Hazelwood power station has shut down, several other coal fired generators will reach the end of their economic life over the next couple of decades. If we had a forward looking government in Canberra we could be considering nuclear power as part of a mix with renewable energy, wind and solar. Nuclear would provide non–intermittent power.

Of course, mention “nuclear” and all the numpties and NIMBYS are up in arms. Stuff them. We need low carbon emission (over the lifetime) energy. AGW is starting to ramp up.

Some numpties, obviously hoping to delay and obfuscate debate cry Thorium! A thorium reactor is still nuclear fission, of course. Bit less radioactive waste, it seems.

Is there a working thorium power generator? Certainly not one you can buy off the shelf.


Quote:

The call for thorium power is not without precedent worldwide. India has pursued thorium technology for decades. And China is revisiting a molten salt reactor design mothballed by the USA in the 70’s. Recently, several companies have sought to commercialise thorium energy, including an Australian-Czech alliance.

Yeah, maybe.

Personally, I would go ahead with a modular generator based on uranium. Yes, that has some problems but modern designs are safe, Chernobyl and Fukushima were old tech and rather special cases.

A nuclear generator would be a big boost to the economy. Universities would set up or expand their nuclear science and nuclear engineering departments, a waste processing plant would be set up, can process and store our waste and, for VERY big biccies, the world’s waste.

Hmmm was going to talk more about thorium but really there isn’t that much to say. Will post some more from the article I quoted above:


Quote:

One critical difference is that thorium, in its natural state, is resistant to fission. This is the process whereby the atomic nucleus splits apart, thus releasing energy that can then be harnessed to generate electricity. Uranium can undergo fission relatively easily, but for thorium to undergo fission – and be useful in a nuclear power plant – it must first be converted into a usable form. This is done via a process known as “breeding”, where the thorium absorbs a neutron, thus transmuting into a heavier element that can later undergo fission. Thorium was first studied as an energy source during the Manhattan project, but uranium proved much easier to work with. During the post-war commercialisation of nuclear energy this dominance was reinforced. Engineers identified myriad paths to design reactors based on uranium, while the added complexities of thorium meant that alternatives didn’t get much of a look in. Today, advocates of thorium typically point to a variety of advantages over uranium. These include fail-safe reactor operation, because most thorium reactor designs are incapable of an explosion or meltdown, as was seen at Chernobyl or Fukushima. Another is resistance to weapons proliferation, because thorium reactors create byproducts that make the fuel unsuitable for use in nuclear weapons. Other advantages include greater abundance of natural reserves of thorium, less radioactive waste and higher utilisation of fuel in thorium reactors. Thorium is often cast as “good nuclear”, while uranium gets to carry the can as “bad nuclear”. Not so different While compelling at first glance, the details reveal a somewhat more murky picture. The molten salt architecture which gives certain thorium reactors high intrinsic safety equally applies to proposed fourth-generation designs using uranium. It is also true that nuclear physics technicalities make thorium much less attractive for weapons production, but it is by no means impossible; the USA and USSR each tested a thorium-based atomic bomb in 1955. Other perceived advantages similarly diminish under scrutiny. There is plenty of uranium ore in the world and hence the fourfold abundance advantage of thorium is a moot point. Producing less long-lived radioactive waste is certainly beneficial, but the vexed question remains of how to deal with it.

https://theconversation.com/should-australia-consider-thorium-nuclear-power-37850

There needs to be more research but there was a working one which
was shut down in the USA in 1969.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyqYP6f66Mw



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6mhw-CNxaE




The greener nuclear alternative
By Tim Dean

If the Fukushima nuclear reactors were based on thorium instead of uranium, the current nuclear crisis in Japan right now wouldn’t be happening.

Thorium is a superior nuclear fuel to uranium in almost every conceivable way, yet we hear almost nothing about it in the contemporary hubbub about nuclear power. If there is such a thing as green nuclear power, thorium is it.

For one, a thorium-powered nuclear reactor can never undergo a meltdown. It just can’t. This is because thorium is slightly lighter than uranium and is not fissile – meaning you can pack as much of the stuff together as you want and it won’t undergo a runaway chain reaction.

Instead, you need to inject a smidge of energy into a thorium reactor to kick it off. Some designs use uranium or plutonium as a seed. An even safer design uses a particle beam to trigger the reaction. If there’s a problem, you switch off the beam, and the reactor cools down of its own accord. The meltdown is averted by simply doing nothing.

That’s a fundamental about-face compared to the current uranium reactors, where the normal operating state requires constant intervention to actively prevent a meltdown.

