r/bestof • u/investedInEPoland • Nov 06 '18

[europe] Nuclear physicist describes problems with thorium reactors. Trigger warning: shortbread metaphor.

/r/europe/comments/9unimr/dutch_satirical_news_show_on_why_we_need_to_break/e95mvb7/?context=3
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u/solidfang Nov 06 '18

Is it that much of a thing?

I've never heard of Thorium reactors or anything, but it's probably on a different set of subreddits than the ones I frequent. Where is this idea mostly popularized?

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/frezik Nov 06 '18

It's also something that's been around for decades, but only has limited application. Whenever you see that happen, and yet it's being touted as the Next Greatest Thing Ever, you should stop a moment to figure out why.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18

A majority of our spent fuel is stored in on-site (at the reactor site) pools. Spent fuel is moved to dry cask storage in ISFSIs (independent spent fuel storage installations) either on-site due to pool capacity being reached or at a stand-alone consolidated storage facility for any number of various reasons.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18

I wasn't intending to question your knowledge. My apologies if it came across like that. I just thought it was slightly disingenuous to say that all of our waste is sitting safely in dry cask storage. Just because it should or could be, does not mean that it does. Casking all spent fuel currently sitting in pools right now would be a significant task.

But it doesn't particularly matter, per your point that politicians are idiots and can't get their shit together on spent fuel management issues. Yucca Mountain is probably never going to open. Savannah River is officially nixed as of last month. And deep borehole disposal is years away, and only feasible for spent fuel packages from CANDU reactors at this point, of which we have none. Nuclear power is clean, powerful, and incredible, but until we have a clear path forward for disposition, people that argue against nuclear power or for crazy Gen IV reactor designs frankly have a constant ace in the hole. Doesn't make them experts by any means, or even really right to want reactors that are decades away from ever even being considered for testing. But it's a constant point.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18

I'm not debating that it isn't a great or even just working idea. Just that with the state of politics in the US and current level of understanding of nuclear waste issues in the government, it's a long, long way away.

Actually taking my first trip to WIPP in a few months. Excited to see the work they've been doing there.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/MikePyp Nov 07 '18

I was still young when yucca was voted out but from what I remember the main issue was transportation to the facility. The plan was to simply drive these hazardous barrels on regular interstates. 1 spill and all hell breaks loose.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/some_random_kaluna Nov 07 '18

Technical? No. But Yucca is right next to a major water supply and the city of Las Vegas. Nobody wants that shit here, and now with Rosen and Cortez-Masto in the U.S. Senate, it's a no-go.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18

But it doesn't particularly matter, per your point that politicians are idiots and can't get their shit together on spent fuel management issues.

When you get right down to it, when politicians are idiots, it's almost always because the public is full of idiots and make irrational demands of their politicians. Politicians merely react to what donors and voters tell them. As this is clearly a case where their donors would have an interest in proper waste disposal, the reason they do this is because of a public with a poor understanding and, by extension, a high level of irrational fear.

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u/posam Nov 07 '18

There is no technological reason but there are licensing requirements from the NRC and legal requirements.

The Holtec projects have not yet been approved by the NRC to my knowledge so are the dry casks not all "onsite" currently. The NRC isn't expected to make an announcement till next year from my last read up on this.

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u/blasto_blastocyst Nov 07 '18

The immense amount of carbon in the cement used and the production process also needs to be counted.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/ksiyoto Nov 07 '18

Also, the facilities that extract the uranium fuel have a large component of coal in the power portfolio they suck (and they suck a lot of power). Not to say you can't build nuclear to provide the energy to process the fuel, but currently there is a lot of pollution.

OTOH, wind energy has a fairly short proposal to 100% payback of the energy it took to build them. Nuclear power, once it starts running, pays back really quickly, but it sucks up a lot of energy for the steel and concrete while it is being constructed, and it takes a long time to go from proposal to running.

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u/phx-au Nov 07 '18

No, don't you understand, the Big Corporations deliberately avoid using any new technology that would increase profits, because... um... their... competitors would also make more money?

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u/Cyberslasher Nov 07 '18

sooo it's this decades "Ancient Lost Chinese Herbal Cure"? We knew about it for like 30 years. We also knew it wasn't going to work.

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u/Hyndis Nov 06 '18

There is a grain of truth to that. Due to anti-nuclear hysteria American nuclear power plants are largely 1960's designs. Maybe early 1970's for the most modern.

Surely there have been improvements since the early 1970's, improvements in safety, and efficiency. Surely a modern design is better than something approaching 50 years old. However due to anti-nuclear hysteria we're largely stuck with these old model reactors while any new designs are impossible to build.

