China Is Building a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor - Here's Why It Matters

hello wonderful person this is anton and today we're going to be talking about something else that china has been recently trying to develop something that might help china resolve its problems with the pollution and also problems with the lack of energy and something that the united states and some other countries had a chance to develop a few decades ago but unfortunately didn't so let's discuss this idea of thorium nuclear reactors and why it could actually transform our society and help us resolve a lot of issues on the planet right now but first let's establish what the problem is and how china is trying to solve it the main problem in china and a lot of other countries is of course pollution due to the tremendous requirements of energy and due to the sheer amount of electricity used in china unfortunately the majority of the energy in the country has been coming from fossil fuels because of this as you probably know from some of the other videos and of course from nasa itself china has been experiencing some ridiculous amounts of pollution all over the country here's the image that was released by nasa just a few months ago showing us how the pollution levels in china changed during the lockdown last year in 2020 but these levels have since returned back to the original value and so the pollution is still a huge problem this obviously doesn't just affect china it affects nearby countries and it also affects the entire world because of the circulation of the air around the world but this obviously is not just a concern in regards to the climate change this is also a huge concern for health reasons there's actually a tremendous amount of research showing us time and time again that the pollution from fossil fuels is extremely dangerous to human health which is of course a very important reason to try to discover some alternative energy that doesn't really cause a lot of problems for us and obviously renewables is a perfect solution but things like turbines or things like solar panels hydro energy or even things like tidal energy all this is still really not at the level where it can replace the fossil fuels and generate enough energy for the entire country which is of course where nuclear energy comes in and a lot of proponents of nuclear energy have been arguing for years now that this is still the safest energy we have not only is it safe but it also produces a tremendous amount of energy required for most countries but unfortunately because of the media exposure and also because of the disasters in fukushima and before the chernobyl the issue with the nuclear energy is now more political than anything else and because of this it's almost impossible for countries to try to create new nuclear reactors now obviously a lot of countries are still building nuclear reactors but not to the extent where it would replace everything including fossil fuels and honestly this is very unfortunate it's unfortunate that the politics and the lack of understanding of nuclear power has created this unusual and somewhat negative image that a typical nuclear reactor has i've actually recently visited a nuclear reactor in south korea just for fun really and it was actually an amazing and very educational experience i've discovered how extremely well protected they are how the amount of energy they generate is absolutely ridiculous but also how difficult it is for the local government to convince people that this is safe but we'll actually discuss this in one of the future videos because i am trying to find a way to film inside the reactor and to actually showcase how all of this works around the world today we're talking about something a little bit different today we're discussing this and this is a recent announcement coming out of china after approximately 10 years of testing a lot of articles started to come out suggesting that china is now moving forward with developing a completely new reactor nuclear reactor known as the thorium molten salt reactor and this is actually absolutely mind-blowing for one simple reason okay maybe two reasons first reason is that this is not a new technology it was supposed to exist decades ago this is that technology that was supposed to bring us nuclear airplanes nuclear powered cars flying cars and so on and so forth a lot of this technology especially from some of the older cartoons it was all based on this idea of thorium molten solid reactors and this is not some kind of a science fiction this actually worked and it worked so well but something went wrong it was never developed to be the technology that it could have been or has it because it looks like china is finally jumping on the boat and building them for real with actual plans for developing nuclear airplanes but what exactly is this reactor and why has it never happened so we have to go back in time here to i guess 50s early 60s back then the us and the soviet union were competing with each other to try to develop as much nuclear deterrent as possible they were both building a lot of nuclear bombs they were also trying to build the delivery systems for those bombs and all of this was based on uranium and plutonium with plutonium being the necessary requirement to build more powerful weapons but because plutonium did not exist in nature they had to use uranium which did exist in nature to try to create as much of it as possible and one of the propositions in the 50s was to actually create some sort of a nuclear bomber that's able to deliver in various nuclear bombs with the capacity to fly all the way from the us to all the way to for example somewhere in russia to obviously deliver some sort of a nuclear weapon now luckily for us this has never happened and hopefully never will but the us government and of course the soviet government were desperately trying to create some kind of ability to deliver nuclear weapons across vast regions of space and for the u.s it came down to developing some sort of a nuclear aircraft and they actually came pretty close to getting them working and pretty close to having them operate as well and here's actually the only known test of a nuclear reactor being flown on the aircraft something that was originally developed right here at the oakridge national laboratory the laboratory that became the center for this technology and the technology was not based on uranium it was based on another material known as thorium thorium just like uranium is what's known as an actinide and just like uranium thorium also possesses extremely similar properties it's radioactive it's relatively abundant in the planet as a matter of fact there's about three times more thorium than there's uranium and it's relatively easy to extract and to use in various production unlike uranium though it cannot be used to produce plutonium which means that it cannot be used as a weapon in any way and because of this this kind of doomed thorium to be abandoned as a project back then the united states was really focused on finding the material that can be used for many purposes including military purposes and uranium was a perfect solution it was able to produce a lot of energy it could then be used to produce a lot of plutonium and all this could be used to produce a lot of nuclear weapons thorium however was not actually that versatile there was a lot of it everywhere but it could only potentially be used to produce energy for civilian purposes and maybe to build an aircraft that can actually fly without using any fuel but this did not provide enough reason for the military and for the government to invest into this and so they ended up cancelling this in 1961 after spending about a billion dollars to try to figure this out this was actually cancelled by kennedy i believe and one of the main reasons for the cancellation was the development of the icbms with the existence of ballistic missiles the nuclear airplanes were no longer necessary but this did not stop these scientists and the researchers at the oakridge national laboratory to try to continue to develop this technology in some way or another they knew that this is actually something that could potentially transform our society they've actually continuously tried to build some sort of a nuclear reactor for at least a decade after this but unfortunately eventually the program was completely cancelled because of the lack of funding and because there were no other experts except for the experts located at the lab right here and just like in some of the previous commercial wars such as the famous betamax vs vhs there was only one winner that winner in this case was uranium and uranium is still a winner even today but unfortunately as we've learned in the last few years uranium unfortunately does not produce the safest nuclear reactors yet thorium kind of does so let's talk briefly about the differences between the modern reactors we use today and what china is developing and also what the u.s could have developed back in the days the majority of nuclear reactors today the vast majority