Making Safe Nuclear Power from Thorium | Thomas Jam Pedersen | TEDxCopenhagen

today we still get more than 75% of the global energy supply from fossil fuels but we only get 1% from wind and solar now we all know that we need to stop using these fossil fuels because they create pollution and cu2 problems but how how are you going to do that in my country we have been building wind power for more than 40 years now essentially all my life and we're still only able to supply a fraction of the in the country's total energy apply from wind fossil fuels also create other problems with wars and conflicts around the world and that results in migration and refugees and hardship for a lot of people who didn't get a lot of benefit from those fossil fuels in the first place but I believe that it's the responsibility of our generation to find a solution to this transition from fossil fuels to something else and it's not going to be the global energy companies that are going to help us do that and I don't think that politicians are not going to do that for us at least not on their own it's not going to be the guy on the street in Bangladesh or somewhere that's going to solve the problems it's us it's people in the rich part of the world it's people like you and me and people in other rooms like this that are going to solve this problem and I have a great confidence that we can find a way to solve it and one of the reasons is I read an article on the internet five years ago it said a ball this size made out of thorium can supply you with all the energy you need for your entire life and there's enough thorium on this planet to power the entire humanity with entity plenty of energy for more thousand years and then it said in that article that thorium costs next to nothing I had to admit when I read that I didn't believe it for one second so I just put it away and I went on with my life but I'm the kind of guy who reads a lot of tech news and these stories about molds or reactors and thorium and he kept on popping up in those take new streams and I read a few more of those and I was curious and then I said to myself hey I'm an engineer and engineers are supposed to go home and calculate if it's really true all the things that we've been told in the media so I did and thorium is an element in the periodic table it was easy to find all the numbers that I needed for my calculation on Wikipedia and in less than 15 minutes I was able to calculate and get the result and it's true I was stunned in a big way when I found out it's really true there's all the energy that I need for my entire life in this ball not just for electricity but for everything for heating my house and cooking my food and for building roads and schools and houses and hospitals and to manufacture all the products and goods that I need throughout my entire life and transportation everything for a hundred years in this ball that fascinated me more than just a little bit I thought this is super cool I want to get me one of those balls so I went on the internet and I googled wek why can't I buy one of these but I couldn't it turns out that thorium is slightly radioactive so there are some rules and regulations but more importantly we're not using thorium anywhere in the industry today that means there's no demand for thorium that means there's no supply and there's no market and no market price but for that research so I did find out that it's true but there's lots of foam in this world for many thousand years and when we mind for other materials that we need for high-tech products and electronics we get lots of tharam out of the ground in those mining operations but because there is no demand for it the mining companies they don't want to refine it so they just put it back in the ground but we have been using thorium a little bit in the past and we know how to refine it and it's actually a easy and very simple process not very expensive and that means that if we were to mine thorium at an industrial scale then the ball the size will cost you less than $100 ladies and gentlemen that is less than one dollar per year for your entire energy supply think about that next time you go to the gas station and fill up your car of course I also thought about that and it's like this seems really great so we have all this energy in this ball but why are we not using it what's the problem what am I not being told and then I find out oh of course it's because we need a machine so convert thorium into energy and that machine is probably super duper difficult to make it's probably something that the scientist has been spending billions of dollars and decades of research and they have no idea how to make it work but around that time I'd also found out that there's there was a small group of scientists back in the 60s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee in United States and they build a machine that they called a molten salt reactor they had a very limited budget and it took them a few years to built the machine and then when they turned it on it worked right away and they ran it for five years who now that machine wasn't able to convert thorium into energy but the scientists knew that if they could make this machine work then they could build the next version and the next version was highly likely able to work and it would convert thorium into energy but then the government at the time and the president this was Nixon at that time he had promised some people in California that he he wanted to create jobs over there and they that government they didn't really understand this project of his new technology in Tennessee so they decided to shut it down and spent some of those money in jobs in California and then through some really unfortunate circumstances this technology didn't get to the public's attention for almost 50 years until a guy called Kirk Sorensen heard about it and he then he started to dig into this and he found out about and he started to publish some of these papers that the scientist had written in the 60s on the Internet and then people started to realize holy cow this is like the holy grail of in an energy production and we've been sitting on top of it for all this time and then word started to spread around the world and and people got involved and that's of course also how I got involved now these molds are reactors is really the key here so I want to tell you a little bit more about them first of all it's a nuclear reactor but it's very very different from the old type of nuclear reactors that we have in all power plants today all nuclear power plants I want to just quickly go through how they are different well first of all the old power plants they have cause really big buildings and it takes many years to build and they're very expensive I think you all know that and then they rely on electrical systems and humans and control rooms with lots of dials and buttons to make sure that they run safely and then finally when we put uranium into them and burn that uranium those old type of reactors are only capable of burning a few percent of that fuel so what we get out of the reactor we call spent nuclear fuel and it's radioactive and needs to be stored safely for a hundred thousand years or more and that has caused a lot of headache in those countries who rely on nuclear energy today but let's try to compare that to moulds or reactors those reactions are can be built really small and then can be built on an assembly line just like we build cars and airplanes and when we do that we can get the price to come down and the quality to go up over time and once we get into volume production these molds our reactors can be built at a very very