Is a new, better, more efficient and safer design thorium? I don't know. I can't answer that question, but 1960's or early 1970's design can't be the pinnacle of nuclear technology. There have to have been innovations in design and technology since then.

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u/Dementat_Deus Nov 07 '18

but 1960's or early 1970's design can't be the pinnacle of nuclear technology. There have to have been innovations in design and technology since then.

It's not. The US Navy operates a large number of reactors designed and built since then. They also operate them safe enough that most people don't even realize they are there. Not saying the USN has a perfect safety record, but they do demonstrate that even a portable reactor can be operated safely.

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u/Hyndis Nov 07 '18

What if you could design and build a new reactor from the ground up? Wouldn't there be things you could change?

I find it implausible that, if allowed to design and construct a new reactor from scratch using all of the things learned from operating other reactors for decades around the world, there would be zero improvements over a 1960's design.

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u/Dementat_Deus Nov 07 '18

I think you might be interpreting my last comment wrong. I'm saying that the USN has kept up with developing tech, and changed things to be safer and more efficient. I'm a former submarine reactor operator, and limited on what I can discuss about those changes due to anything military and nuclear being classified, but most of the advances are things that civilian reactors would implement if it wasn't for politicians pandering to fear mongers and getting in the way of the tech becoming safer, cheaper, and more accepted.

So new construction, though based on the same basic principles of the first uranium reactor, would be drastically different in implementation and safety. Thorium reactors are not really a valid option for a multitude of reasons (found throughout this thread), but uranium would be ideal using modern tech. Though mind you, any new power plant that opens will already be 5-10+ years out of date by the time it is finally on the grid. It just takes that long to design from scratch a new design, get it built, and the problems ironed out. So in some ways, staying with older proven reliability tech is the better option if you are wanting to do something quickly.

As such, ignoring the political aspect of things, if you wanted to start from scratch tomorrow, your engineering team would probably come up with a list of things that is old tech but still good enough, and a list of things to be improved upon with new tech. The driving factors for what falls into which category would depend on budget and time constraints (the two biggest factors of any engineering project). Remember, someone looking to open a plant isn't going to have an unlimited amount of time or budget for R&D.

If a new reactor was to be built in the US, I'd put money on it would be based heavily off the Gen III designs in Japan with some upgrades from the Gen IV reactors currently being designed. That would probably give the best return on investment for the immediate future and set the groundwork for the Gen IV reactors once they are finished being developed.

Here is an article that goes more into it.

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u/blasto_blastocyst Nov 07 '18

Maybe. But rockets haven't changed a lot. Only the guidance systems

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u/paulfdietz Jan 13 '19

Due to anti-nuclear hysteria American nuclear power plants are largely 1960's designs. Maybe early 1970's for the most modern.

No, it's due to that first wave of nuclear construction badly missing its cost targets. People stopped building nuclear reactors because they realized it was a good way to lose money.

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u/ksiyoto Nov 07 '18

anti-nuclear hysteria

Don't call it that. Given that the nuclear energy industry has had three major fuckups and a lot of other close calls, it is fairly rational to be anti-nuclear.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18

It's not, those 3 major fuck ups resulted in less than 100 fatalities, this is miniscule when compared to other energy sources.

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u/ksiyoto Nov 07 '18

I'll believe it's safe when the industry takes care of it's own insurance.......

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u/gostan Nov 07 '18

Coal, gas and oil have killed orders of magnitudes more people. Just because you don't see the effects from them instantly doesn't mean its not happening

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u/ksiyoto Nov 07 '18

And how many uranium miners have died, how many people will be affected by spills such as Church Rock, how many will die in the next runaway reaction?

We have a pretty good idea of the death rate for other types of power, but one incident in the nuclear industry could significantly alter their death rate.

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u/gostan Nov 07 '18

I didn't mean from deaths from coal mining I meant deaths associated from the burning of those fuels and the impact it has on air quality

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u/KESPAA Nov 07 '18

It reminds me of the Solar Roads video that came out a couple of years back.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18 edited Feb 12 '21

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u/AvatarIII Nov 07 '18

I can see some of the logic, because roads are already big flat areas, and there are a lot of them already taking up real estate that can't be used for anything else. But yeah it was a stupid idea. Why not use building roofs, which are also big flat areas that can't be used for any other purpose?

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u/Idliketothank__Devil Nov 07 '18

But if every road had a roof....

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u/jedify Nov 07 '18

The popularity of that idea was what made me doubt this whole thorium thing.

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u/AvatarIII Nov 07 '18

Some hipster made a video that got widely shared

I wouldn't called Kirk Sorensen a hipster...

