Thorium. Why aren't we building reactors everywhere? They

>>134066682
no weapons potential

>>134066682

petrodollar

>>134066778
And we need to make more nuclear weapons? The US and Russia have like the biggest stock pile in the world.

>>134066803
?

>>134066682
Molten salt corrodes parts almost instantly, would have to re-build a new reactor every 3-6 months. This problem has not been solved.

>>134066858
yes. it's not my opinion, it's fact.

>>134066682
This is a question better asked on >>/sci/

>>134066778
>no weapons potential
Nice try.
Th-232 -> Pa-233 -> U-233

>>134067363
isn't the weapons grade u 238?

>>134069234
U-235
U-238 is how its found naturally

>>134066682
The real question is why aren't we building reactors at all.

>>134066803
*pedrodollar

>>134070017
I think everyone's waiting for fusion... It might or might not happen, and gov would keep more potentially for it

>>134069817
ah , ok

is 238 the one they turn into plutonium and make nukes from?

>>134070500
238 is the stuff they turn into 235 which then itself is weapons grade or they use it in reactors to make Plutonium.

>>134066682
The anti-nuclear propaganda machine was super effective. Made it a really hard sell when you're trying to convince someone to let you build one.

>>134066898
Replacing the graphite pipes is still cheaper than the alternative

>>134070754
>The anti-nuclear propaganda machine was super effective.
This. The lefties whined against global warming and carbon for so long, but as soon as the instant fix to their problems appeared, they (((weirdly))) started hating it more than even the fucking oil. I still can't understand how those people are so triggered by nuclear when it solves all their problems and supposedly "saves Earth" with no drawbacks. I guess that the plan wasn't to fix shit in the first place, it was to glue yourself to some random position and just whine so people give you attention, and as soon as that position is fixed, you realize that you can no longer get your daily dose of attention and government grants so you illogically go against it

>>134066682
There are less risks than fission with uranium. But if something bad happens, it will be way worse than Fukushima. The radioactivity would be worse than anything we experienced.

>>134070017
theecofags want us to have lower quality of life, and high energy prices, so they can preen and be smug whilst flying their private jets around the world telling people not too put too much water in the kettel

probably addicted to virtue signalling

>>134066682
it's a meme you dip

>>134071040
The "fossil fuel industry" is and always has been extremely vocal against nuclear power.

Which is funny because they kill far more people every year than nuclear....

And in fact they release more harmful radiologicals into the atmosphere every year than does the nuclear industry.

>>134070619
Uranium in nature exists as a mixture of 235 and 238, 238 is roughly 98% and the mixture of the two is unsuitable for critical mass

>>134070500
yeah U-238 is turned int Pu-239 through neutron absorption.

Pu-239 is easier to make than U-235

>>134071211
False, it would be 0 danger because the fuel just cools and solidifies in the drain tank

>>134070017
Government regulation makes it almost impossible to start building new nuke plants now

>>134071548
I heard it operates at 1 atm of pressure, so it's impossible for it to explode, even if cooling fais

>>134071423
Correct, and so they have to separate the 2 using usually centrifuges.

And I stand corrected. The decay chain of 238 leads to 234.

Not 235.

>>134071708
Somewhere around that, but in addition there is a plug made of salt being actively cooled so when the power goes out your fuel gets dumped into a container in which it cannot sustain net energy release.

>>134071040

I love nuclear power, but you can't in all honestly say no drawbacks. Nuclear waste that we have no good solution for storing or removing is a problem. Reactor meltdowns in the face of natural disasters is a problem.

I'm not saying this are problems that should stop us from using large amounts of nuclear, but we should be honest about the risk analysis.

Liquid fluoride-thorium reactors are great...

They could be used as molten salt reactors and we could completely removed all nuclear waste from the planet in our lifetimes with just a few of them. And when we're out of that waste, back to thorium

>>134072365
The reactors OP is referring to can be used to consume our current nuclear waste.

There's also zero possibility of a meltdown with MSR or LFTRs.

