dont know much about it though, what do experts think?

tehabe 14y ago
Is that an offer to pay all the external costs of nuclear power? I mean, all of them. From final deposit, over insurance policies in case of a meltdown to environmental consequences of the entire nuclear supply chain? Nuclear power is just too expensive for an economy. Nuclear power is limited, there is just not endless amount of uranium on the planet. Also globally nuclear power is pointless, IIRC nuclear power has a global market share of 6% for primary energy. Too believe it could solve our energy needs sounds weird to me. Also nuclear power is inefficient. Efficiency is usually way below 50%, since nuclear power plants are far away from anything you can't usually use the heat an nuclear power plant produce for anything productive, so it's lost. But of course there are new and better plants in development, they are safer and bigger and produce less waste. But the old plants still exist. You can't replace them within a few years, it takes decades. And the costs for such a programme will be very high. Since 2005, there is a nuclear power plant being build in Finland, called Olkiluoto III. The reactor was priced at three billion euros, currently the price increased to about six billion. The reactor might go online in 2015, a decade after the construction started. The reactor will provide 1600 MW of electrical power. For comparison, in 2011 alone wind power plants were build with the combined power of 9600 MW (Europe wide, Germany about 2000 MW, GB about 1300 MW). I know, this is not directly comparable but it gives you a hint, that you could have easily get the 1600 MW in ten years with renewable sources. Nuclear power might be an interesting technology, but for me it is just a steam machine, which leaves a huge pile of waste behind. Nobody knows how to handle it, and people got it wrong. Search for Asse II if you want to know more about it. For Germany it will be very hard to find a safe final deposit for all the nuclear waste.
- scarmig 14y ago
  I think many nuke advocates go much too far in the "nuclear power will solve all our problems!" That said, the strongest arguments for nuclear power has always been as part of a balanced energy diet, not as the off the shelf answer to everything. So, how do we figure out where it's appropriate and where not? Properly price carbon, and remove all distorting subsidies to all forms of energy, from fossil fuels to solar to wind to nuclear. Then let the market do what it does best: figure out the best way to allocate capital to produce goods. Nuclear certainly needs proper regulation and safety requirements, but contemporary designs are much lower risk than the Fukushima reactor from the 1970s or the ancient design of Chernobyl: despite that, they're nearly impossible to build. I've heard it wouldn't even be allowed, in the current regulatory regime, to replace those old plants with new ones. Something's broken there.

jfaucett 14y ago

It seems this has sparked some debates on nuclear vs renewable energy so I thought I'd add a ted talk that explains some pros/cons of each for those interested: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables.html http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_ren...

jc-denton 14y ago

Humm I find it quite an interesting article, but very imprecise. The only useful thing I found on the net about "Thor Energy" is this presentation http://www.docstoc.com/docs/63561509/Thor-Energy-companyoverview http://www.docstoc.com/docs/63561509/Thor-Energy-companyover...

gingerbreadman 14y ago

Kalpakkam, India has already been in works for years! The design for it according to wikipedia had been started in the 80's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor

allerratio 14y ago

The title is misleading. They only test thorium in an already built conventional reactor. Meanwhile in Germany they developed a conceptionally more safe reactor type powered by thorium, built a test reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor) and an industrial reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300). They're both shut down now, partly because of safety concerns: Water leaking into the cooling circuit can lead to explosions (which happened in small amounts) So I guess only time will tell if new reactor types really are better than current ones.

marvin 14y ago

If I am correctly informed (would love to hear from people who are involved in the project), this project is being done in spite of the Norwegian government's stance on nuclear energy. Thor Energy and its associated researchers have tried to stir up support for thorium reserach for years now, but there has been very little support and large amount of uninformed opposition ("nu-cu-lar is baaaaaad"). A number of physicists, notably Egil Lillestøl at the University of Bergen, have talked to official figures about this for a long time about this without getting any kind of traction. Thorium energy seems to be a very promising candidate for safe, clean and cheap next-generation nuclear power. If these researchers manage to develop something without official support, it would be impressive indeed. That the Norwegian government isn't willing to support clean energy research is really quite baffling, given that the energy sector is hands-down the largest contributor to the Norwegian economy. And Norway has the world's second-largest known thorium reserves. For all our supposed good policies, we are still subject to mob rule and completely uninformed detractors.

konstruktor 14y ago
Thanks for, without giving actual examples, telling us that the people opposing nuclear are uninformed and unable to form complete sentences. Without this enlightened information one might have listened to them and judged them based on their arguments. Edit: spelling
- ThomPete 14y ago
  Perhaps you could introduce some arguments for this opposition instead of just do what you complain about.
barry-cotter 14y ago
For all our supposed good policies, we are still subject to mob rule and completely uninformed detractors. To democracy! All hail the will of the people!
jpdoctor 14y ago
> Thorium energy seems to be a very promising candidate for safe, clean Only for some definitions of clean. Forget the radiation, Thorium's toxicity profile is not pretty. Hell, the damn thing is pyrophoric. Hats off to the engineers if they can make a more sensible reactor out of it.

NatW 14y ago

For those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend this video on liquid-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P9M__yYbsZ4# https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...! I passed the video by my uncle who was an expert/engineer dealing with control and safety of water cooled reactors. This is what he had to say: "I found the video very informative technically, as well as being effective in countering many of the the arguments of those who profess to be against nuclear power in any form. I also found the details of the design of the liquid thorium fluoride reactor intriguing. To become an advocate for further investment in this concept, I would have to learn more about how the concept deals with the safety issues involved in the handling of fluorine gas and fluoride materials."

politician 14y ago
I just watched that video (2 hrs!), and I have to agree with NatW on his recommendation. Really, really well done.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ScotterC 14y ago

Interestingly this has already been done in the U.S. kinda. Back when I was working on Indian Point Units 2 & 3 I found a paper about Unit 1 where - about 30 years ago - they mixed in some of the fuel bundles with Thorium to see how well the neutron flux would turn it into Uranium and possibly breed more fuel. It was really fascinating but, although they had some success, there was really no need for it in the U.S. because Uranium is not in short supply and as this article points out, solid fuel reactors kind of dismiss all the advantages of thorium.

s_henry_paulson 14y ago
Even prior to that in the 1960s the US invented Molten Salt Thorium nuclear reactors at Oak Ridge. They were shelved not because of the abundant supply of Uranium, but rather because they could not be used to make weapons. http://energyfromthorium.com/history.html http://energyfromthorium.com/history.html
- ScotterC 14y ago
  Yup. And we had a running MSR at shippingport PA for awhile.

Empro 14y ago

Awesome.

teeja 14y ago

"I think from a long-range standpoint--I'm talking about humanity--the most important thing we could do is start by having an international meeting where we first outlaw nuclear weapons and then we outlaw nuclear reactors, too." - Hyman Rickover, January 28, 1982

Andrea1 14y ago

A Liquid Fluoride Thorium Ractor is as safe a unit as is possible. Look it up online. Much safer, cheaper, and more versatile than a bulky CANDU. It can be throttled and scaled which is a huge advantage. There is plenty of easily accessable thorium worldwide. It also can generate radioisotopes that are extremely useful and much more readily extracted from the reactor than those currently used. Time to begin building these.