Revisiting Thorium Energy - The Future of Nuclear Power? 

Do you think we need nuclear as part of the energy mix at all? Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/undecided and enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 3 extra months for free! If you liked this video, check out: Revisiting the Supercapacitor - The Wait for Graphene is Over ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-swdyGHvmXw0.html

9:01 Thorium is an unwanted byproduct of the rare earth mining process used for making electronics. If it is more expensive to mine that cost would be covered by the rare earth mining process. Also the USA has a huge store of already mined and separated Thorium sitting in containers out in the desert.

I think the desalination plant integration idea is probably the best seller. Freshwater is a huge stresser that will come up in the near future (think 5-10 years)

There are lots of people asking about the claim of "burning up," old nuclear waste in Thorium reactors. I posted a response to one such comment asking about it, and figured there were so many others it would probably be best to post it outright so others can see the explanation and hopefully it will address questions or concerns, or simply those wanting to hear about the potential for Thorium to "burn up" old nuclear waste products. First, the main issue with this concept: The ""burning" of old nuclear waste, specifically plutonium (the primary nuclear byproduct of the classic Uranium-based light-water reactor (LWR) nuclear power plant) doesn't occur in Thorium-based plants. The process is actually used to create a new fissile material for use in the current nuclear power plants. The process of generating electricity via the fission of Uranium is far more complex than most people realize. It's not as simple as melting uranium and dumping it in a rod and boiling water. The uranium refinement process involves creating a granular black powder known as UOX, or Uranium Oxide. This material is formed into the nuclear rods which generate heat via fission, boiling the water, which spins turbines, which generates electricity. The Plutonium is created when U-235 (the type most common isotope of Uranium used in nuclear energy generation and some fission-based nuclear weapons) is fissioned and releases Neutrons, which can then be absorbed into U-238, which is present in the UOX fuel pellets used to make rods. When U-238 absorbs several neutrons, it becomes U-239, which beta-decays into Neptunium 239, which beta-decays into Plutonium-239. That Plutonium is the nasty material we usually associate with nuclear waste byproducts. While U-238 isn't fissile enough to generate the heat and energy necessary to maintain the fission reaction that generates the heat used for electricity generation, Pu-239 is. Now, Plutonium can be used in other types of nuclear reactors, like "fast neutron reactors," but it can also be mixed with UOX as a fissile material to make rods for classic LWR fuel. Here's where the "burn-up" of Pu can occur. Instead of mixing UOX with PuOX to make MOX (mixed oxide fuel, composed of uranium oxide and plutonium oxide) pellets for fuel rods, Thorium oxide, or ThOx can be mixed to make (PuTh)Ox, or Plutonium-Thorium Oxide, which can them be used to made fuel rods for classic LWR nuclear power plants. It can also be added to UOX to make (UTh)OX, which works like traditional nuclear fuel pellets and rods, but reduces the amount of Plutonium generated during the fission process. the Thorium absorbs neutrons and becomes U-232, which can absorb another neutron and become U-233, which is fissile and can be reused as even more fuel. Essentially, Thorium can be used in CURRENT nuclear power plants to extend the quantity of uranium fuel (by becoming U-232, and then U-233), or can be combined with Pu-239 to create a new fuel source out of our stockpiles of nuclear waste byproducts. This is where the misconception of Thorium plants burning Plutonium plants comes from. Plutonium can be used to make a new fuel source for CURRENT nuclear power plants, not as a fuel source for FUTURE Thorium-based fuel power plants. This still accomplishes the desired goal of burning plutonium from our piles of nuclear waste, resulting in less nuclear material proliferation, and thus less potential nuclear weapons. This idea is already used in some places, and can be used in almost every single current nuclear power plant. Now, Thorium-based fuel in FUTURE Thorium power plants (they're still being designed and tested, they're not fully viable yet) would use a different method to generate power. Instead of creating powdered Oxides, turning them into fuel rods, and using those to generate power, Thorium *breeds* Uranium-233. Thorium itself CANNOT generate sufficient heat to run a power plant. But remember, just like in fuel rods, Thorium can be bombarded with neutrons, and it becomes U-233 (that's why it's called fertile, or a breeder; it is used to create a fissile material that can be used as fuel, but thorium cannot be used as a fuel by itself). If we wanted to be technical, Thorium plants are *actually* U-233 plants, since it can only generate enough heat to run a power plant once the thorium has been bred into U-233. I know this is a massive amount of information, but hopefully it will help anyone who is curious about Thorium and its *multiple* potential uses a as a fuel source through breeding, extending Uranium stockpiles, or being used with old nuclear waste (plutonium) to create a new fuel source for old nuclear power plants. Also, sorry for any typos. I had to type this up in a hurry and didn't have time to spell check.

I think the omission here is the small modular reactor development which applies modern mass production technology to the construction of nuclear power stations and decimates both the cost and construction time. There is no reason why Thorium MSR cannot be supplied modular.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors "LFTRs" are seriously the future. I love their design, their safety nets, the commonalities of the resources, the beta decay map. It would greatly improve the future power grid and we can finally move past our painful learning growing pain days of nuclear power that sadly timed up with a war and when we didn't respect the safety nets that were necessary while learning about this science and power source. There is so much untapped potential to create stability to our power grid with no emissions so our atmosphere improves, the climate stops heating up, there is so much positive to gain from safe and smart nuclear power.

I think positives to nuclear like footprint, which allows less habitat destruction and energy density, are overlooked too much due to fear and complexity. Wind and solar is simple for people to get their heads around but I’d rather one “small reactor” and Forrest area around it vs a huge field of solar panels. Thoughts to square footage as a consideration?

I remember the father of a coworker of mine discussing MSR’s back in the early 1980’s. He was a engineer and a boilermaker who was Superintendent on many different power plant construction jobs. He had worked at Oak Ridge and at the Hanford Reservation, along with multiple other energy facilities. I wish he was still living, it would be great to pick his brain today.

I work with Uranium fueled pressurized water reactors, and I've been super fascinated with the differences between Thorium MSR's and what I work with. This video was extremely concise and well explained. Thanks, Matt!

