Thorium Lifters Could Power Civilization for BILLIONS of Years!

imagine if you could power your house with just dirt literal garden variety dirt just go out occasionally with one of these trusty buckets fill it up and you've got enough energy to run your house for a month and if you happen to live on the beaches of kerala that bucket full of sand would run your house for 16 000 years this is not some unproven or impractical science we aren't doing theoretical matter energy conversions or talking about fusion of hydrogen from water this is a well-known well-researched method using one of the three naturally occurring nuclear fuels we are of course talking about thorium and today we're going to talk about lifters the reactor is popularized by kirk sorensen that use molten salt as both the coolant as well as the fuel a nuclear reactor needs three main things a fissile fuel pack closely enough that it can sustain a chain reaction a moderator that can slow down neutrons so they can cause fission and finally a coolant that can take the heat generated from fission to some place where it can generate electricity most of the nuclear reactors we have today use solid uranium oxide pellets one of the problems that you run into is that natural uranium comes as a mixture of 0.7 uranium-235 and 99.3 uranium-238 only the former is facile and we have to get it up to three percent to be able to sustain a chain reaction now you can't separate these out based on their chemical properties since they're isotopes of the same element your only recourse is to use the difference in their weights to separate them using centrifuges this is an expensive and difficult process but you know what's inexpensive and really simple preventing the proliferation of your personal information surfshark keeps your online identity safe by encrypting all the information sent between your device and the internet so you can prevent people from hovering up your data surf shark's clean web blocks ads trackers and malicious websites making your browsing safer you can also change your ip address to place yourself anywhere in the world that way you can see what's trending in other countries expand your cultural horizons and watch unreleased unsubtitled content with a phone translation app it's literally twice fun surfshark allows you to use the same login on an unlimited number of devices really just just how how are they even doing that all in all i say it's a great deal on top of that they're giving you a one month money back guarantee use promo code luddites to get 83 off and three months absolutely free when you sign up check the description box below for more information once you've gone through the process of enriching natural uranium then it has to be fabricated into fuel pellets to put in the reactor when fission occurs the fission products that form damage the fuel pellets and after only 0.5 percent of the fissile material is consumed the pellet has to be removed this pellet is now spent nuclear fuel which needs to be stored somewhere this is usually the thing that public is most concerned about since it also contains high actinides that keep it radioactive for millions of years basically these things are wildly inefficient so much so that it's a minor miracle that they're in the ballpark of cost competitive now in a lifter we'd be able to use up almost all of the thorium that we put in considering the burn up and enrichment that we do for today's reactors that's a six thousand fold improvement on our reactors the key is that in a molten state we can continuously remove the fission products at build up and cycle the purified fuel back into the core it's far easier to do chemistry with liquids and solids which is why chemistry labs are full of solutions and reagents and not pellets now consider the six thousand fold increase in efficiency and couple it with the fact that thorium is three times as abundant as uranium and you start getting the full picture thorium could be our forever fuel powering civilization from now till our sun begins to die okay so the working of a lifter is pretty straightforward a quick glance at these diagrams and tables should tell you all you need to know no okay let's see if we can make it a little easier to understand by unhealthily hyper focusing on just one thing the journey of a thorium atom inside a lifter it starts out in the blanket dissolved in the molten salt in the form of a tetrafluoride meaning with four fluorine atoms the blanket where it resides is subject to neutron flux coming from the reactor core the thorium atom will absorb a neutron to become thorium-233 it's not very comfortable in this state so it'll undergo a beta decay to turn into protactinium-233 the salt in the blanket is circulated in a system where different components can be separated first the protractonium will be separated out from the thorium using bismuth bismuth will dissolve the protactinium and this mixture will go into an electrolytic chamber where they'll be separated electrolytically then the protactinium will be turned back from a metal into a tetrafluoride and sent to a dk chamber where it'll rest for 28 days when it finally awakens it'll have turned into uranium-233 the best nuclear fuel in the whole wide world and quite possibly the universe it'll go to a tank where they'll hit it with fluorine till six fluorine atoms are attached this turns uranium into a gas the fluorine lifts the uranium-233 up out of the molten salt and above the rest of the atoms where it'll go to the chamber with hydrogen hydrogen being a really strong reducer will take away the two extra fluorine atoms and the uranium will turn back into a liquid and get dropped into the reactor core here it'll undergo fission when hit with a neutron producing energy as well as two neutrons one neutron will continue the chain reaction and the second one will go inside the blanket to start this process all over again now let's go back into the core for a second our friend the thorium atom is in the final stages of its journey it has now assumed the form of fission products that are zooming away from each other near the speed of light some of the efficient products have a bad tendency to absorb neutrons meaning that fewer neutrons are available for continuing the chain reaction and breeding new fuel so they need to be periodically removed this is done by running the fuel through another fluorination to turn the uranium into a gas and separate it from the fission products the fluorides of the fission products are then reacted with lithium and removed the uranium is converted to a tetrafluoride with the same method we saw earlier and we are left with clean pristine uranium-233 in the core with a low level of fission products because of this the reactor can be refueled while it's running the only constraint on how long this can continuously work is how long the materials will last because the molten salt can stay liquid at temperatures as high as 1000 degrees celsius you don't need the extremely high pressures that are needed to keep water liquid beyond 100 degree celsius most reactors in use today use water at 350 degree celsius as coolant and thus everything built around it need to withstand these extreme pressures and pressure is what spreads nuclear material everywhere in case of an accident the fact that lifters operate at atmospheric pressure means that there's no chance of an explosion but what about a meltdown simple the