Does anyone know the back story on Thorium? Is this hype or no?
Posted Apr 21, 2016, 3:47 AM UTC
18
Try posting this to r/futurology, r/trees or r/sandersforpresident and the idiots there might even upvote this to r/all.
3
I don't think I need any of that.
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I'm sick of this borderline autistic fascination with thorium on reddit. Do some research. It's not the fuel that's amazing, it's the molten salt reactor. Thorium can be used really inefficiently too in LWRs. But the molten salt reactor that Whineberg and Sorenson where trying to develop is the big deal. It's use most of the fuel instead of like 2%, it's extremely safe as the fuel is far easier to manage and is very scalable.
Kirk Sorenson's own company is struggling because Whineberg's thorium reactor wasn't finished. There is still alot of expensive R&D and plants could still be expensive and difficult to scale requiring very specialised materials.
So Flibe might not develop anything of value. But terrestrial energy and thorcon are cutting the corners with simplified designs that either partially use thorium or only use more available denatured uranium.
Thorcon is probably the most exciting with a real game plan focusing on scaling and strong support from the Indonesian government. Which sorry fellow An-Caps is essential when building something as messy as a nuclear plant. Terrestrial energy are working on melting the tar sands where there is much less regulation. Hopefully Trudeau won't fuck it up.
But really when we're fighting the state through cataclysm I'm betting on solar. Not just at rooftop scale but chargers and power banks for our communication devices and lighting. At such scales it's already affordable to every one with villages in Africa getting solar lamps and phone chargers.
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I didn't even know how to start researching this, hence posting it here, it seemed to have some regulatory issues tied into it so I though ancapistan would find it interesting.
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Yeah that "do your research" bit was shitty by me. The Canadian guy has done such a good job documenting all this though Thorcon is a new development. I'm sick of the conspiracy garbage that this is some sort of technology forbidden by the state when it's really just Nixon preferring the competing project because it was in California. Just good old stupidity.
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Needs a ton of engineering and with the engineering on solid fuel reactors already done its hard to get people to risk billions of dollars on a competing technology. With the proliferation risks its unlikely that any government will fund much less allow that engineering to happen.
It is possible to create liquid reactors that are not necessarily proliferation risks, but it seems likely that governments will shut down anything once they hear highly enriched uranium.
Maybe if Elon Musk decides he wants one in order to go to Mars he can find some way to get it done.
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Lol. If they develop a commercially viable nuclear reactor with a power output that can only power a car the last place I want it is in my car. If I get in a wreck, I could spew a bunch of radioactive material everywhere, even if the fallout risk is minimal. And the lead required to make sure it didn't irradiate me or my garage would be prohibitively heavy, expensive, and unsafe. There are so many problems with this stuff.
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It's not even close to viable yet. Little funding is going into the R&D. These people are speculating wildly and believe thorium based nuclear power is some magic pixie dust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power