Thorium Disadvantages

Uranium-233 is a fissile isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle. Uranium-233 was investigated for use in nuclear weapons. Uranium-233 is produced by the neutron irradiation of thorium-232. Thorium-232 absorbs a neutron, becomes thorium-233, then quickly decays into protactinium-233. Protactinium-233 has a half-life of 27 days and before decaying into uranium-233.
This protactinium has a large cross-section and can absorb neutrons needed to sustain fission. Because uranium-233 releases so few neutrons in thermal-spectrum, and because 2 neutrons are needed to sustain a chain reaction, existence of protactinium would stop fission.
Protactinium-233 is a challenge unique to thorium reactors.
Low breeding ratio is a challenge unique to breeder reactors fueled by thorium, which operate in thermal-spectrum.
The 5,000 tpy figure of Thorium assumes a 50,000 tpy Rare Earths facility that primarily utilizes monazite as its feed-stock.
Thorium is a companion element to Monazite. Monazite runs at +50% REE and about 7% Th. So if you processed 50,000 tons of monazite you would get about 3,500 tpy of Th. However, monazite would not be the only feed-stock. You would use many other mineralizations. like apatite running at 3% REE and .002% Th (but with lots of heavy REE). So it would be a mix and tend toward the 5,000 tpy range.
Thorium Disadvantages listed in this video:
00:00 Solid-fuel thorium reactors fuel utilization ratios similar to PWR.
00:42 Liquid-Fuel in United States licensing is "scary".
02:04 Obama Administration willing to give away MSR know-how.
02:40 PWR seen as "good enough" for long time.
03:00 Licensing restrictions specifically target liquid-fuel.
04:45 NEA OECD evaluated solid-fuel, and liquid-fuel-fast-spectrum only.
20:50 Thermal-spectrum neutrons hitting U233 produce only ~2.3 neutrons.
23:00 Graphite moderator required to sustain fission in MSBR thermal-spectrum.
27:50 Protactinium-233 half-life 27 days.
29:00 Material challenges (MSR is pre-requisite so MSR challenges are Th challenges.)

[@mycattypedthis2827]

so, the main thorium disadvantage that it's a new age technology and old age people in power don't want it.

[@tommylyeah]

If the world flipped over-night to Thorium power.

[@tadferd4340]

@NotJo Nah, the middle east would be fine. The USA gets most of its oil from us Canadians. I would welcome the death of the Canadian oil industry. It may make a lot of money but it's a blight that needs to just keel over and die already. Thorium would also create new jobs and economic opportunity.

[@Khepramancer]

It's actually old tech...

[@TheBaldr]

I spell it out so even the people with little scientific background can understand the problem, the molten salts are to corrosive and no substance has been found for a vessel for period viable for commercial application without replacing it being cost effective. No conspiracy. 29:15

[@tadferd4340]

@@TheBaldr That is the major problem for sure. Need advances in material science. China will likely be the one who develops the material, since they actually have funding.

[@bradhobbs6196]

Waited for the debunking, which didn't really ever happen. In fact, the information presented makes a pretty good case for giving it a shot.

[@gordonmcdowell]

They're stated in description, and I pinned a comment with the timecodes a year ago. But here's a copy/paste of the timecodes... 00:00 Solid-fuel thorium reactors fuel utilization ratios similar to PWR. 00:42 Liquid-Fuel in United States licensing is "scary". 02:04 Obama Administration willing to give away MSR know-how. 02:40 PWR seen as "good enough" for long time. 03:00 Licensing restrictions specifically target liquid-fuel. 04:45 NEA OECD evaluated solid-fuel, and liquid-fuel-fast-spectrum only. 20:50 Thermal-spectrum neutrons hitting U233 produce only ~2.3 neutrons. 23:00 Graphite moderator required to sustain fission in MSBR thermal-spectrum. 27:50 Protactinium-233 half-life 27 days. 29:00 Material challenges (MSR is pre-requisite so MSR challenges are Th challenges.)

[@MartinVanBoven]

@@gordonmcdowell None of those make for a debunking, and most not even for disadvantages.

[@gordonmcdowell]

@@MartinVanBoven Most MSR startups and the majority of funding is headed towards U-MSR variants, both fast and slow spectrum. One of the reasons this is likely happening is because those startups don't have the need for a Chemical Kidney to strip out fission products. Th-MSR operates in a very low breeding ratio. It is challenging to conserve those neutrons so strictly, they can't be lost to any structural materials AND fission products MUST also be removed or else the neutrons will be absorbed by them. If U-233 released more neutrons when hit by thermal-spectrum neutrons, then this challenge would not exist. But it does. Currently Flibe has funding to develop the Kidney, while other MSR startups are busy designing pilot plants. China has the resources to tackle this, and are tackling it now. But in North America, with limited resources, this slows Th-MSR development. Investors likely want the Kidney developed first. DOE is helping Flibe, and it is real money, but this isn't like Bill Gates talking about raising private investment of billions-of-dollars for his own advanced reactor choice at TerraPower. Kirk's choice is to surmount Kidney challenge, and then use it to pull more value out of the operating MSR. But he's still got to prove the Kidney will work as he plans.

[@TheRainHarvester]

Maybe it is a Click bait title?

[@Elite7555]

Well, it is given a shot, but viability isn't proven.

[@samh4232]

This is not a disadvantage video, just how the industry had blocked thorium!

[@stupidburp]

Clickbait works.

[@sirpirincha]

Obvio man. El negocio de los hidrocarburos fósiles no se termina pronto, después le siguen los hidrocarburos orgánicos.

[@samh4232]

Dotte van Dijk I never said I wanted it to be, I just wanted to see if anyone could give me a good reason against!

[@wireflight]

Those blockages ARE disadvantages. Duh.

[@geowar20]

The point being that the “disadvantages” aren’t technical; they’re political.

[@badpizzadays]

The principal disadvantage of Thorium is its lack of weapon potential and light environmental impact.

[@chrisbero2]

Wait, can't you use the U233 in weapons? Not that I particularly like that option.

[@w8stral]

Not really. The answer is Anything ... "can be" a bomb, the question is, can it be delievered effectively? The answer; no, not really. A 100,000 fold reduction in your nuclear arsenal is not exactly a step "forward" to most military planners. @@chrisbero2

[@kingfisher1638]

Small safe Thorium reactors that can charge advanced high energy consumption weaponry and point defenses and drones. It isn't directly a weapon but it could enable all the advanced energy hungry tech we have already developed.

[@Patchuchan]

U-233 which is made from thorium can be used to make a bomb as it was used in Operation Tea pot but it's not practical due to the presence of U-232 which gives off hard gama rays.

[@km5405]

make no mistake the stuff that comes out is still incredibly dangerous ... but atleast it decays mostly in a few human life times. (that quick decay makes it potentially more dangerous short term). ....... if you look at the big picture you wont have kilotonnes of depleted uranium waste in holding tanks so its impact is probably far less.

[@gawayne1374]

How is this supposed to be disadvantages? I am actually more convinced after this video

[@gordonmcdowell]

Well, there's always going to be people searching for such a topic. This is what I'd prefer they find. In fact, using Bing to search videos, "Thorium Disadvantages" was a pre-defined search topic once "Thorium" was entered as a starting point.

[@MrPobanz]

Personally, I'd rather prefer a video which discusses disadvantages like (afaik) the corrosiveness of the fuel, technical difficulties and so on. Just because i really like some technology shouldnt mean that i cant be also critical, in fact, i'd say its beneficial to be critical especially if you really care about something.

[@gordonmcdowell]

The chemical kidney IS the disadvantage. (Or advantage if you are looking to pull out fission products for medical or industrial use.) But that is the unique disadvantage to thermal-spectrum thorium MSR... you can't breed Thorium in a thermal-spectrum without it. If you want a broader take on advantages/disadvantages of MSR would be a different video. This doesn't quite do that, but it is MSRE guys talking more generally about MSR challenges: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e3-rXp2aa7ObiMU ...or Ed Pheil (who works on fast-spectrum MSR) addresses MSR from a different perspective: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pqK5pWuZrd1gapY

[@MrPobanz]

Thanks for the suggestions!

[@rogermorey]

There are disadvantages, and it is dishonest to pose as a detractor to drive off discussion.

[@jibcot8541]

God we need to build thorium molten salt reactors yesterday! What a lost opportunity Chernobyl and Fukushima would never have been able to happen with this design.

[@possumverde]

No we don't. Molten salt reactors are severely underpowered, don't scale up well, actually become an excelent source of weapons grade fuel with some minor tweaks (hence why China is currently building one), their spent fuel is nastier than spent uranium fuel rods for the first few thousand years if allowed to cool (though it becomes slightly less so after around ten thousand years), and they are a complete maintenance nightmare in general. Other types of reactors that use thorium are far better. Edit: They also go through fuel far more rapidly than conventional reactors which just multiplies the issue of how to deal with their spent fuel.

[@cbbrutal1634]

China is almost ready with a first reactor

[@uncannyvalley2350]

China, India, Indonesia, Amsterdam, Norway, America doesn't even have High speed rail, now they're banning abortion, talk about your backward bronze age religions, their love of oil is threatening the entire human species

[@elosant2061]

I'm trying to figure out why fukushima is seen as a major disaster, wasn't there just one death due to radiation poisoning years later?

