China prepares to test thorium-fuelled nuclear reactor
Scientists are excited about an experimental nuclear reactor using thorium as fuel, which is about to begin tests in China. Although this radioactive element has been trialled in reactors before, experts say that China is the first to have a shot at commercializing the technology.
The reactor is unusual in that it has molten salts circulating inside it instead of water. It has the potential to produce nuclear energy that is relatively safe and cheap, while also generating a much smaller amount of very long-lived radioactive waste than conventional reactors.
Construction of the experimental thorium reactor in Wuwei, on the outskirts of the Gobi Desert, was due to be completed by the end of August — with trial runs scheduled for this month, according to the government of Gansu province.
[...] When China switches on its experimental reactor, it will be the first molten-salt reactor operating since 1969, when US researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee shut theirs down. And it will be the first molten-salt reactor to be fuelled by thorium. Researchers who have collaborated with SINAP say the Chinese design copies that of Oak Ridge, but improves on it by calling on decades of innovation in manufacturing, materials and instrumentation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @12:42PM (24 children)
The only walk-away safe reactor design we know of, that requires you supply heat or it shuts itself down, can't melt down, can be used to burn off the problematic wastes...
You know, it's really sad when the Chinese are beating us with the technology we invented (and abandoned because NOOKLEER BAD!).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @01:08PM (20 children)
I would be happy if America just built modern uranium reactors.
The technology works, and the new designs are far safer--not that the old ones in America ever resulted in any serious accidents. There is no need for anything other than to build the damn things.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @02:34PM (4 children)
There are few...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents [wikipedia.org]
You may want to read up on first.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Monday September 20 2021, @12:22AM (3 children)
Your list shows 7 fatalities in a nuclear plant in the U.S. for the entire history of nuclear power. We've had single accidents in coal mines that killed more than that (not to mention an entire town condemned as uninhabitable).
We've had a few more from weapons research, but still not enough to add up to one coal mining accident. At the same time, 4 of those 7 were due to a steam pipe in the secondary loop bursting, so could have happened at any steam turbine plant.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday September 20 2021, @06:25PM (2 children)
Hell, there have likely been more RADIATION [scientificamerican.com] deaths from coal than from nuclear.
However, being better than the single most harmful fuel on the planet doesn't necessarily make you good!
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 20 2021, @08:51PM (1 child)
Yes, the radiation is more of a problem with coal where it is completely unregulated to this day. If someone somehow moved a fly-ash pile from a coal plant to a nuclear plant overnight, regulators would be calling out the National Guard to cordon off the radiation leak. Meanwhile, the coal plant is allowed to SELL the fly ash for use in building materials. And that's just the radiological hazard.
As for other fossil energy, there have been plenty of accidents resulting in fatalities over the years and entire regions facing ecological devastation due to spills.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday September 20 2021, @09:17PM
And there's over 1,400 of them in the US!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @03:08PM (12 children)
And figure out storage. STILL. Come on, brah, if it's so easy...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday September 19 2021, @03:31PM (11 children)
Evaporate the waste to a dry solid and sinter them into glass blocks. Then use them for low quality/long lasting process heat. Perhaps cover the glass bricks with a layer of lead impregnated glass if you deem that necessary, but if probably isn't for most uses.
It really *is* easy. The really long lasting "wastes" are so low in radioactivity that they're not much more of a problem than granite is. Most people are just scared stupid.
My objection to building more of nuclear plants is that we aren't *doing* anything to handle the wastes. That and cost-cutting management that makes really short-sighted decisions for short term profit taking. And that we allow the companies to be dissolved to avoid paying for decommissioning the plants. And a few other management issues.
Technically nuclear fission plants could be a very good idea. The implementation, though, leaves a lot to be desired. If Fukushima had been properly designed, rather than taking some stupid cost cutting measures, there wouldn't have been a significant problem. But the backup power supply wasn't located uphill, as it should have been. There were a few other problems, but they weren't technical in nature. (Well, of *course* there were technical problems. But they wouldn't have lead to a disaster noticed around the world.)