at least are usually based on a relatively simple principle they will use these very very long rods containing a lot of uranium on the inside that are then injected into some sort of a highly pressurized and usually extremely hot water this water warms up because of the nuclear reaction that happens between the rods this reactor core is usually extremely well protected and normally doesn't really cause any problems the water that's located inside the core is then used to warm up the steam generator that then ends up producing a lot of steam that drives the turbine somewhere in the farther location of the facility so this is normally how the process works there's usually at least a couple and sometimes even more cycles that are completely independent of one another but because this uses liquid water and depends on liquid water and because the liquid water here is usually highly pressurized and also extremely hot sometimes even supercritical with temperatures about 300 degrees celsius any kind of a sudden loss of pressure or any serious problem inside the reactor sometimes has a slight chance to suddenly produce a tremendous amount of hydrogen and hydrogen is an explosive gas which is unfortunately what happened with the explosion in fukushima as well and so even though generally the nuclear reactors are pretty safe these unfortunate incidents involving hydrogen produced from the supracritical or super hot water still create a tiny risk that something could maybe go wrong but this is not the case with thorium molten solid reactors mostly because they do not contain or do not need any water the way that the thorium salt reactor works is slightly different it is similar but different here instead of having water as a kind of a coolant and as something to basically transfer heat the reactor itself uses what's known as molten thorium salt basically it's a liquid it's a very hot liquid but unlike in the water reactor it's actually the molten salt itself that contains all of the nuclear materials it does not need to have any rods that would normally contain uranium in this case rods are for a different purpose and here because the material is actually inside the salt itself it's really the molten sole that becomes hotter and is used to transfer heat with the graphite rods in this case acting as a kind of a turn off switch or as a kind of a moderator in order to prevent the reaction from going way too fast and so this molten salt that's essentially a mixture of thorium and some other compounds has a really interesting advantage first of all there's no pressure here it's sort of in regular pressure at the same time the salt itself has to be extremely hot approximately 800 to maybe a thousand degrees celsius but if it gets too hot it starts to expand the reactor and all of this automatically shuts down the whole process so it sort of prevents the reactor from basically going out of control at the same time there are a lot of extra devices and extra features that prevent the reactor from ever causing any trouble so for example if the reactor becomes suddenly too cold to produce any energy the sold actually solidifies and is no longer liquid it's no longer able to do anything as a matter of fact this is what it kind of looks like in regular temperature but if something ever goes wrong in the reactor there's actually a shutdown mechanism right here that opens up this long long long tube that goes all the way to these deep storage tanks that i use as a kind of a dumping area in case something goes wrong and so this entire reactor is actually designed to be extremely safe and this video right here that was made back in the 60s also shows us that not only is it safe but it definitely works this video that you can find in description below from the lab itself tells us that the reactor operated successfully for many many many hours and produced quite a lot of energy but unfortunately it never happened mostly because of the funding but also because of some problems that could not be solved back in the days problems that we know how to solve now there are two main problems first of all because the material is sort of corrosive it's basically kind of like an acid if we were to have this operate for a few decades there was a chance that it might actually dissolve some of the tanks this has since been solved by using some of the new alloys that have been invented in the last few decades at the same time the other problem was that there was no way to measure what happens inside the reactor because of the high temperatures back then there was no actual way for anyone to measure what happens on the inside but now especially in the last few decades there has been new advances in technology with the video that you can maybe check out up there that explains more that allow us to precisely measure what happens in really high temperatures and really high pressures by using some of the modern advances in semiconductor industry which of course means that all of these old problems have since been solved and so why haven't we started developing these thorium reactors just yet well in u.s and in canada and a few other countries around the world there are actually a few private companies like the terrestrial energy right here in canada or the company known as thor con in the us have gotten really really close to making this happen but at least for thor khan they have faced a lot of issues with regulations it's really really difficult to get licensing especially when it comes to nuclear energy because of this storkcon at least is actually planning to try something in indonesia they're building a nuclear power plant on top of a ship that's going to be sort of mobile and is going to allow them to produce energy using thorium without really facing any regulatory problems but all of this is still sort of far from being truly developed because they're still not really there yet but looks like china is they've had this reactor running since 2011 and is now actually developing another one that's going to be used to power nearby cities and nearby villages and for china it makes a lot of sense first of all because they don't really have a lot of uranium in china but they have tons and tons of thorium second of all unlike uranium reactors thorium reactors do not require water and so can actually operate far away from any source of water and china because of this is planning to build these in a desert far enough from anyone that even if there are issues it's not really going to be a big problem the third advantage here is that thorium nuclear waste doesn't actually last as long as uranium and this means that a lot of the pollution produced by thorium reactors will become safer much quicker the next main advantage here is that thorium cannot be used for production of weapons because of this china is playing the smart they've already suggested that these thorium reactors have a potential of being a kind of an export good they might be able to build these in a lot of other countries providing services that way and this is a super clever move politically mostly because first of all these reactors would be very cheap to produce and second of all it will give china a lot of political influence in those particular countries especially those countries that have already signed up for the so-called belt and road initiative and so overall it's actually kind of interesting to see where all of this goes and we don't really know if thorium reactors in the west are going to be making a comeback anytime soon but we know that china is definitely taking this seriously and since thorium reactors have such an important ability to potentially transform our society creating new opportunities for nuclear energy in daily life i personally find this super fascinating but main reason of course being this we might finally have nuclear powered airplanes but i guess for now that's kind of all i wanted to mention there are still going to be a lot of new developments in the next few years and we'll see how it goes with some of the private companies for now we'll check out more about the molten salt reactor in some of the links in the description below and also take a look at these videos from the oak ledge national laboratory that sort of explain all this in more detail and also show you how they were able to create all of this pretty much seven years ago but also kind of tell you a little bit more about how all this was created approximately 60 to 70 years ago this is definitely a super super interesting concept and actually a concept that could potentially solve a lot of problems in the modern world anyway until future developments or until you learn more that's all i wanted to mention subscribe if you do haven't share this with someone who'll learn about space and sciences and maybe come back tomorrow to learn something else maybe support this channel on patreon by joining a channel membership or by buying the wonderful personal t-shirt you can find in the description anyway stay wonderful i'll see you tomorrow and as always bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Anton Petrov