>>134071211

This is not true. Fluoride salts are molten at 400 degrees, perfect for a thermal thorium reactor. If the plant were to lose power for any reason, refridgeration to a solid salt plug in the bottom of the reactor melts. The reactor then drains into a containment vessel that does not reflect neutrons back into the mixture. The salt cools, the reaction stops.

Let's say a cruise missile hits the thorium reactor and blows the fluid all over the place. Same result. The salt cools, the reaction stops. You can walk around in a suit made of thorium all day. The stuff is not radioactive unless it is heated, contained, bombarded, and reflected in just the right way.

>>134072365
thorium reactors can burn other nuke waste

if that's not a reason to build some, I don't know what is

>>134072365
>The waste meme
We can simply put it back underground, salt mines are perfect for keeping the waste containers from deteriorating and the largest salt mine in the world can sustain storage needs for 1000 years

There is literally no argument against MSRs than "who's going to pay to build them?"

>>134072500
4% fuel efficiency vs 96% fuel efficiency.....

You know, I never finished college but that seems like a hell of a bargain right there.

>Why aren't we building reactors everywhere?

Many reasons. One would be the petroleum industry having the globe by the balls in terms of energy dependence. Next up is being associated with Chernobyl and Fukushima. Then there's the bipartisan lobbying against nuclear energy for the past several decades.

>>134073674
>No possibility for proliferation

>>134066682
Cause it challenges the status quo, we've had patented tech from 09 and vast deposits of thorium but (((they))) won't allow us to build them we've already challenged the status quo once before

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>>134066682
because there was no need to, todays nuclear power is born of weaponization research, thats it. stop asking stupid questions when you can find this out on youtube for yourself. sage and report this shit.

>>134073510
is that better than extracting energy from it by burning it in a thorium reactor?

>>134074050
Well fagposter, are you sleepy yet?

>>134073983
>patented tech from 09
america had it going in the 50s

>>134074050
There's enough nuclear weapons by now

>>134074092
With current tech I think the cost/benefit is almost equal, but future tech will be able to do it much cheaper if fusion is never invented.

>>134074160
We are the first country to have patented economically viable reactors in 09

>>134066682

normies are dumb and hear the word nuclear and get scared

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>>13407410
i try not to give faggots YOUs
summer doesn't last forever you know

>>134066682
Besides technical complications that couldn't be resolved after only 5 years of meagre development?
It can't be used to produce weapons, and oil isn't good enough to compete with it.

Perhaps more worryingly, the first thing that comes to mind in people when I tell them about thorium is extreme paranoia. After all, everything that's nuclear is just a bomb waiting to explode!!!
Never mind the fact that thorium can't meltdown, it doesn't even require a bloody cooling tower.
They don't believe it.

Truly, the only way we're gonna see it is once all the economics have been sorted and people are actually educated on nuclear, instead of put in a permanent state of panic.

>>134074296
thorium toilets inc

>>134074296
based on american plans and research, now out of patent

stealing credit, how unlike a poo

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>>134074284
plenty, yeah. after ww2, and once the major powers all had the bomb, the only way to 'win' was to advance the technology. thorium had little potential from a military aspect at the time and much funding was redirected to fast breeding reactors. Nowadays its planned technological obsolescence and greedy hands. This thread should not exist on /pol/ sage in options field
>>134066682 pic related

CANDU reactors are better.
They don't meltdown by design.

>>134074518
>>134074296
I'm surprised they haven't switched to methane energy production desu

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>>134074296
you mean to say that your country became the testbed for a foreign technology for money you most definitely wont spend on toilets

>>134074753
Their women are holy to them.

