What are your thoughts on Thorium reactors

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

They are like uranium reactors but better.

[Wyrt]

No one has made one yet so it's all speculation and too early to declare it being better.

[Afrospinach]

No one has made one yet so it's all speculation and too early to declare it being better.

I believe a long time ago there were some pretty successful alternative reactor prototypes. I am not sure if they were thorium specifically.

They did not build them because the byproducts were not military grade bomb materials so the conspiracy goes.

We *know* they:

Cannot melt down
Have relatively large proven reserves of fuel compared to uranium, far more so than the reserves would indicate because most naturally occurring thorium is the stuff you want which is not something you can say about uranium
Have less awful radioactive waste

So we can say they are better - if they worked. What really kills nuclear power is the duly required amount of regulation. Thorium might have an advantage here a as well as there will never be a thorium Chernobyl/Fukushima.

[Wyrt]

I believe a long time ago there were some pretty successful alternative reactor prototypes. I am not sure if they were thorium specifically.

They did not build them because the byproducts were not military grade bomb materials so the conspiracy goes.

We *know* they:

Cannot melt down
Have relatively large proven reserves of fuel compared to uranium, far more so than the reserves would indicate because most naturally occurring thorium is the stuff you want which is not something you can say about uranium
Have less awful radioactive waste

So we can say they are better - if they worked. What really kills nuclear power is the duly required amount of regulation. Thorium might have an advantage here a as well as there will never be a thorium Chernobyl/Fukushima.

They could be better, but we won't know for sure until someone makes one and tries it out. But who's going to be the first to volunteer to host one?

[Afrospinach]

They could be better, but we won't know for sure until someone makes one and tries it out. But who's going to be the first to volunteer to host one?

Well that is easy, India!

[Gaaz]

They are purely theoretical concepts yet. No one has managed to build a working full cycle prototype, despite promises to do that as early as 2011. As of right now, thorium energy production remains orders of magnitude more expensive than Uranium energy production. As in multiple orders of magnitude. A Uranium core costs somewhere in the region of $1 million and is able to operate for about 4 years, supplying a 1GW reactor with power. Thorium reactors require much more expensive infrastructure, non finalized purification tech, and savings in actual fuel costs are going to be marginal at best. Actual Uranium, its manufacture and preparation constitutes about 1% of your electricity bill. Lets assume that Thorium fuel is going to be totally free. In the best case, magic economy scenario you are going to save 1%. Considering that Thorium reactors require multiple cycles of fuel separation in a reactor itself (as far as I understand the theory, making it much more expensive and more prone to breakdown, albeit with lesser consequences), chances are that they are going to increase your bill substantially.

[Independent voter]

I watched a YouTube video on it the other day. Safety seems to be the biggest feature of thorium reactors. You can shut them down in an emergency without releasing radiation.

You can still make nukes with Thorium reactors. Some people were saying that it was impossible to make nukes with thorium reactors but apparently that isn't true.

[Wilian]

I watched a YouTube video on it the other day. Safety seems to be the biggest feature of thorium reactors. You can shut them down in an emergency without releasing radiation.

You can still make nukes with Thorium reactors. Some people were saying that it was impossible to make nukes with thorium reactors but apparently that isn't true.

It is far, far more difficult and time consuming to produce weapon grade material out of Thorium. That's one of the main reasons why the energy sector moved to Uranium back in 50s, because it made byproducting the types of offshoots needed for weapons super easy.

[horbindr]

they are cool on paper, but governments aren't going to invest the billions/trillions to make them feasible because uranium has strategic benefits whereas thorium does not.

and it's still way to expensive for private industry to start investing in it, especially considering the decades worth's already invested into uranium. it's like green energy's uphill battle against cheap mature fossil fuel technologies, but worse.