Views: 684,843

Keywords: anton petrov, science, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, universe, whatdamath, what da math, technology, steven universe, space engine, universe sandbox 2

Id: 1EFfxMx6WJs

Length: 18min 6sec (1086 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Medical_Officer]

I know a great source of salt...

[u/TserriednichHuiGuo]

Nice to see Anton here.

[u/Qanonjailbait]

Remember there was an arms race back then and thorium reactors didn’t provide a pathway to a nuclear weapons program like conventional nuclear reactors did as their by product is Plutonium, the key ingredient in nukes.

[u/sickof50]

We need more SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty), forcing the US and Israel to sign up!

[u/Fiyanggu]

There's no overstating this development. The world will be changed for the better if this pans out. The return of Atoms for Peace.

[u/Vegetable_Hamster732]

Some kinda interesting history in that video about the US's Thorium-reactor based nuclear airplane projects in the past. Seems the US was mostly considering them for weapons delivery platforms, and sounds like the US didn't care about a clean-energy airplane once they invented ICBMs.

[u/DamarcusArt]

I saw "Thorium salt" and thought "I wonder what that would taste like?"

I am not a smart man.

[u/ArmyRus101]

Happy to see China reviving valuable science which was discarded due to political reasons/lack of funding. Bravo China ! ❤️