Thorium Energy Alliance conference 2022

Thomas Jam Pedersen's key note speech at the 11th annual Thorium Energy Alliance Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico October 2022
#technology #nuclear #thorium

[@suchdevelopments]

😁😄🥰👍👍👍👍ENERGY = PROSPERITY - I agree with that.👍

[@bakedbillybacon]

Amazing. Real fast prototiping. Real steel. Real tests. You guys are awesome.

[@kaibe5241]

If they manage to get this going, it's a game-changer for energy until fusion.

[@artsmith103]

​my perspective is Fusion studies are/were a waste compared to have instead progressed further with this.

[@quinto190]

This is getting exciting... Still a lot of development to do, but your vision is getting much more concrete than it was 2017.

[@captainsloth5895]

Very interesting. I hope Copenhagen Atomics, or any other company, successfully deploys their SMR's, before we've set up 1 million wind turbines in the North sea...

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Don't worry your politicians will always find way to spend every dollar you give them. The more you give, the more terror will result from your hard work ;-) Unfortunately we cannot help you, you must stand up for yourself.

[@willemhaifetz-chen1588]

No problem with Nuclear powered ships we can remove all these windmills again - easy, they break quickly anyway.

[@andheiberg]

Great to hear you’re progressing 👌 thanking you for dedicating your time and energy to improving our planet.

[@ingopinkowski1091]

It's about time people and companies do something about thorium reactors, Europe needs it urgently like yesterday. And I hope some politicians come to their senses and support this kind of energy with funds, like solar and wind power😁😁

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Please don't hold your breth while you wait for politicians to come to their senses.

[@ingopinkowski1091]

@@CopenhagenAtomics I know, politicians get paid by the oil industry, that's why countries still depend on Russian or American Oil Imports.

[@scottmedwid1818]

Gordon was wondering who the other film crew was. You guys did good with this! Keep up the good work. And it was good talking to you again Thomas

[@johnthomas5806]

important to the whole world.....YES

[@johnkutsch7609]

Copenhagen is one of the few nuclear Thorium Gen4 companies that will pull this off!

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Copenhagen Atomics do not make Gen4 reactors. This stuff is much more advanced it is Gen1 of thermal breeder reactors!!

[@toomaskrivonogov2055]

Keep up the good work.

[@FonsecaStatter]

Thanks so very much to all of those activists who, over the years, have been doing an awsome work in spreading the basic knowledge necessary to overcome the primitive fear of «nuclear», amongst so many citizens of all walks of life, workers and politicians ...

[@k-mar9587]

Go Thomas, awesome presentation! Greetings from the German delegation!

[@Gustav4]

You said that the prototype reactor would be ready in 2025 in previous presentations.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

It is still the plan to start the test reactor in 2025, see video at 13:58

[@red-baitingswine8816]

Very informative the 3 (6) graphs at the end.

[@catnadas]

Thank you! Way to go!

[@ancapftw9113]

I didn't know there were free, open source simulators. Not a nuclear engineer, but I would love to play with a simulation to try and understand it better. What I'd like to design is a liquid deuterium moderated nuclear rocket engine, preferably that runs on Thorium/u233. The goal would be to have a cheap engine for interplanetary travel. Doubt the simulation can do that, but it would help me understand the deuterium moderated Thorium cycle

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

All our open source simulations are here: github.com/openmsr and here github.com/copenhagenatomics Soon we will post an easy tutorial for simulation. Be sure to follow so you don't miss it.

[@jwestney2859]

Jam is the coolest middle name I have ever heard!

[@KellyLCall]

I really love this! I want one.

[@der_joschi]

Well done!!, Great news

[@Rosary153]

Can't you do it with just uranium instead of doing it with thorium.are you planning to use SNF ,does it include reprocessing to use SNF

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

We believe that the thermal thorium breeder reactor can make energy at roughly half price compared to use of uranium in the long term. Thus thorium seems a no brainer to us.

[@ThoriumRemix]

I know it would appear redundant in the context of your own channel, but I think you should add the name of the reactor or Copenhagen Atomics to the title of your video. For example I've got a TEAC11 playlist and your video (in a KZbin playlist) gives very little idea what is being presented in the playlist.

[@svendtveskg5719]

Let's go!