[@uncannyvalley2350]

@@elosant2061 big oil owns our media

[@johnmurphy4814]

Thorium disadvantages: It would interfere with the income streams of all current energy source suppliers, so nobody will want to allow it, except maybe China where, whatever they do, without a substantial new energy production method, they will have a deficit very soon

[@alanbrown397]

That has a _lot_ to do with it. Thorium or uranium are simply dissolved into the fuel stream of a MSR. On the other hand, if you buy a Westinghouse nuclear reactor, you can ONLY use Westinghouse fuel rods in it (or GE rods in a GE reactor). The money is in selling proprietary fuel rods, not in the reactor itself. Think of it like the great printer ink scams.

[@bjorndyno2175]

John Murphy, I am pretty sure over here in Europe, we will be good clients of Chinese power stations as of 2030s, as soon as it has trickled down to every simple mind that you can't fuel a modern economy with wind and solar energy. And we will have winded down our own nuclear industry by then.

[@alanbrown397]

100% agree. The general American mindset is that superpowers are the ones with the biggest military. The reality is that superpowers are the ones with the biggest ECONOMIES, and those economies are driven by access to cheap energy. Who controls the energy flows controls the world. Movers and shakers in the USA know this. Look at who really pulls the strings there - people like the Koch brothers, with heavy investments in the energy industries - and they're so fixated on their oil income that they can't see the longer-term picture. The countries who have practical 1000MWe thorium-powered nuclear generation plant up and running first, along with in-stream processing are the ones who stand to dominate the world's economies for the next 75-150 years. Being able to toss in old "nuclear waste" will rapidly be seen as "saviour" status and the fact that there's enough thorium recoverable from coal ash ponds and other similar waste piles to justify cleaning them up will cement that position.

[@ewaf88]

Good analogy

[@jensbrandt7207]

You mustn't forget about india. They don't have any uranium deposits, but a lot of thorium. And they are a young, quickly industialising society with a real interest to have a save and autark energyproduction.

[@taliakellegg5978]

This is like if some caveman banned all use of fire and wheels so they don't lose the market of man labor

[@SharpsKC]

Or how the Romans worried about how the steam engine would impact the slave labor market.

[@taliakellegg5978]

@@SharpsKC lol I didn't know that but yeah even I'm hypocritical because I'm scared of AI

[@jonathanbetenbender307]

@@taliakellegg5978 Not really. After the Industrial Revolution manual labor was in far less demand, so people relied more on their intellect (and over time were enabled to do so). If you deminish demand for intellect and physical labor what are you left with? Robots and AI would be able to fill most jobs... I will not be presuming a utopia. Would we really want to live such a life? Imagine how many people wouldn't be a able to find meaning or purpose. Most sub 120 IQ people would either work a job that they know is meaningless or just exist and recieve wealth, then again this would probably raise the birth rate of high IQ people... I just fear unforseen consequences.

[@taliakellegg5978]

@@jonathanbetenbender307 but that's progress just like the demand for slaves was gone when machines were invented the demand for intelligence might drop but we don't understand humans so I'm sure we will find a new thing that makes humans unique. I don't have anything else to add and I can't predict the future but we are entering a new age an age of the future with robots and space travel

[@jonathanbetenbender307]

@@taliakellegg5978 Yes scarey and exiting times ahead of us, so much potential.

[@timothyhaug2060]

I came here to debunk the debunk... obviously this is not a debunk, but rather a highlight the advantages of a thorium molten salt reactor.

[@samiraperi467]

Meltdowns don't really seem to be much of an issue. A relevant threat scenario yes, something that actually happens in relevant numbers no.

[@jamespfp]

Don't be fooled by the marketing bunkum, Check!!

[@englishtime7925]

@@samiraperi467 Fukishima is an unstoppable disaster for the whole world. 300 tonnes of polluted cooling waste water is dumped into the Pacific every day. Fish catches are down, and governments are hiding that life in the Pacific is dying out, dead from the radiation and birth mutations.

[@samiraperi467]

@@englishtime7925 That's not even remotely true. You speaking of that old image that claims to show polluted water streaming from Japan across the Pacific? Newsflash: it's not, IIRC it's fish migration routes or something, go google it yourself. Hell, the radiation around the plant is roughly what background radiation is here naturally. And where would the water come from? DO YOU EVEN THINK, BRO?

[@englishtime7925]

@@samiraperi467 Nope. I speak of the truth. Every day polluted water flows into the Pacific, and this every day since 2011. The water in question comes from the Japanese Nuclear agency TEPCO who pump the stuff into the Fukishima reactor 1 site to keep the core from melting down into the groundwater, and polluting even more. "NEW - 2019 Fukushima : It's Much Worse. Entire Ocean Is Dying" at 11:49, no heck watch the whole video please. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rmOkq62eosmUqqs" Everyone got a dose web.archive.org/web/20170511060708/enenews.com/everyone-on-earth-has-been-irradiated-by-fukushima-shocking-new-study-reveals-true-extent-of-global-impact-scientists-are-only-just-now-confirming-far-reaching-effects-of-nuclear-disaste

[@claymccormick1203]

the compelling reason for any liquid salt reactor is to burn the waste from light water reactors that there is no other practical way to get rid of.thorium is a good way to do that.

[@rogermorey]

Just because you absorb some neutrons with Thorium in a hybrid reactor, doesn't mean the products from U235 or U239 fission are different from conventional reactors. I would think they would need to be removed from the reactor to prevent buildup and reduction in efficiency.

[@Clean97gti]

Since this video was released, GE and Southwest Research Institute broke ground on a pilot plant to showcase GE's supercritical CO2 (sCO2) turbines as an electrical generator. The prototype was in the neighborhood of 50% efficient, compared to older turbines that struggle to meet 35% efficiency. And the 10MW turbine is the size of a large desk. Several of them could fit on a single truck. It's a serious step forward in efficiency and would be a great accompaniment to a small modular LFTR.

[@Nanamowa]

It can't come soon enough. The sooner we switch over to nuclear, the better it will be for all countries.

[@Patchuchan]

The only real disadvantage of thorium is it does not lend it's self well to the production of nuclear weapons.

[@CriminalizeObesity]

That’s irrelevant nowadays. The short term costs and the loss of income for suppliers is the actual problem.

[@nickl5658]

@@CriminalizeObesity But that is the reason why we don't have MSTR in the 1970s and are only taking about it again in the 2020s.

[@CriminalizeObesity]

@@nickl5658 Yes, yes, I know, hence "nowadays." It really is a shame. I wonder how far we'd have gone....

[@gottjager760]

1, That's irreverent for the majority of states that operate nuclear reactors 2, Yes they do. U-233 has a much smaller critical mass than U-235 and has been successfully tested in atomic devices.

[@artcoffeejeff]

It is absolutely mind blowing that we're not using this technology.

[@whykhr]

Follow the money, Big Oil owns our government, Big Oil decides what energy policy will be, they want electricity to be 80% natural gas/20% wind & solar. The wind & solar is greenwashing for the natural gas.

[@brianevolved2849]

It does not work! UNFORTUNATELY It DOES NOT WORK It Does not work!! THORIUM DOES NOT WORK. It does not work! UNFORTUNATELY It DOES NOT WORK It Does not work!! THORIUM DOES NOT WORK. It does not work! UNFORTUNATELY IT DOES NOT WORK It Does not work!! THORIUM DOES NOT WORK. economically redundant .

[@rokuthedog]

@@brianevolved2849 which part doesnt work? the technology was proven in the 50s

[@brianevolved2849]

@@rokuthedog Dear Roku I am sure you believe that the technology was proven, alas I strongly suspect it never actually worked! Please prove me wrong Peace.

[@ifonlycainwereabel2110]

@@RabblerouserGT he is a troll. Or he is one of the big oil defenders

[@Marinealver]

TL:DW both the economic situation and current regulatory stipulations on atomic energy is hindering the U.S. progress of researching and developing LFTR (Thorium fuel based) reactors.

[@greenmedic88]

I see what you did there. Excellent compilation, not only on the inherent advantages of thorium based reactors, but on contemporary and ongoing developments heading into the future.

[@RPSchonherr]

I've been convinced on Thorium for years. How do we convince our representatives to push for thorium and get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve it's use in the US, and how do we get the funding to do it? I've forwarded some of these videos to Senator Rubio and others. What else can we do? What is everybody else doing?

[@aliensoup2420]

Its probably the same as asking Congress to pass term limits on themselves.

[@Piccodon]

The regulators I'm sure will be favorable to Molten Salt Reactors, but they will not invent, design and finance it. If not the US the Canadians will build the plants and sell the power to the US. Maybe the chinese will make compact reactors and sell them to the US? "Green energy" is a ruse by the fossil fuel industry who knows solar and wind is to expensive and to unreliable. Solar and wind with adequate energy storage will cost more than MSR.

[@obedientfire840]

Is there still a need to weaponize it ? Us has 8000 thermal nuclear warheads .. do they need more ? And if they want more they can build a plant to just enrich the fucking shit out of for the soul purpose of building nukes ?