Thorium is also thoroughly useless for making nuclear weapons. That was once seen as a barrier to its adoption for electricity generation because, after all, the nuclear power industry was originally an offshoot of the nuclear weapons industry. Uranium was chosen as the fuel of choice precisely because its by-products, like plutonium-239, could be made into atomic bombs.

Another consequence of thorium being lighter than uranium is it produces far less of the toxic by-products that constitute a large proportion of the high-level radioactive waste generated by nuclear power plants.

Where a uranium-powered reactor creates tonnes of waste over its lifetime that remain toxic for 10,000 years, a thorium-powered reactor produces a fraction of that waste, and what is produced is only toxic for around 500 years. Clearly, building a facility to last 500 years is a challenging prospect, but it sure beats trying to build one to remain safe for ten millennia.

But wait, there’s more.

Thorium doesn’t only produce less waste, it can be used to consume existing waste. Stick in some of your old reactor waste by-products, or even unwanted weapons-grade material, and a thorium reactor will burn it up, leaving a far less unsavoury residue.

Thorium itself is also highly abundant, far more so than uranium. In fact, Australia has some of the largest reserves of thorium to be found anywhere in the world. Extracting it from the ground is simplicity itself compared to uranium, and far softer on the environment.

It also doesn’t need enrichment; the vast bulk of uranium (around 99.3 per cent) pulled from the ground is unsuitable for a nuclear reactor, so it needs to be spun in centrifuges to extract the minute amounts of useful fissile uranium-235 material from the relatively idle uranium-238.Thorium, on the other hand, can be used straight out of the ground, meaning it can generate around 40 times more energy per tonne mined compared to uranium.

I could go on.

But, in short, thorium is easy to get at, can generate our much-needed baseload power without the risk of a meltdown, without the weapons proliferation risks of uranium, it produces far less waste, it consumes existing waste, and there are several reactor designs that have already been tested and shown to work.

Now, I’m not going to say that thorium is the only answer to our energy needs. It certainly still has its drawbacks – 500 years is still a long time to stand guard over your garbage – but it could provide that all-important stop-gap between existing dirty coal power and the future sustainable energy technologies, or even the holy grail, nuclear fusion.

India has already built a number of experimental reactors, and is investing heavily in the technology. There’s nothing except political will stopping Australia from doing the same. If the technology works, it could come into high demand from around the world, and Australia could doubly do its part in reducing carbon emissions by generating thorium nuclear power at home, and helping spread the technology abroad. We might even make a buck in the process, offsetting the R&D and initial capital costs.

If this country, and others around the world, are going to engage in a debate about nuclear power, we owe it to ourselves to look beyond the relatively primitive 20th century technologies that stir so much ire in the public, and look towards safer, more sophisticated 21st century technologies. Like thorium nuclear power.

I look forward to the news in less than perhaps 2 years that a really large scale Thorium reactor will be built.
It will change the whole world for the better.
No more stinking coal required -
abundant cheap safe energy for everyone.

IF

We cannot run a country on IF.

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 9^th, 2017 at 12:19am:

IF We cannot run a country on IF.

Jovial,
we have to hope for a better future -
I am against burning stinking coal.

Some interesting facts -

the half life of Thorium is over 14 billion years -
more than the age of the universe -
it's so non-radioactive that you could have a brick of
it on your coffee table & it wouldn't hurt you.
( unless you breathed in any dust )

It only fires up when hit it with neutrons.
It just sits around as useless waste above ground from other mines -
especially rare earth metal mines.

Unlike Uranium it doesn't dissolve in water so it doesn't leach into the ground water.

What an amazing element which contains so much energy that it could
power mankind's future forever.

There is 400 times more of it than U235.

Me too.

Renewable energy is intermittent, hence I call for nuclear to provide a non–intermittent energy source.

Would be good for the economy and modern tech, which Chernobyl & Fukushima were not, is pretty safe. Coal mining & burning kills people. Nuclear is not risk free, nothing is.

Would like to start small, build up quickly. Have to train a lot of people, build facilities, uranium processed to feedstock etc. Hell, start refining uranium here! Sell it and demand the waste be sold back to us for a VERY good price.

If thorium gets commercialised, can switch to that.

But we have to get started. A stinking hot summer will overload the grid/generators.

I think it was Cosmos Magazine the dedicated a whole edition to Thorium and Thorium Reactors.  I have a copy somewhere in my library.

Wiki has a fairly good page on it at...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power


Quote:

Some believe thorium is key to developing a new generation of cleaner, safer nuclear power. According to an opinion piece by a group of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, considering its overall potential, thorium-based power "can mean a 1000+ year solution or a quality low-carbon bridge to truly sustainable energy sources solving a huge portion of mankind’s negative environmental impact."