[@christoz77]

Why is the rest of the world asleep on this?? Proud of YALL

[@chapter4travels]

There are two primary reasons. 1. The fossil fuel industry knows that nuclear is the only technology that can replace them and they are fighting every step of the way. 2. The climate "Crisis" industry knows that nuclear is the only technology that can replace fossil fuels and they are fighting every step of the way

[@centeriron]

Thank you for this great presentation) But I have a question to you. How you will handle with radiation dose, which may be gained by personal at periodic maintenance of reactor equipment? Because all of the molten salt circuit (reactor itself, pumps, heat exchangers, pipelines etc.) will be contaminated by radioactive fission byproducts. I will be glad for your answer)

[@johnkutsch7609]

I wont answer for Copenhagen, but in general, if designed for remote maintenance, then no humans have to be near a reactor. You can also design it so that it is densified and put in sarcophagus at end of life. These are very dense energy systems, and the amount of waste and danger is very low - we know how to do this, we do it all the time, everyday.

[@patrickmclaughlin6013]

I dunno. These do seem to be modular so you could swap them out periodically and that them to a maintenance facility designed to service the units. This tech is just so promising and practical.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Service is not possible on these units. We use remote controlled handling and units will cool off radioactively before they are recycled in a closed facility. Only tiny exposure to humans.

[@christoz77]

I am so excited! If I become El Presidente del Mundo! Y’all will be front and center ! We only have a few years to save the world, we shall succeed

[@chapter4travels]

If there was a question and answer period after the presentation could you please show that.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

People are complaining that the video is already too long. Maybe we will publish Q&A seperately.

[@chapter4travels]

@@CopenhagenAtomics Either way is fine with me. I find the Q&A section to often be the most interesting part. Also, the one-on-one follow-up discussions that happen afterward.

[@NomenNescio99]

@@CopenhagenAtomics The video is too short! Please publish the qa session!

[@bentray1908]

The last example looks like highly enriched uranium with over 50% 235

[@patrickmclaughlin6013]

Imho, this shipping container msr is the way to go. It solves so many problems and can be augmented to existing infrastructure.

[@tigertiger1699]

Jesus.. we put a 1 MW CAT 3408 in a 20ft box.., was a super tight fit.. 1MW Why are we pissing around.. let’s do this..

[@ulfwestberg2027]

Really interesting

[@NuniqueNewNork]

You're right. Time for pyrob+ and other reprocessing. But hey, cheap solid state phonon resonance / nuclear acceleration is real. Even the anomalous decay observed by George Braxton Pegram was evidence of 'low energy nuclear reactions'. PS - Thorium 228 isomers have a frequency, and metaparticles can exist in quanta of time energy. please feel free to ask me about CVD lithium tantalate on zirconium vibrated with a high harmonic. =) I give away ideas for fun. I'm trying to fund a nanoparticle project. lol. I feel like sometimes I'm dabbling in some next gen stuff in my head. no lab. in my head.

[@MrRolnicek]

It's great that they're building and running lots of salt loops, developing pumps and targeting shipping container size. Those are all AMAZING qualities. There is, however, one BIG issue I have with this. And it's the presentation. Presenting that Thorium is a great advantage because when you mine Uranium, most of it is the useless U238 which isn't a fissile material, it's only a fertile material and only a small portion of it is the U235 that you want beacuse it's fissile whereas when you mine Thorium you only get one isotope. The problem is that the one isotope of Thorium is also only a "useless" fertile material which means any comparison to U235 is misplaced at best.

[@anthonydonnellon9832]

From my very limited understanding of this, the difference between the two fertile isotopes, is that waste from thorium/U233 produces waste with a far shorter half-life than U238. This is because the decay chain is shorter. While I agree that this is not as big of a selling point as it’s made out to be, it may be the fact that thorium is almost useless for weapons production, unlike Plutonium.

[@MrRolnicek]

@@anthonydonnellon9832 Yea the first part is true, the second part is way wrong. U233 is about as good for nuclear weapons as Plutonium is. What you CAN do is contaminate your Thorium reactor with Uranium 238 so as your Thorium generates the fissile U233 it will be automatically contaminated with U238. So for nuclear weapon use you'd need to separate the isotopes rather than simply separating elements chemically. But then you have Plutonium in there as well made from the U238 so eh...

[@MrGottaQuestion]

@@MrRolnicek contaminate with U232 - a hard gamma ray emitter that would destroy your centrifuges and kill your scientists if you try to purify for a bomb.

