China's Molten Salt Reactor Program and the Thorium Fuel Cycle/U233 | Rock Logic | Ep 31 

Incredibly stupid and shortsighted...

China's nuclear program is a good thing, as we need all nations, especially huge polluting ones to find any means possible to lower greenhouse gases, as fast as possible. As far as denaturing the US stockpile of U233, the Thorium alliance should collectively picket the govt to postpone plans for this until regulatory applications for all of these new companies are further along.

China, reclaiming its spot as the world's #1 power.

@@eitkoml not really *re*claiming, It's never been the most powerful country in the world...

Can China become like France, give up coal and switch to nuclear? France has good technicians and engineers and the french reactors are working quite well.

One can only hope.

No, the US and most of Europe seem dedicated to following the failed German model.

@@chapter4travels But think of all the pretty rainbow dildoes! that will surely keep our society going strong!

Why develop your own, when you can just buy the design. Just don't cheap out on parts. Because that ducks you over when you're talking about nuclear power.

Thorium is a dead end. Too expensive and too little output with physics limiting the ability to make them more efficient. Then there is the huge amount of radioactive waste they produce. The only benefit is that they are less likely to blow up.

Thank you!

Essentially, US developed Uranium based reactors because those allowed nuclear weapons, while Thorium reactors did not. We are decades behind with TMSR, and the technology will take many years to be efficient.

@@ascaniosobrero never too late.

And I hope those companies continue to receive support in the coming years. We need to commercialize this pronto.

We agree!

Thank you!

Thanks Paul! I appreciate that.

Well said. I suspect there are also geopolitical motives behind this (controlling the petrodollar, denying de facto colonies cheap energy,...).

I find it interesting, and somewhat unnerving how much finger pointing there is. Ive heard in nuc forums such as this that big oil is pushing renewables because they know its a dead end that ensures the status quo. Now im hearing they push old nuclear for this reason. In oil forums you hear people simply declaring climate change a hoax and saying renewables is a ploy by large moneyed interests to fleece the population. In pro renewables forums people declare nuclear to be as bad as fossil fuels, in bed with big oil. I don't think any of these positions have any merit. There's no grand conspiracies. There's merely established interests with momentum, and little new entrants with the difficulty of convincing regulators, policy makers, analysts, media, and the public into seeing and doing different. This industry is accused of having lobbyists. "Big nuclear" its called. If so, they'd represent companies like Westinghouse.. and if so they are awful bad at results given recent decades. These new start up companies need to get the outreach out there. Sadly its up to the informed public like Mr Kenny to do this job. Why must the nuclear people view themselves as engineers, almost above the fray? Doesn't make a bit of difference if you have a bright idea, if no one can be convinced to let you do it.

@@davidcampbell1420 The common denominator is government influence over the energy industry. So long as the power to regulate and even shut down industries and subsidize others exists, an industry or interest group will capture it in order to further their own cause. Implement a free market without government influence (except protecting property) and all the distortion goes away and entrepreneurs, innovators and investors will have confidence in long term stability of the legal framework regarding their product.

@@phamnuwen9442 do we have the time to have a completely laissez faire attitude though? The climate emergency looks quite dire. On a regular day I'd agree with you.

Thanks! Will do!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Ha ha ha .... are you kidding ... the US will be concentrating on the real important issues ... educating four year olds on which gender they want to be , tearing down statues of Robert E Lee , giving illegal immigrants $35000 and the right to vote . letting biological males compete in womens sport

Source?

Thank you!

We’d love to, but those are expensive and we don’t necessarily have the budget for them right now. As soon as we do have the budget though we’re absolutely incorporating more.

That's not a problem for the US. It might become a requirement for the US. This is one of the challenges for any MSR that does fuel filtering outside of the core, like Flibe's LFTR. If one can divert U233 or precursors of it, one has weapons grade material. This poses a big problem for regulators. Other companies such as Elysium burn the U233 as it's made, as material never leaves the core. The other difficulty with weaponization is you end up with U232 as well as U233. If you can't separate the two neutronically, you'll have zero hope of doing it chemically. U232 poisons the U233 as bomb making material. Thorium absolutely can be weaponized, but it's really specific how. You have the US' logic in reverse. They won't want thorium reactors if they can be weaponized. It's not that they don't want them because they can't be.

That may have been true in the past, but with enrichment facilities already in place, there is likely little issue in getting weapons grade material, so there is little need to mix civilian and national/military infrastructure, and that is what MSRs hope to be, a civilian energy solution.

False, one of the thorium myths. No nuclear power gets its plutonium from domestic nuclear reactors and we never have.

We are! Thank you!

Glad you liked it!

Me too!🥝🥝🙏

In terms of heat production I will need to get back to you. My understanding is they are looking to run the reactor at 600 degrees C instead of 700. However the in terms of the reactor vessel in the Elysium MCSFR it remains the same regardless of power output. The modularity concept of the Elysium design is pretty ingenious. Instead of developing different sized reactor vessels for different power outputs, they add additional pumps and heat exchangers for the same reactor vessel to increase power output.

