TC No. 31 Richard Martin • Thorium Superfuel @ Googletalks

you [Music] it's been interesting to see this movement that really started out with a committed band of outsiders really grow to a worldwide wave in which there are actual businesses raising actual money and hopefully building and licensing actual reactors I am gonna talk about what needs to happen to actually make thorium power a reality so we're gonna actually start with the Roman Empire so why did the Roman Empire fall someone has counted up the number of theories to explain the fall of Roman the one that really interests me here is was outlined by Joseph Tainter in a 1990 book called the comp the collapse of complex societies and it has to do with with what's called energy return on investment so put simply the energy required to maintain the Roman lifestyle all those monuments games and spectacles feasts and centrally heated bath houses became more and more costly as the centuries passed fertile cropland was depleted and landscapes were just were deforested remote borders became harder to defend and the army the source of Rome's might for a millennium went under fed and unmotivated by the end Rome was easy pickings for the barbarian hordes so here's a painter actually in an interview the great problem Rome faced was when they would have to incur very high cost just to maintain the status quo they had to invest very high amounts in solving problems that didn't yield a positive return but instead simply allowed them to maintain what they already had I would argue that that's a very succinctly found ourselves in today so essentially Imperial Rome fell because it failed to diversify its energy sources and notably an innovative technology existed to do just that Rome was the first civilization to develop all the necessary components for the world's first steam engine but it never built one for practical use in the first century AD a man named he of alexandria who was a Greek living under Roman rule described an Ayla file which was named for Aeolus the god of wind which is now considered the first device powered by steam it was a water filled cauldron that's the big container you see heated by a fire obviously with a pair of tubes projecting upwards from its lid the tubes supported a metal sphere that's spun on its horizontal axis with two nozzles or tip jets for tuning protruding from it and bent in opposite directions expelled through nozzles steam generated thrust that spun the ball it was considered a marvel of ingenuity but something of a parlor trick the Romans never thought to use steam to drive machines to perform labor why should they when slave labor was so cheap and plentiful so moving forward in time a bit in her great book the march of folly the historian barbara tuchman catalogues a series of critical turning points at which governments and societies trapped in the status quo despite mounting contrary evidence failed to leap imaginatively to take bold and visionary steps into the future and to change the course of events Tuchman called a pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest and some of the points that that she described were the start of World War one Vietnam in the u.s. etc I mean the US and Vietnam etc and here's what Tuchman wrote wooden headedness consists of assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs that definition applies perfectly to our current nuclear power industry and I would argue the whole power system ignoring the potential for thorium power in the 1960's and 1970's which is what we did was short-sighted to do so now would be folly so let's talk about nuclear power for a moment and most of you will be familiar with what I'm about to talk about nuclear power provides about 20% of the electricity in the US and about the same percentage worldwide in France it's much higher it's about 80% in France and by many measures the nuclear power industry has been successful it has a relatively clean safety record and over the last 10 years what's happened is the nuclear power industry has gone through what they call uprating which basically means running the reactors at higher power levels then they were conventionally designed for and they've relicensed existing power plants beyond their original design life the thing about nuclear power is that it's stagnant in terms of innovation so the Nuclear Regulatory Commission just licensed the first new nuclear plant in the US and 34 years and it's a two reactor plant in Georgia and it's conventional light water uranium reactors which is basically 40 year old technology because what happened was when the industry began to really stagnate in the 80s people didn't go into it they started going elsewhere they went to Wall Street they started going to Silicon Valley etc so there's kind of a donut hole in the middle of in terms of personnel in the industry that's starting to change a lot of young people are starting to go into the industry again and nuclear engineering departments are starting to get full again but something needs to change to really bring the industry into the 21st century and I would argue that it's thorium so just briefly on thorium I'm gonna assume that a lot of you have heard of thorium power as Kirk Sorensen has been here he's one of the kind of leaders of the thorium revival in the u.s. thorium is about four times as abundant as uranium it's it's about as common as lead I've heard it said that in India which by some measures has the the largest resources of thorium in the world if you scoop up a handful of sand on a beach and Mumbai you've got enough thorium in your hand to power the city for a year that sounds apocryphal to me but it does give you a sense of how common it is and what a dense an efficient source of energy it is the other