Competition from the Thorium reactor

[Elling]

FF enthusiasts should be aware of the status and the fate of the very promising reactor design by Carlo Rubbia, the boss of CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. ( He led the discovery of the vector bosons W and Z. The LHC project is now in the final preparations to look for the famous Higgs boson. Quite interesting, Higgs may not have anything to do with the mass property as predicted in the standard model but it does indeed fit into Tom van Flandern’s elyseum, the ether in which light propagates as a pure wave. Elyseum would be composed of elysons with some intimate connection if not outright identity with the elusive creature Higgs. More on that on http://www.metaresearch.org )

Rubbia led extensive experiments on his Th reactor in the CERN premises with European Union money, verifying all the good properties and numbers : Q = 30, very little radioactive ashes that can’t be used for weapons, subcritic regime, inherently safe from meltdown. The typical design delivers 1.5 GW electrical. 27 tons ThO2 covers 5 year…Geneva would get by on a ton per year..The world has enourmus quantites of ThO2 deposits particularly in Australia, India, Norway and the US (California)
However the French, always them in the way, stopped EU funding when they found out that Rubbias Thorium would undermine their new generation of superbreeders using highly pressurised water. Rubbia has given up on them and asked Norway to fund the prototype. A small thing to ask given the state of finance of that country. The Th prototype would cost 1 billion $ because it needs a particle accelerator to ignite the Th cyclus. As by now, the uneducated luddite/purists in our government has said flatly no to this opportunity of a lifetime. Norway’s thorium would bring incomes thousand times our oil but some people just can’t do multiplication. A group of physics professors will try to organise a professional lobby but they’re up against high odds.
If Norway doesn’t cough up the funding, Rubbia will turn to Russia, India or China where scientists can’t wait to get started.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003536.html

Critics to Th pundits form a coolheaded Englishman :
http://www.fjfi.cvut.cz/con_adtt99/papers/Tu-o-g3.pdf#search="Peter%20Wilson%20Thorium"

However, people have a hard time distinguishing the bids for new energy. To distinguish the shorthand media versions on the Th reactor and the FF reactor, I’ve established this list :
FF : 10-100MW, Garage, Non-experts, 0.5 M $, Rural
Th : 1-5GW, Acre, Experts, 500 M $, Cities – heavy industry

Both technologies would have their applications ! Different groups of countries sit on different deposits of Thorium, Uranium and Borax, have different financial strength and technological maturity. The interdependance in the world will somehow spread along new axis between North and South instead of being wholly focused in the Gulf.

So : Even with a verified principle, invented by the world’s leading physicist by elaborate experiments in the worlds leading lab, with a whole region’s money behind it, in full openness between a majority of the industrialised nations – the process of commersialisation is effectively halted by lobbying and coorporate interest.

[Glenn Millam]

Ahhh… don’t you love politics?

Anyway, the Thorium reactor looks really good. It is the startup costs that is killing it, and I hope that some country out there will take the risk and do it. At our current state, we don’t need to be turning down really hopeful solutions just because a few people feel their current investments may be threatened.

What is important to look at in this with Focus Fusion is that the startup costs for a single reactor capable of proving the technology will be under a million dollars (US). (Current estimate is $200,000.) That means that it can be achieved by a private investor willing to take out a mortgage on their house. Think about that. Without the need to have a government or huge private firm to put up the cash, the all-important testbed can be done by individuals for less than the cost of an independent film. And think about the return on that investment.

Hmmm… I wonder how much equity I have in my house…

[Elling]

We all just adore the sarcastic uninformed bickering of the best among us, yeah
They are afraid of one single Bequerel but can’t see the problems coming from radioactivity and particles from coal.
Technocrats unite..

I don’t think it’s the startup costs that is currently stopping the Thorium reactor. It might be just the other way around : spectacular projects should have a high price tag for credibility.
Rubbia does not want to transfer accelerator designs outside Europe, for research monopoly or patriotric reasons.
Work to improve the synchrotron for sufficient reliability is ongoing. Possibly the RF powering and the proton injector are the failing parts. The fuel cycle needs to be fully worked out. I’m not competent to say whether an attempt on a full scale commercial reactor is justified now but necessary preparations would certainly accelerate (hmm) if the money was on the table. Simulations and nuclear expertise are now so mature that new reactors can be expected to perform right out of the box.
The more conservative Thorium approach was done to get rid of the Russian Plutonium stock. WER-100 reactors are currently operating.
http://www.thoriumpower.com/

Maybe FF will need more money than announced. The semiconductors for downconverting and recycle xrays, are they readily available ? Could there be a need for extra stuff to excite the critical amount of plasmoids like microwave heating, lasers, magnets ? Could the engineering phase be sped up by spending money lavishly in a parallell crash developement effort ?