[Afrospinach]

It is far, far more difficult and time consuming to produce weapon grade material out of Thorium. That's one of the main reasons why the energy sector moved to Uranium back in 50s, because it made byproducting the types of offshoots needed for weapons super easy.

https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

I ran across this this morning.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think they are overhyped. I have yet to see someone that shows me a complete breakdown of the whole system with all costs and ecological impacts. They all focus on "they can't melt" and that is it and the scientificially illiterate media (and hypetrain passengers) jump onto that and proclaim it the best thing ever with illustrious exclamations of "for science, man!"

I've seen some reports on it that were more critical but even they could not clonclude anything since some of the data is just flat out missing.

[horbindr]

https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

I ran across this this morning.

uranium has more strategic uses than just nulclear weapons though. it's also used in tank armor, armor piercing ammunition, probably in oil drill bits, etc. so traditional enrichment processes are valuable in other ways.

meanwhile there aren't really good uses for thorium waste/leftovers at all. iirc there is a huge mountain of it in china that they have no clue what to do with.

- - - Updated - - -

I think they are overhyped. I have yet to see someone that shows me a complete breakdown of the whole system with all costs and ecological impacts. They all focus on "they can't melt" and that is it and the scientificially illiterate media (and hypetrain passengers) jump onto that and proclaim it the best thing ever with illustrious exclamations of "for science, man!"

I've seen some reports on it that were more critical but even they could not clonclude anything since some of the data is just flat out missing.

well that is a huge benefit, cause it would allow you to build much smaller ones because you don't need the extreme amounts of support infrastructure and safety infrastructure uranium needs. and decentralization of power grids is something a lot of people are interested in.

but yeah nobody wants to pay the up front cost to find out if thats actually feasible.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

Thor...

Friend!

Thor...i...um...

...

Good!

[Wilian]

https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

I ran across this this morning.

That doesn't really refute anything I said per se. The article outright admits my first notion (That it's far more difficult to extract weapons grade material from Thorium than from Uranium) while the second portion I could've worded differently; The article admits that the weapon related uranium process is main reason why it became widespread initially and while there was research done into Thorium in 50s and 60s it never kicked off.

[The Stormbringer]

I'd love to see a working Thorium reactor.

[Afrospinach]

That doesn't really refute anything I said per se. The article outright admits my first notion (That it's far more difficult to extract weapons grade material from Thorium than from Uranium) while the second portion I could've worded differently; The article admits that the weapon related uranium process is main reason why it became widespread initially and while there was research done into Thorium in 50s and 60s it never kicked off.

I am not refuting anything, I have just always heard the tagline "not weapons grade byproducts" and it would seem this was not exactly the case. There were lots of things said in the past that were also terribly misleading like "there is 500x more thorium than uranium" if you remember that one from that hippy website peddling "green nuclear", maybe not as it was almost a decade ago.

uranium has more strategic uses than just nulclear weapons though. it's also used in tank armor, armor piercing ammunition, probably in oil drill bits, etc. so traditional enrichment processes are valuable in other ways.

meanwhile there aren't really good uses for thorium waste/leftovers at all. iirc there is a huge mountain of it in china that they have no clue what to do with.

Most uranium is not fissile material anyhow. Not up to speed on all the isotopes but I assume if they need that stuff for non fissile use the can just dig it straight out the ground.

I'd love to see a working Thorium reactor.

I would just love to see a more productive attitude to all things nuclear period.

[Doctor Amadeus]

I think some like the idea because Thor is in the name Thorium reactor.

[Masark]

Cannot melt down

Depends on the design. The most famous thorium designs (molten salt reactors) technically can't melt down, because meltdown is their normal state of operation. Other designs would use solid fuel and therefore would be hypothetically as vulnerable to a meltdown as any other nuclear reactor (which for modern designs is "not very").

[breadisfunny]

i would like to know people's opinion on antimatter fuel sources in rockets.

[The Stormbringer]

I would just love to see a more productive attitude to all things nuclear period.

Yeah... it tends to be so much more efficient than other methods, but people are so panicked about it. Also, I hope you didn't take my comment in a negative light. I genuinely would like to see a working Thorium reactor!