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(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @03:35PM
Cool, so it sounds like it's ready to go. Thanks for your hard work explaining that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 19 2021, @05:18PM (2 children)
Denial is more profitable than educating the public sufficiently to get approval to operate.
We have a strong tolerance for things that are already built and in operation, but an even stronger irrational aversion to accepting new things like nuclear waste processing in our "backyard". Little wonder with government's track record of secrets and lies.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @08:22PM (1 child)
> Little wonder with government's track record of secrets and lies.
Let's leave it to for-profit corporations which have squeaky clean record on spontaneously looking after the environment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @02:56AM
Somehow, the media multinationals pushing the Die-for-Environment!!! agenda, are for-profit corporations too.
It is a sad state of the humanity, when peddling fear is far more profitable than making any real goods.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RS3 on Sunday September 19 2021, @08:31PM (2 children)
I do some work for a small company where I make, test, repair, etc., some instrumentation for nuclear reactors. The instruments work and are reliable, but could (have) use(d) some design refinements, especially where parts are obsolete and I'm having difficulty finding NOS (New Old Stock) parts. But I'm not allowed to change anything at all. It's crazy expensive and time-consuming to attempt to get anything re-certified for a nuke. Pretty much the opposite of agile development. And I'm not saying to take risks, rather make a more streamlined process. For instance, changing a resistor value does not need new radiation bombardment tests. Well, you could argue to do it, but it really doesn't need all of the dozens of tests repeated. Heck, electronic component variation could effect the outcomes just as much.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by corey on Sunday September 19 2021, @11:34PM (1 child)
I’m doing some work in space electronics, what you say resonates. But lately what’s been the trend in space electronics is, rather than make sure every IC is rad hardened, more COTS components are used with a risk based approach. That is, include various mitigations such as TMR (redundancy), reconfiguring FPGAs occasionally (and only configuring then when you need), etc. The cost comes down heaps, and I think the regulators are on board with it. I guess similar issues would be encountered with nuke electronics like total dose, SEE (SEU, SEL), etc. when exposed to charged particles.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday September 20 2021, @07:46AM
Oh wow, FPGA in space? Okay. I'd have thought they'd lose a bit here and there and then you're hosed.
The nuke stuff I work on doesn't get individually rad tested. Initial / test units did, and the assumption is if they're made exactly the same, they'll be okay. And there were huge margins so I'm not worried. But thinking you can get the exact same part with the exact same characteristics 30 years later is unrealistic. But again, I'm not allowed to change or substitute so I do my best to replicate the antiques.
These handle space rad better: https://www.science.org/content/article/return-vacuum-tube-rev2 [science.org]
:)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Monday September 20 2021, @01:02AM (1 child)
Not glass blocks, they can leach. CSIRO / ANU figured it out decades ago. You incorporate it into Synroc [wikipedia.org] and stack it in a desert.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Monday September 20 2021, @03:34AM
No. That's wasteful. Synrock is ok, but you don't need that. Glass blocks are fine, you just put a second layer of glass around the inner one. And you want to use them as a heat source, not just pile them out in the desert. If you want to make them into Synrock, well, OK, but you may need to sheathe it anyway, because you want a smooth external surface. And I don't think it's needed. (You didn't include a trademark notation, but it sounds as if one is supposed to be there.)
The thing is, you don't need to guard it for thousands of years, because the really radioactive things have short half lives. So if a small amount leaches out in a century of so it doesn't matter. But if you want to protect against that, at least use it for low level heat while it's still hot.
P.S.: That "second layer of glass" is probably sufficient, but you may want it to be lead glass or some such. It depends on the nature of the stuff on the inside...and that stuff has already been mixed with a bunch of sand, because I didn't just mean glassified nuclear wastes, I meant glass. If you think it necessary (I don't, but I'm not a real expert) you could have a layer of heavy oil or tar between the outer block and the inner one. That will keep any water from penetrating in case there's a leak in the outer layer.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday September 20 2021, @04:19AM (1 child)
I hate to break this to you but the waste IS a solid already. It just has to be kept in pools of water to keep it from melting and/or combusting on contact with air.