thing about thorium is that it's fertile it's not fissile and what I mean by that is you can't cram a bunch of thorium into a small space and create a critical mass and start a spontaneous chain reaction you have to have an external source of neutrons and what happens when you bombard thorium with neutrons it goes through a nuclear decay chain and eventually reaches actually an isotope of uranium which is u-233 the type of uranium that is consumed in nuclear reactors is actually u-235 which is very rare in nature so that's why you have two enriched natural uranium up to a certain level of u-235 to to create a substance you can use to run a reactor with if you enrich uranium to about three to five percent or maybe seven percent u-235 you've got reactor grade uranium if you continue and enrich it to twenty percent you've got weapons-grade uranium and so that's the drama the dilemma we see unfolding in Iran right now if you have a civilian nuclear power industry with centrifuges to enrich uranium it's relatively easy to enrich it to weapons-grade you don't have to enrich thorium at all you can use naturally-occurring thorium you do need a small igniter fuel to bombard the thorium and it transmutes on its own and becomes u-233 which is in many ways a better source of energy than u-235 finally the nuclear waste issue and we don't have a solution for nuclear waste right now so if you use thorium in the right kind of reactors which I'm going to describe in a minute they're called liquid fluoride thorium reactors not only do they produce much much less waste which is much shorter lived in terms of the radio toxicity you can also consume or process existing waste from conventional nuclear reactors and burn it down essentially into a form that's much easier to store and much easier to deal with and I've had people argue against that but the fact is the way to solve the nuclear waste problem is to build liquid fluoride thorium reactors which are known as lifters and there are several other advantages to using thorium instead of instead of uranium one of which is thorium is a distributed resource there will never be a Saudi Arabia of thorium it's found everywhere everybody has a little a lot of people have a lot the US has the latest estimate although these estimates are often revised is that the US has four hundred and forty thousand tonnes of uranium resources in the ground the other thing is we've got a bunch that has already been produced for the experiments that went on in the 60s it's sitting in the desert in Nevada it's enough to power the u.s. for the next hundred years and the current plan on the part of the do-e is to down blend that thorium with spent uranium fuel and bury it essentially so that gives you a sense of how crazy our policy is right now on nuclear power enacting the same policy that hasn't worked to date only more forcefully is an accurate description of the nuclear industry strategy first its so-called nuclear Renaissance energy policy is a toxic blend of wooden headedness economic self-interest scientific ignorance theology and technological inertia in particular nuclear power industry suffers from technological lock-in which I'm sure is a term that all of you are familiar with the attendance E of established technologies to crowd other competing and Posse possibly superior systems out of the market the best known example of course is our friend Microsoft few people would suggest that Windows is the ideal operating system for a personal computer but Bill Gates is a brilliant and ruthless businessman and even today windows controls something like 90% of the PC market and the stagnation of nuclear power technology has followed similar lines and it was apparent a long time ago while an appropriate decision at the time it now seems that light water reactors in other words conventional uranium based reactors may have been an unfortunate choice one of the most one of the interesting features of this history is the belief held by many that light water is not the best technology either economically or technically so let's talk about risk in September of 2010 a natural gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno California not far from here it killed eight people immediately thirty five houses were leveled dozens more were damaged created a crater 167 feet long 26 feet wide and 39 feet deep it was like an asteroid the size of a refrigerator had gouged the earth when's the last time you saw a headline about the San Bruno natural gas explosion and natural gas is considered a relatively clean fuel right and we have a bunch of it and its really cheap right now but that accident was one of a rash of industrial accidents around fossil fuels that included the 2006 sago mine disaster which killed 12 people the collapse of the Kingston fossil plant in Tennessee in 2008 which resulted in the largest release of coal ash in US history and the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion which killed 29 miners in April of 2010 the most famous though was the April 2010 blast that brought down the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig killing 11 workers and spilling 206 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico other countries have not been immune in July 2010 an oil pipeline exploded at the port of Dalian in northeast China resulting in the worst oil spill in Chinese history now let's talk about Fukushima Daiichi and I'm gonna preface this by saying I am NOT dismissing the seriousness of that accident but if you step back for a min and think about the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant three people died two were workers trapped in the turbine Hall of reactor 4 which ironically was the only reactor that was that contained no fuel at the time