[ExI] cost of SBSP and thorium

Brent Neal brentn at brentneal.me
Sun Aug 19 16:13:37 UTC 2012


On 19 Aug, 2012, at 5:17, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 04:54:59PM -0400, Brent Neal wrote:
>> 
>> On 18 Aug, 2012, at 15:18, Keith Henson wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> However, the time scale involved (which I don't understand at all)
>>> makes them a questionably choice.  Any thoughts on why even the
>>> Chinese think it will take 20 years?
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> This is confusing to me as well. Making fluoride salts of actinides is a well known technology. Molten salt reactors have existed, as has been pointed out here, for years. The only thing I can figure is that there are some issues with fuel handling and heat management that we were cavalier about in the 60s that need to be dealt with now. But that's not a 2-decade problem, that's a half-decade problem…
> 
> Are you fucking kidding me? Why do I bother to post facts when
> you all seem to prefer to exist in a make-believe universe?
>> 

Eugen  -

Being cranky with us will not change the actual facts:

Overview of fluoride salt reactors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
You make the fluoride salts with HF, of course: http://science.howstuffworks.com/uranium-centrifuge.htm
Also more overview on the manufacture of fluoride salts here: http://www.exportcontrols.org/centrifuges.html
And a representative scholarly article here (from 1967, just to pin a date down): http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac60252a030

More on molten salt reactors - a presentation from Oak Ridge: http://www.ornl.gov/~webworks/cppr/y2001/pres/120507.pdf
And a reference from the journal Nuclear Applied  Technology in 1970: http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=4727102

Digging into the Oak Ridge literature leads me to believe that heat management is the problem they're trying to solve now. The 1960s era Oak Ridge MSR used graphite as insulation. We understand now that this is a poor materials choice. 

The point is that thorium salt based liquid fuel reactors appear to have a very good chance of producing relatively safe, low-byproduct heat which can be used to turn a turbine and make electricity. The main reason they don't appear to have been used thus far is because they don't produce a lot of long-lived fissionables that can be used to make bombs. The military-industrial complex would not have had a lot of use for this in the 60s and 70s.

B

 




--
Brent Neal, Ph.D.
http://www.brentneal.me
<brentn at brentneal.me>





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