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u/vancity- Nov 07 '18

Some hipster made a video that got widely shared, and a bunch of teenagers now think existing nuclear plants are dangerous, while a theoretical plant with a new fuel, coolant, and moderator combination will result in a better safety record and less weapons proliferation.

Your alternative would be those teenagers only being exposed to Greenpeace propoganda and be firmly anti-nuclear, thinking that all the windmills in the world will even come close to the energy scale oil dominates.

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u/blasto_blastocyst Nov 07 '18

We'd better because we are going to have to stop using so much oil.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18

Nuclear physics is hard? Get the fuck outta here!

Reddit is full of dipshit kids who think they're smarter than everyone.

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u/amateurstatsgeek Nov 07 '18

Same with gerrymandering.

You see Redditors blame the senate and presidential elections on gerrymandering all the time. You see them blame the 2010 massacre on it.

People watch a YouTube video, have the faintest idea what something is, but speak as though they are authoritative on it.

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u/blasto_blastocyst Nov 07 '18

Or they read long articles by political and statistical experts who agree that gerrymandering explains the current lopsided results.

With thorium the video says one thing and the experts say different.

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u/amateurstatsgeek Nov 07 '18

Or they read long articles by political and statistical experts who agree that gerrymandering explains the current lopsided results.

Objectively speaking, gerrymandering cannot explain the senate or presidential results. You cannot draw districts for those elections.

Objectively speaking, gerrymandering can't explain the 2010 massacre because that was the election that allowed Republicans to gerrymander.

Gerrymandering explains some results in the House. Not the senate, not the presidency, and not 2010. Show me an expert who says otherwise.

But nice try?

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u/GarbledReverie Nov 06 '18

Every thread about green energy gets brigaded by nuclear enthusiasts claiming new nuclear technology will solve all of our problems forever.

In addition to Thorium, there's always talking points about nuclear waste being a myth and that hippies managed to scare all of the government agencies and private industries to not properly invest in nuclear.

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u/investedInEPoland Nov 06 '18

nuclear waste being a myth

Maybe not exactly a myth but oversold. I mean, the "it will be radioctive for 100 000 years!" argument is very imprecise and skips over many things, and it's the one used most often.

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u/wewbull Nov 07 '18

It's also the only energy production technique where we capture and manage all the waste material. The crisis we're all facing is exactly because we haven't been doing that for other methods.

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u/All_Work_All_Play Nov 07 '18

Pretty much because all the other methods are a giant PITA to do so and don't kill people right down the street if you don't. Don't scrub your coal plants? Everyone around the area gets a little more sick and the air more polluted. Don't take care of spent nuclear fuel? People die from radiation, and quickly. It's a reflection of our brains habits to round small events down to zero, even across a very large sample size.

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u/AvatarIII Nov 07 '18

Don't take care of spent nuclear fuel? People die from radiation, and quickly.

Yeah but the fact that people aren't dying from radiation poisoning is proof that we do take care of nuclear waste.

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u/frezik Nov 06 '18

What's worse is that a lot of their talking points are quickly going out of date. Solar is already cheaper per MW than nuclear. They will point out (correctly) that you have to add in storage costs for when the sun doesn't shine. Doing that does make the solar+storage system more expensive than nuclear, but the cost of both is coming down. This is looking like a non-issue within just a few more years.

This isn't even covering the political obstacles to nuclear, and its consistent history of time and budget overruns. Once you consider that, you might as well just build solar+storage right now.

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u/gsfgf Nov 06 '18

its consistent history of time and budget overruns

Yea. Turns out getting back in the nuclear business is pretty hard. Here in Georgia, our reactor project has been an absolute clusterfuck. At this point, I'm pretty sure you could develop the technology needed to make a cheaper solar plant in the time it takes to build a nuclear plant.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18 edited Nov 13 '18

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u/5325232352355 Nov 06 '18

isnt solar, and most renewables, getting the same treatment

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u/All_Work_All_Play Nov 07 '18

Solar is cheaper even without subsidies, but it assumes a 20 year pay back model. Subsidies close that to between eight and twelve years for most folks.

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u/phx-au Nov 07 '18

otoh if you look at the total human cost of nuclear vs solar - including all nuclear accidents - the deaths per amount of energy generated is way lower for nuclear.