Quote:

Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. . . . his team built a working reactor . . . . and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973

Others, including former NASA scientist and thorium expert Kirk Sorensen, agree that "thorium was the alternative path that was not taken … "  According to Sorensen, during a documentary interview, he states that if the US had not discontinued its research in 1974 it could have "probably achieved energy independence by around 2000."


Quote:

CANDU reactors are capable of using thorium, and Thorium Power Canada has, in 2013, planned and proposed developing thorium power projects for Chile and Indonesia.

Quote:

India has one of the largest supplies of thorium in the world, with comparatively poor quantities of uranium. India has projected meeting as much as 30% of its electrical demands through thorium by 2050

Quote:

In May 2010, researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York began to collaborate on the development of thorium reactors, aimed at being self-sustaining, "meaning one that will produce and consume about the same amounts of fuel," which is not possible with uranium in a light water reactor.

Quote:

In late 2012, Norway's privately owned Thor Energy, in collaboration with the government and Westinghouse, announced a four-year trial using thorium in an existing nuclear reactor." In 2013, Aker Solutions purchased patents from Nobel Prize winning physicist Carlo Rubbia for the design of a proton accelerator-based thorium nuclear power plant

Quote:

In its January 2012 report to the United States Secretary of Energy, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Future notes that a "molten-salt reactor using thorium [has] also been proposed." That same month it was reported that the US Department of Energy is "quietly collaborating with China" on thorium-based nuclear power designs using an MSR

Quote:

According to the World Nuclear Association, there are seven types of reactors that can be designed to use thorium as a nuclear fuel. Six of these have all entered into operational service at some point. Two are still conceptual, although currently in development by many countries:     Heavy water reactors (PHWRs)     High-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTRs)     Boiling (light) water reactors (BWRs)     Pressurized (light) water reactors (PWRs)     Fast neutron reactors (FNRs)     Molten salt reactors (MSRs, LFTRs)         The Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed and built a demonstration MSR which operated from 1965 to 1969. It used U-233 (originally bred from Th-232) as its fuel during its final year.     Accelerator driven reactors (ADS)     Aqueous Homogeneous Reactors (AHRs) have been proposed as a fluid fueled design that could accept naturally occurring uranium and thorium suspended in a heavy water solution. AHRs have been built and according to the IAEA reactor database, 7 are currently in operation as research reactors.

It seems clear that thorium is not sufficiently different or commercial yet. And thorium is still nuclear fission, not that much different.

I want nuclear + renewables as soon as possible, start with uranium. Thorium can be explored because if and when it does get commercialised we have a motza of it.

But uranium, pebble bed reactor or something more modern, is what we need to start with—and that will take long enough to be sure!

Eventually fusion will be commercialised. But we can’t wait for ifs, buts or maybes.

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 9^th, 2017 at 12:19am:

IF We cannot run a country on IF.

;D ;D ;D

You lose again Bobby  ;)  Its Captain Planet strikes again !!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogMBLRHJYXU

So, Agnes, you are happy to see the country run on “ifs” and “maybes?”

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 9^th, 2017 at 5:52pm:

So, Agnes, you are happy to see the country run on “ifs” and “maybes?”

What if we tried to make a Uranium reactor &
10 years before we finished it,
it was already obsolete because of progress on Thorium?

There are those IFs again, Booby.

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 9^th, 2017 at 6:40pm:

There are those IFs again, Bobby.

A Thorium reactor could be less than 2 years away.

The Indians & Chinese are making progress.

Could be! You said the Indians have been working on thorium for decades!

Look a lot of time is finding suitable sites, building infrastructure and ground works—levelling, containment etc etc.

No need to commit to a particular technology for some years.

Oh dear I just don't get it...  you post stuff and Monk still doesn't get it. :D :D :D ::) ::) ::) :D :D :D

Grendel wrote on Aug 9^th, 2017 at 8:09pm:

Oh dear I just don't get it...  you post stuff and Monk still doesn't get it. :D :D :D ::) ::) ::) :D :D :D

The real shame is that every Govt. we've ever had has ignored Thorium.
If only we could have got the plans from the Yanks back in 1969,
from their working reactor,
we'd be world leaders & all rich beyond imagination.

Try to imagine: unlimited, cheap, safe, energy -
no more stinking coal power stations &
selling the Thorium & the reactors to the rest of the world
for gigantic profits.

That is what could have been.

But thorium is still nuclear fission, no better than a modern uranium reactor.