An a exercise in stupidity.

@@drmosfet And that is exactly why the US will do it.

. They're not stupid they want you to think they are to disguise their geopolitical motives of colonial empire and power.

Noted

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny Hope your next video comes out soon!

Thanks a ton!

Here you go! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EdelSZUxZeM.html

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny Muchos gracias.

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny Just wanted to make a couple minor corrections. 1) I believe you mentioned that China's MSR project would be to the benefit of Xi Jiping. This may be the case, but I kind of doubt it. The project is being pushed by SINAP and it's driven by Jiang Mianheng, the son of Jiang Zemin, the latter being a borderline blood enemy of Xi Jiping (Zemin tried to have Jiping assassinated at the start of his term as general secretary). They also represent different/opposing political factions within the CCP. While this is a little conspiracy-ie, I would imagine that if Jiang Mianheng had a way of making sure that SINAP's MSR project benefited his father's faction instead of or at the expense of Xi's faction, he would do so. This also could be why SINAP has had difficulty funding the MSR project (I only know this because I read a powerpoint presentation maybe 2 years ago put out by SINAP, and one of the problems they highlighted in it was funding issues). It wouldn't surprise me if Xi and his faction were reducing funding to the project simply due to it's connection with Zemin (him being the father of Mianheng).

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny 2) You mentioned the DOE's excuse for downblending Oak Ridge's U-233 stockpile, that U-233 is "weapons grade" material. This is kind-of only half-true, with some nuances. PURE U-233 is probably weapons grade material, as it's fissile and there shouldn't be any reason why it wouldn't work in a fission bomb. HOWEVER, that's only pure U-233 which is impossible to get, as it will ALWAYS be contaminated by a certain amount of U-232. You'll produce U-232 when you produce U-233, but you might be able to separate that U-232 from the U-233 that you produced, but it would require a LOT of modifications to the reactor producing the U-233, and your efforts would be immediately clear from the outset. HOWEVER, U-233 also has a small chance of decaying to U-232, so even your "pure" U-233 will still end up having a little U-232 in it. U-232 contaminated U-233 is unworkable in a fission bomb, both gun-type bombs and implosion-type bombs. Most people are probably familiar with the reason why U-232 contaminated U-233 won't function in an implosion device, this being the intense radiation given off by Tl-208, U-232's decay product, which is intense enough to fry any nearby electronics unless they're shielded from the core by more than a foot of lead. What most people don't seem to be aware of, including Isaac Arthur, is that U-232 contaminated U-233 won't work in a gun-type device either. U-232, like Pu-240, is highly subject to spontaneous fission, which would cause a U-233 bomb to predetonate. That said, I am positive there has to be some contamination level/threshold under which U-233 contaminated with U-232 could still be used in one of these types of bombs. However, I would bet that was still a fairly low threshold. That's because Eugene Wigner brought up the possibility of using U-233 for bomb material during the Manhattan Project, as they were encountering lots of issues with plutonium and they were looking for other options. Glenn Seaborg almost immediately shot Wigner down though, pointing out the U-232 issue, with him characterizing U-233 as unworkable in a gun-type device. Still, I don't think any of that actually was considered by the DOE. Unfortunately, I think this is just anti-nuclear efforts of democrats :(

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny 3) Lastly, I've actually spoken with people in the US congress and at the DOE about the downblending of the U-233, emphasizing the importance of medical isotopes. The person at the DOE countered that there are other ways of producing those medical isotopes, such as blasting targets of radium or other materials with neutrons, which would produce some of the isotopes that we're talking about, Ac-225 and Bi-213. However, I've also read through the IAEA "Report on Joint IAEA-JRC Workshop "Supply of Actinium-225"", so I was already familiar with "alternative" methods of producing these isotopes. Those methods can indeed produced these medical isotopes, but in much smaller volumes, with A LOTTTTT more toxic and radioactive waste, and they also produce other isotopes of the same element, like Ac-227, which are impossible to separate from the isotopes that you want, like Ac-225, and which are MUCH more toxic, as they have much longer half-lives and are thus sticking around irradiating you for a much longer time. Ac-227 is quite nasty. Those undesirable isotopes are also the natural decay products of uranium's other isotopes, U-235 and U-238. So once the U-233 is downblended, you'll never be able to milk it for medical isotopes again, as anything you pull out of it will be a mix of different types of isotopes, some that you want, and some that you don't, and you'll have no way to separate them. U-233 is the ONLY way to get "pure" samples of Ac-225 and Bi-213.

This guy gets it.

Technology Overview for prototype - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mfXKokl7ZjY.html - NRC Makes Available Kairos Power Construction Permit Application. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received a preliminary safety analysis report (PSAR) - the first portion of a construction permit application - from Kairos Power which requests permission to build a test reactor at a site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

I'm familiar with Kairos and may cover them in a future episode.