[@dickyboi4956]

@@obedientfire840 nuclear war is extremely unlikely. no one wants to takeover a nuclear hellhole especially at the cost of turning their own country into a nuclear hellhole due to retaliation. world war 1 and 2 were a decade or so apart. since Nagasaki and Hiroshima there has not been a single uncontained large scale conflict. if you actually look no country with nuclear capability ever becomes a war zone.

[@dickyboi4956]

@@obedientfire840 kinetic bombardment from orbit is much more likely

[@abhishekanand354]

With world's 25% of THORIUM reserves, India has been hard at work for past 50 yrs to use it and replace URANIUM and is surprisingly close to success..🤔😎

[@alanbrown397]

You mean Proven reserves (which just means "already found and marked out"). Thorium is _everywhere_ and nobody's really looking for it. At the moment it's a nuisance byproduct of rare earth mining - Thorium is _the_ product that makes rare earth mining uneconomic most places n the world because none wants to buy it and because it's slightly radioactive, you can't get rid of it by putting it back in the same hole it came out of. In a Thorium economy the world's rare earth mines would almost ALL become thorium mines which do a sideline in rare earths. Neodybium magnets for all! Hoorah!

[@HermanWillems]

They are NOT close to success. Stop spreading lies.

[@bulacomunistu8727]

The commercial nuclear reactors appeared after...what?15 years after the first nuclear test? India tested their first nuke in early 70s.And while they do have nukes,I don;t think they intend to bolster their arsenal too much.So current facilities would be enough.Now...getting back at your 50 years comment....they should have been there already.When something appears too good to be true...you need to start asking questions.

[@digitalnomad9985]

@@bulacomunistu8727 Thorium reactors are useful in disposing of nuclear waste, generating safe electricity, and using a resource that is currently a pollutant. It has nothing to do with producing weapons grade materials. Those have to come from the water cooled uranium breeder reactors. If India makes this breakthrough first, it can license the technology and make a lot of money, as well as benefiting them directly.

[@bulacomunistu8727]

@@digitalnomad9985 I think you got your reactors mixed up.Breeder reactors are for "burning" wastes material from the classic light water reactors,given the fact they can use the "fuel" a lot more efficiently. However,my point was this(because I reread my comment and I saw it could be misinterpreted).India doesn't need a lot of material for nukes(like the US or USSR/Russia do).Therefore,they need only a small amount of reactors for that purpose(weapons grade uranium or plutonium).Therefore,their focus on thorium reactors(original comment claims more than 50 years of R&D) should have yielded results by now,given the fact that from the first nuke detonation to commercial civilian use of nuclear power it only took 10 years(1954 Obninsk civilian powerplant).This whole thing looks like the endless money pit nuclear fusion projects have been so far.But hey,I'm willing to change my mind if they come up with a feasible commercial project.Until then, I'll remain a skeptic.

[@sciencoking]

For anyone wondering where the actual "disadvantages" are, here's a TL;DR of what wikipedia is saying: Around 28:00 the guy is explaining the process of turning fertile thorium-232 into fissile uranium-233. He very tangentially mentions that this takes about a month to happen. The problem is that the intermediate stage, protactinium-233, is a neutron poison, meaning it eats a neutron and does not split. On top of dampening the reaction, this turns it into the unusable 234-isotope, so it also removes reactor fuel. This is why they keep talking about the "chemical kidney": They need a way to sequester the protactinium as soon as it is created and take it out of the neutron crossfire until it to turns into uranium. Now the amount of protactinium involved in even a large scale reactor is annoyingly small. We're talking sub-ppm trace concentrations of it in the thorium solution. This is very hard to isolate from the bulk liquid and the process to do this efficiently is the major area of research. It probably doesn't help that the bulk thorium salt is molten fluoride, making most organic chelation agents unsuitable without an energy intensive process (cooling, dissolving, separation, boiling off the solvent and reheating all while the reactor is running). This is actually a simple exercise in engineering and organo-metal complex chemistry though and the research won't even really involve much radioactivity, so I still don't understand why they're not just throwing some dollars at it until it goes away, I mean we're talking maybe a few million to make the technology feasible.. Edit: The diagram in his presentation mentions fluoride volatility. Uranium hexafluoride evaporates at less than the boiling point of water, so the idea is the uranium will simply boil out of the molten salt. It sounds like this would require a lot of thorium to just sit there gassing out for several months and you'd have to keep it molten during that time.. I guess it's possible though.

[@davestagner]

If it was a few million dollars to magically solve the problem, it’d be a solved problem now. Instead, this makes a really good explanation of why there’s been so little progress on thorium. Rather than looking for global conspiracies to suppress a clearly superior technology in every single nuclear-capable nation on Earth, it could rather be that this stalling problem is just inherently a Hard Problem and NOBODY has been able to solve it in any effective manner. Nuclear engineers that know a lot more than you or me look at the neutron problem, throw their hands in the air, and say this doesn’t work in practice, no matter how great it looks on paper.

[@Ra-zor]

Being forced to maintain and replicate what is effectively now stone age technology, purely because big business has money invested in stone age technology is a very effective way to hold back an entire country, and eventually remove it from the bigger global picture altogether....

[@martinzitter4725]

Hey, that's free-market capitalism at its best. If you have a problem with that, move to China.

[@Swaaaat1]

@@martinzitter4725 Ehh. No, this is NOT Free-market capitalism. And not nearly as it's best. This a corrupted mixed capitalism. In a true Laissez faire capitalism this type of technology would have arrives pretty quick, because there would be no laws to prohibit the creation of this type of power planta and Fosil fuels could not use the laws in their favor.

[@martinzitter4725]

@@Swaaaat1 ~ It's a pity that the U.S. broke up AT&T in 1984. The country would be in a better place if we didn't have all those confusing telephone companies.

[@SunShine-xc6dh]

The idea of thorium reactors isn't really any younger. Just not nearly as viable

[@karhukivi]

The real problem with thorium is that it does not form mineral deposits as readily as uranium. Yes, it is 4 times as "abundant" in the Earth's crust as uranium, but the word "abundant" does not mean widespread and easily obtained. To obtain a deposit that you can extract economically, there has to be a geological process that concentrates it, usually 200 to 1000 times. Thorium is only concentrated in two types of rare occurrences, monazite sands and pegmatites, while uranium is concentrated in at least 14 types of fairly common deposits. This is because uranium is soluble in oxygenated groundwater and can e leached out of granites and precipitated elsewhere in a reducing environment, e.g. phosphates or carbonaceous rocks. Thorium is like the rare earth elements, quite abundant but rare to form deposits as they are not soluble and therefore not geologically mobile. Thorium will always be more expensive than uranium. Why use silver wire for house wiring when copper is cheaper? Silver is a better conductor, but it is simple economics that determines the usage.

[@toyocoro]

The cost of fuel in the whole nuclear fuel economic equation is minuscule and is the cost item they least worry about. The nuclear industry only cares about reliability of supply and the fuel is easy to stockpile.

[@CatboyChemicalSociety]

i dont like how these videos are click baited actual disadvantage material has to resist fluorine and sodium in their elemental form prevent freezing of the salt in the pipes while in operation there are more but these are the 2 big ones

[@leohorishny9561]

It's telling that you're one of the rare questioning voices in this thorium infomercial. Everyone else is mindlessly drooling, "yeah, thorium!"🤔 People are so unwilling to question things presented to them.🤷‍♂️

[@bubbaganoosh1387]

US bureaucracy are geniuses at creating regulations that prevent innovation.

[@dejayrezme8617]

That's a rather unfair view on bureaucracies. It's pretty clear that once revenue streams for one technology are set up, the structure of the US government allows strong effects to stop innovation from endangering those revenues. You see that everywhere. No matter HOW stupid one way of doing something is, once someone does it commercially he has an interest to keep doing it. And the US system allows lobbying and corruption to influence regulations to stop competition. I'm just saying this because there is an element of anti-government sentiment that works as propaganda to obfuscate and ignore the problem of systematic influences. There is no conspiracy, just once the machine makes money the machine works to keep doing the same stupid shit. We need a more free and open market, and only the government is powerful enough to create rules to allow this. Industries fight this. That is why many politicians spout anti-government propaganda. Just my opinion / interpretation of what is happening of course :)

[@rich1051414]

Often, it is those screaming about the broken government who are doing it to remove regulations that hamper their ability to block market competition. They will also setup private licensing firms which the market they control must pass through first. They will argue that making those firms non-private will corrupt them, ignoring how bad the corruption is due to their private nature. If the market dominator is willing to pay so much that license becomes a barrier of entry, they will offer it to the private licenser under the stipulation everyone else has to pay that egregious amount as well. See how that works?

[@dejayrezme8617]

@@rich1051414 Interesting, I hadn't thought of that. I know many bog corporations also love regulations if they can craft them for their own gain. Basically they are using any system to twist the market for their advantage. We are far away from an open and free market. Imho regulations need to become a far more open and flexible and democratic process. And patents and copyright need to be scaled down drastically as well. Especially patents on technology needed for renewable transitions.

[@pjkon4603]

​@@rich1051414 Hmm, and why exactly would the competition be willing to get these "private licenses" from their competitors? I'm all for criticizing corrupt lobbying, but the idea that innovation squelching regulations could survive without government force behind them is pure lunacy. Though maligned above, anti-government sentiment is essential to deregulating new technologies when those technologies have any opposition.