Pretty good breakdown of this technology. As far as comparing msr reactors to renewables, there are some unfair/inaccurate biases that always raise their ugly heads. If the promise of msr technology is realized, their construction, regulatory and operating costs will be a small fraction of light water reactors. Solar and wind costs are always presented with a 4 hr battery backup. This is fine with a renewable contribution of 20 - 40%. The costs rise exponentially once they are relied on for 80%, and another exponential rise for 100% reliance. A likely candidate for the best "battery" is molten salt or other thermal storage. This would work well with nuclear as well, making a mixed system of renewables and nuclear an easy visual. Of course if we pursued nuclear more aggressively, there wouldn't be an intermittency issue. Nuclear equals constant, reliable energy, with boatloads of heat. Heat for not only desalination, but hydrogen production, heavy industrial processes, heating the local community and more. The waste can be used for things like medical isotopes. MSRs are not just of the lftr design. Fast neutron designs can be employed to use much of the nuclear waste already in storage. Well worth pursuing. 👍

(11:05) Terrapower isn't building a molten chloride fast reactor in Wyoming. It's building its liquid sodium metal fast reactor (Natrium) in Wyoming. Using molten salt for thermal energy storage DOES NOT make Natrium an MSR.

Two questions: - I seem to recall hearing somewhere that thorium reactors could actually be used to consume nuclear waste from traditional nuclear power. Is this true? If so, that alone would seem to be a huge advantage. - How adjustable is the output of a thorium plant? Is it only suitable for base load or could it replace the highly reactive gas power plants without resorting to batteries?

I've explored much "fringe" science over the years, & your channel is pretty much a list of my favorites-the discoveries that I KNEW would soon advance tech exponentially. Thanks for keeping me informed of how my imagined future is finally arriving!

9:03 "While Thorium is more plentiful than uranium, it is more expensive to mine" is not exactly accurate. It's a byproduct (a nuisance) that has to be separated out of other commercial mining processes. In other words, there are stock piles of the stuff just waiting for something to be done with it. Also, it isn't a rare earth element like uranium. In regards to the waste half-life being just 500 years, it's also worth noting that the fuel cycle in an MSR can further exhaust that fuel - we can use an MSR to eliminate existing stock piles of nuclear waste while benefiting from the useful 'waste' isotopes for medical purposes, space flight and many other applications.

Matt, could you say more about MSRs "burning up" radioactive waste from pressurized water reactors? I understand this is possible, and if so, that may, in the near term, be as important a use as producing energy.

You mentioned desalinization as a nice "bonus" side effect of LFTRs. You did not mention that the excess heat can also be used, as a byproduct, in the production of important medical isotopes also.

Great video, as always. I have been asking and wondering for years, why are we so against Thorium. Yeah, we will get there with solar and wind someday but we can't just stop and just hope the newer items will be enough. Let's get on board with Thorium.

I am certain that the planet needs some form of consistent energy to work alongside the renewables. Thorium appears to be the most acceptable (politically) before fusion can be relied upon.

another use besides desalination is hydrogen production like high temp electrolysis as well as distinct heating. its more efficient(esp if used from required cooling) to use some of this heat directly for heating then turning into electricity just to be turned back into heat for heating buildings, of course this requires another system. Also when comparing energy sources should see whole impact. glad you mentioned nuclear waste and batteries but there is also all the resources to build wind turbines, PVs, batteries and then also the life span of each component

I don't understand why LCOE is counted for 30 years of operation? Most of the nuclear reactors have lifespan of 60 years, new one are designed for 80 years of operation. On the other hand, wind and solar have lifespan up to 30 years batteries even shorter 15.... We can't logically compare something with lifetime measure if we don't assume in equation different lifespan. For 1 NPP we must rebuild 2x wind/solar plant and 4x its balancing storage...

If I remember correctly, a molten salt reactor first achieved criticality in the mid sixties. Due to the large amount of investment in what is our current form of nuclear energy technology, such competition could not be allowed. This was the explanation I heard in an interview by one of the developers of the reactor. We are not unfamiliar with many examples of valuable technology and products being suppressed by powerful special interest. Hopefully the Chinese showing interest in this technology will make this less likely to happen.

Greetings: Although you mentioned briefly that thorium reactors have spent fuel waste with a shorter half-life than conventional light water reactors (pressurized and boiling water reactors) you failed to mention that molten salt fueled and cooled reactors can use light water reactor spent fuel as its fuel, being a potential solution to existing stored spent fuel; we get energy while significantly reducing the volume of existing spent fuel and significantly reducing the lifetime of its radioactive spent fuel. Thorcon is presently working on a demo molten salt reactor for Indonesia that will operate on the least expensive fission fuel available at the time. The reactors will then be manufactured in Korean shipyards similar shipbuilding, towed to the shore closest to their need and settled on the seabed where they will be connected to the grid. Multiple units will work in parallel as power capacity is required. The reactors themselves will be delivered as sealed pots that will be swapped with second units that are available side-by side with collant/fuel pumped from the old pot to the new so refueling downtime is limited and providing radioactive decay time before the old pot is refurbished. Factory construction will enable reduced expense as improvements can be handled during manufacture.

Matt, excellent job in explaining the thorium processes. As a minimum we should build some prototype reactors and learn. These reactors could be the "flywheel" when solar and wind are intermittent.

*The USA even had a Thorium powered airplane in the early1960's plus many working reactors BUT since the DOD was more interested in bomb making materials they ditched Thorium as being 'TO CLEAN'. An alloy called MONEL was even developed to safely carry the Molten salts.*

If you take a look at the Agorameter, which tracks Germany's electricity production in real times, and look at, say, the last month, you'll see that intermitency problems go far beyond a 4 hours lag of renewables production. it's more like several days in a row. So yeah, even on rather long lasting batteries, they'll still need to be backed up by gas or coal or nuke, that should obviously factor in the mwh price.