How ever, as the fuel rods are actually 96% reusable U-238 and 1% Plutonium that can be used directly as fuel again once the fuel rod is recycled the remaining 3% of the old rod that is actually unusable* in a nuclear reactor could be sintered into a ceramic that could possible be used in applications where you needed a constant low yield heat source, like a desalinization plant that uses reduced air pressure to lower the boiling point of the water. Similar to an OTEC [wikipedia.org] system.
A ceramic would be better since they can be made to withstand more thermal variation than glass before shattering or maybe something like Borosilicate glass, aka, Pyrex.
*fission byproducts, whats left over when the U-235 or Pu atoms get split. mostly neutron absorbing isotopes that "poison" the chain reaction They produce all the heat as they decay.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday September 20 2021, @01:49PM
IIUC, there are multiple steams of waste, and it isn't all solid.
And to be even more "nitpicky", the proposal I mentioned wouldn't handle gaseous waste, like tritium or various other isotopes of this and that, so provision would need to be made for them. But it's not really difficult. There shouldn't be that much, so really minute porous inclusions should suffice. (I don't think there are many elements that would be liquid at the likely temperature, though gallium comes to mind and there are a few others, but I don't see them as causing a real problem.)
OTOH, to convert the stuff into glass bricks you'll need to raise it to the melting point of glass. (Any old waste glass should do for this purpose.) Then you mix it in and let it slowly cool (just a bit) before you add another clean layer of glass or so. (If you need to get really fancy, you could sculpt out a hole in a larger glass brick, add some tar, and then place the layered glass brick inside the large one and seal it. Naturally it's trickier than that, but the basic process is simple, relatively cheap, and yields a source of low level heat.
But if you think you need to foam the inner block slightly things get more complicated. I think it would still be relatively cheap and easy, though, once you had the process set up.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday September 20 2021, @02:28AM (1 child)
I'm sorry, the modern Uranium rectors in the USA are not nearly as safe as they are advertised to be. They still use normal water under extraordinarily high pressures to cool a mass of solid fuel that would happily continue to undergo fission even if the coolant was lost. As has happened several times in the past, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and several other smaller incidents with rectors aboard modern military vessels that didn't make it into the main news channels.
All of the commercial, and military, plants currently operating in the USA are all Light Water Reactors, meaning they use normal water to both cool the core and transfer the heat to where it can be used.
Now the problem with those reactors is that to get enough heat out of the core to be useful you have to have temperatures way over the normal boiling point of water. So to keep the coolant from turning to steam the cores have to be kept under a lot of pressure, around 2300psi. ( For context a SCUBA tank is usually at 2000psi.) and if there is even a small leak in the system the coolant goes almost instantly to steam and the core can over heat and all sorts of bad things happen. Kind of like when you pop the cap on a cars radiator when the engine is hot.
Once the water has boiled away the solid fuel in the core keeps getting hotter until it melts into an amorphous mass like what is currently sitting ind side the rubble at Chernobyl.and Fukushima that can continue to undergo a self sustaining chain reaction.
Where Molten salts have the huge advantage is that since the salts, which are both fuel and coolant, don't need to be under any pressure to remain a liquid at normal operating temperatures the core is at near ambient pressure. So no danger of a massive steam burst blowing your building up.
Another lovely feature of a MSR is that as the fuel/coolant heats up it expands, moving the fissionable atoms further apart and reducing the chain reaction. It self regulates. Once it reaches operating temperature you have to start cooling it to keep the reaction going.