[Jolly Roger]

I read up a little on the Thorium Reactor. It would be a little improvement on the current Uranium and Plutonium reactors, but not much.

Though it can’t melt down, it still generates radioactive waste that has to be isolated from the environment for 500 years. That is still too long.

It still generates electriclty using the old heat-steam cycle. Generating plants will still be large and expensive, too expensive for developing countries.

Let’s just get Focus Fusion producing net energy. Then the world will beat a path to our door!

[Elling]

In fact, Rubbias ADS has several reliability and longevity issues that need to be fully understood. Also, it swallows 30MW for the proton accelerator that might be used for other purposes. Basically it’s probably too complex.
However, there’s the abandoned molten salt reactor MSR that can run not only on Thorium but on all the fertile materials.
MSR is the ultimate fission reactor all things considered.
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/

Thorium is infact a significant improvement over Uranium in mining cost and proliferation risk.
A liquid core has several very significant advantages over the current light water reactor running on MOX rods : fuel preparation cost, continous reprocessing much cheaper, no high pressures, passive inherent safety.

The original MSR runs on thermal spectra neutrons and needs graphite moderator rods. These “tar babys” need to be replaced. However there are MSR designs that use fast neutrons and eliminate the deadful graphite disposal.

[Lerner]

Maybe this should be continued under “general discussion” . It is not really relevent to lobbying.

[Focus Fusion Society]

Hey presto. Moved to Fusion Alternatives: General Discussion 🙂

[Transmute]

I think that the thorium reactor is a must for further development, in a particle bed it is melt down safe, does not present a nuclear weapons proliferation risk and can breed it own fuel, the particle fuel balls never need to be opened and can be safely buried when used up. The Thorium reactor has much MUCH more science behind it then nuclear fusion and could be ready any time all that needed is funding to build them and public support, the latter of which will likely never happen because of the nuclear stigma. Sure thorium reactors as not as good as a p-b11 reactor could be, but its way ahead in development and all options should be research and if possible developed, in our modern energy starving-global warming world.

[digh]

I mentioned this in other forums, the Molten Salt Reactor was actually developed into a working prototype in the early seventies. Most of the major development issues were worked out (see ORNL). When they pulled the plug in the early seventies the reason given was “It wasn’t a true breeder! Then the first oil price shock came in the early seventies and still the design was not revived.

Point of information, the US has the second largest reserves of thorium in the world. So what killed it politics, lobbying, stupidity, all three! This technology might finally be revived. When I looked into who buys stock in thorium fabrication I found that wall street investers are buying hundreds of thousands of shares at a clip. The advantages of thorium MSR
low short lived radiactive wastes, the ability to burn high level waste held in storage, safety against proliferation and loss of control, have been mentioned by myself and others. I think we are going to hear more about thorium ie. FUJI MSR (if refunded) a strong program in India etc.

[Axil]

What is not commonly know is that the LIFE ICR is a thorium fission/fusion hybrid driven by laser pellet implosion fusion. 95% of the LFTR design is usable in a wide range of thorium reactor types. There are also other thorium reactors under development that are 95% technology compatible with other types of thorium reactors.

[JShell]

Could LFTRs burn the spent fuel from all the nuclear fission reactors still in operation? Burning radioactive waste in newer reactors instead of trying to keep storing it next to the nuclear facilities is definitely an intriguing (and environmentally friendly) idea that companies making profits off of nuclear fission should help fund.

[Brian H]

Back to costing arithmetic for a moment, the figures suggest to me a thorium reactor would produce 10X more power than an FF generator, at 1000X the cost. (Plus heat cycle generator and disposal facilities.) It’s one advantage is that the physics is easier (at the moment).

Hmmm …

[Author]

Posts