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OfflineNikon Addict
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Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors * 2
    #27870794 - 07/20/22 07:18 PM (1 year, 6 months ago)

I've been into all forms of energy saving and energy producing technology for awhile now. This group out of Denmark came up on my radar a little over a year ago. They've developed technology our government developed in the 1950's. (see what I did there?) They're called Molten Salt Reactors, they primarily use thorium as the fuel source. Thorium is basically considered a waste product of most mining processes. It's beyond abundant...

They're modular, making them easy to mass produce, their fuel is barely radioactive compared to uranium, it degrades in 300 years as opposed to 100,000 years and get this, they can burn old dangerous fuel during their process, which is why they're also called waste reactors. They're also known as Fluid Fuel Reactors, Aqueous Homogeneous Reactors and Fluoride Reactors. I bought the book that they got their hands on. It's on Amazon, its titled "Fluid Fuel Reactors" The book was published under contract with The United States Atomic Energy Commission.

This is basically free energy because a fuel source to run one of them is around $200.00 and that small load can produce for 30 years. The cool thing about this is if the process goes off the rails, it just stops and cools down but can easily be brought  back to life once the issue that halted production is addressed. Today's technology would runaway,  possibly leading to a melt down explosion.

The question is, why wasn't this pursued? I have my own suspicions...


Mass Manufacturing Thorium Reactors: Powered By Stardust


--------------------
personal note: "It’s fair to say I’m stepping out on a limb, but I am on the edge and that’s where it happens.”


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Invisiblelaughingdog
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Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: Nikon Addict]
    #27882298 - 07/29/22 09:40 PM (1 year, 5 months ago)

:thumbup:


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Offlinehigh_desert
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Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: Nikon Addict]
    #27884932 - 08/01/22 05:04 AM (1 year, 5 months ago)

He goes into a lot more depth but Illinois Energy Prof basically says they probably should have started with thorium reactors when they first started commercial nuclear plants but now that U235 reactors have been in use so long, they are so improved that it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to go back and start over with Thorium. Apparently they can also make molten sodium systems work with uranium and there's 3rd Gen reactors with other kinds of fail safes. He still thinks it should be explored though and may have some place in the future. Too bad we didn't start there though eh? Maybe they didn't because they wanted that bomb fuel. 😐



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Invisiblekoraks
Registered: 06/02/03
Posts: 26,667
Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: Nikon Addict]
    #28010688 - 10/22/22 12:53 PM (1 year, 3 months ago)

Quote:

Nikon Addict said:
They're called Molten Salt Reactors, they primarily use thorium as the fuel source.



There's MSR's and there's the thorium fuel cycle. They're different things, but they can indeed be combined. The Chinese are currently doing this to the best of my knowledge; nobody else is at this point very close to a working reactor. Theoretically it's not a massive challenge, but countering the political and societal winds, not to mention getting the economics to line up, is kind of tricky.

Quote:

Thorium is basically considered a waste product of most mining processes. It's beyond abundant...



Sort of. For nuclear power count on having to invest heavily and incurring substantial operating costs to mine thorium. While it's abundant, a bit like lithium, it's also spread out rather sparsely. You have to sift through a lot of sand to get some thorium. So anticipate significant impact on landscapes, and not necessarily the kind of energy efficiency you'd expect because the mining & refining isn't free, energy-wise.

Quote:

They're modular, making them easy to mass produce



Jury's out on that. It's an interesting debate in itself if small & modular is the way to go, or more centralized and bigger. I don't know if any compelling arguments either way are available.

Quote:

their fuel is barely radioactive compared to uranium, it degrades in 300 years as opposed to 100,000 years



Depends, depends...but yeah, there are distinct advantages to a thorium cycle.

Quote:

and get this, they can burn old dangerous fuel during their process, which is why they're also called waste reactors.



Alright, but several breeder reactor designs have been proposed (and some built) throughout history.

Quote:

This is basically free energy because a fuel source to run one of them is around $200.00 and that small load can produce for 30 years.



Yeah. And then you wake up and find out it's not free it's very uncertain if it'll be competitive at all. You're forgetting for a minute that the technology still needs to be developed and that operating these doesn't just entail 'drop in a fuel pellet and press the green button'.