[@rich1051414]

I feel like everyone forgets we have been there before. Anti-trust laws became a thing for very very good reason. Without it, companies would just become too big to lose, and competition is impossible. My point is, both extremes can and will be abused by those with power. There is no extreme solution.

[@jameswatkins7763]

Great video! Thanks for editing!

[@richardsandwell2285]

Such a shame technology does not progress fast or far enough because of people who have vested interests in everything staying the same.

[@jb678901]

www.technologyreview.com/s/542526/china-details-next-gen-nuclear-reactor-program/

[@douglasclark2386]

@@tommorris3688 Very large amounts of CO2 are generated to make either windmills or solar cells, and they can not provide the energy needed for a base load. In the US renewables supply less the 8% of our energy, and most of that 8% is hydro electric. Renewables have a place, but they are not , and can never be the only answer with out humanity reducing its energy usage drasticly, and standards of living falling to Victorian era levels.

[@hanzo2001]

​@@tommorris3688 Some industrial processes cannot be stopped because a restart would be far more expensive and wasteful than just keeping all systems going. That is one of the issues of renewables, they are not reliable to maintain a base load. Thorium reactors have so many other benefits that it's just inconceivable that we are not spending as much money as possible for research on this. Something very interesting about the nuclear waste of a thorium reactor is that the waste itself has a much shorter half-life, cutting down the issue of waste storage, which it will produce in much less quantity because it spends most of it much more efficiently (albeit, it is more dangerous due to it being more radioactive). There can also come a time when even the old nuclear waste can be burned down in a specially crafted breeder, and we could start to make use of the old long-living waste. With these reactors, we would also have enough energy to manufacture a surplus of renewable generators for much cheaper speeding up adoption and reducing even more the carbon footprint. A technology leap this big would completely transform our way of life, for what was once a scarcity will become abundant and there is nothing more useful than raw energy to help transform people's lives (hopefully for the better). I do concur that I don't like the waste products, but that doesn't mean that humanity will not find any use for them in some point in the future.

[@scottwillis5434]

To understand, put yourself in their place. What are you driving right now - yeah, there's a better car, spend $40,000 on this new model. No, no track record yet. What, you don't want to spend your money? 'You must be corrupt!'

[@eruno_]

Big corporate interests have been ruining society and progress since capitalism

[@TxFw]

One of the best videos to date on Thorium MSRs...

[@greenspiraldragon]

I have read about Thorium reactors. People make it out to be some sort of miracle reactor. It's not. It's mostly a pipe-dream. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Disadvantages are it does not fission on it's own. You have to either put weapons grade uranium in it or blast it with some sort of accelerator or something. It creates less energy and is less economic than traditional reactors which already struggle to compete on the open market. It creates a mixed waste stream that is very difficult to dispose of. It won't melt down, but can leak. It has most of the same disadvantages of conventional nuclear power but is less cost effective. Thorium breeds uranium-233 which is fissionable and is a risk for proliferation.

[@gordonmcdowell]

I'm glad you read! Looks like you read anti-nuclear propaganda, as you're making some misleading assertions. First off, ALL breeder reactors DO require fissile to sustain fissioning of fertile material. This is mentioned in many videos I've created, so it isn't some dark secret. Ideally, U233 is used, but Pu or HEU can also be used. Pu and HEU can be used in nuclear weapons, and repurposing Pu or HEU from nuclear weapons as fissile seed is a much better use for it. (See very successful "Megatons to Megawatts" project for concrete example of nuclear bombs being decommissioned and turned into nuclear fuel.) With Thorium MSR this would happen once, then the fissile seed remains inside the reactor while Thorium is continually added as fuel. It creates far MORE energy, per unit of fuel, than traditional reactors. That is, it is more efficient. If a large city is to be powered, then multiple thorium reactors are deployed next to each other. It is easier to manufacture multiple smaller reactors than a single large one, as smaller reactors can be constructed in a factory but large ones constructed on-site. It is typically on-site construction where cost overruns arise. Each large reactor being built by a new workforce, rather than a single workforce churning out small reactor after small reactor. Often today's nuclear power plants house more than a single reactor, so this could be 12 small ones instead of 4 large ones. These are not identically priced reactors... 12 small ones would cost far less than 4 large ones, as this is 4 on-site constuctions compared to 12 flat-bed-truck shipments. Thorium Molten Salt Reactors, as being pursued by Flibe Energy in USA, and SINAP in China, create Fission Products and little else. You can call it a waste stream if you want, but it is actually a collection of very valuable materials. Conventional solid fuel reactors also produce very valuable materials, but those materials are never recycled because they're trapped in solid fuel rods together with minute quantities of potential weapons material. Th-MSR, in contrast, produces only Fission Products and not weapons materials. Th-MSR, in contrast, is in an easily partitioned liquid form, making the sale of Fission Products an attractive and profitable proposition. This revenue source might be bigger than the sale of energy for the first few reactors, as some of the materials are extremely rare and will continue to be so until a large fleet of Th-MSR operates and harvests isotopes. You say "it creates a mixed waste stream which is extremely difficult to deal with". That is 100% backwards. Th-MSR is a reactor which can make (some) choices about what isotopes it produces. Liquid state allows online chemistry, so operator can pull out desired isotopes once they're created but before they're altered into something less valuable by neutron flux. Medical isotopes being an example of an extremely valuable, but short-lived, byproduct of energy production. In today's reactors such materials are created too, but they're impractical to harvest. You assert "it won't melt down but it can leak"... while no one is planning on building a leaky reactor, the Molten Salt would quickly freeze rather than boil. The reactor core is designed to sustain fission and trap heat. Any other environment (except for another reactor core) can't sustain fission nor trap heat as effectively. A solid, radioactive, pancake of salt might sound scary to you, but that's a shape optimized for dispersing decay heat, while potentially harmful isotopes remain chemically trapped in the salt. Your proposed "leak" applied to a conventional reactor could result in an actual disaster. With MSR it results in a liquid-then-solid pancake of salt, assuming the reactor doesn't have a catch-pan below the reactor to direct your "leak" into a more purposeful drain-tank. "Thorium breeds uranium-233 which is fissionable and is a risk for proliferation" Kirk Sorensen speaks about this at length in a video I'm about to release, but here's an additional point he doesn't make, for you to consider: The U233 created from Thorium replaces the U233 fissioned into Energy + Fission Products. Th-MSR does NOT create a surplus, it SUSTAINS an equilibrium. And if U233, exceptionally valuable material already being used to create medical isotopes in Oak Ridge, was to be removed from the reactor than fission would stop. That's the world-standard for how weapon seeking nations who have power reactors are kept from using them to create weapons... a nuclear reactor suddenly shutting down detected by satellite. That's the tell. There's no stopping Th-MSR to refuel. There's no swapping old fuel rods out for fresh ones. Thorium is slowly, continually, added to Th-MSR while it operates. U233 isn't added. U233 isn't removed. Contrast that with conventional reactors refuelling cycles, and the international presence needed during every single refuelling cycle to ensure a weapon-seeking nation doesn't divert used fuel rods, or alter the refuelling pattern to try create weapons grade material by "lightly toasting" U into Pu (instead of more fully fissioning the Uranium). What is done today with international monitoring, with Th-MSR, could be replaced (or supplemented at first) with laser spectroscopy monitoring of the salt. The salt is homogenous, and it is possible to bounce a laser off a sample inside the reactor core (through a pane of glass) to determine exactly what it is made of at any point in time. That is simply NOT an option for solid-fuel reactors which are constantly having their fuel-rods shuffled in and out. What's in a fuel rod? You need to know the rod's history to figure that out... where was it in the reactor and for how long? What is in the salt? Bounce a laser off of it and find out. While I feel the supposed proliferation concerns voiced by anti-nuclear organizations is specifically designed to tarnish power reactors, there is at least the example of India to show a power reactor being abused in such a manner. U233, the fissile that HEU or Pu will be converted into during the operation of Th-MSR, has NEVER been used exclusively as fissile in a weapon... even in the 3 weapons tests which used U233, other weapons-grade material was used along with it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233#Weapon_material For all the ~14,000 nuclear warheads currently existing in the world, zero contain U233. This is because the unavoidable U232 contamination is a bit of a problem for weapons. Given the choice, 14,000 times, the creators of nuclear weapons decided they could do without U233, and the U232 which would accompany it. All the weapons-grade material contained in those 14,000 weapons can be used to seed Th-MSR, changing the existing weapons-grade HEU and Pu -into- U233, which would then be trapped in the reactor during its lifetime, and almost certainly moved into the next Th-MSR after that. I hope you'll take some time to learn more about Thorium reactors, and not exclusively from anti-nuclear organizations.

[@nimbex3081]

The only disadvantage to using Thorium Molten Salt Reactor is our government bureaucracy.

[@RealTechZen]

Liquid thorium reactors should also be seen as an essential part of putting people on Mars, where both thorium and flouride salts are far more abundent in the soil than they are here on Earth. Solar/wind power generation on Mars should be seen as something to use just to get the first few liquid fuel reactors going.

[@paulgaier4525]

Unbelievable we are not moving forward with this technology. The cheap desalinization alone would literally cure drought. Can you imagine Africa with cheap and unlimited power and water?