Where MSRs really shine however is that because a chain reaction needs a specific volume, aka critical mass, to keep going. If the fuel gets spread out too much the reaction stops and the fuel cools and solidifies. So if the core did get cracked open somehow, say a plan hit it, the fuel would no longer have critical mass and the whole mess passivley shuts off and contains itself. Which allows for a wonderful safety feature in the reactor. To shut it off all you have to do is drain the core into a holding tank that doesn't maintain critical mass, and the plug on that drain can be nothing more than a bit of the fuel salts kept cool by fan cooling the pipe. If you lose power the fan stops cooling, the fuel gets hot and melts, the core drains into the holding tanks and the chain reaction shuts off. Literally walk away safe. I've heard that the MSR test reactors at Oak Ridge would occasionally be shut down at the end of the week by just turning off the freeze plug cooling and letting the core drain out. So that trick has been tested and proven.
tldr: Watch Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors [youtube.com] It covers everything about MSRs and Thorium you need to know to understand what China has accomplished.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21 2021, @12:14PM
I agree about pressurized water reactors being the height of stupidity. I'm just gonna nitpick you on the 'would happily continue to fission' thing.
See, it's that ~6% of the rated heat load of the reactor comes from the daughter nucleides tumbling down their decay chains, and those start out more or less distributed across the periodic table (it's actually a bimodal distribution, because U235 doesn't tend to split equally very much).
It's not fission that makes an uncooled reactor melt down, it's the intense radioactivity of a mess of freshly shattered atoms that does it. And it takes months to fade.
Seriously though - building a fission reactor with solid fuel (meaning it can only be removed mechanically piece by piece, IF the pieces haven't been damaged...) AND putting that thing into a pressure vessel, and then cooling it with water (bad choice). And on top of that, cladding that solid fuel in a material which will catalytically crack water into hydrogen and oxygen gas at high temperatures.... Got to be the dumbest possible reactor design I can think of.
Only one worse is running a fast-breeder reactor. Although I kind of feel that molten sodium metal is actually a better choice of coolant than water, steam-pressure-vessel-bomb-hazard considered. And the fact that it burst into violent flames on contact in air could be considered a bonus - at least you aren't going to ignore slow leaks. Problem with fast breeders is that if maliciously controlled - or just out of control, a-la Chernobyl, well... They need to have very concentrated/large fissionable inventories to work at all, so 'the worst that could happen' tends to be pretty bad, especially compared to thermal-spectrum. Luckily we haven't seen that 'worst' yet, and I hope we never do.
But I would be much happier with a nearly-intrinsically-safe* molten-salt reactor.
(* you know, apart from all the heat and neutrons and radioactivity, that is).
The way I like to think of it: Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame said the most impressive explosion, to him, was the one caused by an electric water heater. That's a pressure vessel, with water in it, closed off, and having too much heat applied. They had to strip out and override at least three different very simple and reliable safety devices to get it to explode, but when it finally did...
When the guy whose name is listed as an inventor on the patent for light water reactors pleaded with congress to ban them, well, who would know better?
But hey, 'better the devil you know', right? Except it turns out that is really just stupidity caused by FUD.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @01:41PM
As soon as the Chinese perfect it, America will steal the design and build their own cheaper knockoffs
(Score: 5, Insightful) by seeprime on Sunday September 19 2021, @05:23PM (1 child)
A large part of the problem in the US is that energy companies are not incentivized to build new safer nuclear plants. My state is actually paying older nuclear plants to keep running, otherwise they'd be closed due to an inability to make a profit. No new plants are being constructed. Wind and solar are big here and account for over half of all power generation. But, nuclear is needed if we want carbon free power during the winter when it's cloudy out and the winds are calm. And yet. it's not happening as politicians play too many games in order to get re-elected. So, gas plants get fired up, literally, and exhaust tons of CO2 that we're told is being brought under control. CO2 pollution won't really be controlled until it's no longer happening. Until then it's just rhetoric spun to get votes. There is no long term thinking and practical implementation of safe nuclear power these days.
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday September 19 2021, @11:37PM
Well when it’s not sunny or windy where you are, it might be over in California. The requirements of wind and solar baseload generation is distribution. When it’s cloudy and still in California, it might be windy where you are, or in Texas. But having nukes helps, for sure.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @01:19PM (1 child)
Note that the article sets a number of particulars about the type of Thorium Reactor it is.... at there's been 40+ years of other Thorium-based projects that failed to break even. (THTR-300 being one, that used the relatively-safe "pebble bed" process.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @04:06PM
Too cheap to meter?