>>134074675
energy is directly related to politics, gtfo fag

>>134066682
>Why aren't we building reactors everywhere?

we only allow china to build lifter reactors

>>134074885
>foreign technology
Yeah Jamal tell me more

>>134070017
>The real question is why aren't we building reactors at all.

the real question is why are we dismantling the shitty ones we built before that are leaking and build some good ones

we also need a global effort to contain Israel and Japan's meltdown fuckup in the pacific, it's going to take 4 lifter reactors and 4 submarines to power the containment effort, a global level cleanup that should honestly be led by Russia as they have the most experience

>>134074753
We used to have a methane program but with lpg and electricity reach its no longer a thing in the current year

>>134071366
>fossil fuel

this really bugs me every time I hear it, there is no evidence that petroleum comes from fossils other than a Rockefeller funded study from the late 1800s

>>134075158
POO

>>134074885
>your country became the testbed for a foreign technology

India should watch out, that didn't work out so good for Japan, after all why not sell them substandard equipment, they're soulless non whites anyway

sincerely

GE & Bechtel

>>134066898
Underrated

>>134066682
>Why aren't we building reactors everywhere?
Its corrosive, Materials Science hasn't advanced to the point yet where we can safely hold the fuel in pipes and tanks that won't rust away rapidly. Its the "F" in LFTR that does this, Fluoride is a bitch of an agent.

>>134075224

Shut up fundie

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>>134066682
I agree that more reactors should be built. No reactors use Plutonium they use Uranium. I have heard of Sodium Uranium reactors but that just does away with the water. What is the design concept of this Thorium reactor? What makes it safer and produce more electricity? Safety is the biggest concern, and water reactors are a known quantity. In Japan they knew they should have water tight generator rooms, they said they were to expensive, . I wonder if they are saying that now.

>>134075707
>Shut up fundie

hey you have any evidence calling it fossil fuel is anything but marketing that keeps the price high?

>>134076375

What the fuck are you talking about. Why would it affect the price.

How do you think all that energy got stored? It's all energy that has to have been captured by photosynthesis. The vegetation became coal. The sea creatures that acquired the energy by eating the plants became oil.

None of this is vaguely controversial. I question where you're getting your information from if not some wacky young-earth Christian pseudo-scientist

>>134072365
>I love nuclear power, but you can't in all honestly say no drawbacks
Actually. Yes, we can.

Let's take each of your issues in succession.

>muh waste!
We know exactly how to handle, transport, properly dispose of such material. The problem is that there isn't a place authorized to do that due to regulation. Yucca mountain would have been an excellent facility for this... but the environmentalists apparently would rather have us keep all the waste here on the surface exposed to the atmosphere rather than bury it under a mountain in in uninhabited area of a state that has had nuclear devices detonated over 2000 times.

>Reactor meltdowns.
The type of reactor being discussed per OPs question of Thorium is LFTR's. The fuel is liquid already, and can't have a danger of melting because of that. As for more common reactor types that use solid fuels, we have too many safety devices in place, in America, that it can never happen here. Lets look at the major cases where disasters or near disasters have occured.
Chernobyl: Commies purposefully disabled all their safeties and stopped cooling the fuel. And then poured cooling on it again after it was overheated, causing a steam explosion. The solution is not to let Commies run nuke plants.

Fukushima: Not properly protected against possible earthquakes and tsunamis. Japanese law required hardening and testing of nuclear facilities against the third worst earthquake and tsunami that Japan had ever recorded, instead of being capable of taking on an earthquake greater than the worst. In fact, the Onagawa plant, the plant closest to the epicenter, survived without issue with a sea wall three times higher than the worst recorded tsunami, because they considered the bureaucrats to be, and I quote, "human garbage."
Solution: Don't listen to lawmakers and regulatory bodies for your safety standards, they are politicians and human garbage- not engineers, we are better than them.
TBC

>>134076375

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

Tl;Dr: insufficient evidence and poor predictive power.

>>134066682
We didn't meme it hard enough back in 2011, we'd be closer to having them by now if we did. Another thing we didn't do was mass e-mail heads of energy departments around the world informing them of the potential, very few people in those circles even know of molten salt reactors. I remember vividly there was a time where it was a daily occurrence to see thorium generals mostly started by nuka-cola who I haven't seen for many years now before then it was solely something /sci/ would discuss.

The MSRe built by Oakridge national laboratories was the second ever (the first being the atomic plane prototype reactor that was scraped after ICBMs became viable) and the first true MSR. They built it from near scratch in only 5 years after which it was critical for another 4 years without fault, this was done on 80 million USD of funding (adjusted for inflation) with construction beginning in 1960. Trump would have no problem building these he just doesn't know about them.