[@theq4602]

Could you imagine the western United states not being dependant on the Colorado river?

[@alanbrown397]

Careful with desalanization. The side effect is lots of concentrated brine - which is already causing major environmental issues where it's been deployed without care and attention. (This can be mitigated, but all steps need to be thought through, including where the output goes.)

[@HermanWillems]

You know what is more unbelievable that people like you believe these video's by just looking it once without verifying if it's true or not. THAT is unbelievable.

[@brianevolved2849]

It does not work! UNFORTUNATELY It DOES NOT WORK It Does not work!! THORIUM DOES NOT WORK. It does not work! UNFORTUNATELY It DOES NOT WORK It Does not work!! THORIUM DOES NOT WORK. It does not work! UNFORTUNATELY IT DOES NOT WORK It Does not work!! THORIUM DOES NOT WORK. economically redundant .

[@p51mustang24]

South Africa had no energy, and no water. A bunch of white dudes showed up 450 years ago and turned it into highly productive farmland with excellent infrastructure. S. Africa was known as the breadbasket of Africa. Over the last 200+ years blacks immigrated to this newly successful country. 25 years ago the blacks took over. Now there are rolling blackouts, food shortages, and one of the worlds top 5 murder rates. It's not the land. Africa has some of the best land and resources on earth. It's the people.

[@KatrinaRussell]

One of the most excellent videos I've seen on nuclear options. Thorium is obviously very much hated and feared by big oil.

[@gordonmcdowell]

Thank you. Here's another one I did which I think is quite timely. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eHzClKeaqdRrn5I "Andrew Yang on Thorium, Democratic Candidates on Nuclear"

[@Duconi]

Well big oil is already on the way to die. For the paris agreement we have to get climate neutral within the next decades. That's not possible with oil. We have to reduce Oil 5% this year and another 5% next year etc. and replace it. As Thorium is not ready and maybe needs 50 years to reach mass energy production this will be renewable energies with storage. We can build that now and it provides energy this year. Renewable energy with storage is able to replace fossile fuels completely in the next 20 years. So Thorium is a competitor to renewable energy not to oil.

[@idlewise]

No, not by the oil industry. The military: Thorium = no more Plutonium for bombs!

[@paulgoogol2652]

​@@idlewisemakes no sense to me. There's still a lot of plutonium and uranium available and more so when it is not used to generate elecricity.

[@idlewise]

@@paulgoogol2652 sure, but the military can never get enough...

[@fastSPX_90]

the shot in the tramway really turns Kirk Sorensen into a meme, the guy harasses people with the superiority of thorium fueled MSR regardless of context. Thank you so much for this video btw, it's fascinating

[@aaronmicalowe]

18:50 The other reason why we prefer fuels to be liquid is that they're easier to move around and manage once they've in the power generating system. E.g. it's easier and quicker to pump gas into a car from an underground tank than it is to load solids into a compartment. Using a single piece of solid that could be loaded in one go causes other technical challenges like a clean and consistent burn and how to manage by-products.

[@justgivemethetruth]

Molten salt ... the liquid part you talk about sounds simple ... but just remember that liquid is at around 1300 degrees F. That is insanely more difficult to work with than steam in a pipe and water.

[@aaronmicalowe]

@@justgivemethetruth Lol, I would say it isn't rocket science, but in this case, it probably is. 😂

[@justgivemethetruth]

@@aaronmicalowe More like subnmarine science ... the US Navy has built and operated nuclear powerplants in its subs and ships for many decades without incident. Go with a proven technology. I am amazed at how many people do not understand that. But it is likely that most of the thorium proponents out there are tied in with the nuclear industry and want to promote the most profitable uncopiable system - and that is just wrong and will lead to no good.

[@sequorroxx]

Outstanding collection of arguments backed up by expert's quotes and context. Well done.

[@spacecadet35]

The main disadvantages of Thorium reactors is that you cannot use them to make nuclear weapons and the fuel is a lot more available than uranium cycle reactors. The first successful thorium reactor was operating in the 1970s. But every government that wants a nuclear reactor wants it so they can make weapons.

[@SALSN]

Very interesting, great video.

[@ElemXCR]

I'm still stunned why we haven't gotten thorium reactors. Or why no private company were to produce a blueprint and patent it and build one.

[@gordonmcdowell]

DOE GAIN has provided 3 funding instances to Flibe Energy since 2018, so stuff is now moving ahead as opposed to rather stalled and lengthy 2011-2017 period. Not optimal however, still funding constrained.

[@1xm_mx1]

This is the type of cheap, clean energy that will lift nearly everyone out of poverty and also extend our life expectancy and allow more people to live on this earth without more pollution. Thank you for this excellent video, more people need to see this.

[@mymy3172]

In the USA your going up against the Energy Oligarchs, Good Luck!

[@Mac13587]

It's like big pharma and expensive new bad drugs vs old cheap drug combination that are safe. Thorium is cheap, easy and scalable, above all safe

[@markm.9458]

What a shame this clip, upon clip, wasn't produced properly.

[@atheistcable]

mark m. I found it fascinating and kept my attention. It was produced properly.

[@TheHellogs4444]

@@robertlee8805 I think at the current point reactors are done as opposed to solar. There's just too much capex involved.

[@kenloose3560]

@@TheHellogs4444 Solar does not work very well at night and batteries are not ready to step in so in the interim there is a place for a safe, base load, non carbon fuel. Thorium seems to be a good candidate.

[@TheHellogs4444]

@@kenloose3560 Yeah, but look at the damn cap ex involved and the unit cost. Look at the wiki page for lifetime cost of nuclear (no estimates for Th tho). It's just economically not viable over solar panels + batteries

[@kenloose3560]

@@TheHellogs4444 Baseload, Baseload! Solar cannot sustain baseload. Without a baseload energy source wind and solar are appendages to the power supply. Batteries do not appear out of thin air. They too take money and resources to produce and dispose of later. The same can be said of solar panels. Wind and solar are not free. They too have their financial and environmental costs that must be factored in. Compare Electricity costs in Germany where they have gone heavily into wind and solar to costs in France that has chosen a nuclear option.

[@darioampuy]

melted salt reactors and thorium reactors were rejected because manhattan project needed weaponized grade uranium and plutonium, and those are byproducts of fast spectrum reactors and can't be made with liquid fuel and thermal spectrum reactors

[@stupidburp]

The glut of weapons grade material in inventory from reducing stockpiles means that producing large amounts of new material isn't even necessary any more for weapons production anyways. Even for the most hawkish minded people then there is no good reason not to switch to a thorium fuel cycle.

[@darioampuy]

that's the current line of tought... i'm talking about back then... back then energy eficiency and security wasn't as much a priority as means for obtaining militar grade fissible materials... the weapons race run for so long that thorium and liquid fuel reactor designs were forgoten completelly. and now at least in USA there is a lobby to keep the current nuclear designs and all the industry behind it. it's as if the betamax developer was the goverment counselor about what standard the country should adopt beween beta and vhs.

[@mtube620]

Yup, the uranium nuclear generation is all about sourcing weapon grade uranium and plutonium.

[@alanbrown397]

Correct - but the sourcing is a side product of the fuel production process for reactor fuel - U238 (depleted uranium) is an essential component of h-bombs as a for-instance. A LFTR will happily eat U238 as a sidestream fuel (or unenriched uranium, but why would you do that?)

[@terminusest5902]

LFTRs could produce weapons material but could easily burn up weapons material as well. So we can reduce stocks of dangerous nuclear waste. Specific complaints about LFTRs is overboard. Fast breeder reactors would be worse. Depends on how they are used.

[@melio6768]

I hope the algorithm will soon spread this incredibly good video around the world!

[@RGSTR]

Wow! What a great documentary! I only clicked on it because it kept showing up in my recommendations... Seeing the length I decided to quit as soon as it got boring - which it didn't! Great editing. Speaking of recommendations, this, although being two years old, seems to have been suddenly pushed over the last few weeks? Strange! I won't complain though.

[@SuperReznative]

Reggiostar I was researching.. thorium,,/ interest videos several years ago.as a spin- off of Fukushima radiation disaster..U tube since has been censoring certain ( truth and Christian) content by changing its algorithms.; ..so yes it is good to take note... of why the big push.; on this now...while other subject matter becomes obscure.. Google too has been doing this as well,,users have noted certain subjects (like hillary,,,or clinton foundation,)are available on other search engines Be open minded,,be vigilint.

[@reedcriswell6654]

Do the big oil companies have something to do with blocking Thorium?

[@coronalight77]

Ok ok you got me lol. Title was a good lure.

[@bobbyjohnson2956]

Solving the corrosion problem, , I think is a major problem .

[@rashidisw]

@@c7042 Corrosion are mostly happens due to heat of the flowing molten salt, its not chemical based corrosion.

[@SunShine-xc6dh]

​@@rashidiswcorrosion is chemical process.

[@sownheard]

I literally just learned about thorium in the last few years 😄 I can't wait for the future to take place.

[@crackwitz]

hey nice laser pointer effect. I've been doing similar things. the noise popping up on edges in the picture gave it away.

