Why Thorium will be a Game-Changer in Energy

This is a thorium energy Alliance  conference so it has thorium in the   name and you would think that we would  be talking about thorum all the time but   think about all the talks that have been  here it's mostly about uranium right that sucks we should be talking about  thorium because thoriumm can do something   unique and special that uranium cannot do and I've  been pissed off by so many conferences that call   it like Advanced reactors or whatever when it's  not it's like light water reactors and   I really think we should try to have a conference  for example this one where we sort of look into   the future and not into the past and so part of  my talk today is about why I think thorium is   special and I know many of you know this already  but I hope some of my slides will give you   courage to talk differently to your neighbors and friends and colleagues so I think many of us   got excited about an image like this where the  ball the size of a golf ball can supply with all   the energy you need for your entire life not just  electricity but everything Transportation all the   products you need all your share of all the public  roads and houses and Hospital everything it's   amazing that you can can get all that energy out  of this little ball and it cost only less than   $100 so if you live for 100 years it's $1 per year  that is amazing and that's why I think most the   people in this room are here but the problem is  we don't have the machine that can take the energy   out of that ball and that's what we're trying  to build and I know a few others who are trying   the same and hopefully within a few years it  will happen and I think we should all celebrate   that like crazy we've been at this for quite  a while now so thorium not only does it   have unique properties in terms of being able to  produce a huge amount of energy but there's also   lots of thorium and a lot of times when you talk  to uranium people they say there's a three or   four times more thorium than there is uranium which  is technically true but all the uranium reactors   I know they run on uranium 235 and you know that  orange little sliver there that   uranium 235 it's very rare and you can't really  use it you have to enrich it and everything so   in reality there's a thousand times more thorium  than there is uranium available to us I mean you   can always debate about uranium and sea water  and all that but thorium is just a lot easier to   get to one thing that proves that is we already  do mining for other materials and we get Thorium   out of the ground when we do do mining for rare  earth and gold and copper and shit and   that thorium alone that we already get out of the  ground today would be enough to power the entire   electricity of the whole planet we don't need to  open one additional mine so that is also amazing   and you can't say that about uranium I mean now we we they said at cup 28 we need three times   more uranium and everybody's scratching their  head where's that going to come from and what   about enrichment facilities and what is  it called like fuel production and everything   and of course the uranium price already went up just because they start talking about it   so a lot of times when you talk to sort of  the people from the general public they will tell   you that nuclear ah it's too expensive it takes too long to build it has this awful waste and it's dangerous and I hope  some of my slides today can sort of help you   tell them what you think I agree that classical nuclear is too expensive and too slow no   doubt about it it sucks but I think we should try  to sort of rethink what can we do about that how   can we solve that problem that it's too slow and  too expensive I offer some ideas today and I   hope we can have more discussions over a beer  later then then people say it's dangerous   that's definitely a hoax I mean nuclear is not  dangerous I'll get back to that in some of   my slides later and then they say oh there's all  this awful waste ah yeah it is not the best waste   I agree but maybe we can do something about it I  mean let's try to look at it in a positive light   then there's these guys that says  oh there's these new reactors small modular   reactors Advanced modular reactors generation four  there's even people talking about generation five   now Molten salt reactors high temperature  reactors all this crap it doesn't change   anything it's still the the old stuff that we've  had for I don't know seven decades so please when   you talk to your neighbor or your colleague about  copenhagen atomics please don't call us a small modular   reactor or Advanced reactor generation four or five  or whatever we are something completely different   from all these other okay so I'll  try to sort of give you some ideas of how you   can talk about the difference between uranium  and thorium so here is a list of properties   you could say for solid fuel reactors it's sort  of I want you to go home don't trust me go home   and look this up for yourself this is sort  of the average numbers for solid fuel reactors   you know those designs they last for  60 years maybe with extensions you can look   up the uranium price on the web right now it's at  4500 for 5% enriched uranium in those those type of   reactors you can get 1 to 2 GWh out of  every kilogram of fuel some reactor designs are   a little bit better than others but that's sort  of the average for solid fuel reactors and you   know that most of them take