fuel is already in a molten state to quote noted nuclear expert hp lovecraft that which is dead may never die but say the chain reaction gets out of control and the fuel starts heating beyond what is safe good news here too this salt has a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity if it heats up the salt expands the distance between the atoms increases making it less likely that a neutron will hit anything as the number of fissions decreases the temperature goes back down okay but what if something goes terribly wrong and all the human beings disappear off the face of the earth well in that case a fan cooling a horizontal section of the reactor will stop all the heat from the molten salt will melt this frozen section and the fuel will drain into these tanks since there's no moderator here to slow down the neutrons the fission will stop and the dk heat from the fission products will slowly fade away my point is the reactor is as safe as such a dense source of energy can be now uranium atoms do this thing when they absorb a neutron instead of fissioning like good little atoms they just start climbing uranium absorbs a neutron that neutron turns into a proton and an electron and so it gets one step up the periodic table to become neptunium then it absorbs another neutron and becomes plutonium then another and becomes american and curium this migration up the periodic table is what leads to the production of higher actinides and by the end of a fuel cycle you're left with several hundred kilograms of these these higher actinides are what caused spent nuclear fuel to remain radioactive for millions of years now it's true that it would be safe if they were buried in the ground but no one's willing to take on a contract for several million years maybe the scientologists could do it they're the kings of multi-millionaire contracts but syrah instead of bringing back dead memes you should be trying to tell people that this waste isn't all that dangerous well no waste can be a huge selling point when it comes to convincing people that nuclear energy is the way to go and here's where lifters come in thorium starts a little lower down and 90 percent of uranium-233 undergoes fission only 10 remains to climb up to uranium-235 most of it will undergo fission here leaving only a vanishingly small amount to get to the higher actinides considering that long-lived waste has always been one of the main arguments against nuclear power this is a big point in favor of lifters no video about world changing technology is complete without a look at the obstacles they face the first here is tritium tritium is formed from lithium when it's hit by a neutron if you remember the fusion video aja actually plans to use a lithium blanket to breed tritium as fuel tritium is radioactive so you don't want it leaking out even though it is weakly radioactive no regulator will allow it kirk plans to address this by using supercritical carbon dioxide cycle to produce electricity with a steam turbine you'd have hydrogen molecules from the water that would make tritium hard to separate with a carbon dioxide cycle the only hydrogen there will be tritium so they can separate it this has the added benefit of requiring much smaller sizes than steam turbines as well as giving higher efficiencies up to 45 percent now this isn't a mature or commercially available technology but there's no reason why it shouldn't work the other main issue is testing all the components and processes to see if they can withstand the high temperatures and radiation inside the reactor a material called hasseloyn should be able to do so but until they build and test one of these things they won't know the good thing is that something like this has been done in the past oakridge national lab built and operated a molten salt reactor back in the 60s for five years over 20 000 hours of operation with no major issues modern lifters will need to last a lot longer but at least this is an indication that the basic principles are sound kirk's company fleib energy was also given a grant by the department of energy to study the chemistry involved in the molten salt design which should help the development of the chemical kidney at the heart of the lifter now there are some people who believe that this fuel cycle is perfect for someone who wants to build a uranium-233 bomb if you can separate out the protactinium and let it decay into uranium-233 you'll have a powerful nuclear weapon in practice this is quite difficult to achieve because you always get some uranium 232 as well this emits high frequency gamma rays which make it impossible to put it near any kind of precision electronics required for a bomb also countries like india pakistan china and u.s already have nuclear weapons we don't need clandestine programs to produce them so this isn't really a major issue often i'm quite surprised about how many people watched the videos on batteries nuclear power and energy in general after all for most of us cheaper electricity wouldn't change things much it's not like our computers will become faster or our smartphones will get superpowers and i tried to come up with an explanation for that i think what excites us most about these technologies is the foreseeable end of the fossil fuel era a massive part of mankind's history is entering its sunset and a new dawn beckons cars that don't pollute industries that run on process heat and electricity enough spare energy to clean up our rivers make enough clean drinking water to bankrupt nestle and maybe even enough to cool down the planet to the level we want thorium offers all of that and much more the nuclear waste it'll produce includes isotopes that are invaluable in targeted alpha therapy where you send an alpha emitter to bind to and destroy cancer cells then you have uses in imaging and tracing which are made possible by some of these isotopes lifters can create fuel for mankind's exploration of space and the high temperatures they operate at can decarbonize vital industries like fertilizers by creating hydrogen without fossil fuels and where there's spare heat energy you know that these gentlemen will be sniffing around before too long mastering thorium technology will undoubtedly be a difficult task but with so many good people behind it i'm confident that scalability versatility and clean nature of thorium energy will win out in the end if we do stand at the dawn of the thorium age then i think we owe a lot to these guys kirk has given hundreds of talks in the last decade about thorium energy and gordon has recorded thousands of hours of talks interviews and discussions and made them available on his channel i hope for all their work lifters begin coming online and light up the world as they envisioned thanks once again to surf shark for sponsoring this episode i hope you guys enjoyed this video like share subscribe and start a conversation below to get more videos like this in your recommendations i'll see you really soon bye [Music] you

Channel: Tech for Luddites

Views: 276,505

Keywords: Lifter, Kirk Sorensen, Flibe Energy, Molten Salt Reactor, Liquid Fluoride thorium reactor, gen 4 nuclear reactors, thorium

Id: 74iiaXIVtZI

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

It's all cool and all, but kudos to you if you can name the one and only thing that a thorium reactor can do and uranium reactor can not... ??

[u/Ebola714]

That is really cool! Thanks for sharing.