[@hinternsaubachel5109]

It is also more difficult to gain fissile materials from a thorium reactor to make nuclear weapons apposed to Uranium based technology. This also may have played a small role in why we use the type we do now.

[@erbalumkan369]

Big role. I would even say, lead role.

[@SunShine-xc6dh]

No it isn't the process is 100% dependent on the creation of fissile material from the thorium

[@ravenraven5165]

Simple thorium is the end of nuclear weapons.....

[@aleksandersuur9475]

How so? Thorium fuel cycle is impossible without breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities. That's perfect for bomb grade plutonium production, just mix in some depleted uranium and extract plutonium from spent fuel. Hey presto, bomb material, as much of it as you can be bothered to stockpile and with better ratio of plutonium isotopes than from an uranium reactor.

[@Rob_Moilanen]

@@aleksandersuur9475 You should probably take a physics class, your oversimplification leaves out several key facts as to why it doesn't work that way, nor is as simple as you make it!

[@aleksandersuur9475]

While it's certainly a gross simplification(what do you expect from a youtube comment?) it will still very much work. All you need to breed Pu239 is U238 and neutron flux, you can have a process tube running through your reactor, or you can include U238 in the fuel mix itself, that's up to you. You can successfully do the latter in liquid salt reactors, in solid fueled reactors it only really works if you have process tubes, or if you shut down the reactor much more often that you would a regular power reactor. India managed to build a weapons stockpile with CANDU reactors just fine, you'll have an ever easier time of it with a suitable thorium reactor. Reprocessing facility comes as a package deal.

[@Rob_Moilanen]

@@aleksandersuur9475 No, because with a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor you're typically not going to be operating in a fast spectrum, you'll be in the much slower thermal spectrum and U 238 doesn't "breed" very well in that spectrum, so you're not going to be a proliferator of Plutonium 239 with this cycle. The physics has got you by the balls there and will crush your proliferation dreams. Remember the thing about Thorium is your bottleneck is your 28 day decay cycle to get it to a fissile U233 product to sustain the reaction, if you try to operate in the fast spectrum you'll burn up your fissile product faster than you can make it. Now, the only way you're going to get around the physics of that bottleneck is to put in multiple fueling loops to keep up with your fast fissile cycle. Now, this is where the economics of doing a fast cycle Thorium plant bite you in the ass while the physics has got you by the balls. Now your fast Thorium plant costs more to build than a conventional breeder plant cause you had to put in extra fuel loops just to keep it running. So your return on investment is going to be so far out (if you ever see it) that you'll never be able to afford to build that plant and still have it make economic sense to anyone that you are looking to invest into it. If the economic numbers don't work and you're hostage to the physics of Thorium, it's just not going to happen. Hell, even with the US government pissing billions into these projects, they couldn't get around those two key facts (both the physics and the economics) about Thorium, that's why they never went there to start with. Not to mention the two of the salt fast breeders they built, did melt their solid fuel cores (EBR-1 and Fermi-1). Even though both happened for very different reasons, folks start losing their shit when they found out, so yeah that's not gonna happen again (at least not in the US anyway). Ok, now you understand why fast cycle Thorium is out of the question, you're back to the slower thermal spectrum Thorium cycle. You're probably thinking you're out of the woods since you got rid of an economic headache and went with the more feasible slow cycle. Not so fast there speedy, cause here's a big ole bowl of nope when we slap the non-proliferation cuffs on you for good. As I said earlier, U238 doesn't do "breeding" in the slow cycle, cause it only gives off 1 neutron (actually 1 point 8 or 9 something, but for all intents that point something is as useless as creating methane from a fart, so you only get 1 usable neutron) and to do breeding you need spare 2 neutrons, 1 to sustain the reaction and the other to breed U238 to make Plutonium 239. Ok so that's one handcuff and here comes another bowl of nope to stop you and put you in non-proliferation jail. The thing about Thorium is it's a fatty, it loves to absorb neutrons both as it's raw 232 form and as it's lean mean fissile creating U233 machine. BUT when U233 fissions it gives off 2 neutrons (as earlier, actually 2 point something, but again that point something is useless as methane from a fart, so 2 usable and that's it), 1 of those is to feed to ole fatty Thorium 232 and send it off on its 28 day crash diet to become lean and mean U233, the other to sustain the reaction. Now remember U233 just came back from a crash diet, it's hungry and it wants to be a slow fatty again, so it has about a 30% chance of absorbing a neutron and becoming ole slow fatty U234, which as you know is not a fissile product. Ok now you're thinking hey U234, we're just 1 neutron shy of getting on the Zoomba Majic Bus Utopia 235, right? Uhm yeah, hope you enjoyed the other bowl of nope, here have another, cause where are you getting the spare neutron from to become U235? Cause you only had 2 spares to start with, you sent 1 with ole fatty Thorium and got greedy and ate the other to become fatty U234. So not only do you not get to be U235, but you also just put the fire out cause you didn't have a spare neutron to continue the reaction. CLICK CLICK, you're now under arrest and going to non-proliferation jail, toodles~ Ok nerds, don't lose your shit, I know that's an exaggeration of what happens. But atleast it gets the point across as to why you're not getting on the nuclear bomb bandwagon with a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor. If the economics doesn't bust your ass one way, the physics has got you by the nuts the other way, so either way, it's just not happening!

[@aleksandersuur9475]

The neutron spectra is not optimal for Pu239 breeding, sure. But think about this for a second, B Reactor in Hanford was only designed to 250MW thermal, what's the total power of a country full of power stations? France is averaging something like 50GWe of nuclear power. It doesn't matter that the breeding per unit of reactor power is going slowly, you overpower that with the sheer scale of reactor power you are using for power generation anyway. Crucially, with a liquid thorium salt reactor, you pretty much need constant fuel replacement and reprocessing. It's not a batch processing type of deal with such reactors, it's more like CANDU reactors where you replace a bit of fuel pretty much daily. And you do need reprocessing to keep the fuel cycle going. At that point bomb grade plutonium extraction is pretty small thing to add. If your end goal is lots of nukes, do you start by building country full of thorium reactors? No. But if you do so anyway for power generation, then you can certainly build nukes as a side-gig. Sort of like what India did, it's not like they built all these reactors just to make nukes, no they actually need the power and that's the main reason they are building them. That of course did not stop them from using the reactors for dual purpose and building a weapons stockpile on the side.

[@Brunk14]

Funny that Weinberg was a big advocate for molten salt reactors. I agree with him, the guy seemed like a genius. Weird title for the video, when its showing the profound advantages of MSR's

[@bursnurreberg3035]

Hope they figure it out soon in an industrial scale.

[@AlexxMk2]

This is gold, now if some political channels would pull their head out and discuss this.

[@christophermasterson8753]

Thorium can't be made into a weapon. I've heard.

[@The9thDoctor]

it can but it's like 100 times harder to make a bomb out of thorium waste products compared to uranium and the bombs made with it are not as good, it'd be way more expensive to make a bomb using thorium waste products than to just make a bomb with current methods.

[@patricialawson6749]

@@The9thDoctor In 1950 the nuclear bomb was number ONE priority and the electric power production was number TWO. But now we have enough atomic bombs that we give them away "free" to some countries. So what is number ONE priority now in 2020 ? The bomb or low cost electric power ? Regards, Patricia

[@The9thDoctor]

@@patricialawson6749 it no longer matters, because anti-nuclear people have made it hard to get new designs/methods approved for commerical use.

[@SunShine-xc6dh]

Yep and it also doesn't create power as thorium. Step one in this process is turning useless thorium into fissile uranium which can generate power including in bomb form

[@RaimondoBarbera]

referencing min 30.43 It would be a good thing to protect metallic structure with a synthetic diamond layer or graphite is the best choice. If it would be a very cheap deposition method of a carbon cristal layer how thick the layer should be?

[@MaxB6851]

There should have been water tanks on the hills behind the Fukushima reactor allowing gravity to feed back up water if the diesel motors failed to drive the water pumps, that would have saved the reactors.

[@JamesSavik]

Every new technology has disadvantages. That's what engineers are for. The difficult we can handle. The impossible might take a while.

[@claytonmccormick7506]

the easily possible it takes a politician to screw up.

[@kurtwesterman4315]

Great title, made their algorithm actually circulate the real information to people who need to see it. If you wouldn't have had such a misleading title it might have been buried like many technologies that threaten current industry leaders with a bit of healthy competition which stifles general innovation.

[@gordonmcdowell]

Title is based upon me typing Thorium into Bing search engine in 2017 and seeing what permutations it automatically presented me with. Bing doesn't work that way any more, but I was capturing a top permutation at the time. If you have progressive friends following Dem primaries please take a look at kzbin.info/www/bejne/eHzClKeaqdRrn5I and consider sharing it with them.

[@kc5402]

One of the major disadvantages of Thorium which isn't discussed here, is that it doesn't spread as easily as Nutella. Making sandwiches with it is more difficult.

[@peterhoward492]

Wow! Enlightening

[@61dingbat]

Miniature Thorium power plants

[@garytowne1548]

Mis-titled. This is a good complete story.

[@buskirkr]

There really are no practical disadvantages; only the political ones to the status quo!

[@bobo888bobo]

So the person who put up this video is trying to mislead with the choice of title. Why should we listen?