different price point than old type of nuclear power you know very small price and then with regards to the safety molds our reactors is known to be one of the safest reactor types that we know of and I want to point out two things there's one safety theme called walkaway safety and it simply means that if all the human operators were to walk away from it and reactor that is running and we lose the control systems or the electricity then these reactor types are still capable of shutting themselves down and come to a stop for using simple physical and mechanical properties and when they stop they don't release any harmful materials to the surroundings the other principle is called the prime-minister safety and it simply means that no matter how many stars you have on your shoulders you will not be able to operate these reactors in a way where they become dangerous or unsafe even better if somebody tries to fiddle with the reactor in ways that they shouldn't then these reactors are capable of letting the world know about it before things get out of hand but what really got me hooked is feature number four about the waste because these moons our reactors are capable of burning all the fuel that we put into them that means if I put this ball or throw them into that reactor and burn it then I what I get out is it is a small the same science of waste and the tiny fraction and that is radioactive and it needs to be storage safely for 300 years but we already know how to store something very safe for 300 years so essentially all the headaches have been cleared up but what's really great is that we can take the spent nuclear fuel from these old type of reactors and bring it over here and then we can mix it with the thorium and then we can burn it one more time and get additional energy out of it but also really importantly when we burn it the second time in the molten salt reactors we reduce the number of years that the wastes have to be stored also to 300 years so let me just know so when I heard about all of this I decided this is really great well you know why are we not using it and I decided I could not just sit around and wait for this to happen I had to get involved so I started to travel the world to go to conferences about 4 amenity and molten salt reactors and build an international network of scientists and engineers that I could work with and then here in Copenhagen I was also able to meet with some really great scientists and engineers and we formed a group and eventually we decided to start a company together and that call that company is called Copenhagen Atomics and our dream or our vision in coming Atomics is we want to bring we want to help bring this new energy source to market bring this technology to market and we want to do that through openness and through collaboration we want to collaborate with people from other countries scientists and engineers and we have this a long-term vision that we want to build these molds or reactors inside a 40-foot shipping container on an assembly line and then we want to ship them out into the world to where the wasters and help burn that waste out of existence so those those molds or reactors should be configured as waste burners and that's why we call it the Copenhagen atomic waste burner now let's step back and talk about or rephrase what it is that I've told you here first of all there's this new type of fuel that we didn't realize most of us that it existed and there's lots of it and we can use that to replace fossil fuels and then there's this machine that allow us to burn it in a way where it produced no pollution no see you - and it can even help us reduce the stockpile of radioactive waste that we have around the world but I don't think that's that's really great but the biggest thing for me it's the last point is that by implementing this system for producing energy we will be able to produce enough energy for all of us in this world so we don't have to fight over anything anymore in wars and conflicts and hopefully this will help us reduce the wars and conflicts and all the problems that are related to that and I think it would be really great if our generation could achieve that to implement a new energy system like that that could achieve all these things instead of the fossil fuel so I want to ask you to reconsider how should we build a newer energy system in this world if you were responsible how would you design such a system I'm pretty sure that you would probably not give special rights and unfair advantages to a few rich countries or a few global corporations and then allow them to take advantage of the fact that we all need energy if we want to live a prosperous lives and you will probably not allow them to influence our political systems and many of the decisions that are made around the world and then there's also these problems where decisions are made about our environment for example I'm thinking about tar sands and gas fracking I mean we've really become so hungry for fossil fuels that we're trying really hard to destroy the world around us so I think it would be great if we can find ways to solve that by rethinking how we have the energy system and finally I want to take it to your home and think about in your home you probably have running water and internet connection now nobody owns the water in this world nobody owns the Internet but still for a small monthly fee usually a flat fee you can get utility providers to provide those services to your home and it's of great benefit to you so what if nobody owned the thorium in this world and nobody owned the technology to convert or to build these molten salt reactors then maybe someday in the future we could have an energy system where for a small flat fee per month you would be able to get all the energy you want into your house you can use that in your 3d printer to print all kinds of products you need and of course to heat your home and and cook your food but also to charge your electrical vehicle whether it's a car or some kind of flying device I think that's the kind of future that we should try to aspire to but of course now I told you all the great things about 4 amenity but so why don't we have it already and of course that's because there's there's still some things that needs to be solved there's a stack of people problems and has to be solved and then there's a smaller stack of technical problems but the real big problem is that they really interconnected and it's like the hen and the egg problem you cannot solve one without having solved the other one first and vice versa so it it makes it really difficult to get started and nobody wants to be the first one to come in and invest if everyone everyone else can just come later and get a free lunch so there's some hurdles that we need to attack and that's where we need you I think it's going to be people like you people in the rich part of the world you should bring this forward and how can you help well the the least thing you can do is to tell your colleagues and friends and family that this new energy system exists that it's possible because before as a society before we know about this we cannot have a debate about it and then we're definitely not moving anywhere but then the next steps is that we need a lot of people with skills in communication and law and design and graphics and many of these soft skills to help us build this energy system so I invite all of you who have an interest in building a better world for the future to come along and help with this task so that we can build yeah better future for you for me and for the next generations thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 471,458