I did a paper about thorium reactors 17 years ago. I'm still waiting but I've matured enough to realize they wouldn't be making as much profit from such an efficient power source.

The cost of solar needs to be increased to include enough battery storage to allow for a constant output on a 24/7 basis. So if you want a 100 megawatt solar plant you need enough batteries and solar panels to provide 100 megawatts 24/7.

U233 breeding of Thorium is just as useful and practical as Pu239 breeding from U238. U238 is the most common material in used fuel fods from light water reactors. This means a uranium fuel cycle can produce negative waste as it disposes of existing stockpiles. This seems far more attractive. Moreover the neutron economy with Thorium is a bit thin. You need fissile U235 ro bootstrap the breeding, but most likely people will be blending U235 with thorium long term anyway. "I came for the thorium but stayed for the molten salts". The real advance here is the reactor concepts not the fuel type. Another big advantage is industrial process heat. These things can reach 600C or with more material science, 1000C. This means cracking of water into hydrogen as well as desalination. CO2 and ammonia harvesting from the atmosphere becomes possible. Hydrocarbon synthesis becomes possible by tying these things to refineries. This could clean up the oil industry by creating carbon neutral or negative combustible fuels.

With recent advances in mass produced thorium reactors in ship yards, a complete reactor can be built in months, and delivered anywhere in the world in weeks. This destroys the cost of long construction times, the primary expense of building reactors, and further reduces the cost per kw. Moreover, because the reactor is made of plug and play modules, replacing worn subsystems, is fast, inexpensive (relatively speaking), and increases service life. Finally variations in design make it possible to also build fast breeder reactors based on the thorium cycle, allowing us to use the existing solid nuclear waste as fuel, and eliminating the long term storage problem created by the prior technology. Until we improve our grid to better handle transient energy production, thorium reactors provide us a fantastic stop gap to ensure global energy sufficiency, while protecting the environment, and even providing the energy to help us begin removing excess carbon from the environment.

First thorium reactor is actually almost under construction now. Indonesia has signed an agreement to build first TMSR-500 reactor that will be constructed by ThorCon. It will be constructed in shipyard in form of a ship, then moved to desired place, placed in one of the bays next to one of the islands. Work is progress is fast and we may see this plant operational within 2023-2024.

One minor confusion. The TerraPower (Bill Gates) design only uses Molten Salt to hold the energy (heat) from the reaction for later use. It uses liquid sodium for cooling, and is a fast neutron design.

I recall several countries building Thorium reactors several decades ago but not much since -so presumably they weren't very good so hopefully problems have been solved. I wouldn't go holding my breath waiting for this.

Thanks for this update Matt. I've been keeping an eye on the viability of Thorium technology for a while.

Re 4hr battery backup for LCOE costs of wind and solar power: what country do you live in, that having zero power for 8-10 hours a day (minimum) is acceptable in mid-winter, or 4-7 hours of power outage is acceptable during a heat wave in summer? I'm curious how that 4hr battery backup is viewed for power grids in Alaska? For wind enthusiasts, keep in mind that when there is a hurricane or other high storm winds, turbines are usually turned OFF to try protect the rotors. It's not just idle periods (which can happen) that can result in no power production. LCOE costs should also include all the electrical cabling required to connect wind and solar plants to the rest of the grid - you need a lot more of them than you need for traditional (or nuclear) power plants, since the latter have higher power production capacity, and can usually be placed closer to the end users than the former. Bottom line - that 4hr battery backup solution is only viable in a power grid that includes a large portion of fossil fuel or nuclear power production. Pick one. (Hydro is great where the geography supports it, but is not scalable to meet growing power needs - pretty much every valley that can be dammed for power already has been.)

Good video. I noticed a couple of important subjects that you missed: First, the 500 year storage of waist from Thorium - This is only possible if fuel "reprocessing" is used where the unspent fuel and the non fission products are separated via a process inside of the reactor chamber, as in LFTR, or separated outside the reactor by a third party. Both methods require government regulations and certification that are too lengthy (decades?) and expensive. Plus the government will surely screw it up! Also, if Thorium is converted to Uranium-233 and is then used to fuel other reactors, I heard a presentation given by Terrestrial Energy that this constitutes High Enriched Uranium which nuclear regulators probably won't allow, even if the new U-233 is used "internally" like in the LFTR reactor. But if Thorium is used in a "burner" reactor like in Thorcons design I think the regulation process is simpler. One cool feature regarding molten salt fueled reactors is that the chemistry binds with the fission products in an "ionic bond". So if the fuel is exposed to the atmosphere the fission products stay in the fuel (this needs more research though because the MSRE experiment in the 1960's was not for the purpose of studying this feature, but this was observed in the experiments results).

The former director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory Thorium Molten Salt Reactor program will be happy that his work is finally being put into use (if he is still alive). There is a video somewhere of him talking about the TMSR and he knew back in the 50's it was a superior and safer alternative to Uranium, water cooled reactors. He felt Uranium reactors had been chosen because they integrated with America's nuclear weapons program better back in the 50's, not because they were a better commercial energy source than TMSRs.

Fusion power would be the best option, and you know it's only 30 years away.

Elysium's fast neutron MSRs actually burn (and eliminate) all kinds of nuclear waste as fuel - have all the safety/simplicity/cost advantages of (slow neutron) Thorium MSRs, and more, without requiring so much R&D.

9:01 - Thorium would only be expensive to mine if we were to explicitly mine just for that, but it happens to be a waste product of rare earth mining - at present, we apparently "throw away" (read: store in large piles) 30x more Thorium per year than needed to power the entire world. Add to that that Thorium needs very little processing to be fuel ready and it's pretty much the cheapest nuclear fuels in the world, and that's even before we consider that it's also far more efficiently used (99% vs 0.5%).

Matt, I’m not even a science guy but I think you’re wonderful. I love watching your presentations. Thanks

Cost aside (although correlated) , it seems that returns on energy invested for LFTRs is streets ahead of competitors. The following comparison is given by a source I came across: Corn (ethylene) X 1.3 Solar PV X 7 Natural Gas X 10 Wind X 18 Nuclear (today) X 80 Coal X 80 Hydro X 100 Thorium (LFTR) X 2000 Pretty impressive, if true!