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 9^th, 2017 at 9:33pm:

But thorium is still nuclear fission, no better than a modern uranium reactor.

Are you joking?

Thorium is fission. Not that much different to uranium.

Bit less waste.

Did you read my OP?

No Monk, the real question is...  did you or do you read anything anyone else writes. :D :D :D :D :D

It would seem you don't.

You have a closed one-track mind and it's pathetic that we have to put up with you. ::)

Hazelwood power station has shut down, several other coal fired generators will reach the end of their economic life over the next couple of decades. If we had a forward looking government in Canberra we could be considering nuclear power as part of a mix with renewable energy, wind and solar. Nuclear would provide non–intermittent power.

Of course, mention “nuclear” and all the numpties and NIMBYS are up in arms. Stuff them. We need low carbon emission (over the lifetime) energy. AGW is starting to ramp up.

Some numpties, obviously hoping to delay and obfuscate debate cry Thorium! A thorium reactor is still nuclear fission, of course. Bit less radioactive waste, it seems.

Is there a working thorium power generator? Certainly not one you can buy off the shelf.


Quote:

The call for thorium power is not without precedent worldwide. India has pursued thorium technology for decades. And China is revisiting a molten salt reactor design mothballed by the USA in the 70’s. Recently, several companies have sought to commercialise thorium energy, including an Australian-Czech alliance.

Yeah, maybe.

Personally, I would go ahead with a modular generator based on uranium. Yes, that has some problems but modern designs are safe, Chernobyl and Fukushima were old tech and rather special cases.

A nuclear generator would be a big boost to the economy. Universities would set up or expand their nuclear science and nuclear engineering departments, a waste processing plant would be set up, can process and store our waste and, for VERY big biccies, the world’s waste.

Hmmm was going to talk more about thorium but really there isn’t that much to say. Will post some more from the article I quoted above:


Quote:

One critical difference is that thorium, in its natural state, is resistant to fission. This is the process whereby the atomic nucleus splits apart, thus releasing energy that can then be harnessed to generate electricity. Uranium can undergo fission relatively easily, but for thorium to undergo fission – and be useful in a nuclear power plant – it must first be converted into a usable form. This is done via a process known as “breeding”, where the thorium absorbs a neutron, thus transmuting into a heavier element that can later undergo fission. Thorium was first studied as an energy source during the Manhattan project, but uranium proved much easier to work with. During the post-war commercialisation of nuclear energy this dominance was reinforced. Engineers identified myriad paths to design reactors based on uranium, while the added complexities of thorium meant that alternatives didn’t get much of a look in. Today, advocates of thorium typically point to a variety of advantages over uranium. These include fail-safe reactor operation, because most thorium reactor designs are incapable of an explosion or meltdown, as was seen at Chernobyl or Fukushima. Another is resistance to weapons proliferation, because thorium reactors create byproducts that make the fuel unsuitable for use in nuclear weapons. Other advantages include greater abundance of natural reserves of thorium, less radioactive waste and higher utilisation of fuel in thorium reactors. Thorium is often cast as “good nuclear”, while uranium gets to carry the can as “bad nuclear”. Not so different While compelling at first glance, the details reveal a somewhat more murky picture. The molten salt architecture which gives certain thorium reactors high intrinsic safety equally applies to proposed fourth-generation designs using uranium. It is also true that nuclear physics technicalities make thorium much less attractive for weapons production, but it is by no means impossible; the USA and USSR each tested a thorium-based atomic bomb in 1955. Other perceived advantages similarly diminish under scrutiny. There is plenty of uranium ore in the world and hence the fourfold abundance advantage of thorium is a moot point. Producing less long-lived radioactive waste is certainly beneficial, but the vexed question remains of how to deal with it.

https://theconversation.com/should-australia-consider-thorium-nuclear-power-37850

Bringing the OP to the front. The differences between thorium and unranium fission reactors are not that great in fact.

More important to start work finding sites, doing groundworks, containments, facilities for waste storage under water on the site and building infrastructure. There will need to be legislative changes, protests by NIMBYs—quite enough to be getting on with without getting too excited about the exact technology. Need to train lots of people in nuclear science and engineering, etc.

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 11^th, 2017 at 10:42am:

The differences between thorium and unranium fission reactors are not that great in fact.

The big difference is that Thorium doesn't a very good bomb make. Which should be comforting for some, with reference to storage.

But that is pretty minor difference in real life.

Waste from Thorium lasts for a few hundred years not tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

Thorium reactors can also use other waste in their processing.

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 9^th, 2017 at 9:46pm:

Did you read my OP?

Yes - did you read anything I wrote?