[@mobiuscoreindustries]

@@bobo888bobo it's misleading because it was intentional. What the author likely wanted to say was to catch anti nuclear people looking for arguments and prove them wrong. But everyone know that if a view is that entrenched they will just click off and find some other way.

[@SpiritsBB]

@23:00 LOL that bus speech threw me off guard.

[@ElmerCat]

In Boston, the Enrico Fermi overpass connects Logan Airport with the Sumner and Callahan tunnels.

[@tomrobingray]

What a very strange documentary, it's like an information fugue. I love it.

[@dannyoman7219]

Simple . The problem is money , the energy people with it don't want to loose it !!!! Simple

[@grehuy]

The problem is never money. Its ALWAYS people who believe in money. (Like you?)

[@SunShine-xc6dh]

If they have money, and this is some super future product, why wouldn't they just corner that market. Energy companies don't care what type of energy you buy just that you buy from them...

[@Globovoyeur]

This is an interesting approach: hard cuts between presentations by (mostly) unnamed speakers who mostly favor thorium. The shot of the solid-fuel advocate in the hearing is clever; he's obviously wrong. Some people will understand that this video goes a long way to make the case for thorium, but others will just be confused by the rapid-fire changes.

[@faustin289]

"The most environmentally friendly way to operate a Thorium breeder, is the ONLY way to operate the Thorium breeder." All advocates of Thorium nuclear energy should memorize this phrase!

[@Trump-a-Tron]

ohhhhh....okaaaay..... LOL!! Considering the dirty players involved in this f***ing GAME, the title of this video is _brilliant_ !! Those that don't know will click, and those that know a little bit (like me).... will also click!! xD

[@sefman5851]

Lol, good eye.

[@daveb5041]

*So we are chasing fusion when we have an almost limitless supply of thorium? That's like trying to build solar panels over an oil field and getting 0.1% of the energy in that same space*

[@gordonmcdowell]

There's quite a bit of Uranium too, but it requires a fast-spectrum (ideally fast-spectrum MSR) to consume it efficiently. I suggest fusion ought to still be pursued, that ITER experiments and hardware continue (as there's already sunk-cost), but that people recognize it is entirely possible fusion will NEVER be practical. It might be practical. I expect it will (one day) be practical. But it MIGHT NOT. No one is re-creating the conditions inside the sun, because the sun is actually low-energy-density... the reason the sun produces so much power is because it is freaking huge. It is huge, and we can't create gravity. That's not news to fusion researchers, but I don't think voters see the difference between momentary break-even and a practical energy supply. Contrast that with Th-MSR. IMHO very doable. Right now biggest challenge is "Chemical Kidney", which (as Kirk Explained in Brussels in 2018) can be greatly advanced with low-cost non-radioactive chemistry R&D as can be conducted on university campuses (not national labs). Neutronics and behaviour of liquid leverage computer simulation. Re-testing vessel alloys already scheduled at NRG/Petten (with a MSR fuel test completed just this week). Th-MSR R&D is taking place with the design of commercial reactors in mind. China's building a pilot Thorium (solid-fuel and liquid coolant) Molten Salt Reactor RIGHT NOW. Even if Th-MSR somehow fails to commercialize (and I'd bet that it will), "chasing" Th-MSR assists every other MSR permutation. There are MANY permutations, and they all start with the basic notion that the water used in BWR and PWR can be improved upon using Molten Salts as coolant instead. From there... different fuel cycles... fast-or-thermal spectrum... solid-or-dissolved fuel... even Moltex has a notion of liquid-fuel in metal-pins. All sorts of ideas. And just as MSRE already happened in the 60s, there's no looming question as to whether the concept is practical. An MSR pilot has been done already (MSRE). The participants considered it a success, and were shocked when the program was cancelled.

[@faustin289]

Going with your metaphor, it would be actually wise to build a solar panel plant over an oil field. Solar is clean and renewable, oil is neither. Thorium is a game changer....but fusion energy, if achieved, would propel our civilization to a whole new level.

[@mobiuscoreindustries]

Just like i say with renewables and nuclear : they aren't mutually exclusive. Thorium can power up humanity for Millennias, so does solar, so does fusion. We should not be picking favourites, we should simply fire all cylinders and unleash the strongest potential humanity ever had. We need to innovate everything, everywhere and everytime to pave our way to the stars

[@JohnJones1987]

You had me in the first half, not gonna lie!

[@ThomasLaverne]

Very good but quite messy video! Extremely interesting though!

[@jordansprecher259]

Man, Terraria looks so different in this video. Did they update the rhodium mod?

[@MichaelWolffKG4Y]

Clever naming - love the approach! Thanks for continuing to provide the information you provide to this ol' Navy Nuke. I'm on board, looking for ways that I might be able to help move things forward. The work of Kurt Sorenson and others has done much in the way of evangelizing this approach among those interested in such things, but overcoming short attention span syndrome is a big obstacle to getting the support of the mainstream. Even the traditionally anti-nuclear factions of the American left are re-evaluating what is and isn't rational with regard to this fear of nuclear anything. Whether this is 'the' way forward, or merely 'a' way forward, to meet the energy challenges of now and the future, it seems that we're kidding ourselves if we think we can overcome using solar and wind as carbon-free emissions solutions developing slowly with increasing demands that seem to never relent.

[@stevewyatt3339]

it is a 1 minute conversation, it destroys the vessel too often to be worth it

[@JasonCunliffe]

Great Thank you !

[@tmackintl]

Confusing title, sounds anti-thorium, but video is pro-thorium... msr sounds great, but I know nothing about it.

[@buskirkr]

You understood it perfectly!

[@taaviparn9175]

22:59 Preaching Thorium on a bus. Lol. I too like thorium but not this frantically.

[@MarkBarrett]

They mentioned they can extract Xenon from by-products. Those gases are actually in short supply.

[@DanFrederiksen]

Would it be well suitable for subs too? if it can't go too critical and is fairly compact. Military interest could pave some ways.

[@willerwin3201]

Here are the actual disadvantages: 1. Thorium power plants require fuel reprocessing. 2. Because of #1, thorium power plants are intrinsically more complicated than many current light water and heavy water reactors. Thus they would be more costly to operate and have more points of failure. 3. Thorium isn't as developed as a fuel; there are very few demonstrated designs. 4. Thorium requires different mining, milling, and fuel processing infrastructure that doesn't currently exist, adding significantly to its up-front costs. 5. There is no shortage of uranium or plutonium vs our present needs, so there isn't a lot of incentive to develop it. 6. Natural gas is cheaper than nuclear power these days. Here are its advantages: 1. You can breed thorium in the thermal spectrum. 2. It produces less high-actinide waste. Every other purported advantage of thorium is usually false, misleading, or irrelevant. You can absolutely use a thorium reactor to create a nuclear bomb. Its efficiency arguments are little different than those in favor of fast breeder reactors for uranium and plutonium, and the safety features of such reactors are similar to the molten salt reactor concept. I'm all for developing thorium reactors, but not at the cost of developing more uranium and plutonium-based designs. This doesn't need to be an either/or debate.

[@GordonMcDowellPublic]

Fair.

[@Olie956]

A virtually infinite energy resource. I can see the disadvantages...

[@istand4truth]

Fascinating

[@edsemaj]

I appreciate minds at work .........

[@attaque71]

I wish there was a way to get a hearing with Trump and sweet talk him into pushing for this tech.

[@Enumclaw]

Who says we can't? Lets all Tweet him about it.

[@colinbergmann5750]

He wants winning. This is winning. He'd be into this bigly.

[@xpeterson]

Quick, someone turn this presentation into a coloring book!

[@terminusest5902]

Trump will say " that sound great" then do nothing. His friends and big supporters do not want Thorium to compete with oil, coal and Uranium industry. The US government subsidies these big, profit making power industries. They just funded $80 000 000 to future nuclear power. That is a small fraction of the money they give to fossil fossil fuel corporations. China has just funded $3000 000 000 to develop next generation nuclear power.The big US uranium based nuclear power bureaucrats are unlikely to approve building any next generation reactors for the foreseeable future. So China and India will develop next generation nuclear reactors.

[@klesk4never]

Tell him that China is winning the race to build Thorium reactor. USA would have working molten salt Thorium reactor by 2021 and it would be great, trust me it would be the best Thorium reactor you had ever seen, much better then Chinese Thorium reactor. And it would require no Mexicans to run, no Mexicans at all.

[@jerrylove865]

The video says two things. 1) Several non-US countries are "doing it right". 2) US companies are happy to do what works, they just don't want to be first at it. OK. I hardly see a problem. Let Canada or China or wherever pilot the system and then implament the mature system here. And since most of this is more than 8 years old... if "regulation" is the issue, this must have already happened. How many large thorium reactors are operating today in China? Canada? Elsewhere?

[@vir042]

I dont think you understand the time things like this take.. Take fusion for example, a few years ago china+usa+eu+india+jp+ru decided to invest in a type of reactor that would produce power if you built it large enough, so they decided to invest in it together. Building the reactor is going to take 12 years alone, then they will run the reactor for 10 years before starting to go up in high enough power to produce electricity. So with a research reactor that started building 2013 it is going to produce energy at 2035 at best..