[@MrGottaQuestion]

Any uranium light water reactor actually requires for fertile material to be continuously transmuted (by capturing neutrons) into fisile material. Although U235 is required to get the reaction going (at 0.7% for heavy water CANDU, but at higher percentages in low enriched uranium for light water reactors), the reactor would soon use up the u235 and the reaction would stop. However, the u238 comprising about 97% or more of the fuel gets transmuted upon nuetron capture to plutonium which is then fissile and continues the reaction in the reactor, providing the energy to keep the turbine spinning as well as further neutrons to keep transmuting u238 ("all" the u235 is used up at this point) and then splitting the plutonium. This is why the transuranics in the spent nuclear waste that Copenhagen atomics wants to burn up has a large portion of plutonium (as seen at the end of the video). Saying thorium is a "useless" isotope is like saying that u238 is a "useless" isotope that is fertile, awaiting neutrons to become fisile and then undergo fission. I assume the comparison you are referencing is that of the uranium light water reactor vs. Copenhagen atomics reactor. Let's take the mining. Although most uranium is discarded (as "depleted" uranium), tremendous mining of uranium is still required. Most of this is u238, and most of a reactors' fuel rod is u238. Most of the energy produced by the reactor in turn comes from u238 (transmuted into plutonium of course). In most molten salt thorium reactors, including that of Copenhagen atomics, thorium would be transmuted through neutron flux into uranium (after about a month of being an isotope of protactinium). It would then generate energy. Regardless of whether your reactor is solid core water cooled graphite moderated LEU, or a thorium MSR, your reactor starts off with a fissile material transmuting lots of fertile material which later becomes the vast majority of your fisile material, keeping the reactor going. The only difference is that, mining wise, unlike with light water reactors, the molten salt reactors would not require any mining as both nuclear waste (containing the fisile "starter") as well as the thorium (the fertile material to be "bred" into fisile material) is in abundant supply today as a "waste" product without any future mining needed for decades or even centuries of human energy supply. Of course mining could be carried out in the distant figure to guarantee millennia of energy supply, but today is totally not needed. In what other way is the comparison to U238 "unfair"?

[@MrGottaQuestion]

Comparison to U235*

[@pauljbusby]

The most important Topic on the Planet. Absolute no Brainer...The problem you have is the Criminals who run this Planet won't have a bar of it

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Yes! we need a #reboot

[@Piccodon]

I just can't picture 3m^3 of deuterium oxide at 760°C inside a shipping container. Why not use graphite?

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

D2O is a better moderator than graphite. It can last for more than 50 years and is lower cost on the long term and create less waste. - And we keep the D2O below 25C, which result in small termal losses, but the economics gets almost twice as good as when using graphite, thus the thermal loss become a no brainer.

[@Piccodon]

@@CopenhagenAtomics Thanks for your explanation. Water at 2250psi is a major safety problem. Brilliant .

[@brightshadowdenmark]

Godt arbejde gutter :D er det muligt vi få en kort video på Dansk som vi kan vise til de danskere der ikke er så skrappe til engelsk, så de også kan forstå principperne bag TMSR's og hvor langt udviklingen er ?

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

I løbet af Nov kommer der en video på Dansk her i kanalen.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Find den danske video her: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fZ6baaGFbrqEbrc

[@brightshadowdenmark]

@@CopenhagenAtomics tusind tak :D

[@SkovlyWolf]

Spændende foredrag. Hvis I svejser i jeres stål tænker jeg I anvender 316Ti, da det er nemmere at svejse i end 316 grundet 0,5% titanium der øger varmeledningsevnen (så vidt jeg har forstået det).

[@alexlawcb]

Hope you succeed

[@edpiv2233]

Kirk is the man

[@davidpetzer5725]

Captain Kirk

[@johnerichoare7732]

It's about time Thorium Atomic energy replaced fossil fuels. Starting with the Royce Royce thorium molten salt modular reactors outside big cities in Britain as a start. John Eric Hoare.

[@YellowRambler]

Thanks it’s good to know it’s more then the Chinese in this race. Does this reactor have thermal processing capabilities for things like crude oil refinery to reduce carbon footprint of fuel’s ⛽️, would its output be high enough for making Cement? The one use case for the thermal output, I hope never happens is crude oil fracking.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

The higher the output temperature the more expensive. There are lot's of application requireing 500 - 600 C heat. But yes we could deliver 1000 C, but this would be more than twice the price per kWh of heat at that temperature.