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday September 19 2021, @02:03PM (3 children)
You can't make Thorium bombs. As the US military likes their booms, the bigger the better, it's no wonder they ignored thorium.
Thorium reactors should have been a thing 30 years ago.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @03:02PM
No completely true - it does not make a boom that is big enough.
Any system that you can extract energy from and it continues to generate energy will go boom, period. IE: It is creating more than it is consuming, then the energy extraction process makes the system "stable". Fail to extract that energy from the system, and it runs away - ie a BOOM.
Now if there is built in limiting factors, like mass must be greater than X degrees, and it takes a outside source to get it to that temperature and keep it there. And mass cannot self maintain that temperature once generating energy. Then the fuel is "safe" since it will "tend" to shutdown. How fast is another question.
Current Fuel Oils/Gasses not that safe. Though reality safe and stable are room temperature, they need to be converted to a gas state, but once they are ignited they continue to burn, generate energy that continues the process, including heating the fuel making more gas. If confined they do go boom, but general not that big, unless there is a oxidizer. It is why gasoline burn "slowly" It takes a lot of oxygen to keep high rates of energy release. BLOWERS on Dragsters come to mind, before going to nitro fuels. Propane is least safe, since since no heating is needed for it to be a gas. That is why military likes it as an air-fuel bomb. drop a "propane" tank, make it leak, and ignite. Why city blocks and whole homes are wipe-out via a "gas leak"or propane tank explosion.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @08:27PM
Just out of interest, how much is the energy market compared to the nuclear bombs market. I'd be fairly confident there's a few factors of 10 difference - so holding back the energy market just to get a sideline in nukes seems.... improbable. If you're prepared to waste that much money, just make a dedicated plutonium factory and then who cares about the energy market.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday September 20 2021, @02:45AM
While you can't make a Thorium Bomb, you can make a bomb using Thorium that is just as powerful as the ones from Uranium.
You just have to put the Thorium in a reactor and make some U-233, which works just as well as U-235 for bombs. Extract the U-233 and use that instead of U-235.
One of the reasons nobody has taken that path is that you also get U-232 in the mix that actually makes the whole mess more unstable, radioactive and more than the Manhattan Project wanted to deal with so they focused on Uranium.
Thing is the U-232 contamination isn't an issue in a Thorium fueled reactor which goes for a "smolder" instead of a "Boom"
For some good back ground on MSRs and Thorium I would suggest watching this [youtube.com]. I used to be 99% no nukes (1% for space) and watching that video changed my views completely.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Sunday September 19 2021, @02:30PM (26 children)
The 'problem' with Thorium reactors is that they make the production of fissile isotopes easy, so most practical/engineering research was shut down to prevent 'the baddies' making fissile isotopes either for their own purposes, or presenting a target for other people to steal.
If you ignore the proliferation issues, Thorium is a great technology.
https://phys.org/news/2012-12-thorium-proliferation-nuclear-wonder-fuel.html [phys.org]
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the-superfuel-thorium-riskier-than-we-thought-14821644/ [popularmechanics.com]
I've chosen the above links rather than rabid anti-nuclear links (of which there are many). The problem of proliferation is one of human nature, rather than technology, so not easily solved by technical means.
Even so, I fully expect climate change to enable the use of thorium reactors. Might not happen in my lifetime, but with fusion ever 50 years in the future, places like India (sitting on large Thorium reserves - over 900,000 tonnes); Egypt (over 300,000 tonnes); Turkey (over 300,000 tonnes); and South Africa (over 100,000 tonnes) will see the economic argument as compelling.
To be honest, the current once-through cycle for uranium is also unsustainable. Fast-neutron 'breeder' reactors become economically compelling too, given climate CO2 goals: and they too have highly material proliferation problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle#Fuel_cycles [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @03:13PM
All you have to do is convince people that releasing CO2 is bad. Those enviro-whackos just won't listen tho...