>>134070017
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html
>>134071620
Basically this.

>>134075607
This is the main argument against MSRs and it certainly has a degree of validity, from what I have read one must use nickel based alloys which seem to hold up many fold better than steel or iron but its still an issue and a complicated one at that. I found this interesting report here - page 15 talks about this issue. http://fhr.nuc.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/06-002_B.Laurenty-MS-report.pdf

I hope in the future newer and better alloys are made but ultimately their will be no solution unless a large portion of engineers are looking at the technology which is where us ordinary folk come in, people simply being aware helps make this technology a reality.

>>134076321
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ9Ll5EX1jc

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>>134066682
The real business behind nuke plants is selling Uranium to them. The builders control the fuel supply.

Thorium is way cheaper and lower profit since it's such a more efficient system.

We'll get there eventually but it's not going to happen in the next 20 years.

>>134072365
>>134077484
Three Mile Island: Wikipedia explains it much better than I could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
However, the main things to point out was inadequate training of the operators and poor user-interface engineering. The plant itself attempted to correct the issue without human intervention by pushing in control rods and opening secondary coolant valves. However, no significant damage or release occurred. It basically would have solved itself if not for human interference and the use of resin as a valve.

Heck look at the US Navy, that is how you run a nuclear power program. The navy has had absolutely 0 incidents- a perfect record. This is due to Admiral Rickover mainly and his strict adherence to discipline that is still being observed today.

>>134066858
by petrodollar he means oil, coal, natural gas, and other entrenched fossil fuel interests lobbying against nuclear (and renewable) energy sources because it'd hurt their wallets if something else that could challenge oil, coal, and natural gas profitability.

>>134071040
chernobyl and three mile island were a one two punch of the dangers of ATOMIC ENERGY to the common idiot who ignores the fact that one was a bunch of idiot slavs disregarding every possible safety precaution for no valid reason and the other was a malfunction in non-redundant systems that were in a design that's hideously outdated by today's safety standards, and even that accident hasn't been linked to any instances of cancer or the like. and then the moment that starts to fade a japanese plant gets hit with an earthquake and tsunami stronger than the maximum rated that it was designed and built for and barely has anything happen to it that endangers folk, but that just proves how dangerous ATOMIC ENERGY is

now ignore coal slurry and coal ash accidents, oil spills, natural gas lines leaking, and the pollutants released by processing and burning fossil fuels and whoa suddenly nuclear doesn't look very good

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>>134075086
i would like to see you come up with evidence otherwise. nice try south indian streetkid. I'll even give you credit for using expensive words.

>>134066682
>Thorium.
>Why aren't we building reactors everywhere? They produce more power than plutonium and is easier to find with exception to it's plutonium helper which is more than half the material of a normal reactor.
>Explain why we aren't building theses if we've had em since 1970's?

Maybe they don't work like you think they do.

There's two big reasons.

1. It is ridiculously expensive and time consuming to get a new reactor approved by the NRC. It can take up to 10 years and over a billion dollars before construction can even start on the thing.

2. MSRs have an issue with the salt currouding the containers. This can be mitigated if monitored closely, but it's still an issue.

>>134079717
>dangers of ATOMIC ENERGY
LOWEST BIDDER

>>134070619
They don't turn U238 into U235, they refine the ore (comprised almost entirely out of U238 with tiny amounts of the valuable U235) to extract the U235, which can undergo fission with slow neutrons. U238 can be used to make Pu239 though, through neutron absorption.

U238 can undergo fission but with fast moving neutrons, as is the case in fission-fusion-fission bombs.

>>134082818
I corrected myself in another post. But thanks.

>>134066682
BECAUSE IT WILL BLOW UP LIKE A NUKE RETARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ARE YOU TRYING TO GET US FUCKING KILLED?

>>134076321
thorium is cheaper and more abundant

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>>134072365
>nuclear waste meme
you could take all the nuclear waste we've ever produced and fit inside a fucking Wal-Mart.