[@frankkolmann4801]

Your biggest problem will be gamma radiation. Even if you buried the containers they will make the soil radioactive. The suns gamma rays are reduced in power as the rays slowly force their way through the body of the star and become the light we see. Say you place the container into a room constructed of cast iron walls 50mm thick you have a shield, but then maintenance becomes a problem as the room will be intensely radioactive.

[@gerritcoetzee9075]

We have the spent nuclear fuel. Just give us the reactors to run them.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Which address should we sent them to? ;-)

[@gerritcoetzee9075]

@@CopenhagenAtomics Not sure if you are serious or not. The address is: Abbott Inland Port Johannesburg, South Africa. Abbott manages all of our import products.

[@JohnChampagne]

The fact that there's no economic penalty to running at 100% suggests that a system that generates electricity AND intense heat to drive the production of liquid fuels for transport could benefit from the ability to quickly shift from one use to the other, depending, primarily, on the volatile price of electricity. Liquid fuels made by *removing* carbon from the air would not contribute to accumulation of CO₂ in the atmosphere. The system can be sustainable, with no need to replace current fleet of vehicles.

[@danielchristopher2933]

"molten state" is "plasma state", Correct?

[@smftrsd]

No it is the Liquid state Like the molten state of ice is water

[@nibiruresearch]

Very hopeful news!! Who is paying this development? Good luck to all of you i Copenhagen,

[@patrickpersson2996]

us investors :D also got some money from the EU if my memory is correct

[@patrickpersson2996]

also they sell their salts etc. so there is some income already

[@nibiruresearch]

@@patrickpersson2996 Thank you Patrick.

[@nibiruresearch]

@@patrickpersson2996 Dear Patrick, I hope so. The EU spends so much money on burning trees. That is an insane crime in my view.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

We also sell molten salt test loops.

[@albertgerard4639]

Just casually drops carbon-carbon cores are required

[@MrGottaQuestion]

Explain please, if you find this very difficult to do

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

The first reactor will have a metal core, but the neutron economy is better if we use a carbon-carbon core. Thus this is the long term goal and what several of the shown plots were based on.

[@albertgerard4639]

@@CopenhagenAtomics I'm sure you know about the challenges of carbon-carbon, built by gaseous depositing onto carbon fibers. Difficult and can't be made solid :(

[@vauchomarx6733]

What still concerns me is that widespread use of small, modular breeder reactors might pose a big proliferation risk. With thorium as main fuel, it may become easy to obtain weapon-grade U-233.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Hi. There is a misunderstanding, you cannot obtain weapon-grade U-233 from Copenhagen Atomics reactors. We do not seperate Pa233, thus you can only get reactor grade U233, which is less of a prolifiration risk than reactor grade plutonium, which you have in all ~400 nuclear reactors in service today. Thus these reactors are more safe than all the existing reactors, which has already proven to be super safe.

[@JanEskildsen]

Dansk tekstudgave i artikelform ønskes - og danske undertekster.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

Vi har ikke en artikel lige nu. Men du kan se denne video fra os på dansk. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fZ6baaGFbrqEbrc

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Economic dead end. The massive increase in the grid capacity means building 5 times more capacity in a no fossil fueled world. The grid is 10 times more expensive to build than the total power plants. All nuclear promoters know it is the grid that is the biggest cost but only talk about the small nuclear thing. They say nothing about the loss of the high energy density fossil fuels and 5 times more power plants that will be needed. But the electricity has to be transported, so let's cut the b...sht, these are intelligent people and they say nothing about the massive cost that is the massive grid capacity increases and construction costs of the build. In Australia the $1trillion power plants will need $10trillion grids. If 20million Tesla vehicles given away free that is only $0.07 trillion. And then you do not even need any power plants on the grid. Stupid stupid stupid, Economics.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

I disagree that the grid expansion is 5 or 10 times more expensive than the power plants. But anything politicians decide usually becomes excessively expensive. Thus it is a complex discussion. I personally believe that half of all nuclear build in the next 40 years will make commodities like ammonia, H2 and aluminium. Thus no grid is needed for that half.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

@@CopenhagenAtomics some people believe that you can walk to the moon. But the engineers can tell you the facts. My life has been construction engineering and tendering. I have construction time in power stations and transmission line construction. Trust me, there is a lot of socialism in the private sector for the grand projects paid by your taxes.