between 4 and 15  years to build I mean maybe one is a little bit   faster and definitely some are a little bit slower  but that's sort of the average and the price of   electricity from solid fuel reactors are between 60  and 120 dollars per MWh electric so how does that compare to thorium do you think  do you think thorium is the same sort of roughly   the same ball game a few people are shaking their  head most of you are just holding your breath so I had to compare it to copenhagen atomics and  again some of these numbers you cannot look up   but let's talk about so our design is also  sort of 50 year lifetime plus maybe extensions   the price for thorium is $50 per kilogram we've  already ordered tons of thorium so I know   this price because that's what we paid for it course just like uranium the price might go up or   down but since there's so much thorium in the world  I think it's more likely to go down than to go up   in the future if one kilogram of thorium you can  get 22 GWh of energy out of that thermal   energy and then how fast can we build this  well I've also been at some of the previous   conferences and the goal for copenhagen atomics is to  build one reactor every day but of course we also   need to deploy them and deployment is a little  bit more difficult so I would expect that in   the beginning for a 1 gigawatt power plant it  would take 18 months to deploy that and later on   when we sort of get things up to speed we  should be able to deploy in six month a one gigawatt  power plant because it's not built on site it's  truly modular it arrives on trucks and then the   price of energy for for these type of reactors  is between $20 and $40 per megawatt hour so again   completely different ball game and I've  made sort of a column with the differences so you   don't have to do the calculation in your head you  can see on most of these things we are an order of   magnitude better than solid fuel reactors and so I don't think we should compare ourselves to   all the old reactors I believe that our reactor is  like a jet airplane and the old reactors is like a   horse carriage I mean it's not the same  thing yeah so we want to mass manufacture these   reactors and we've planned this through the whole  like development of our reactor the way we   planed the whole company we want to make one reactor  every day you know that car factories they can   easily make a thousand cars every day and our reactors have less components than a   modern car so of course we can easily assemble one  reactor every day I mean we don't start in the   morning and finish in the evening we have sort of  an assembly line and and the reactors move down   the assembly line and then they come out at the  end one comes out every day the problem   is not so much to mass manufacture these the  problem is to deploy one reactor every day that's   a difficult challenge to get  approvals to deploy one reactor every day and   we're working on that I love to spend some more  time on that but I've limited time so I've decided   to do that some of year but there's one more  thing I want to point to is you guys have done   a physical labor where you dig a hole in the  ground or move some things and you're sweating   and you're working really hard and then you know  that you're not as strong as a horse so it's   you're not doing one horsepower actually on  average like an adult man that works really   hard he can do 150 watts of work with our muscles  and you can't work 24   hours you have to sleep and eat and stuff  aswell so if you try to calculate   this type of reactor this reactor can produce  42 megawatt of electric energy 24/7 so   if you try to calculate how many people it would  take to do the same amount of work it's actually   amazing it's more than a million people to  do the same work ofcourse we don't do that   we buy electrical motors and have them do pumping  or whatever and robots are coming that's what they   say at least and those robots will also need  electrical energy to work but think about it   you know I think this could change the future  of how we live and play on this planet   because if we make one of these reactors every  day some country let's say some island state   somewhere they call copenhagen atomics and say we want to  buy 300 of your reactors we say yeah okay let's   make an agreement and then we and then we deliver  300 reactors to them that's the same as having   300 million workers added to your country that's  more than there are workers in the entire United   States so I think this idea of deployment  can really change a lot of countries and let's see what will happen all right I announced that I would talk more about   danger and nuclear energy I heard at least  several talks today where they say ooh this   is a safer nuclear and I call bullshit on that  so let's talk about the numbers the way I   see the numbers I mean you don't have to agree  but I think at least we can have a   little bit of fun talking about the numbers  in a different view so I'm sure all of you have   seen this before coal fired power plants are the  most dangerous type of power plants we have   they kill the most people I think many of us  believe that roughly 1 million people die every   year from coal fired power plants it's not only  from air pollution it's also from mining and from   shipping all that coal and everything so 1  million people right and coal fired power plant has been   going on for many decades so if you sort  of go all the way back to the second world war and   calculate