[@jerrylove865]

None of those statements seem relevent. You don't want to build a large number of plants if you don't have a working research reactor; and if all these other countries are "doing it right" as claimed, one of them will setup the research reactor... so no problem. The only way the status quo, as described, need changing is if someone is attempting to use this as an excuse for personal gain.

[@vir042]

@@jerrylove865 I simply responded to the time-table, i don't care about what usa is doing. I just said that even though countries started building research reactors 8 years ago, i doubt any of them are in even 50% capacity yet. I also agree there is no point in building 100s of reactors before the research is done, but at the same time i personally think there should be one research station in EU so that we can get that expertise as well. I would rather not trust that china let us practise on their reactor and its always good to get hands on experience before you start to build real reactors.

[@LoisoPondohva]

8 years is less than one takes to build. If we are talking large commercial ones, China is building 3 rn. As for operational, there are around 7 research ones that are under 300MW. But those still count to prove it works. The problem that this video brings up is the fact that we could've been at this stage 70 years ago if not for internal American politics and broken regulations.

[@jerrylove865]

@@LoisoPondohva "The problem that this video brings up is the fact that we could've been at this stage 70 years ago if not for internal American politics and broken regulations" America regulates 5% of the world's population; unless you are saying no one has yet to advance to where the US was in 1950.

[@afterthesmash]

Concerning 4:06 MIT alumni Dr. Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie founded Transatomic Power in 2011. Its board directors included E Ink Corporation co-founder Russ Wilcox. Among its backers were the venture capital outfit Founders Fund, of which Peter Thiel is a partner. ... In 2018 the company announced that it would be winding down and open source its intellectual property. *The company discovered that in 2016 it had made errors in its early analysis and realized that the design couldn't consume nuclear waste.* Despite the error, class act leaving behind the fruits of their labours for the next guy.

[@jimmyjames6318]

We need to make this happen. What is it going to take? 🙏

[@philipfreeman72]

Low pressure & less pollution I don't see disadvantages.

[@PaulHigginbothamSr]

This is so clearly the best fuel, the best method, and the way forward with nuclear reactors there is no question. Thank you Kirk, you are simply a good NASA engineer. Every engineer needs understand this truth. Flibe? On that I am not sure because it has lithium in it. Pure sodium fluoride might be better because no tritium will be generated.

[@jaywerner1648]

I've been watching a few of these videos on youtube, that all seem to have a mash up of lectures and interviews. Does anyone know where to fined the originals?

[@gordonmcdowell]

Jay Werner ThoriumRemix.com

[@ronaldvankuyk908]

Thorium can be transformed into uranium 235 and not made into plutonium which as weapon material was first choice for the military .got it.ronadam

[@Luciphur]

Who his man Kirk Sorensen? I cant find him on wikipedia except 9 lines on Flibe Energy page.

[@Killerean]

The Thorium reactor certainly is an interesting method for making energy, however, even I can see some deficiencies in it's working principle. These deficiencies will have to be addressed before sharp model is introduced. The need for the fuel to remain molten will be the key challenge around these reactors. Even though it sounds great to have a fuel you can just flush like a toilet, there is a key moment in the operation of the shutdown procedure that could ruin the whole thing. Should you have a failure that results in the flush piping cooling before the fuel is flushed, the flush procedure will become ineffective. Fuel rushing down the pipe will freeze over and block the flush pipe. With molten salt we're talking serious temperatures that need to be maintained at flush piping at all times to maintain it operational. Another type of failure will render the whole reactor inoperable. That is when the reactor doesn't flush, but also couldn't maintain the reaction. Then, the fuel freezes directly in the reactor, with no way to re-melt it, destroying the reactor and all adjacent components containing the circulating fuel that can't be re-melted. By this I don't mean we shouldn't perform research on this type of reactor. I say these things to remind you that thorium reactors are no miracle machines. They are at least as difficult, if not more difficult compared to solid fuel reactor. And so far, there was very little thorough large scale research done on these things. There are challenges not only directly visible, but also hidden ones, we didn't experience with these reactors so far, because we weren't using them. That's why we should approach this technology with caution, making sure we are not closing our eyes before potential dangers of this technology.

[@gordonmcdowell]

I don't know if Flibe Energy has commissioned simulations of their own drain tank yet but others have. Here's a fast-spectrum-MSR drain tank analysis: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a4i7cn-fiqpjiZI , and thermal-spectrum-MSR (for ThorCon): kzbin.info/www/bejne/np64q32rq8afkKM ...I don't know if drain-tank analysis is part of any DOE GAIN vouchers for Flibe Energy but right now their biggest news is Chemical Kidney funding and not Drain Tank.

[@bearcatben4762]

Why not both uranium and thorium? If coal and natural gas can coexist in the electricity market then uranium and thorium can

[@claytonmccormick7506]

URANIUM can be burned in a phase 4 reactor it is much harder to burn thorium in a phase 3 reactor.

[@buskirkr]

@@claytonmccormick7506 Can thorium be burned in a phase 4 reactor? Can uranium be burned in a phase 3 reactor? Apples and oranges?

[@claytonmccormick7506]

@@buskirkr thorium cycle can burn uranium as well as any high level waste there is a different decomposition chain with thorium allowing the burning close to completion more things and because these are liquid reactors you do not have the breakdown problems that limit solid core reactors to about 2% conversion.

[@SunShine-xc6dh]

Thorium can't compete without help, just like natural gas required massive regulations on coal power before it could compete

[@not2tees]

Whoever made this video deserves a lot of credit - was that you, Gordon McDowell? Super well done, excellent editing and creative sequencing, and a mountain of effort, I'd say.

[@gordonmcdowell]

I did create it, yes. Thanks. There were some truly awful videos showing up in response to searching for "Thorium Disadvantages" so figured people should be able to find something informative instead.

[@axeman6560]

@@gordonmcdowell well done, great for a layman like me.

[@gregvassilakos]

This video sort of garbles the description of the design of the Fukushima reactors. They were Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) that operated at much lower pressure than the Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) that are the most common type in the United States.

[@flanker53]

India is already building a three stage thorium based power plant is expected to complete by 2019

[@theq4602]

How's that going?

[@alanbrown397]

Last time I checked, India was building a conventional light water design with thorium rods. This can only ever be as efficient as uranium (not very) and has the same disadvantages as a uranium/water design, inasmuch as the rod have to be pulled from service long before they're burned up, making for lots of waste or an expensive reprocessing proposition. Thorium _can_ be used in lightwater designs, but is at a substantial disadvantage to uranium if you do so. The supreme advantage of the liquid fuel molten salt design is that you can get neutron poisons (xenon) out of the loop during operation rather than having them remain trapped in the rods _and_ get final products (helium, tritium) out on a continuous basis as well, whilst only doing _just_ enough inline onsite chemical processing in a tapoff loop to stop the system fouling itself up. Anything problematic/majorly biologically toxic is simply left in the loop until broken down Less mess. less fuss, no nasty shit being carried around the countryside to be susceptable to accidents or terrorism - and after being allowed to cool off (literally, or radiologically) most of the output products are saleable materials. Imagine a world with virtually unlimited supplies of cheap helium - and how fusion research can benefit from having tritium on tap (right now it's fantastically expensive so noone works with it)

[@digitalnomad9985]

@@alanbrown397 "cheap helium" That's another disadvantage for US strategists. Right now, 95% of the Earth's helium comes as a by-product of a particular natural gas mine in Texas. That's why the Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen, because the US wouldn't sell Nazi Germany helium. (It was considered a strategic material, in WW1, dirigibles were used as bombers and even in WW2, barrage balloons were used as a defense against bombers.)

[@alanbrown397]

@@digitalnomad9985 Right now the USA is dumping the strategic reserve on the world market and has been for the last 25 years. It's selling at approx 1/10 the price it used to before that decision, but MSRs could bring that down by another 90-99%. I know how much my employer spends on helium each year, We could do a lot more research if there wasn't 8 figures going into gas purchases - and that's quite apart from the costs of things like MRIs and suchlike. Dirigibles are a sideshow.

[@TheSanien]

Thorium isn't "viable" because it is harder to weaponize there I said it!

[@agentstevehaines9164]

No it's not

[@oldman2800]

It's easier to get plutonium from coal than thorium

[@CriminalizeObesity]

San Ien Jao Not true. Shifting to Thorium would cause suppliers to lose money, and the Nuclear Power industry doesn’t want to make the change since it would cost them lots of money in the short run. There’s far more than enough in our nuclear arsenal to end humanity at the moment.

[@SunShine-xc6dh]

Thorium is useless prior to being weaponized.

[@stephenverchinski409]

Simply asked here. What is the overall life cycle energy return on investment?

[@mariushusejacobsen3221]

It is my understanding you can indeed use U233 for bombs, but with disadvantages. Shorter shelf life, strong EM signature. Would also need complete redesigns from current weapons.

[@liesdamnlies3372]

The U-233 isn't all that disadvantageous itself, and bombs have been tested using it (I think the most recent to do that is India, though people have misreported the source of the material being a CANDU reactor, which it wasn't). It's the side-product of U-232 from the thorium fuel cycle which releases stupid-scary amounts of gamma radiation from it's daughter isotope Tl-208 that make the fuel a bitch to work with. That's the barrier to proliferation.