Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Thorium Energy

Fez909 said:
If it is proven, why are they not building proper plants now, rather than research plants?
Click to expand...
because it was last done 40 years ago and everyone who worked on that plant is now either retired or dead, so a lot of engineering and design lessons have to be relearned by a new generation, plus I said it was proven not that the exact process had been perfected ready for a full commercial roll out.

It's proven to work, and the key issues that were highlighted in the original pilot plant have all been addressed in the intervening period, but in other fields (eg high temperature materials, miniturisation of heat exchangers etc) so that work needs to be translated into the MSR plants and the whole lot needs to be proven to work together, and refined, then proven again prior to commercial roll out, by which time hopefully this generation will have developed the engineering and chemistry knowledge and skills needed to make this into a commercial reality.

We really dropped the ball on this, had it been developed in the 70's we'd probably now have 10-30% of world electricity supply coming from this source, and the US, UK, Europe would have been able to safely export the technology around the world and be clear market leaders in it. Now, we're back to first base, no worse, we're still on the bench, and the Chinese are going to have it developed and commercialised before we've even stopped scratching our heads about whether we maybe ought to be taking another look at this.

Even Falcon ought to like this technology, as it really is a massive simplification compared to current generation nuclear that's also far more efficient, far safer, and far more abundant than any other nuclear technology. It's so simple that we had 2 professors with combined 90 years experience in power generation scratching their heads and asking where the rest of the diagram was, prior to having a look at all the previous issues that had been highlighted in the 70's and working out that all of them had already been solved, mostly in the gas turbine sector in which they happened to be experts.

This is kinda making me realise that I ought to devote some time this year to actually pulling them all together on this before that huge amount of knowledge and experience get's lost. It's just finding the time, and persuading everyone to work for on it for free for long enough to pull it all together to the stage where we actually might be in a position to apply for the funding needed to actually put some of that knowledge to use in this field. I nearly killed my solar business by devoting most of a month to trying to pull together a fundable feasibility study for this last summer.
 
hmm. Maybe if I devoted half the time I spent on urban to this project.......:hmm:


ps I'm in no way implying that I'm a thorium expert myself, I just happen to have been introduced to one of the only people in the UK who is, and possibly could help connect the dots to make something useful happen with it, as he's mainly just bimbling about being retired while wondering in the back of his head if anyone's actually ever going to ask him to pass on his knowledge of this potentially world changing technology before he shuffles off to another place.
 
I was under the impression that the corrosive nature of the fluoride salts was a huge draw back to thorium. Also as a waste product there is a build up of fluorine gas that has to be handled.
 
erm erm, IIRC both those problems were mentioned as being known issues but ones that had already been addressed / he knew how they should be solved.

I'm not sure on the details though, but as he was a chemical engineer of 50 years standing in the field, I'd tend to believe him.
 
Because LFTRs use liquid fuel, it is easy to control the chemical state of this fuel so that it becomes non-corrosive to reactor components. Today's solid fuelled reactors confine their fuel in small fully contained metal rods, which does not allow full control of the chemical state of the fuel. The fission process produces various corrosive elements, which can damage the metal fuel rods over time
Click to expand...
link
 
Dr Jon said:
I see that Jeffrey Sachs has said that nuclear is the only way we might avoid carbon catastrophe.

He is right. I just pray that the world chooses Thorium when the penny finally drops.
Click to expand...

If it so good, and I have seen very little to say otherwise why is there not an almighty dash
to get the first PSs up and running, also if the technology was initially developed in the west how is there a danger of China copyrighting the process?
 
coley said:
If it so good, and I have seen very little to say otherwise why is there not an almighty dash
to get the first PSs up and running, also if the technology was initially developed in the west how is there a danger of China copyrighting the process?
Click to expand...

Too expensive.

Solar PV is already cheaper and produces more electricity per square metre when you include the typical 10km exclusion zone round a nuclear reactor.
 
rover07 said:
Too expensive.