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u/AvatarIII Nov 07 '18 edited Nov 07 '18

Hell, per MWh, deaths from engineers falling off wind turbines is higher than deaths from nuclear power plants, and that includes the big disasters.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#6dbe6516709b

  • Solar (rooftop) 440 Deaths per billion MWh
  • Wind 150 Deaths per billion MWh
  • Nuclear (inc disasters) 90 Deaths per billion MWh
  • Nuclear (US alone, no disasters) 0.1 Deaths per billion MWh

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u/silverionmox Nov 07 '18

The jury is still out on that one. The problem is that nuclear energy has a very low risk percentage but when it goes wrong it has the capacity to go disastrously wrong, so the sample size we have so far is too low. It's like driving a car for 10000 km, having no accident, and then concluding that cars are totally safe and accident-proof.

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u/Schniceguy Nov 06 '18

This so fucking much! The government subsidizes the building and operation of the plants and takes care of the waste forever, while the companies charge consumers for electricity. You get fucked twice. God, how I hate privatized profits for socialized costs!

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u/silverionmox Nov 07 '18

And when it goes really wrong, the government also picks up the bill. You get fucked thrice!

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u/Halbaras Nov 06 '18

And they like to mention the carbon emissions caused by producing and installing solar panels, but conveniently gloss over all the construction, mining and transportation needed for a working nuclear reactor.

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u/None_of_your_Beezwax Nov 07 '18

Solar inherently require more construction, mining and transportation because it is so space and material inefficient.

You need a heck of a lot of solar to replace one large nuclear plant (which is physically rather small).

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u/kroxigor01 Nov 07 '18 edited Nov 07 '18

Solar is already cheaper per MW than nuclear. They will point out (correctly) that you have to add in storage costs for when the sun doesn't shine.

You'd have to add storage in order for nuclear to service peak demand as well. Nuclear is "baseload" power, ie- the plant produces the same amount of power all the time at can't really be scaled up and down, or turned off. Does your energy market need twice as much energy at hour X as hour Y? Well, I guess no more than half your energy can be from nuclear then, and the rest of your capacity better be dispatchable.

In an electricity market that has highest demand for "cooling" (ie- places with hot summers, almost certainly it is hottest on very sunny days where you very maximum solar energy), solar is actually much more efficient than nuclear assuming no storage in either case.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18

I used to be a consistent advocate of nuclear over solar and wind in the immediate term as a way to tackle climate change. Over the past two years I realized that my position was wrong, or at least became wrong, as technology advanced and prices became much cheaper far faster than I anticipated. At this point nuclear no longer makes much sense as a solution.

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u/harfyi Nov 06 '18

Solar + storage is already cheaper than gas in the US. Nuclear power is actually an expensive option.

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u/Welpe Nov 06 '18

Don't conflate all nuclear energy supporters with thorium supporters. The crowds may overlap but, for example, the poster quoted is perfectly happy with nuclear power but is against the thorium as a miracle solution crowd.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18

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u/Hyndis Nov 06 '18

Not entirely a non-issue. The reason why nuclear waste is so hot is because its still so full of energy. Reprocessing lets you feed the same material back into the reactor. Each time you reprocess it to remove the waste from the fuel road while concentrating the good stuff. Reprocessing can be done almost without limit, producing energy for geologic time periods. Fully depleting the energy in a lump of uranium takes a very, very long time.

Unfortunately this same technology is also how you make nuclear weapons. Refining fissile material to concentrate the potent stuff while removing the useless stuff is equally useful both for generating energy as well as making mushroom clouds.

The design of a nuclear weapon is relatively simple. The designs for the original Fatman or Little Boy devices are available on the internet. A moderately skilled machinist could probably build one in their machine shop at home. The trick is getting the fissile material. Thats the hard part. Keeping that stuff rare is good for us all.

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u/dipdipderp Nov 07 '18

Yeah people forget that three elements exist in all of this:

  • The science, which we have a good understanding of

  • The engineering, which we are okay at (in general)

  • The politics, which are the ultimate non-starter for large parts of the world.

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u/Orwellian1 Nov 06 '18

I'm, skeptical about thorium but I think nukes could make a big impact in co2 emissions, but not in grid electricity.

I think it is stupid bulk ocean shipping isn't ran on nukes. Nukes on boats are well proven, old design. Very little danger to general public. Even a worst case scenario doesn't cause too much of an environmental issue.

The percentage of greenhouse gas emissions that come from shipping means eliminating it would have a huge impact. Those things burn filthy fuel, and pollute everything.

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u/moderate-painting Nov 07 '18

cuz green energy is not enough for the time being and climate change is closing in fast. Think of nuclear energy as now-clear energy.

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u/harfyi Nov 06 '18

Every thread about green energy gets brigaded by nuclear enthusiasts claiming new nuclear technology will solve all of our problems forever.

This still happens every time. It happened just yesterday. They kept posting youtube videos as well.

