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From CNN:
The massive find of conventional oil on state land could bring relief to budget pains in Alaska brought on by slumping production in the state and the crash in oil prices.
The new discovery was made in just the past few days in Alaska's North Slope, which was previously viewed as an aging oil basin.
[...] "The interesting thing about this discovery is the North Slope was previously thought to be on its last legs. But this is a significant emerging find," Repsol spokesman Kristian Rix told CNNMoney.
Of course, this news won't ease rising concern among investors about the stubborn glut of oil in the U.S. There are increasing signs that shale oil producers are preparing to ramp up output after surviving a two-year price war with OPEC.
It's a gift from $DEITY! Who needs renewable energy when we just keep finding oil! Right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2017, @02:45PM (4 children)
Not sure which universe you're referring to, but in this one, we had Oak Ridge National Lab successfully run a 7MW molten-salt reactor over the span of four years. [wikipedia.org] The only apparent reason why the technology wasn't developed further at the time is that it's quite difficult to make weapons using such a design.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday March 13 2017, @03:56PM (3 children)
Not sure which universe you're referring to, but in this one, we had Oak Ridge National Lab successfully run a 7MW molten-salt reactor over the span of four years.
If you'll read your own link, you'll see that the ORNL experimental reactor didn't produce any power aside from some impressive waste heat.
I'd love to see molten salt reactors like the LFTR catch on. But they haven't, which hampers that proven track record a bit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2017, @04:05PM (2 children)
1. nuclear reactors only produce "waste heat", turbines produce power
2. molten salt reactor is the same for thorium or uranium ....
3. thorium and uranium produce almost identical waste streams, the different is not material
4. molten salt reactors don't exist because they are a pain to maintain!!
5. there are better ways of having passive safety
It's kind of sad to see armchair "physicists" keep repeating tired old bullshit about Thorium. It's already used in world's nuclear reactors! Meltdowns are caused not by fuel, but by lack of cooling. Hence the word melt. Actually, Uranium plays NO ROLE in meltdowns like Fukushima because Uranium chain reaction is completely stopped at that point. If they were running thorium in same geometry, they would melt just the same.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday March 13 2017, @04:46PM
1. nuclear reactors only produce "waste heat", turbines produce power
Waste heat [merriam-webster.com] is heat other than that used for the primary purpose of a system.
For example, if a reactor heated water to produce steam which turned a turbine to produce electricity, any remaining heat would be waste heat, but the heat energy used to heat the fluid driving the turbine isn't wasted.
The ORNL molten salt reactor experiment didn't produce electricity, or indeed anything else except data--information. And waste heat. (And it wasn't fueled by Thorium.)
So the difference here is that many reactors have a proven track record of producing power, but molten salt reactors--while proven technically viable at ORNL--have no proven track record of generating anything useful other than valuable data.
Now, in the context of this article, if a reactor yielded something usable elsewhere via energy conversion such as electricity, or motive force for an airplane, then it would be on some level comparable to oil. If it was just an interesting study in a really hot building, then not.
2. molten salt reactor is the same for thorium or uranium ....
3. thorium and uranium produce almost identical waste streams, the different is not material
Yes, almost identical. But the devil's in the details [glerner.com].
4. molten salt reactors don't exist because they are a pain to maintain!!
While that may be a contributing factor, the situation is more complicated [discovermagazine.com] than that and the technical and policy decisions involved date back for decades.
5. there are better ways of having passive safety
There are other ways, sure. Better? Unproven, since the thorium liquid reactor folks have yet to get anything into production so far as I know.
It's kind of sad to see armchair "physicists" keep repeating tired old bullshit about Thorium.
There are some really interesting proposed ideas for combining molten fluoride salt reactors with a thorium -> uranium fuel cycle to produce a low-pressure breeder reactor with passive safety features such as an actively cooled drain block [wordpress.com]. Until someone builds one, they are just that--ideas. Afterwards, the data would presumably speak for themselves.
Uranium plays NO ROLE in meltdowns like Fukushima because Uranium chain reaction is completely stopped at that point. If they were running thorium in same geometry, they would melt just the same.
Making a reactor safe against meltdowns involves that passive safety we are talking about.
With a core of solid fuel rods + failure of cooling, the failure mode is "meltdown" which is bad [wikimedia.org].
With a core of liquid fuel held in place by a cooled drain plug + failure of cooling, the failure mode is "everything drains into an inert tank" which is arguably not so bad [wordpress.com].
This configuration does not magically appear once designers add a pinch of magic thorium dust, of course; it is a design that includes a decision to use a promising passive safety feature. Proposed reactor designs I've seen that include this idea typically also include the decision to use a Thorium fuel cycle. Still falls under "wouldn't that be nice."
But if this [wordpress.com] or another nuke design were to be developed that reduced/eliminated the need for long-term waste storage and reduced/eliminated the meltdown risk, then I argue that it would probably be better for most use cases than burning oil.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 13 2017, @09:15PM
> Uranium plays NO ROLE in meltdowns like Fukushima because Uranium chain reaction is completely stopped at that point.
Incorrect.
Inserting the rods triggers the exponential decay of the chain reaction.
Your traditional 2-3GW (thermal) reactor will still need over 5MW of cooling three weeks after a scram event.
Not extracting the heat leads to meltdown.
https://mitnse.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/what-is-decay-heat/ [wordpress.com]