Solar PV is already cheaper and produces more electricity per square metre when you include the typical 10km exclusion zone round a nuclear reactor.
Click to expand...
Bit dodgy in the UK though? and why not more solar PSs, though that one in Saudi is impressive
 
It will be 20-30 years before any new nuclear reactors are built by which time renewables will be well established.

UK gets about half the sunshine of Saudi Arabia per square metre. Plenty to make solar PV viable.

At the moment it's still more expensive than Coal and Natural Gas but the price is falling while fossil fuels are rising.
 
Does anyone know how the polywell fusion reactor is coming along it seems to be better than the ridiculous other methods of fusion wasting cash projects
 
Radio silence I'm afraid. Now that the stimulus money has been spent, there's not even any Kremlinology to be done with the quarterly reports. No news is..... No news. At this point, we either hear about the scientists involved working somewhere else (no sign of that yet) or the Navy calls a press briefing.
 
rover07 said:
It will be 20-30 years before any new nuclear reactors are built by which time renewables will be well established.

UK gets about half the sunshine of Saudi Arabia per square metre. Plenty to make solar PV viable.

At the moment it's still more expensive than Coal and Natural Gas but the price is falling while fossil fuels are rising.
Click to expand...
According to NN last night solar has achieved parity in Southern Europe and wind has done the same in Central Europe but what would happen if we had a prolonged period of heavy snow and little wind?
 
Back up power would be from gas power plants. Natural gas at first but as more surplus renewable electricity is available, renewable gas and hydrogen.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/det...ant-enters-operation_100009491/#axzz2NE7LugXu

The gas grid offers ample storage opportunities for solar and wind power. Solar and wind generated power is channelled into electrolysis which produces hydrogen. A further step in the methanisation chamber can additionally convert hydrogen, with the input of carbon dioxide, into methane gas. This can then be fed into the gas grid. The gas can be stored in natural gas storage caverns or chambers or used for tanking of vehicles or industries. Alternatively the gas can also be converted back into electricity when needed.
Click to expand...
 
Any idea of the efficiency of that sort of storage? (ie. electricity -> hydrolisis -> methanisation -> storage -> combustion -> turbine -> electricity)
 
This article gives a figure of 40% electricity to gas conversion. Not sure what that means in practice.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/det...-round-for-solarfuel_100008735/#axzz2PaU18JBb

SolarFuel already has an alpha plant successfully in operation connected to an electric load of 25kW with an overall power-to-gas efficiency of 40% (without optimization measures). A 6 MW demonstration plant is being planned with the goal being set to test the SolarFuel technology on a scale that is practical for the energy sector under real-life economic conditions.
Click to expand...
 
Wilson said:
+compression^
Click to expand...
Good call. I was under the impression the whole gas system was relatively low pressure - a few bar, which the domestic network is, but it turns out the supply for power stations is as high as 85 bar.
 
coley said:
According to NN last night solar has achieved parity in Southern Europe and wind has done the same in Central Europe but what would happen if we had a prolonged period of heavy snow and little wind?
Click to expand...

Renewable gas for power back-up and fuel for transport.

 
I can't find the article at the moment, but the UK is having a big hand in both countries projects and in Norway due to our experience with Magnox fuels.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

editor
Let's talk about earthing and 'Harnessing The Earth's Energy While You Sleep'
2
Replies
31
Views
1K
Gaia
Gaia
P
shouldn't we have more effective ways of harnessing solar energy now? because
Replies
27
Views
1K
Ralph Llama
Ralph Llama
gorski
Energy problem solved!!!???!!!
18 19 20 21 22
Replies
632
Views
32K
gentlegreen
gentlegreen
Sunray
Geothermal Energy
2
Replies
50
Views
3K
equationgirl
equationgirl
tendril
Thorium powered car
Replies
17
Views
1K
free spirit
free spirit
Back
Top Bottom