Quote:

The question is, why wasn't this pursued? I have my own suspicions...



Partly because of path dependency; by the time it arrived at the scene, the nuclear industry was already heavily invested in uranium fuel cycles. Partly because the main proponent of the technology, Weinberg, was a wayward son of a gun who apparently sucked badly at politics - and possibly at human interaction in general. And partly because the then existing & proposed uranium designs had the added benefit of producing plutonium, which was of course convenient to blow the commies to smithereens.

It's an interesting technology alright. If you add a little nuance and research to your already present enthusiasm, you could make a difference one day.


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OfflineNikon Addict
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Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: high_desert]
    #28143832 - 01/17/23 12:38 AM (1 year, 10 days ago)

I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I haven't been spending much time here. This was a great video that allowed me to understand the process on a deeper level. A lot of it confirmed my belief system and only further convinced me that this is part of our future It boils down to economics though, doesn't it? Well, may be now that the global economy is in a tailspin and about to implode, maybe economics will become a less important issue. Then again...


--------------------
personal note: "It’s fair to say I’m stepping out on a limb, but I am on the edge and that’s where it happens.”


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OfflineNikon Addict
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Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: koraks]
    #28143874 - 01/17/23 02:18 AM (1 year, 10 days ago)

Quote:

koraks said:
Quote:

Nikon Addict said:
They're called Molten Salt Reactors, they primarily use thorium as the fuel source.



There's MSR's and there's the thorium fuel cycle. They're different things, but they can indeed be combined. The Chinese are currently doing this to the best of my knowledge; nobody else is at this point very close to a working reactor. Theoretically it's not a massive challenge, but countering the political and societal winds, not to mention getting the economics to line up, is kind of tricky.

My Reply: Well, with the worlds economy about to implode, maybe they'll be less resistance pursuing and implementing this technology. Then again, maybe the collapse will insure it never sees the light of day.

Quote:

Thorium is basically considered a waste product of most mining processes. It's beyond abundant...



Sort of. For nuclear power count on having to invest heavily and incurring substantial operating costs to mine thorium. While it's abundant, a bit like lithium, it's also spread out rather sparsely. You have to sift through a lot of sand to get some thorium. So anticipate significant impact on landscapes, and not necessarily the kind of energy efficiency you'd expect because the mining & refining isn't free, energy-wise.

My Reply: The company claimed thorium is a byproduct of almost every mining process and that it was actually reburied, so I'm going to have to look into your claim there's a burden to consider. But if this companies engineers claims are correct, thorium is easy to come by because mining processes will never end. NEVER... At least until there's nothing left to mine.

Quote:

They're modular, making them easy to mass produce



Jury's out on that. It's an interesting debate in itself if small & modular is the way to go, or more centralized and bigger. I don't know if any compelling arguments either way are available.

My Reply: I'm basing my claim on the companies claim that three of the current design can fit on a flat bed trailer. I work on equipment where a single unit can take up an entire flat bed so I consider these units pretty modular by any standard really. As of this moment, CA claims one unit can produce enough reliable energy for 400 average homes. But right now, these reactors could solve energy issues of poorer countries where one unit could serve the needs of a million or more. This will allow the company to further develop what they have now and will lead to greater output efficiencies.


Quote:

their fuel is barely radioactive compared to uranium, it degrades in 300 years as opposed to 100,000 years



Depends, depends...but yeah, there are distinct advantages to a thorium cycle.

My Reply: I'm glad we agree

Quote:

and get this, they can burn old dangerous fuel during their process, which is why they're also called waste reactors.



Alright, but several breeder reactor designs have been proposed (and some built) throughout history.

My Reply: I'm no expert when it comes to nuclear reactions but isn't the main purpose of a breeder to extend the useful life of more reactive fuels? I may be mistaken, you tell me. But if that's the definition of what a breeder is than a waste reactor is different than a breeder because a waster reactor consumes the more hazardous waste during normal operation. It converts 100,000 year waste into 300 year waste while taking advantage of extracting further energy from waste material that has to be safely contained. If you're correct, then I'm wrong. But if my understanding of what a breeder primarily does is correct, molten salt "waste" reactors are a win for humanity on the whole. You tell me...

