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

china's molten salt reactor is almost complete with activation expected sometime this fall this will be the first time a molten salt reactor has been operational since the msre in the 1960s and while congratulations are certainly in order it also serves as a reminder of how behind the u.s is in prototyping comparable technology in this space today i discussed the status of the molten salt reactor development and the viability in pushing for a true thorium fuel cycle in our lifetime i'm sean kenny and this is rock logic hello again and welcome to rock logic i'm your host sean kenny and before we get started i want to ask you to hit the like button subscribe to our channel if you enjoyed today's episode leave a comment below now at the recording of this episode the chinese government is nearing completion of its very first molten salt reactor referred to as tmsr lf1 or if you want to get technical thorium molten salt reactor liquid fuel 1. that's right folks this is a legit thorium-fueled msr leading the charge in this endeavor is the shanghai institute of applied physics who in collaboration with the chinese academy of science has been working diligently towards expanding the work initially started by oak ridge since 2011 they have had around 700 scientists engineers and technicians working on various aspects of the design and since 2019 they have been working on construction of their first reactor in the gobi desert the project is set to be a two megawatt demonstrator plant located in huawei a city in northwest central gansu province this is not a power reactor but rather a fission prototype to do materials and operations testing of the technology by 2025 they will complete a construction of a 10 megawatt thermal reactor and they won't stop here by 2035 a 100 megawatt thermal demonstrator plant with full electro metallurgical reprocessing will be built eventually they hope to have reactors in the gigawatt range in commercial development the chinese have already spent 3.3 billion dollars to date on this program long term president xi jinping aims to drive thorium molten salt reactors as a key component to making china carbon neutral by 2060. in addition to domestic interest the chinese plan on exporting the design to 30 different countries that are involved in china's belt and road initiative in time and assuming little competition from the west the chinese aim to dominate the advanced nuclear space for the most part they are set up to do this they have a highly educated workforce on it with a long-term build and test approach but there's one hitch in this plan the materials and supply chain don't exist however one of the advantages of being a centrally planned economy is that when your leaders really want something especially something that doesn't exist they can pretty much will it into existence with little to no regard to costs they are enriching lithium-7 as well as facilities for the beryllium to make flieb salt they are building factories that will produce nuclear-rated graphite cores to moderate neutrons they will eventually be using brayton cycle gas turbines using supercritical co2 and in time they will have their own stockpiles of uranium-233 as far as the thorium goes they've already stockpiled it by collecting waste streams from their rare earth mining industry so china's on the ball where does that leave the united states well not in a good place you see unlike china the united states as a country has spent exactly zero dollars towards the development of thorium molten salt reactors aside from some seed money from investors looking to get some skin in the game with the advanced nuclear space or some doe grant money towards research there's been almost no serious centralized or concerted effort towards getting anywhere near a prototype the private companies that have made progress are either not using thorium not building a molten salt reactor and if they happen to build a molten salt reactor that uses thorium it's not happening here to make matters worse the united states is the only country on earth with a pre-existing stockpile of uranium-233 this is essential to the startup of lifter because it's the only substance that can make efficient use of the thorium fuel cycle without making plutonium it's also capable of making vital medical isotopes that can treat various dispersed cancers i feel that this needs to be emphasized this is not a form of uranium that exists in nature uranium-233 is an isotope that is man-made and can only be made by the intentional exposure of thorium-232 to neutrons the reason we have access to these materials is that we have done experiments with thorium as a potential fuel for advanced reactors this stockpile is not very large and the best guess would only be suitable to start maybe a dozen thorium and salt reactors like the lifter so this already gives the united states a very clear advantage if we decide to switch gears and make a move towards building thorium molten salt reactors is that what we're doing no apparently the current administration at the department of energy is working towards disposing of the only existing strategic stockpile of uranium-233 at oak ridge national labs being a material that could be used to make weapons there is a cost associated with maintaining this stockpile and the government apparently doesn't want to take care of it anymore because no one is using it so the strategy is to extract whatever medical isotopes they can from uranium-233 to do research on cancer treatments before diluting the uranium-233 into a vat of u-238 in a process called down blending this would essentially render the material useless any startup looking to run a molten salt reactor using the pure thorium fuel cycle like flybenergy would need to start from scratch so china is currently winning the united states is lagging behind on molten salt reactor development and aside from a few underfunded startups working on this there is almost no real strategy to compete in this market against china does this mean that all hope is lost no a couple things need to be addressed here just because the department of energy is short-sighted doesn't mean molten salt reactor development is doomed here at home for starters even though u-233 is crucial for the most optimal thermal breeder design and can achieve the most optimal use of the thorium fuel cycle it's not at all necessary to start every kind of msr after all not every msr design proposed uses thorium startups like elysium and multex have extremely fuel flexible approach that gives them distinct advantages they can run on almost any type of nuclear fuel even existing waste stockpiles eventually they could build up towards running on thorium or low enriched uranium thoricon power is looking towards having its first reactor operational within a few years and while i'll agree the reactor doesn't have the most optimal design compared to others they will be able to make it run on a steady diet of uranium 235 and thorium-232 now personally i want to see lifter have its day in the sun among all the proposals i've seen it really does have a lot to offer in terms of maximizing one of the best nuclear fuels in existence even if we lose our strategic stockpile can we still run a lifter without u-233 yes can we make more uranium-233 yes potentially let me explain a few years back kirk sorensen published a proposal for a variant of the lifter concept called lifter 49. the idea was that this reactor would work almost in the same way as the original lifter would with one major exception instead of using thorium-232 and uranium-233 lifter 49 would run on thorium and plutonium-239 from existing waste stockpiles the process starts with resolving the waste pellets by hydrofluorination and then extracting all the uranium isotopes this reduces the amount of remaining waste material to five percent then the fission products are extracted and stored and you are left with only the actinides which make up about one percent of the waste by volume this gets fed into the reactor where they are burnt producing energy as well as an excess of neutrons the neutrons get absorbed into the blanket which contains thorium which then becomes protactinium-233 and is later extracted the pro-tectinium decays into uranium-233 which can then be used in other thorium fueled lifters the whole process works in the same way that we've discussed on the show except that u-233 doesn't get consumed right away all the energy and neutrons in a lifter 49 come from the actinide waste feed almost all the actinides are burnt and hardly any actinides are produced since there is no uranium-238 in the reactor by extracting all the uranium isotopes from the fuel before feeding it into the reactor the lifter 49 is able to burn nuclear waste much faster than other waste burners while leaving almost no long-lived waste and the uranium that is extracted from the initial waste stockpiles can be used in heavy water reactors so clearly we have solutions that will allow us to adapt to changes and a lack of access to certain materials however these solutions are absolutely meaningless unless we actually apply them the way i see it we have two choices we can lay down and let the chinese produce these reactors in mass allowing them to conquer the global energy market along with every other aspect of the global economy or we can apply ourselves we already have companies that are looking to take the next steps and bring these concepts to commercial development they need help they need funding but more importantly they need a clear path to commercialization to do that we need our government to start by making common sense regulatory reforms in regards to advanced nuclear licensing specifically as it applies to molten salt reactor development by doing so these companies would have an easier time appealing to investors by drawing a clear path to revenue once achieved we could see maybe a dozen different reactor designs competing for market share as the united states continues its current path of decarbonizing its power production infrastructure i hope to see some movement on this soon for now i'm sean kenny and this is rock logic you