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Sunday September 19 2021, @03:39PM (5 children)
Actually, the once through Uranium cycle may be sustainable for very long periods of time, though not extremely efficient. The story I've heard is that extracting Uranium from sea water is cheap enough (energetically) that you CAN run a cycle based around
1) extract uranium from sea water
2) use the uranium as reactor fuel
3) use some of the power from the reactor to power step one (and the necessary refinement).
I think it was last year, or the year before, I read about some Japanese researchers using an ion-exchange resin to extract Uranium from sea water. They could do it, but it wasn't economically competitive.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 19 2021, @05:25PM (2 children)
But, is the seawater extraction process commercially viable anywhere other than just off the coast from Fukushima?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday September 19 2021, @07:48PM (1 child)
OK, perhaps it was longer ago than two years. It was before Fukushima. And it's not commercially viable anywhere, because there are lots of ores that are cheaper to process and higher grade. But it's energetically viable...or nearly so, and would be with a tiny bit of development. But it wouldn't be commercially viable as long as there are better ores.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday September 20 2021, @03:55AM
So, never.
Thorium has a huge advantage in that 100% of the Thorium mined can be used as fuel. And over 5000 tons a year or Thorium is mined as "waste" from an average Rare Earth metal mine.
Oh, and FYI, that 5000 tons from a single RE mine could provide the energy needs of the WORLD for a year.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday September 20 2021, @03:06AM (1 child)
The once through protocols are why we have an issue with nuclear waste today.
If the spent fuel is reprocessed can reuse 97% of it again. The remaining 3% is much easier to contain and manage.
Heres the break down. A spent fuel rod is : 96% U-238, 1% Pu Isotopes, and 3% fision bybroducts that are neutron absorbing and interfere with the chain reaction.
Since each component is chemicly distinct separation is easy to accomplish. There was a recent announcement that heated Nitric acid could be used to dissolve the spent fuel rods and the specific metal nitrate slats would be precipitated out by cooling the solution. The extraction and purification of Plutonium was prevented since both the Pu and U salts precipitated in the same temperature range resulting in a mixed U/Pu metal salt that could be used directly as fuel in a properly configured reactor core.
One of the biggest reason why Spent fuel reprocessing isn't done has been over proliferation concerns as all the methods developed previously separated the Plutonium and allowed for easy processing into weapons grade purity.
Another tid bit I remember hearing was that if we started reprocessing the spent fuel we wouldn't need to mine any more Uranium for at 100 years give or take. So the miniing interestes had a vested interest in lobbing against reprocessing.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday September 20 2021, @01:35PM
Yes, it would be much better to "burn to completion". I was arguing with the phrasing rather than the goal.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 19 2021, @05:21PM (3 children)
Proliferation would explain China's interest, but I thought that Uranium/Plutonium tech directly uses the fissile isotopes, so is even worse from a weaponization of the power plant standpoint?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday September 19 2021, @07:36PM (1 child)
Both Yes and No, worse in that it is well tested technology for making bombs, but the Thorium -> Protactinium 233 -> Uranium 233 route enables fairly rapid production of fissile material as, in principle, you can use chemical extraction of the fissile Uranium from the fuel rather than using banks of centrifuges. Thankfully all the engineering details have not been worked out, as you need to keep Uranium 232 contamination low. I would expect any nuclear-capable state investigating Thorium reactors to look at how to produce fissile Uranium 233 in the process, and it is the kind of thing IAEA inspectors would be on the lookout for. A reactor designed to produce 'clean' U233 would be easily recognisable.
This Quora answer goes into more detail: https://www.quora.com/Nuclear-Weapons-How-dangerous-is-the-U-232-mixed-with-U-233-coming-out-of-a-Thorium-fuel-cycle-reactor [quora.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 19 2021, @09:43PM
That chemical process involves uranium hexafluoride, doesn't it?