Quote:

This is basically free energy because a fuel source to run one of them is around $200.00 and that small load can produce for 30 years.



Yeah. And then you wake up and find out it's not free it's very uncertain if it'll be competitive at all. You're forgetting for a minute that the technology still needs to be developed and that operating these doesn't just entail 'drop in a fuel pellet and press the green button'.

My Reply: Well, I pointed out the companies claims in previous replies that thorium is a waste product of almost every mining process carried out while you claim it's difficult to  mine. I'm not involved in the mining industry, at least not directly but if these reactors can operate on $200.00 worth of fuel then your economic model is wrong. It has to be wrong  because if you were right, the cost of the fuel would be exponentially higher. Once again, I need to look into whether you're correct and they're lying, because this what it would amount to, that these engineers are lying because the numbers can't be that far off, where this could be considered a simple error. But I'm letting you know right now, you just tipped your hand on where your head is at regarding alternative energies. Probably just a subconscious brain fart. This isn't condemning you... I get you...

Quote:

The question is, why wasn't this pursued? I have my own suspicions...



Partly because of path dependency; by the time it arrived at the scene, the nuclear industry was already heavily invested in uranium fuel cycles. Partly because the main proponent of the technology, Weinberg, was a wayward son of a gun who apparently sucked badly at politics - and possibly at human interaction in general. And partly because the then existing & proposed uranium designs had the added benefit of producing plutonium, which was of course convenient to blow the commies to smithereens.

My Reply: I've heard and read the same things about the guy, but let's face it, if he didn't get along the people who gave us the world we have today, this sheds a sort of positive light on the guy. And there's no doubt in my mind the goal was access to plutonium.

It's an interesting technology alright. If you add a little nuance and research to your already present enthusiasm, you could make a difference one day.




My Final Reply to Your Closing Statement: It's amazing technology in my opinion and needs to be pursued because by tackling and addressing weaknesses or flaws, you further develop. I don't know about me making any real difference regarding this technology other than sharing ideas and promoting. Part of the work I do involves working in cogen plants on the turbine and controls side. When a large facility is selling it's excess energy back to the utility that sold them the natural gas that powered their jet engines while providing free heating and cooling of the facility, one becomes curious of the potential other technologies posses. When I view anything, and I mean everything, I consider all factors involved before coming to personal conclusions. I'm not going to lie, I tend to look on the brighter side but if it becomes clear something is not worth pursuing, I don't pursue it. I don't believe in involving myself in any form of waste. For the record, my primary expertise is heavy commercial and industrial refrigeration. I've been directly and indirectly involved in many different industries because of the work I do. Seeking energy efficiency is part of who I am as an earthling. I want to apologize for it taking so long to get back to you. I've got so much sh*t going on and have other interests. I appreciate your point of view and I will try to find time to look into your claims. Take good care.


--------------------
personal note: "It’s fair to say I’m stepping out on a limb, but I am on the edge and that’s where it happens.”


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InvisibleBigBrother
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Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: Nikon Addict]
    #28162885 - 01/29/23 01:16 PM (11 months, 22 days ago)

Note that I'm an outsider to the nuclear industry and my interpretation and terminology below likely isn't 100% precise. Though I did get the chance to visit the National Atomic Testing Museum earlier this month and saw the Phoebus 2A nuclear-thermal rocket engine up close, which was awesome! It wasn't powered on at the time (fortunately/unfortunately), but that certainly didn't stop me from making rocket sounds and soaring around the room imagining myself as Spaceman Spiff :shrug:

My understanding is that the main driver behind the US nuclear industry coalescing around pressurized light water reactors fueled by enriched uranium is that Admiral Rickover originally started the nuclear subs and aircraft carriers down this path, and when President Eisenhower's administration made the leap from military to civil nuclear power, the quickest way to a working plant was to throw in an unused core originally meant for one of those nuclear aircraft carriers. And once the ball started rolling in that direction, the bulk of the research and innovation, support infrastructure, commissioning process, regulatory oversight, etc... all became entrenched and fed back into not straying too far from the chosen path. My guesses as to Admiral Rickover's decision are that the pre-existing uranium-based infrastructure supported this choice, as well as proven safety, reliability, many engineering problems had already been solved, and probably to some degree plutonium production. When you're on a time crunch to get some nuclear vehicles cruising through 1953's oceans, you're not sitting around developing new technology to eventually solve 2023's problems.... ("They'll've already figured fusion out by then anyway...or they're all dead.... My money's on the latter.")