how many people died it's probably more  people than died in in the second world war from   coal fired power plants so I don't know if you  think it's dangerous so if you have something that   can slow down the growth of coal fired power plants  how can that be dangerous and nuclear energy if   we look at nuclear energy it's not very  dangerous like a thousand times less dangerous   than coal fired power plants and if you look  at those numbers for nuclear energy then they also include the death from mining and you  know that it's really really difficult to get a   reactor approved because the reactor have to be  super duper standard like really safe but you   know how much time we spend on making it safe to  mine uranium not so much what about when there is   an accident I mean if you build thousands  of something eventually there is going to be   an accident right we we can't really make 0 accidents so when there is an accident and we've   had a few accidents Chernobyl and Fukushima how  many people actually die I don't know a few people   a few people in in Fukushima one guy but then when an accident happens then there are   some humans that come in and say oh we should do  something like for example in in Fukushima they   wanted to have evacuation more people died from  that evacuation than from the reactor itself so   it's not the reactor that is dangerous it's the  people that are dangerous the the people that   make wrong decisions in in Chernobyl it was  even worse you know when there is an accident   and there's iodine you're supposed to get iodine  iodine tablets and they had the iodine tablets   but there was a guy who decided that it shouldn't  give the ID in tablets to the people because it   might scare them and that's the that's the thing  that killed the most people in Chernobyl it's a   stupid mistake by one guy is there any really big  regulations around that to void that stupid people   make stupid mistakes no not at all so the the  whole like trying to make nuclear more safe it's   a hoax and it's it's just trying it it's a hoax  by uh I don't know anti- nuclear people to try   to hold nuclear energy back and I think we should  just stop this and and honestly when I hear some   of you saying that new nuclear or mol reactors or  small modular reactors is more safe I think you're   doing it a disservice to the industry because  what you're really saying is I want to slow   down nuclear and I want to make it more expensive  that's what you're saying and that's not what we need and um and then also um well I should go  to the next slide for that so there's also this   um misunderstanding of radioactivity we hear  this again and again especially if some of us   is interviewed by the media they they say oh  but is your reactor radioactive uh yeah it is   oh then it must be dangerous okay uh like what  are you talking about um of course most of you   know electricity and you know you you probably  know that this a 1 and a half volt battery is   not dangerous and I don't know if you know where  you learned that but I assume that all of you know   that 1 and A2 volt batteries are not dangerous  I also assume that all of you know that high   voltage power lines like 1,000 Volt or 10,000  volt is dangerous I mean if you touch 1,000   volt you might die you're not guaranteed to die  but you might die and it's a little bit similar   if there's the kilometers per hour if you drive  1,000 kilm an hour in some crazy car you might   die it's dangerous but um but if you drive 100  km an hour I'm sure many of you have done that   even within the last week and I don't think you  feel it's super dangerous but but I also think   you know that it's not risk-free and of course  it's the same with with radiation I mean there's   levels of radiation that are super dangerous and  there's also radiations levels of radiation that   is not dangerous and um so of course I should  say that uh there is no physics that that makes   a connection between voltage and kilometers per  hour and radiation I mean I made this comparison   but the way I made that comparison is at what  level do people die and and when you look at   radioactivity a one seed might kill you it's  not super likely but you might die from one   SE if you get 10 seevers ah it's not good right  it's like 10,000 kilovolts or whatever it's not   a good idea um but if you get 20 Mills which is  the limit for radiation workers nobody has ever   died for that from that we don't know any evidence  that anybody has ever died from that so that's the   same as a one one and a half volt battery and you  know I I I never seen anybody spend millions of   dollars on making one and a half volt battery  safe but I've seen people spend millions of   dollars and trying to make 20 Millers safer and  every time you guys talk about allara or lnt or   whatever what you're really talking about is how  can we kill more people from coire power plants   every time there's a meeting about alar or lnt or  whatever you know that delays and makes nuclear   energy more expensive so it it's a it's again it's  a disservice to the people of this world to try to   make nuclear even safer um I mean there's there's  actually people who live in areas of the world   where there's 100 Millers you get 100 Mills per  year in your house so they live in that house for   their whole life and there is no statis statistic  evidence that they get more cancer than the rest   of us so 100 m is a little bit like driving 100  km an hour I mean we know that you know every