Thorium for all!! My dad has worked in Nuclear for almost 40years including many of the new tech developed in the 90’s and said this is where the technology should be going for many reasons

For renewables to become feasible you'll need somewhere around 400 hours storage, not 4 hours. Putting the LCOE around 160 USD/MWh. Then add in the grid-costs and you're looking at around 200 USD/MWh. Or 3-8 times higher than standard uranium nuclear.

other potentials of thorium molten salt reactors encountered: 1. the MSR can also use much of the other nuclear waste as fuel to supplement their own fission processes - a way to productively consume decades of dangerous stockpiled waste. 2. the high temperature of molten salt can be used industrially - no need to create heat (burning fossil fuel) to support industrial applications.

I don't know if it was mentioned, but these Thorium reactors are quite small. Windmills, solar cells and associated distribution and transmission equipment take up a lot of space. Covering up land so people and animals can't live or farm on it isn't all that bright. Running power lines hundreds of miles when you can have a power plant next door to give you 24 hour power,.......well you get my thinking. And,......even the promised magic batteries won't help for long spells without sun or wind. Thanks for the video.

I think, given just the challenges in long distance transmission, there is absolutely still a place for a reliable output source like this. Not to mention the whole desalination/hydrogen thing. The latter of which may likely be a big part of decarbonizing transport aircraft. They could at the very least, build MSR powered plants that are mainly for that purpose, could they not?

What happened to the first thorium-based (MSR) nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s? Didn't it run for quite a while before the military shut it down because it couldn't 'breed' plutonium or some such?

We absolutely need this for base load. Even with LFP batteries, Wind and Solar aren't stable enough for baseload generation as the requirement for batteries is truely massive in the case of solar. There is also the potential in military vessles as nuclear powered destroyers and cruisers (the biggest logistical headache for the military in prolonged operations). Further, if demonstrated to be safe enough (which is well within the realm of possibility) it can be used to produce clean shipping. Small reactors can be more safely deployed to service remote towns and the waste (what there is of it as it is only 1% or less of conventional nuclear, can be transported as a solid in a tank that can then be heated, melted and pumped. During the transport, there is no danger of a "leak". Using this in conjunction of Wind/Solar will also allow less aggregate land use for the grid. From a security perspective, its also much easier to secure to ensure part of the grid remains operational during hurricane etc.

It's worth noting that the DOE-backed TerraPower \ GE molten salt reactor mentioned at 11:05 is *_not_* a thorium reactor; it uses *uranium.*

Still firmly in the realm of "I'll believe it when I see it". Thorium has been promised for at least as long as fusion - possibly longer - and yet has had far less interest. Certainly lack of government interest could be somewhat explained by early decisions to promote reactors that could produce weapons-grade material (ie: Uranium) and follow-up lack of interest based on sunk cost fallacies (ie: "we did all this work on uranium can't switch tracks now!") But.. that doesn't explain the lack of commercial interest. Assuming all the wild claims about the "thorium future" were accurate, there's no reason commercial investment couldn't have started decades ago. Yet we're currently in a situation where fusion (a technology we're not even entirely sure we can make work at all) is seeing far more investment than thorium (a technology we know can work with enough effort). That suggests to me that there is, at the very least, an extremely low expected return on investment for thorium. And while its easy to say "yah but the climate is more important than money!", its much much harder to convince someone to take an economic loss for the ideal, especially when there are other viable competitors already on the market (solar/wind + batteries and of course the well-established uranium reactor designs). But.. then there's China. China doesn't have the long history with uranium to mute government interest, and their authoritarian control means they can ram through low-ROI projects without too much concern about "but muh tax dollars!" public backlash. Whether or not they'll put in sufficient investment to make this work in a useful time frame (never mind beating out the handful of commercial competitors that have finally started up around the world) remains to be seen, as does their ability to sell it to other nations if it ends up not having a high enough ROI for more money-limited economies to consider (and lets face it, few developed nations would consider it regardless just because of the current anti-China political landscape among the west which is unlikely to get better in the near future).

Very good presentation. Is the problem more with handling molten salt than the Thorium reaction? Wasn't there a solar farm near Las Vegas that used the sun to heat molten salt that was shut down, mostly due to the cost of maintaining equipment that comes in contact with molten salt?

Overall very solid and well balanced video! There's just a couple details you got a bit wrong - all reactors (including light water and MSR) can reprocess fuel to consume nearly 100% of all the fuel. It's just more expensive (france has been doing it for decades) Also, the MSR wasn't invented during or for the Manhattan project. It was designed exclusively for the nuclear bomber program. And it wasn't shut down due to difficulties with reliability - it ran longer than any other test reactor in history without needing any maintenance. It was fabulously reliable. Alvin Weinberg was the director of Oak Ridge and a HUGE proponent of developing the MSR because it actually poses a far, far lower risk of proliferation and accident than uranium PWR's. The problem came in the form of the cold war and politics. Admiral Rickover from the Navy ultimately had the final say in what was pursued at Oak Ridge, and he and Weinberg butted heads constantly over it, because Rickover wanted a nuclear navy (particularly nuclear subs) and reactors that could produce warheads to keep up with the Russians. Molten Sodium has... _problems_ with water, and the reactors are much harder to make produce weapons-grade material. The main issue it had outside of politics, was that MSR's (particularly fluorides) are EXTREMELY corrosive, and radiation embrittlement can exacerbate things even further. So they lose some of their cost benefit in needing to be made from stronger corrosion-resistant materials. They're also a tad more sensitive to xenon poisoning. There's a fantastic book chronicling the history of why nuclear power went the direction it did - it's called "Superfuel" and is a really fun, enlightening, easy read - it's basically 100% down to the cold war and nuclear arms and ships. Civilian reactors were always a complete afterthought. And lastly, you were close to an important point about timelines. Most climate studies I've seen estimate that we simply don't have enough time to bring nuclear on anymore as the primary base-load source for energy. We waited too long and now we don't have enough time to wait. So while I think in the future nuclear will be an important part of base load energy grids (particularly as energy needs grow everywhere) I don't think it can currently compete for the money we need to be investing to end fossil fuel use. I have a hunch that some of the load will be handled with a system like what Ford is using with the new F150 lightning - your electric car can produce a LOT of power. Enough to power a home for 3-10 days at full, normal use. If we install systems for home and apartment buildings that charge the vehicle during low-demand hours, and then somehow coordinate them with a signal from the power company during peak use to cause the ones that are still parked at home and plugged in to just start sending power back into the home, it can act as a smoothing power source that we currently use a lot of natural gas power plants for.