of the earthquake and tsunami a third man died at Fukushima Fukushima Daiichi which is Daiichi sister plant nearby but in the context of the the wider earthquake and tsunami which killed at least 18,000 people the nuclear accident was a footnote and in comparison with the series of fossil fuel disasters that I've just described it hardly rates mentioned Arnold Gundersen is a former nuclear power executive who served as an expert witness in the investigation of the Three Mile Island accident and he's become sort of a loud voice in opposition to nuclear power and he called Fukushima the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind so my point is that gives you an idea of how distorted our views of nuclear power and radioactivity and nuclear accidents really are most nuclear technologists today are hemmed in by an incremental ISM that eliminates the possibility of bold and visionary leaps the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's nuclear future which was formed by the Obama administration soon after Barack Obama took office has looked at various pathways forward for nuclear power in the 21st century including on that list is thorium reactors but the chances of getting something licensed in this country and getting finance and getting built are slim only the smallest and most predictable next step is safe enough to pursue the perception of dangers too high so here's the real risk this is one of many charts this basically is various predictions of the rise in temperature through the end of the century in degrees Celsius and this is what scares me so if you look at the risk of a nuclear power accident in general from conventional nuclear power much less from thorium reactors which are far safer versus this risk that we're looking at there's no comparison we're hastening the onset of disastrous global climate change by continuing to burn fossil fuels and just a word about natural gas I just wrote part of a cover package for Fortune magazine about the natural gas boom and that's a great thing for America $2 natural gas is a great thing and we're actually exporting natural gas from the gulf coast to Western Europe because even with the transport costs which with natural gas are pretty high the price once you get it to you know Brussels or wherever in Europe it's still much cheaper that's not gonna last that price imbalance is not going to last the natural gas industry is not yet the market is not yet globalized like the oil industry is and that's going to change so the being simply the low-cost provider of cheap energy is not a pathway to sustain prosperity so if we continue on our current path large coastal cities could be underwater millions of acres of agricultural land will have turn to desert severe drought will be widespread resource wars fought over increasingly scarce supplies of water and energy will be common and so on but again we have a perceptual problem the prospect of global climate change is sort of abstract and distant to most Americans and there have been some polls recently they're sort of staggering that only something like 35 percent of Americans consider global climate change a real threat since 2001 fears of another terror attack have poison American life and cost America billions of dollars in ways both visible in terms of long lines of security at airports for instance and invisible including the difficulty of foreigners to come work for companies like Google because of visa issues despite the comparatively clean safety record of the nuclear power industry the potential of nuclear power at least in the US has been stifled by risks that are almost too small to measure so what's changed why are we incapable of summoning the will the confidence the end the unity to produce similar achievements against a threat that is every bit as existential as world war 2 or the Cold War the first and most obvious is the political system I probably don't need to tell any of you how impossible it is to get the US Congress to take action on any critical matter of long-term national security and prosperity the other change however is the financial system current levels of government debt make a new quote new Manhattan Project for energy unquote impossible at the same time the evolution of the private sector financial system particularly private equity in the stock market favors quick returns over long term investment clear exit strategies over building new industries and consumer focused technologies mobile phones and applications social media new forms of entertainment over large and complex infrastructure projects in other words we can't do it because we've never done it before and even if we could do it the public will never support it new technology must be the basis of the transformation with a few notable exceptions the nuclear power industry's plans for the next generation of reactors can be summarized as the same only more so any nationwide energy strategy should promote and require the rapid development and deployment of new forms of nuclear power especially liquid-fueled thorium reactors and the transformation must draw on America's innate competitive advantages the US has the top engineering schools in the world a vibrant alternative energy investment market a pervasive though aging power grid and increasingly open and deregulated energy markets also large numbers of investors scientists and entrepreneurs who view the energy crisis as a signal challenge of the 21st century plus we invented thorium fueled reactors so how much would all this cost this these are a couple of graphs about trying to figure out what the real cost of energy is and nuclear power is kind of in the middle of both these graphs and there have been various attempts to calculate the overall cost of electricity