Nukey boys I have talked with say the chemicals are much harder to deal with than the radiation. Might be faster than centrifuges, but it's a higher skill level.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday September 20 2021, @03:45AM
If you want weapons you use Uranium as a fuel. You can use it to breed Plutonium that can be chemically separated from the spent Uranium fuel and concentrated. The centrifuges everyone talks about have nothing to do with extracting the Plutonium. They are used to increase (enrich) the concentration of U-235, the isotope that can undergo fission in the uranium intended for use as fuel or bomb core. It is time consuming and takes a lot of specialized hardware to do. The original U enrichment process used a high pressure diffusing method for enrichment, with required a lot of pipes, filtering elements and a lot of time just to get enough U-235 to make the Little Boy device dropped on Hiroshima.
The reason why plutonium has such a high proliferation risk is it can be bred from U-238 and then chemically separated from the Uranium. Unlike mined Uranium the Pu you get from this is easy to purify into a weapons grade purity and amount.
The Thorium fuel chain doesn't produce Pu and the U-233 that is generated is unsuitable for use in a weapon due to the unavoidable U-232 contamination [wikipedia.org]. The USA looked into it in the early phases of the Manhattan Project and deemed it too much trouble to work with and weaponize.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @05:34PM
I don't want to cook up a bomb. I'd just like my own RTG to save on Winter heating bills. How hard would that be to roll up if I had a few tonnes of Thorium?
/sarcasm type=obvious. I know that even if I could make some isotope that threw off that much heat, the expense vs. my ordinary heating bill will be ridiculous.
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Sunday September 19 2021, @06:46PM (2 children)
I'm staring to think that the DOE and Fusion Energy Sciences are the equivalent of NASA, ULA and SLS. If Elon turned his attention to fusion, it would be working in five years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @07:27PM
well, Bill Gates has been pushing for modular reactors (NuGen Iirc?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @12:39AM
Given his success at the more mundane hyperloop, I'd have reasons to worry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @09:15PM (10 children)
The mass die-offs in Africa and parts of the middle east and asia are going to start in the 2030s. We ate dreaming stting goals of 1.5 - 2° by 2050. Because the only real way to stabilize emissions by 2050 worldwide is drastically reducing population. At some point, you have to triage, and Africa is hopeless, as are parts of asia and the middle east.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @09:35PM
Use nuclear fusion to power the world's air conditioners. Problem solved.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 19 2021, @10:13PM (2 children)
You don't sound, let's say, too broken up about that. You know most people in those regions emit far less CO2 per capita than developed nations, correct?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @12:33PM (1 child)
The aid should have been contingent on birth control. So blame the US in large part for refusing to help women be masters of their domain - their bodies.
Having 10 children is still seen as some sort of old age insurance by men. Hence multiple wives, lots of kids. The men don't give a shit if half of a brood of 20 die among their 4 wives.
How I feel about it or how you feel about it doesn't change the facts on the ground - they WILL die. Same as the rest of us will. Thing is, their numbers are far less sustainable over the next decade than, say, the nordic countries.
Those same nordic countries need to increase their genetic diversity by increasing immigration from areas under threat, because they will be the planet's lifeboat over the next 100 years. But they can't increase their population too much or they too will be unsustainable.
We knew for decades that the shit was going to hit the fan. We know that the current world population is unstable. And we know that we will miss the climate targets. So the lifeboat scenario is our only fallback, unless you want Musk to start churning out B Arks.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday September 20 2021, @02:37PM
That's not an issue of global warming or pollution though. That's a demographic problem, and largely to do with the fact that most of the developed world doesn't care enough to help these places make the necessary leap from 19th to 21st century.
You're sitting there drooling over the prospect of these people dying off en masse, and it's both creepy and very very obvious. Cut it out.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @12:45AM (4 children)
It would make sense to start with the greedy people with the highest CO2 footprint per capita [worldometers.info]. Ya know? Lest they let their habits as inheritance between generations. Besides, it's more effort efficient to eliminate the baddest few.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @03:02AM (1 child)
Mother Nature is not SJW. It deals in ABSOLUTES.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @03:18AM
Which is why social justice warriors have been trying to get you to take mother nature seriously, but die on a vent if you want /shrug
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @12:38PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday September 22 2021, @03:40AM
Educating women seems to help. I don't know about educating men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @03:00AM
They are printing this bullshit for longer than we live. Only the date of the apocalypse is drifting further and further.