Quote:

Re: Should we build a thorium nuclear generator?

Think we should wait till it can actually be done.

I think the thorium stuff is just a red herring to delay any move to nuclear energy.

Dnarever wrote on Aug 11^th, 2017 at 9:55pm:

Quote: Re: Should we build a thorium nuclear generator? Think we should wait till it can actually be done.

It's already been done.
The first reactor was shut down in 1969.

We could as a country put more into R&D.  There are only a handful of people in Australia now looking at this alternative.

We have banned Uranium based power.
We now have put all our eggs in the wind and solar basket.
But even if every house became its own solar power generator there would still be a need for a baseload supply even if it was just back up.

DNA...
Quote:

The call for thorium power is not without precedent worldwide. India has pursued thorium technology for decades. And China is revisiting a molten salt reactor design mothballed by the USA in the 70’s. Recently, several companies have sought to commercialise thorium energy, including an Australian-Czech alliance. None of these factors are reasons to ignore thorium, which may yet prove to have a significant role to play. New thorium-based reactors under construction in India and China will focus attention once again on the viability of thorium power.

Monk...
Quote:

Today, advocates of thorium typically point to a variety of advantages over uranium. These include fail-safe reactor operation, because most thorium reactor designs are incapable of an explosion or meltdown, as was seen at Chernobyl or Fukushima. Another is resistance to weapons proliferation, because thorium reactors create byproducts that make the fuel unsuitable for use in nuclear weapons. Other advantages include greater abundance of natural reserves of thorium, less radioactive waste and higher utilisation of fuel in thorium reactors. Thorium is often cast as “good nuclear”, while uranium gets to carry the can as “bad nuclear”.

We need to find out who these Indian & Chinese Thorium scientists are &
lure them here with big money so we can catch up & pass them.

We need to be the first.

Much easier just to buy a modern uranium reactor.

If this summer is as hot as it looks like being and lots of power failures then opposition to nuclear power should be a lot less. It was always ill informed, especially as reactors became more modern and safer.

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 13^th, 2017 at 12:11pm:

Much easier just to buy a modern uranium reactor. If this summer is as hot as it looks like being and lots of power failures then opposition to nuclear power should be a lot less. It was always ill informed, especially as reactors became more modern and safer.

What about buying up the Indian & Chinese Thorium scientists?

They are probably on low pay & would welcome coming here.

Great doco on Thorium -
it actually explains how it all works -
I don't know why it says disadvantages - it's all about the advantages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAiHtrWHxK0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaOD1r8QWP8


Thorium Is About to Explode, 1769


Good morning, I’m still reporting on: Thorium Is About to Explode, 1769

Synopsis: Scientists at the Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG) in the Netherlands, are starting to conduct experiments with thorium molten salt reactor technology.
Surprisingly, nuclear reactors have the lowest fatality rate per watt generated of all other forms of energy generation. However, there are many drawbacks; uranium used for fuel is expensive to process. It can also be adapted for use in the most horrible weapons humankind has ever developed.
Waste products of the uranium fuel cycle can remain dangerous for centuries into the future and no good disposal scheme has been developed that is acceptable to everyone.
Using thorium instead of uranium solves most of the problems.
Thorium is abundant. It doesn’t require an expensive enrichment process to be use as fuel in a nuclear power plant. It can’t be made into bombs and a thorium-fueled reactor is inherently safe that shuts down automatically if something goes wrong. Lastly, the waste products have much shorter half-lives and are much easier to deal with.
Thorium reactors were successfully tested at Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee from the 1960s until 1976. Since the U.S. was at that time more interested in creating nuclear weapons than safer energy generation, the thorium option was abandoned.
Now the Netherlanders have picked up the ball and are running with it. There are some technical problems to solve, such as the corrosive effects of long-term exposure to the high-temperature thorium salts used in the fuel cycle, but these are seen as relatively easy to overcome.
However, the Netherlanders are not the only ones in this race. The Chinese announced nearly 2 years ago that they were working on a molten salt thorium reactor and plan he have a commercial version up and running by 2026.
But there is an even more interesting player in the thorium race – Norway. At an underground test site in Halden, Norway, Thor Energy has built a small thorium test reactor. It currently powers a nearby paper mill, which it has done since – catch this – since 2013.
Thor Energy says their’s is a 5-year experiment. When it comes to an end – NEXT YEAR – the fuel rods will be disassembled and analyzed to see if thorium is ready for commercial reactors. The project has had the financial backing of Westinghouse Electric, one of the world’s largest producers of nuclear reactors.

Even more & great technical comments:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woNU2Vgl7j0