[@migBdk]

First, nuclear power plants can replace fossile fuel plants and biomass plants. Because the Copenhagen Atomics reactor is a small MSR, the new plants can use the exact same grid as the old plants. And they can generate the electric energy a lot cheaper. So the economics checks out really great. Now, if we want to phase out the fissile fuels that kill about 1 mio. people every year from air pollution. Then we also need to replace the fossile fuel in engines and heaters. This will require some investment to do. However, it also have nothing to do with the economics of nuclear power.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

@@migBdk did you say more national power grids with more nuclear power??? To replace fossil fuelled electricity generation ????? The national grid is at capacity now. 5 times more central nuclear electricity means a massive national grid expansion, 5 times bigger grid. The grid is the killer cost. Electricity is the most expensive energy to transport.

[@migBdk]

@@stephenbrickwood1602 read what I write. I explaned clearly that it is not giant central nuclear power plants, but small modular reactors.

[@wbaumschlager]

So basically you are going to burn the business model of the Green Church.

[@edroberts5193]

The data for solar energy payback at the 11.30 mark is quite wrong. Rather than quote Forbes Business Magazine (!), the data from the Fraunhofer Institute is a far better guide - www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf This shows that the figure for solar is at least 15 times better than indicated in the presentation. Hard to take the rest of the presentation seriously with such a data point.

[@MrGottaQuestion]

The government of Germany put all its energy eggs in one basket, regardless of discussions of if the third world (85% of GHG emissions in a few decades) could afford "green" energy (it can't), or whether German "green" energy producers could balance load of intermittents with demand (they can't) especially without use of natural gas (absolutely no way). Despite these very serious scientific and technical red flags, Germany delved right into their "Energiewende". And now you want to cite a figure from a German technical organization that their "green" energy is totally working and going to save the day, and that without citing this exact figure, it's "hard to take this presentation seriously." Seriously?

[@edroberts5193]

​@@MrGottaQuestion Thanks for your feedback, which encouraged me to check other sources. I stand by my comment. If you don't believe the quality of work from the Fraunhofer Institute (which puts you in a very small minority), this is from the Brookhaven National Labs in the US, which gives a similar energy payback period for solar - www.bnl.gov/pv/files/pdf/pe_magazine_fthenakis_2_10_12.pdf . Your feedback prompted me to look at the equivalent numbers for wind energy and light water reactors, and the same order of magnitude discrepancy exists there, eg www.newscientist.com/lastword/mg24332461-400-what-is-the-carbon-payback-period-for-a-wind-turbine/ and isa.org.usyd.edu.au/publications/documents/ISA_Nuclear_Report.pdf Assuming a 50 year reactor life before refurbishment, the number for LWR is 7.7, not 75.

[@MrGottaQuestion]

@@edroberts5193 I would venture a guess that much of the energy required for LWR involves enriching uranium. Big questions emerge - does this processing happen by the more efficient centrifuges or are the numbers you are seeing from the '50s before this method of isotopic separation was invented (and had decades of improvements). Maybe the 75 number completely ignores the energy costs of enrichment as downgraded nuclear weapons material could have been used for fuel. But it's quite telling that for such an established fuel cycle as for the LWR, the numbers are all over the place. Sticking to basic facts, the very imperfect solid fuel LWR results in greater than energy break-even and provides stable base-load power that does not pollute CO2. No other energy source currently available is able to do so (except for molten salt solar collectors, which are being shut down the world over as being uneconomical). Thanks for showing your sources. A solar panel in Arizona will definitely have a higher payback than one in cloudy Germany, and the gas savings will be extreme in Arizona (being able to power a/c systems during daylight hours) vs cloudy Germany (where simple cycle peaker gas plants will need to balance the load), resulting in potentially more gas used than if the more efficient yet slower-ramping combined cycle gas turbines are simply used without any solar). Putting this network effects into the calculations invariably makes intermittents look much worse several-fold.

[@CopenhagenAtomics]

You touch on something important here. How can we trust the numbers from different organizations. You have already established that it depends on how much of the surrounding systems you include in the analysis. E.g. cost of evening out intermitten electricity production. Cost of the energy used to make the steel, concrete and aluminium depends... and some solar panels and some reactors use more materials than others, but them maybe they also last longer. Finally you can debate if the energy used to build solar or nuclear is more or less CO2 free and more or less subsidized. There are lots of variables that can be misused if one wishes to do so. But I still believe that Copenhagen Atomics thorium molten salt reactors are at least 2 orders of magnitude better than the best PV solar panels when you look at the energy invested vs. the energy extracted over the total lifetime. You are welcome to disagree, but then let os just agree that we disagree.