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny There are also scenarios to do Deep Burn of Unused Nuclear Fuel.

Thank you!

You're Very Welcome.

The Natrium™ reactor and integrated energy system - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-i8C7YLPClAA.html - Also, just watch a youtube video by Molten-Salt Reactor Choices - Kirk Sorensen of Flibe Energy @ ORNL MSRW 2020

TerraPower is building a sodium cooled solid fueled fast reactor that dumps waste heat into a Molten salt storage solution. That's very different than building a true MSR. It's worth mentioning that TerraPower does have an Chloride Salt Fast Reactor Concept on paper, but that is not the design they are currently building under DOE funds.

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny I thought they were building a MCFR demo with Southern Company,

. Very cool. I think Elysium's fast neutron MSRs will process all kinds of nuclear waste.

Well maybe in the case for getting LFTR's to market sure. But there are other MSR concepts that do not require the supply chain that China is spending billions on. Elysium has a design that can run on spent fuel using the supply chain that already exists. The financial risks associated with commercial development aside what we need now is leadership. Specifically from our DOE. They are sitting on tens of billions of dollars collected to fund construction of a waste repository for SNF. We need someone to say if this money isn't going towards it's intended use then lets use it to fund MSR programs that make use of SNF to generate power.

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny Elysium has no founding, unfortunately. Someone in the field told me so. The only one with some hope of success in US is TerraPower. Anyway how can a startup compete with a big government with illimited founding and hundred engineers? And also making the rules...

​@@albripi Well I'm not sure why they would have no founding. We had the CTO of the company tell us otherwise and he has been building and testing reactors for the Navy for 32 years. But putting that aside. Your frustration is very much justified. I have certainly given a lot of criticism over US regulatory policy over advanced nuclear sector. A lot needs to change. Last year we did an episode talking about regulatory policy suggestions that could jump start MSR development. If you would like to take a look here it is. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7VQv_3bWCGg.html

So the great thing about MSR's that the fuel is in liquid state so more of the fuel can be used through fission. We end up burning 99% of the fuel compared to the LWRs we use today which use between 1%-4% That's already a significant improvement in fuel efficiency. Of the remaining 1% that's left over 83% of it will be safe for handling and can be reused within 10 years. The remaining 17% will need to remain in geological isolation for 300 years. Compared to spent fuel from LWR's that has to be stored for over 10,000 years. Now these numbers are for Thorium MSR's like the LFTR. If we used Molten Chloride Fast Reactors in conjunction with these we could also take those spent fuel inventories and run those reactors on waste.

Why wouldn't Elysium's or Thorcon's very effective and more quickly achievable concepts work better for China for the nearer future?

@@red-baitingswine8816 China wouldn't be building a whole new supply chain from scratch if they just wanted to be first. They want a reactor that makes the most efficient use of Thorium because they have a long term goal with energy production. A Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor achieves that for them. Elysium's MCSFR might just do a better job and we can run it on our existing waste stockpiles we already have.

It's China, they steal intellectual property all the time and claim that some farmer invented it.

If MCSFRs are used to burn Thorium, these alloys wouldn't be necessary.

Thank you so much! Love to hear it!

MCSFR

Thank you! Cheers!

*(and much quicker to implement)

@@red-baitingswine8816 That is a good question. The Elysium design is a relatively new concept being a fast spectrum reactor that burns waste in a pot of molten chloride salts. China does not really have as much nuclear waste as the US does and they are looking at other proven fast spectrum concepts to deal with that long term. The reason they aren't doing what Thorcon is doing is because while one can respect getting to market as fast as possible that is not Chinas concern. They want a reactor design that makes the most efficient use of the Thorium waste they have made from the REE mining industry. China knows they have time to test and develop because there is unfortunely not as much competition at this scale from other countries. Even if a start up like FLibe can get more funding that is only part of the problem. They need political support from our government. They need access to a supply chain that doesn't exist. SINAP does not have these problems so they have the US and other countries at a disadvantage.

I couldn't watch it for very long so I missed that one, it was difficult to watch after hearing them go on about mangle trees saving coastlines from soil erosion, then vegan crusade against flatulence bovine.

Simple, climate change is way down on the list of priorities, in fact having a solution is really frowned upon. Never let a crisis go to waste, real or imaginary.

The main players in cop26 have no interest in an actual solution to their imagined "crisis". Having a continuous "crisis" is far too valuable to solve.

You're welcome!

Well you’re welcome to wait until the end of the video.

@@RockLogicWithSeanKenny This was a hint.

The waste from a uranium based reactor can also be cut down to those timelines like that as well. it just requires reprocessing steps that retain the trans-uranic materials within the reactor and only pull out the fission products. It is the trans-uranic materials that have the long decay lifetime and most of them are fissile or fertile, so if you leave them in the reactor they will also eventually fission.