Channel: Rock Logic With Sean Kenny

Views: 23,054

Keywords: rock logic, sean kenny, podcast, rock logic with sean kenny, china, china msr, china molten salt reactor, china msr program, molten salt reactor, msr, thorium, thorium msr, thorium fuel cycle, uranium, u233, u 233, uranium 233, uranium 238, plutonium, nuclear energy, nuclear power, clean energy, u238, making u233, how to make u233, sean kenney, rock logic with sean kenney, medical isotopes, uranium isotopes, rare earth elements, china nuclear, china nuclear power

Id: smI7NdmQ7gc

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AlanCrowley]

Thorium Nuclear reactors are the future of energy production, i have paste a comment I made on r/Sino where they talked about green energies, and since I'm hungry as fuck but my ADHD can't let me see this post go away without a proper comment, here are my comment that i posted there:

"Those new wild turbines may generate a good amount of electricity, but the new Thorium Nuclear reactors are state of art technology, about a year ago while i was working a engineer showed me the blueprint and a exemplary prototype of the Thorium reactors they'll put in countryside China and maybe all around the Gobi desert, unfortunately this engineer didn't speak English, and my Chinese is cursed but i understood that those Thorium Nuclear reactors are safer, better and way more efficient than the Uranium Power plants and by far they're the best method of energy production for both China and the world, as China might export such technology for it's vital and strategic allies like Russia, Myanmar and North Korea, and economic partners like Germany, Brazil and South Korea later later them the team of economists and engineers i work has send a message for our executive superior that it is indeed a good idea to implement and that the local bank of economic and social development of Shenzhen should invest and implement this, plus it will free China from the Uranium and Coal commodities from Australia that China depends for their Thermoelectric and Uranium Power plants, so it's a absolute win for the Chinese people since Thorium is a very available resource here in China"

Plus, the Thorium reactors will decrease the fossil fuels use in China and all around the world if North America and Europe make their reactors as well

Sorry for my english, just like my Chinese, my english is not the best