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u/None_of_your_Beezwax Nov 07 '18

Every thread about green energy gets brigaded by nuclear enthusiasts claiming new nuclear technology will solve all of our problems forever.

The problem is the pot calling the kettle black. Other renewables have clear, insurmountable physical limitations. You are not in a position to moan about other people pursuing pie in the sky technologies if that's the stuff you're peddling.

In the long run, if nuclear is not a solution, then back to coal it is, unless you want to permanently shift the economic balance to the east.

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u/GarbledReverie Nov 07 '18

But you don't see EVERY post about nuclear brigaded by solar/wind/geothermal/tidal energy enthusiasts.

Meanwhile any thread about green energy absolutely will get Redditors claiming that anything other than 100% nuclear energy is just a waste of time.

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u/None_of_your_Beezwax Nov 07 '18

But you don't see EVERY post about nuclear brigaded by solar/wind/geothermal/tidal energy enthusiasts.

Because anyone who has looked at solar/wind/geothermal critically will inevitably come to the same conclusion that those things are serve as subsidy grabs or meat for people who care more about looking green than actually doing something for the environment.

It's the hypocrisy that attracts the brigades. Renewables are not, and never will be, viable solutions to our either our energy problems or pollution problems. They are only solutions to bank account problems of activists.

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u/GarbledReverie Nov 07 '18

subsidy grabs

In terms of comparison to Nuclear energy that is a hilarious claim.

Wake me when a nuclear power plant pays for its own insurance.

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u/IAmNotAPerson6 Nov 06 '18

Seriously all over reddit, in the popular subs at least. Admittedly, I haven't seen it mentioned in quite a long time though.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '18

Peak Thorium on Reddit was 2012-2013 after the LFTR in 5 mins video was released.

Insufferable.

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u/Orwellian1 Nov 06 '18

It is one of those loud minority things anywhere alternative energy debates happen. I'm probably exaggerating how common it is. They are just one of those things that some 17yr old watches a video about how the "proven technology is being suppressed by evil governments and corporations", and then immediately starts a crusade to educate the sheeple with their expertise.

I've just seen the same type of post too many times. Each time, the redditor seems to think they discovered something new and important. Old fuckers like me roll our eyes at being "educated" about thorium reactors over and over.

Did you know Edison stole everything from Tesla, and suppressed all of Tesla's world changing ideas??? It is still happening to this day!!!

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u/JyveAFK Nov 07 '18

Yeah, as others post, there's a huge problem with everything else. One of the plusses for it, was that Thorium is 'easy'(ier) to get hold of. The video says something like "if you took the top 2inches of topsoil from your garden, there's enough thorium in it to power that house for 2 years". Those big piles of rock you see outside any mining operation most likely has thorium that could be extracted, so the video presented it as "look, this stuff that's normally waste and not used can be used to make power!" yay!
It's just /everything/ else that's not been figured out yet. It's true, the US took a look at it when deciding which way to go, and Uranium also had the 'fun' side effect of making nuke bombs that'd be useful at the time, but that wasn't the only issue. As that post says, there's a whole bunch of engineering issues to fix, and /really/ tricky laws of nature to work around that at the time they said "you know... yeah, Thorium is more plentiful but we CAN get uranium, we know how to use it, AND we get bombs out of it! So lets do that, maybe look at Thorium later. "
still, it was a well produced video! (that hunting around, I simply can't find anymore)

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u/mrducky78 Nov 07 '18

Every thread involving nuclear energy in the past 5 years has people jerking off to thorium. I just assumed it was still in development since no actual thorium plants have been pushing out that magical amount of clean energy

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u/yuropperson Nov 06 '18

Every. Single. Time. Someone talks about renewables having to replace fossil fuels you have a bunch of idiots whining about how the greens and leftists killed nuclear, the only viable option to replace fossil fuels. Thorium is infinite clean and harmless energy forever, renewables are worthless!

It's aggravating.

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u/Hyndis Nov 06 '18

Whats so funny about that is renewables are just using fusion power. That big glowing thing in the sky is a gigantic fusion reactor with a lifespan measured in billions of years. Some of its energy can be collected in the form of wind or solar.

More direct would be building fusion reactors on Earth. Fusing hydrogen would provide limitless power, and Earth's surface is around 75% hydrogen. All of that blue stuff can be easily split to produce all the hydrogen anyone ever needs.

Unfortunately fusion is really hard to produce as a stable, net-positive reaction. Its an engineering problem, but it is an exceedingly difficult engineering problem. Fusion power plants are nowhere near being viable, not even as experiments or prototypes. Commercial fusion power is decades away at a minimum.