Great video Matt, it’s defo a subject that’s going to be worth watching for the future. Hopefully the research will all come to fruition from all parties and a stable and safe nuclear future will benefit everyone.

Thorium has been the answer since the 50s when the guy who designed nuclear reactors like Hanford told the committee that thorium was the long term solution. For those interested in a more in depth overview of what a thorium reactor is I highly recommend you look for Gordon Cromwell here on RU-vid.

I had been following Kirk Sorensen with Flibe Energy and listing to him talk about modular shipping container sized Thorium reactors that could power water desalination for remote villages… making synthetic fuels and causing combustion cars to run on nuclear ☢️ energy was pretty mind blowing… The claim we only need one mine to produce enough thorium for the whole nation was the most appealing.

The metric equivalent of an acre-foot is the cubic meter (m³). An acre-foot is a unit commonly used in the United States to measure large volumes of water, particularly in relation to irrigation, water supply, and reservoir capacities. It represents the volume of water required to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot, which is approximately 43,560 cubic feet. To convert acre-feet to cubic meters, you can use the following conversion factor: 1 acre-foot = 1233.48 cubic meters (rounded to two decimal places) Therefore, if you have a given value in acre-feet and want to convert it to cubic meters, you would multiply the number of acre-feet by 1233.48. Conversely, to convert cubic meters to acre-feet, you would divide the number of cubic meters by 1233.48.

(8:46) The production of U-232 isn't a proliferation risk, it's a proliferation barrier. Pure U-233 is a "potential" proliferation risk, but it's much less so if you have U-232 contamination, which makes the contaminated U-233 VERY unworkable in either a gun-type or implosion-type nuclear bomb. That said, the real proliferation barrier for thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeders is the anemic U-233 breeding ratios in the thermal spectrum, which are only 1.05 to 1.07 (depending on whether you separate out protactinium). This means that thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeders use almost all of the fuel they produce, on an almost 1 to 1 ratio, leaving VERY little excess, such that it would take between 17 to 25 years (depending on your breeding ratio) to just double the amount of fuel in the reactor (which, given it's a thermal spectrum reactor, will only be 3% to 4% of the material in the fuel salt, is not a whole lot to even begin with). Operating a thermal spectrum MSR thorium breeder with protactinium separation, the protactinium would flow in a constant stream from separation to a single insulated decay tank that is constantly fluorinated to strip off uranium (both U-233 & U-232) as it's produced/decayed, with that fluorinated uranium gas flowing to another chemical process which strips off the excess fluorine to convert the uranium back to a salt that goes into the reactor. One continuous chemical process, like what's handled by any chemical or petroleum plant. If someone wanted to make a bomb out of U-233, they'd have to set up their MSR to separate protactinium in batches (so that you could separate the U-232 & U-233), which would require a whole lot of additional complexity on the reactor, with all protactinium produced over a single day, for example, going to individual insulated tanks, which will require several radiation, high temperature, and chemically appropriate (not reactive with the salt) flanges & valves which will be mechanical in nature, diverting production from one container to the next to the next. Each one of those individual decay tanks must also be fluorinated separately instead of together, with dozens to hundreds of pipes carrying highly reactive fluorine gas instead of just one. Then, even after you introduce all of that complexity, you still can only pull off a TINY sliver of U-233 production (due to the anemic breeding ratios). If you take out any more than that tiny sliver you'll kill the reactor, as you'll be reducing the overall fuel density in the reactor below the point required for criticality.

Higher neutron efficiency also leads to longer lifespan of reactor casings, pretty cool, seeing as start up and refit costs are the largest expenditure for reactor operators.

Matt Ferrell. I hope you don't mind if I give a lengthy rebuttal or commentary: 4:15 is Canada's Terrestrial Energies IMSR, also at 12:35. The slanted roof is part of the "always on" emergency cooling system. Pipes filled with a gas remove 1% of the heat from the reactor and the roof is used to dissipate the heat. 8:30. Are you referring to "plate out" where nuclear fission products collect in unwanted and unknown areas of the liquid reactor? This is a huge problem that nuclear regulators will demand be solved. More R&D and material development is required. Terrestrial Energy decided to not even try to solve this and have been given approval to just replace their IMSR reactor every seven years. This is a work around to the plate-out and corrosion issues in liquid fueled reactors. They don't discuss what happens to the used up reactors though. LFTR will never happen due to these issues, also the the conversion of Thorium 232 to Uranium 233 in a LFTR results in High Enriched Uranium. Even though the fuel stays in the reactor vessel this is a big no no! I heard a leader of the LFTR team say "to collect the highly radio active off gas, one only needs to bend a pipe, like seen in a kitchen sink pipe". I knew then that LFTR was a R&D sinkhole. Make money on R&D contracts and probably never produce a working reactor. 11:00 Molten Chloride (fast reactor). Another R&D sinkhole. Obtaining unspent fuel and or weapons grade Uranium/Plutonium, which is required, is a regulatory and political nightmare. No politician will allow this. They will say they support it but they are lying. Even if approved the permits for the facilities, safe operation (most nuclear accidents and injuries happen in processing facilities) will take years/decades. I don't see a government entity doing this properly. I also don't trust Bill Gates-had to fit that in. 10:24. Kairos Power's pebble bed, salt cooled reactors (Uranium only) is the best option to get Gen4 reactors built and once the public, business, government see Gen4 is so much safer than Gen1,2 reactors then hopefully MSR and Thorium will be seriously developed. I have a feeling Kairos reactors will be expensive and the TRISO fuel, while much safer than existing solid fuel, is not recycleable due to its complexity. But TRISO fuel is already licensed and the reactor is well on its way in the NRC regulatory system (the regulatory system is just as important as reactor development and not to be under estimated). Matt. Will you make a video on Kairos's design, as well as the X-Energy pebble bed reactor, X-100.