Rating: 4.8535886 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Denmark, Science (hard), Alternative energy

Id: tHO1ebNxhVI

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/moolah_dollar_cash]

The nuclear power plant design I really get excited about is moltex energy, which has some amazing claims for what it can achieve based on some pretty solid evidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DurVdLZgz7g

That's a link to a youtube video of theirs. It explains very well how they can bring the costs down while at the same time making a design that's safe and (relatively) environmentally friendly, with nuclear waste that only remains radioactive for two-hundred years opposed to two-hundred-thousand years.

[u/BadElf21]

As much as i love thorium and nuclear technology in general, if solar continues its tremendous trend toward cheaper and greater production, nuclear power may be overtaken entirely. I'd rather have solar farms as far as the eye can see than a nuclear waste repository i must safeguard passed the life expectancy of all human empires and governments.

[u/NextGenPIPinPIP]

I heard a rumor that Reddit is actually powered by Thorium-Graphene reactors.

[u/ilevel239]

Lightbridge is a company that creates materials to help lower the temperature during the process of thorium nuclear energy creation, I think. Check em out

[u/SpeakMouthWords]

Oh the Thorium meme. When will you die?

Take a scan through here: https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html

Fair play to this guy if he's actually going to build it though. We need all the help generating electricity that we can get.

[u/VanVelding]

Turns out a source of nuclear power is radioactive.
"Costs will diminish once production scales up."
Safer because of "simple mechanics."
Tamper-proof because of reasons.
Flying cars.

Anyone else get bingo? I think it's great that folks are working on improving nuclear power, but it's irksome when their successes are portrayed as some kind of outside the box, not nuclear power, silver bullet and not the result of eighty years of nuclear power research.

[u/StinkMartini]

You've obviously never heard of cobalt thorium g...

https://youtu.be/aSlf2vB80lo

[u/TheSingulatarian]

And after WWII when nuclear power was first developed they said electricity would be so cheap they wouldn't even meter it.

[u/johnmountain]

I mean hasn't this been the promise of nuclear power since the very beginning? And yet it turned quite a bit more expensive, because there are many other costs with a safe nuclear power plant than just producing the raw energy.