Breeder reactors are designed specifically so that the number of neutrons being generated through the ongoing fission reactions equals (in an isobreeder) or is greater than the number of neutrons directly fissioning fissile atoms plus the number absorbed into non-fertile non-fissioning atoms plus the number escaping the reactor altogether plus the number needed to transmute fertile atoms into fissile ones to be fissioned later. Isobreeders turn fertile atoms into fissile ones at the same rate that they consume fissile atoms, while other breeder reactors create a surplus of fissile material. Non-breeder reactors don't rely on transmuting fertile atoms into fissile atoms, though it does still happen to some degree.

One major challenge is that there's a thin margin for not losing too many neutrons to non-fertile non-fissioning atoms. As more atoms fission into smaller atoms (fission products), some of those fission products readily capture neutrons (neutron poisons) and can bring the number of available free neutrons below the minimum amount needed to sustain the fission reaction plus completely replenish those fissioned atoms with fertile -> fissile ones. Another related challenge is that protactinium-233, a required but non-fissile link in the thorium fuel cycle, sits around for a while before decaying into fissile uranium-233, and during this time it can capture another neutron to become protactinium-234 and go down a chain that sucks up more neutrons before either eventually fissioning or ending up in the waste stream as a transuranic.

And in general, much of the science and many of the engineering hurdles of thorium-based breeder reactors have been solved in theory/in a lab setting/on a small scale, but there's still the enormous task of putting everything together into a working, reliable, economical real-world solution. Note the "ball started rolling" sentence above and think of the number of years/dollars/people involved in all of that, to some degree would need to be done again for these new reactor designs.

Much of our current nuclear waste (and in turn much but certainly not all of the social and political animosity towards nuclear power) from current reactors is due to neutrons transmuting uranium atoms into larger transuranic atoms. The thorium fuel cycle can mostly avoid creating transuranics in the first place, certainly to a much higher degree than current uranium-based reactors, and those transuranics tend to be directly fissile or within short chains to arrive at fissile.

Certain breeder reactor designs keep the fertile fuel and the fissioning fuel separate, which makes pulling the U-233 out of the fertile fuel into its own task and pulling the fission products out of the fissioning fuel a separate task. Current reactors just have everything mixed together into a single fuel, therefore a single initial waste stream, which complicates the separation process, plus there's no easy way to pull out atoms in a transitional link from fertile to fissile (e.g. protactinium-233) before they capture another neutron and go down an undesirable chain.

I suspect the best strategy would be to implement a large number of thorium breeder reactors of various power-generating capacities, plus a small handful of waste reactors designed specifically to burn up the materials from our current waste stockpile and perhaps from the small amount generated but not easily burned by the new thorium reactors. Dividing out the task of generating heat/electricity from the task of burning waste (and these plants could generate electricity at the same time, why not) into separate designs would likely be easier than trying to accomplish both with the same design.

I'm immensely excited about thorium-based breeder reactors, the possibility of getting full use out of the planet's thorium reserves, burning up transuranic waste, potentially sifting through the fission products and extracting useful rare elements, using the high heat possible in these cores for industrial/residential heating processes and maybe hydrogen extraction, and of course generating electricity from an abundant fuel source. The promise of modular, compact, inherently-safe designs really sweetens the whole package, too!

Regarding mining and purifying thorium, I'm also under the impression that it's very low hanging fruit and not a huge hurdle to the process, basically free relative to the capital costs of building the reactors/plants, staffing and operating them, and putting in place the subcontractor/regulatory/utilities infrastructure to support them.

~BB


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Invisiblekoraks
Registered: 06/02/03
Posts: 26,667
Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: BigBrother]
    #28163720 - 01/30/23 12:58 AM (11 months, 21 days ago)

That was a nice essay BB. Well done. I agree with your observation of path dependency (google that term, it'll make perfect sense to you, you'll find) w.r.t. uranium light-water cooled reactors. Note that PWR's were actually not the first generation of US energy-generating reactors. Instead they were BWR's of the same pedigree as the Fukushima ones (they were/are GE reactors after all). So in terms of implementation there was (and probably still is) a rift between submarine propulsion reactors and commercial power-generation reactors. However, much of the infrastructure, knowledge and technology providers overlapped.