Dear Matt, Good presentation, but there are a few extra points need consideration: 1) the radioactive waste is not only hugely shorter lived for thorium, but there is a much higher percentage utilised than uranium. Separation of the fissile fuel is easier because there is a chemical difference between the substances not just isotopic differences. 2) if there had been as much money thrown at thorium that the high pressure water reactors have had then there would be these reactors all over the world many years ago and it would be cheap and safe to operate. 3)The sourcing of Thorium is not as expensive as you might imagine since it is a byproduct in many types of mining waste; enough to fuel the world for many years. 4) the cost of recycling batteries, PV cells and wind turbines after their useful life has not, (as far as I can work out) been factored into the cost of these renewables because it is difficult to calculate the cost factor for that far into the future. Lastly there were initial encouragements for uranium reactors when there was an urgent need for Plutonium, for fission bombs and then tritium for fusion bombs. The byproducts from thorium would be greatly sought after for medical and other industrial uses and much less attractive for military use. If the products were to be used for destructive purposes then the gamma radiation signature would make their source easy to detect.

I remember hearing about Thorium reactors like 12 years ago and I've been a strong supporter of them. It's unfortunate that profit is normally 1st 2nd and 3rd concern for what guides and advances technology, because if that weren't the truth we would of had eleltric vehicles for the past 100 years. I feel Thorium is a victim of the same trend. If we had been investing into over coming the problems of Thorium when it was first brought to the table as an option instead of almost completely dismissing it for so long, we'd probably be using them now. Just happy there's finally a push for it now

One thing that I don't think that you mentioned (correct me if I just missed it) but Thorium based reactors have far less radioactive waste that builds up over time, making them much, much cleaner in terms of waste compared to Uranium based reactors. Also, you can get far, far more energy out of Thorium than you can for the same amount of Uranium. 2 very important things to remember and mention when discussing it.

Excellent channel Matt. Thank you so much for all your work and your professionalism. Well done mate 👍🙂🙏

Not all I've read or seen on thorium reactors are the molten salt models. Furthermore, many of stories I've heard involved smaller reactors of both varieties (uranium-based and thorium) for our future. I like the idea greatly.

Thanks for the great video. I have a couple comments/notes 1) THORIUM SUPPLY - A very rich source of rare earth metals (REM) is Mountain Pass California. But because the chemical properties of thorium and REMs are very similar, deposits rich in REM also tend to have substantial amounts of thorium. Currently because there is no commercial use for thorium, that is a problem. US environmental law doesn't just allow that Thorium to be dumped in tailings piles. As a result US production cost are more expensive than Chinese REM, which aren't quite so fussy. But if Thorium becomes source of income and not an expense, then not only can the US get much close to being independent with respect to these materials so important to advanced technology, but also produce enough thorium to power our economy. This is even more the case of Australian, where their major deposit of REMs have an even higher Thorium content. And to "prime the pump" as it were, there is approximately 7 million pounds of thorium nitrate that the US government acquired decades ago with the thought of using it in breeder reactors. But when that didn't happen, they got tired of paying for storage. So all of it was put it in metal containers and buried at the US nuclear testing site in Nevada. All we would have to do is go dig it up and we would have enough thorium to supply all of the power currently used by the US for a decade. With a gradual ramp up of MSRs and given that MSRs (or any nuclear reactor) are unlikely to generate more than about 1/3 of our total energy, just the thorium buried in the Nevada desert would provide all that we would need for 40-50 years. 2) SYNERGISTIC INTEGRATION WITH WIND AND SOLAR - Current Pressurized Light Water Reactors (PWRs) do not work at all well with intermittent energy source like wind and solar. PWR can only increase or decrease power output very slowly. Thus they can be a good source of base power, but they can't provide the necessary rapid load-following capability to fill in the gaps in wind and solar. PWRs peak temperature is only 280 c, so not hot enough to make direct thermal storage feasible. Thus to store any of the power they generate in order to provide load-following, PWRs would have to use the same methods that solar and wind would use to store excess power (batteries, pumped hydro, etc.). Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) don't like to change power levels any faster than PWRs do. But MSR's advantage is that their peak temperature is over 600 C. This is hot enough to make direct thermal storage worthwhile. Studies have been done that look at using vacuum insulated tanks to hold molten tertiary salt. While the energy from the reactor coming into these storage salts is pretty steady, the amount of energy being extracted depends on the flow rate of the molten salts being pumped through steam generators, which can be varied rapidly over a wide range. This allows MSRs with thermal storage to have a load-following ability. With the ability to rapidly change the amount of electrical power generated, MSRs could be key to fill the gaps left by the intermittency of wind and solar without having to build huge battery storage farms, or other energy storage mechanisms. Another fact to consider is that for wind and solar to provide say 75% of the total grid energy, the actually installed capacity would have to be approximately double that so that excess power created when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining can be store for the periods every day when it the wind has died and the sun has set. And it is likely even worse than that because of fairly large seasonal variations in solar incidence and wind velocity. So solar will have to be even more capacity to produce enough power in the winter when the sun is lower. And wind installed wind generating capacity will have to be sized based on times of the year when winds are on average lower. With MSRs with thermal storage, the installed capacity of wind and solar could be considerably smaller. So while MSR might have a higher levelized cost of energy by itself than wind or solar, the important load-following capability could mean that MSR (or potentially other high temperature reactors like helium cooled pebble bed reactors which could store energy in exactly the same types of molten salts) could be a very important part of a future grid where wind and solar is a significant fraction of the total energy supply 3) PROCESS HEAT - most industrial processes require some amount of increased temperature to work. About half require temperatures above 400 C. With a 600 C working temperature, MSRs could be a source of process heat. One very interesting one that my team is investigating is using renewable energy sources to make synthetic fuels. These fuels take CO2 out of the air (or sea water, which looks like it requires less energy) and hydrogen from splitting sea water and using a combination of heat, electricity and the right catalysts, reverse the combustion process and produce hydrocarbon fuels. The initial fuels produced by most processes are methane or methanol. Methane can be used for anything which currently uses natural gas. Methanol can be used as a fuel for transportation. But further processes which are largely heat driven in the presence of a catalyst can combine methane and methanol to make longer chain hydrocarbons, all the way up to octane (the major component of gasoline) and even diesel/kerosene/jet fuel. It is likely the only non-combustion heat source that can be used directly to drive a lot of very important industrial processes. The one we are particularly interested in for use in aircraft is butanol. Butanol is the alcohol of butane. It has an energy density just slightly less than gasoline, can be used at up to100% concentration in most current gasoline engines. So a notional MSR could be located near the coast. Sea water is pumped in to provide CO2, hydrogen and cooling. The MSR provides a steady 24/7 source of electricity and high heat to drive the processes. various stream

