IGX

Alfred_E._Neuman wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 10:33 pm One other thing I've always wondered is why there's never been a big push to pursue Thorium fission reactors. The liquid salt reactors that use Thorium as the fissile material are apparently a c hair away from being melt down proof. If they overheat, the liquid salt expands to the point that the fission process slows down and it finds a balance point well short of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

From everything I've read, the technology is there and we don't need to invent anything new. Just perfect the reactors and deploy the things. The waste product is even an isotope that's used to fight cancer.

Developing a thorium-based fuel cycleThorium fuel cycles offer attractive features, including lower levels of waste generation, less transuranic elements in that waste, and providing a diversification option for nuclear fuel supply. Also, the use of thorium in most reactor types leads to extra safety margins. Despite these merits, the commercialization of thorium fuels faces some significant hurdles in terms of building an economic case to undertake the necessary development work.A great deal of testing, analysis and licensing and qualification work is required before any thorium fuel can enter into service. This is expensive and will not eventuate without a clear business case and government support. Also, uranium is abundant and cheap and forms only a small part of the cost of nuclear electricity generation, so there are no real incentives for investment in a new fuel type that may save uranium resources.Other impediments to the development of thorium fuel cycle are the higher cost of fuel fabrication and the cost of reprocessing to provide the fissile plutonium driver material. The high cost of fuel fabrication (for solid fuel) is due partly to the high level of radioactivity that builds up in U-233 chemically separated from the irradiated thorium fuel. Separated U-233 is always contaminated with traces of U-232 which decays (with a 69-year half-life) to daughter nuclides such as thallium-208 that are high-energy gamma emitters. Although this confers proliferation resistance to the fuel cycle by making U-233 hard to handle and easy to detect, it results in increased costs. There are similar problems in recycling thorium itself due to highly radioactive Th-228 (an alpha emitter with two-year half life) present.

nafod wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 7:58 pm Hell, even combustion engine vehicles would immediately cease to have much utility.

There'd be a push for the Hydrogen Economy where electricity would be used to make hydrogen, which has a byproduct of water when it burns.

Fuels are still more energy dense than batteries.

But it could be that the Hydrogen is used in fuel cells, so not really combustion.

Beautiful, clean Hydrogen.

Alfred_E._Neuman wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 10:33 pm One other thing I've always wondered is why there's never been a big push to pursue Thorium fission reactors. The liquid salt reactors that use Thorium as the fissile material are apparently a c hair away from being melt down proof. If they overheat, the liquid salt expands to the point that the fission process slows down and it finds a balance point well short of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

From everything I've read, the technology is there and we don't need to invent anything new. Just perfect the reactors and deploy the things. The waste product is even an isotope that's used to fight cancer.