from a thorium fueled nuclear plant that depends on many factors that are pretty hard to calculate right now including the cost of capital length of time the licensing operating costs such as labour and overtime operating efficiency and so on but various thorium supporters have calculated that the overnight cost for a lifter plant the overnight costs are the cost to build and start up a plant excluding interest and other collateral costs they came up with a range of around $2,200 per kilowatt of capacity plus or minus 30 percent or so so a 1 megawatt prototype plant would cost 2.2 million an overnight cost and a commercial thousand megawatt plant would cost around 2.2 billion other estimators have come up with lower costs around $1400 per kilowatt and I would argue that what we're gonna see is once lifters liquid-fueled thorium reactors start to be built the cost of the technology is going to come down fairly rapidly but you have to factor in the social costs as well liquid-fueled thorium reactors are carbon free their contribution to nuclear proliferation risks is essentially zero they not only eliminate the cost of long-term storage of reactive new radioactive waste but also can process existing waste from conventional plants making it very much easier to store and they'll jump start a new era of energy technology innovation that will benefit companies and the nation in ways that are impossible to quantify right now considering those benefits there's no question that thorium power offers the most economical Avenue to bring on-line massive amounts of new generating capacity without adding to current levels of carbon emissions [Music] national and international efforts to develop new sources of carbon free energy are exploring a reactor concept first introduced in the 1950s and 60s the molten salt reactor the first molten salt reactor experiments were conducted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory the design was radical for its time and offered many advantages worth a fresh look today molten salt reactors differ for most nuclear power plants in operation today such as light water reactors to understand how let's review the basics nuclear power plants generate electricity through a fissile chain reaction fissionable isotopes like uranium-235 233 or plutonium 239 absorb a neutron and then fission that is split apart into fission products in that process they generate heat as well they eject more neutrons to continue the chain reaction a moderator is usually employed to slow down the neutrons so they are more likely to cause another fission when they impact the fuel in the case of light water reactors solid fuel rods contain the fissile material water surrounding the fuel acts as both a moderator and coolant the coolant carries heat to turbines that generate electricity in a molten salt reactor the core operates very differently the primary coolant is a salt heated above its melting point so it is a fluid while private industry is developing several distinct designs here's the most commonly proposed configuration instead of fuel rods fissile material is dissolved in the molten salt the fuel flows around graphite rods which moderate the energy of the neutrons to support the nuclear chain reaction other designs include liquid or solid fuel contained in rods similar to current reactors but with molten salt as a coolant these reactors can use a broad range of fuel and salt compositions and there are even designs that do not require a moderator at all and are a class called fast reactors several designs would employ thorium fuel which offers many benefits there is at least three times more thorium than uranium on the planet and its waste largely decays in hundreds of years instead of tens of thousands other advantages of molten salt reactors include safety and efficiency replacing water as the coolant removes possibility of steam explosions and generation of flammable hydrogen gas low pressure operation also places less demand on containment systems the nuclear reactions are easier to control because liquid salt expands in the event of an unanticipated rise in temperature this expansion shuts down the reaction additionally a freeze plug can dump the fuel into tanks and stop the reaction this option provides a fail-safe in the event of power outages or other events because these reactors can operate at higher temperature their steam cycle generates electricity more efficiently the use of liquid fuel allows for real-time waste processing and finally there is no need to shut down the reactor for refueling new fuel can be introduced to the system during operation while the test molten salt reactor of the 60s ran over a period of years several challenges remain before construction and operation of a full-scale commercial plant these include understanding and mitigating the corrosion of structural materials development of reliable and efficient chemical separations including tritium instruments and controls for real-time monitoring of the reactor and licensing and risk assessment for a non light water reactor design researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are working on many of these challenges we have expertise in radio chemistry real-time online monitoring as well as materials design and performance testing contact us to learn more about how we are advancing molten salt reactor technology [Music] [Music]

Channel: Keith Rodan

Views: 11,742

Rating: 4.7729259 out of 5

Keywords: Thorium Community Series, Richard Martin, Thorium, Thorium Superfuel, Nuclear Technology, Molten Salt Reactor, Googletalks, Dept. of Energy, DOE, PNNL, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Id: nQLDGZ81Ze0

Length: 28min 4sec (1684 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 15 2019