I don't think it is more expensive to mine thorium than uranium if you are talking about the final product. With thorium, .25 of the ore is used where with uranium it is a fraction of a percentage of the ore, and requires a great deal of processing e.g. cladding before it is ready for the reactor.

I'm curious the LCOE cost for Solar and Wind, did this also factor in the cost of replacing those units and also the rate of efficiency drop (especially) in the case of solar panels that degrade over time (roughly 20+ years they lose a good chunk of there efficiency from date of production) also battery storage degrades, so those too would need to be replaced to ensure high efficiency returns, so while Solar and Wind "are cheaper" the LCOE must increase surely.

I think the key is to build mini reactors. They're Faster faster faster. Faster to approve, faster to build, faster to replace (or upgrade.) Granularity of resources is the same argument as modern computing with server farms and a distributed network, versus a few giant centralized computers like in 1950. Yes we absolutely have to move forward with this technology. And we have to perfect the actual safety.

I think it's odd that the costs associated with solar only includes a 4 hour discharge time worth of battery storage, where no place on earth gets 20 hrs of sunlight a day all year round. In order for it to be a relevant comparison of costs, you would expect to see an amount of storage that would at least make it through the night and ideally through a few overcast days, seeing as how nuclear power does provide constant power regardless of time or season. They might also allow for the subsidies of solar and on the other side the costs of heavy regulation and licensing fees of nuclear into this equation, since those things affect the price artificially. I'd be interested to see what an actual cost comparison would reveal.

The one thing held against Thorium is that you can't make nuclear weapons from it. Which means that the Military Industrial Complex won't fund it which is (partially) how we've paid for the fission reactors we have now.

The 220φ engine accelerates the ions confined in a loop to moderate the relatarvistic speeds, and then varies their velocity to make slight changes to their mass. The 221φ engine then moves ions back and forth to produce ions, thus traveling in a vacuum line, so give the goose his gander. We could reliably get ~94% efficiency with a closed loop superheated steam system harvesting exhaust heat from a small jet engine and got just below 96% efficiency in some ideal test cases. The main limiting factors were that the discs had to be designed to stretch uniformly without distorting at ~40k RPM and that the gaps between the disks had to be designed for an incredibly specific set of operating parameters (steam temp, pressure, velocity, etc.).

It's important to note that modern nuclear cores cannot meltdown even under a catastrophic failure.

My thoughts come from hearing about this through Matt's and Joe's productions on this subject: when asking if we need nuclear, I'm convinced the answer is "Yes". The cost figures given here for returns I'm pretty sure don't include the total cost environmentally of building the solutions...and cleanup when they are no longer viable. Others here also mention that nuclear is needed for base load although that can also possibly be countered with cheaper storage solutions...again considering the footprint though...it makes me nervous to leave out nuclear. I also feel a good mix is a safer solution. Nothing totally wins out. Germany's decision to phase out nuclear and go all green for example does not think of the environment foot print cost of eliminating this vital power producer. It feels like...saying I like chocolate cake. I like chocolate. I like sugar. I don't like flour so eliminate that one. Well you now have a candy bar...not a cake.

I really hope this develops into as viable of a power source as it is promised to be- we definitely need a replacement for current nuclear reactor technology. Basic safety factors aside, any power source that produces a by-product where the only viable response is to pour it in barrels, put the barrels in massive underground vaults, and wait centuries or millenia for it to become less toxic... Yeah, not really all that good in the long term view, is it?

You mentioned using "waste" heat for steam desalination, but not district heating. " Waste" heat use in District Heating would almost double thermal efficiency of the reactor, reduce costs by 50% in winter less, in summer when there is lower heat demand. Another missed point is that out put temperatures of up to 1400 C° can be used to drive many, if not most industrial chemical processes, like making cement/ lime fossil free.

For baseload power and for periods of time longer than 4 hours, it is absolutely necessary to have nuclear power and low cost thorium reactors essential. Most days it may not generate most of the power but 4 hours is not a lot of time particularly during the winter or to cover for outages. We are so reliant on 24/7 power now that blackout tolerance is becoming less and less of an option. Also could you look at the accounting for solar which includes safe disposal and/or recycling of expired panels?

Matt, you missed one of the big benefits of a liquid Thorium reactor... all the waist from our current water reactors could be reprocessed and burned up in a Thorium reactor. Do that and we solve our current nuclear waist storage problem.

Another educational video from the inimitable Matt Ferrell. Well done, sir! All options must be on the table since current trends for carbon dioxide emissions look really bad. Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good or even good enough.