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InvisibleBigBrother
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Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: koraks]
    #28166891 - 01/31/23 10:50 PM (11 months, 19 days ago)

Thank you, koraks! :thumbup: I appreciate the kind words and further reading rec!

I've been thinking about thorium-based reactors for a while lately and got psyched with the opportunity to get my thoughts down in text. I very much hope nobody goes on to build a thorium-based breeder reactor relying solely on my thoughts above, just to eventually find that'd I left something important out or was mistaken on some critical point. Nor would I want for someone to cite my random post on primarily a mushroom-growing internet forum as a factual and error-free source in their term paper (though I'd be honored if someone used my outline as a starting point in their research, then fact-checked everything and filled in the gaps, then posted their findings here in response).

Ah, path dependence for sure! Sort of like maintaining backwards compatibility with a prior version of a product (even if it wasn't your previous product per se, if the industry has designated it as a gold standard, you'd probably be best off creating hardware or writing software that can play nicely with it). Let's see if Copenhagen Atomics and/or others can initiate a new path with thorium to expand uranium's regulatory agencies, siphon off its support infrastructure, transition its research and development labs, burn away its waste stream, and eventually absorb its role in our power generation needs.

My current gig is as a report developer for hospital electronic health records systems. Quite a few of the data storage strategies and linkages, naming conventions, module splitting, etc... don't make a whole lot of sense through a 2023 lens. But when you consider the very first iteration of the database I primarily write off of was architected 25+ years ago, and that was on top of another system that goes back to the 1970's, they've done a pretty damn good gob working within the path they've had that depended on those original and subsequent design decisions, not breaking all of the old reporting content that relies on maintaining the path. The database developers don't have the option to say "This all no longer makes sense. Blow it all away and start over fresh."

~BB


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Invisiblekoraks
Registered: 06/02/03
Posts: 26,667
Re: Copenhagen Atomics and their Molten Salt Reactors [Re: BigBrother]
    #28166949 - 02/01/23 12:18 AM (11 months, 19 days ago)

Quote:

BigBrother said:
I very much hope nobody goes on to build a thorium-based breeder reactor relying solely on my thoughts above, just to eventually find that'd I left something important out or was mistaken on some critical point.



Hehe, I think that risk is pretty minimal :smile:

As you undoubtedly know, several parties are working on this technology. The Chinese are the closest to putting it into operation, but information about what they're doing exactly is somewhat scarce. In Europe, there's also a series of programs on this, but since it happens in a democratic, peer-reviewed academic (etc.) setting, it progresses rather slowly. The previous program under which this happened was SAMOFAR (http://samofar.eu/) , which gave rise to its successor SAMOSAFER (https://samosafer.eu/). You'll notice this is also a consortium of private and public players from academia and industry alike (with an emphasis on academia for now). Partly overlapping with this is another European program: https://esfr-smart.eu/

If you dig into those programs, you'll find that the emphasis is currently on research and education. For instance, at Delft University in The Netherlands there has been a massive increase in the number of students participating in courses on nuclear physics. There's also dozens of PhD projects being conducted (and partly already finished) on MSR-related topics. This means that a new generation of nuclear physicists is on the rise, and that will form the basis for R&D and ultimately implementation. At the same time, the public perception of nuclear energy has been shifting over the past few years, with an increasing awareness that nuclear energy might prove to be an essential element in a sustainable energy mix. This notion was virtually impossible to state a decade ago without being ridiculed.

Interestingly, it's places like this forum that play a (modest) role in early dissemination of information to a broader public. For instance, I read about MSR technology several years ago right here on this forum, was intrigued by it, talked to some people, and someone in my immediate vicinity thought it so important that he started a very active lobby for this technology. Over the years, he has given dozens of presentations to a variety of organizations, public parties, government agencies; he has linked up with academia (see the programs above), brought like-minded people together, is featured in regional media frequently with his message, etc. It's fascinating to see how a a seed was planted and that this currently results in thousands of people becoming aware of this technology - and responding to it surprisingly positively as well.


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