Also consider additional benefits of a hybrid desalination and thorium nuclear power plant: not only would you get substantial quantities of possible water at no cost in energy production, the concentrated brine from that desalination process, using electricity produced by the plant, could potentially be chemically mined for valuable minerals such as lithium, gold and others

Yes I think we will need a good mix in our energie supply. And not rely on one source. So a nice and clean source like LFSR will be helpfull. I hope that NRG can make a big contribution in the research needed.

Thorium reactors could be a good way to augment grid storage as well as emergency backup. Grid storage isn’t where it needs to be yet. Four hours isn’t enough. One Arctic blast could suck up all the juice and people could freeze to death. Problem is neither grid storage nor thorium reactor technologies are where they need to be yet.

Great video Matt but could you please enlighten your viewers about Indonesia's choice of the walk-away safe high temperature but near ambient pressure ThorCon's 7×500MWe Liquid metal Thorium ion molten sodium fluoride salt burner energy converters that can be brought on line within 2 years for $1200/kiloWatt and provide electricity to the grid for a pre-profit levelised cost of $30/Megawatt.hour without destruction of thousands of Hectares of scarce tropical rain forests ...each 500MWe unit is bult like a double-hulled bulk-carrier in a Korean shipbuilding yard, fully equipped and fitted out before being towed to Indonesia where the fuel salts are added. All at a cost of $1200/kiloWatt to ThorCon. Although the PPA agreement is initially for 25 years the design life is 80 years by replacing alternating reactor pots every 8 years including a 4 year passive cooling period. These are capable of being either auto "load-following" or as a "base loader"

Hello, i think the problem is not the cost of producing electricity, it is the cost of not having electricity when it is needed. As long as electricity can not be stored in megawatts and hundreds of megawatts. it is not renewable source vs other, it is the cost of having electricity vs having no electricity when needed. This winter will be interesting in Europe, we might see what is the cost of blackout or industry shutdown because of the lack of electricity when it is needed. I love your channel keep on the good work.

I been keeping tap of our power generation composition in the UK and I have to say the performance of wind power has been abysmal On a good day we would be utilising about half of our installed capacity (25 gw) and there are times we don't even utilise 1/10 of that capacity for days and weeks We have to go nuclear whether it's SMR or molten salt just to plug that gap

The Chinese research project should be closely watched, (preferably by reading their e-mail in real time; reversing the usual flow of research information). One fact that is rarely spelled out is that the waste storage problem is a symptom of the horrendous inefficiency of the current conventional technologies. So much of the potential energy in the fuel is not captured for use, but remains in the waste to cause problems.

Nice work as always! One correction Matt - not all conventional Uranium-fueled reactor must shut down for re-fueling. The CANDU reactors, which are in wide use in North America and elsewhere, are fueled/de-fueled continuously without the need for an expensive shutdown, nor is it necessary to build two reactors to ensure that there is always power flowing from at least one reactor. This has always been a huge advantage of the CANDU design over the Westinghouse PLW designs favored in the US.

I'll point out that CANDU reactors (in use in Canada and many other places in the world) can be refueled "live", and also have other desirable safety properties due to the use of U238, rather than U235. They have a lot of "inherent' safety features often touted by LFTR enthusiasts, and they have been operational since the late 1960s...

Question: in all these energy production cost estimates, do the calculations also include maintenance, chemical stream remediation, and cost for disposal at the end of its lifespan? Total Life Cycle cost is very important in choosing what type of energy production process to adopt.

Well, nuclear (pwrs) have 12 gramms of CO2 per MWh, solar has 27. Wind is in fact comparable, until you factor in methane leakage (due to not being on demand, and still not having grid scale storage). Anyway, yes, thorium is the way to go.

Renewable LCOE should include the cost to make renewable a 24-7 reliable energy source. GW days of storage are needed plus you need to build up the renewable output so it can both provide the required load power plus at the same time charge the batteries. You might need to double the renewable capacity to both charge the batteries and provide the load power at the same time.

I've been a supporter of MSR reactors since I first heard of them at least a decade ago. If they had been the first type built instead of the cheaper kind that runs on arrogance, nuclear power wouldn't have the stigma it does today.

So cool! I really do see this as the near future of nuclear and energy production in general! The far future of course being Fusion but I understand that is a loooong way off.

Wind and solar are great, but at very high (or low) latitudes where population densities tend to be low and distances vast, small offsite built reactors might make a lot of sense and Thorium has its advantages, too.

"Thorium is 3 times as common as uranium. " Only a tiny fraction of Uranium is suitable for nuclear power generation. Thorium is 400 times as common as that fraction.

I do think that MSR's also have the promise of being smaller than conventional reactors and it should be possible to make MSR's modular, count with that all the other possibility's MSR's provide and i think we could do a lot better than solid fuel reactors.

Matt, I am curious though why no mention of Kirk Sorensen? From a historical standpoint he did get the ball rolling again in 2006 after the government abandoned the project in 1969 and actually coined the phrase LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor).

I think thorium is going to have an impact regardless of whether it pans out as a viable fuel. Nuclear is really the only option we have for a de-carbonized world and the increased research Thorium spurs is the best chance we have of getting there. whether it is public perception or new reactor designs it's a net benefit.

Very interesting topic. I would recommend you to also look into the "dual-fluid reactor" design, that combines molten salt and molten lead reactors

Mass produced small modular nuclear seems to be the best business model. Even better couple it with mass produced modules like an all in one power and desalination/green hydrogen plant for one low price. Lots of countries would have interest in that. Other options could be different types of furnaces or the ability to power existing furnaces. As in iron smelting or cement production. Big factory complexes could buy them to power their operations.

Great video. I like to hear more about the safety and environmental impacts of the various energy generations methods. Damns have broken, nuclear accidents have made areas uninhabitable for generations, burning fossil fuels cause climate change, raw materials (lithium, coal, thorium, etc.) are limited and have environmental impacts of their own. Is there some sort of value (NOT Dollars) that can be assigned to compare safety and environmental impacts fairly (and who judges what is fair)? Long term environmental impacts, future site status after unlikely catastrophic failure, sustainability of raw materials? I'd like to something like an FMEA type of evaluation that weighs various energy production methods with respect to factors other than dollars.