now   and then there might be a problem but most of the  time it's not dangerous so um yeah I hope you can   use that scale for something then I want to talk  a little bit about the sort of the the development   plan of copenhagen's atomics uh we have we've  divided our development into these six Milestones   uh we started 10 years ago and the most time we've  spent on developing the technology for the first   10 years um we have developed unique pumps for  mol reactors uh we have developed a unique uh   Molen all Reactor Core it's called The Onion core  it has unparalleled efficiency compared to any   other reactor we've ever seen so that's one of the  things we developed I'll talk about it a little   bit later uh We've also developed a method to  purify salt because if you purify the salt and get   rid of moisture and oxygen and everything you get  less corrosion and some people say oh corrosion   is a big problem for molor reactors I think we've  solved that we don't bother to run with expensive   materials we can use stainless steel 316 and run  that for many years no problems with corrosion um   so we've spend a lot of time on doing basic uh  development of technology for for mol reactors   and we also sharing that with the industry uh  we're selling some of the technology to other   players in the industry um all right and then um  the second milestone there is we're developing   uh non-fishing prototypes so we have already  built two reactors fullscale reactors the same   size as our commercial reactor and we're running  those with non-radioactive materials so basically   fenx salt uh in our Workshop in Copenhagen uh  so we heat it up with electricity and we pump   the salt around and we do all kinds of tests with  thermal expansion and thermal cycling and uh heat   exchanges and all these things we need to test  before we can go to to a real reactor and the   first real reactors for our development um plan is  a one megawatt test reactor that we plan to run in   2026 so very similar to ACU what ACU is doing  but the difference is that our reactor has the   onion core and it's using thorum as a blanket so  it it will be the first thorum Molen Sol reactor   in the world I think let's see um so uh the the  that that first test react we're going to run it   for one month and we're going to run it at one  megawatt so it's basically just a test and the   reason why we run it for a short amount of time  and and small power is then we can transport the   things around on the roads afterwards uh we we  would really like to be able to move it around   especially the fuel um so that's the reason  for that but as but like I said it's it's a   fullscale reactor it's the same reactor design  as the commercial reactor we've just not run it   at full power so as soon as we have that up and  running we will we will move towards the first   commercial reactors uh and once we have proven  that the commercial reactors are working and they   are uh providing energy and selling energy and  they can run for a number of years uh then we will   start the mass manufacturing sort of in the early  2030s um and I think we will go just directly to   making one reactor every day and of course right  now we're trying to get our heads around how do   we actually deploy all those reactors and that's  a whole talk by itself so you will have to wait   till maybe next year to hear about that um and  then finally the the really really really big   goal is is Milestone number six where we want to  make a thorum breeder reactor in thermal Spectrum   uh that's going to that's going to be cool when  we do that um that's 2035 uh a little bit about   our reactor design um so it's um I talked about  in the beginning that we have this ball out of   thorum and we want to make a machine that can  convert it into energy very very efficiently uh   and this is sort of a cartoon drawing of what it  would look like um if you um if you look inside   in the middle there we have the schematics of an  onion core sort of a cut through in the section   View and then uh right next next to that there's  an insulation wall uh and that's because inside   the the 40ft shiping container there's a a cold  region and a hot region the cold region is sort   of blue and it's room temperature the hot region  is a little bit orange and it's uh usually 600°   and then you have a number of heat exchangers that  takes the Heat and uh get the the heat um that is   produced from the hot salt out to the customer and  the the heavy water we use as moderator needs to   be cooled all the time uh roughly 5% of the energy  that is produced by the reactor goes into heat in   the water and we need to take that out so there's  a number of heat exchangers sending the water out   for cooling um and then uh you could see at the  bottom there's a number of Tanks so when we shut   down the reactor all of the liquid up in these  Heat exchangers and the Reactor Core will drain   into the tanks at the bottom and uh basically  we do that just by stopping the pumps as soon   as we stop up the pumps everything will drain  down into the tanks and then when we start the   pumps again it will start running so basically to  to shut down this reactor you just cut the power   to the box then it will stop so it's a very simple  mechanism um and you you also see the thick line   around that sort of the thick gray line around it  that is the third barrier so we need free barriers   between the radioactive salt and people outside  and the third barrier is sort of a very very thick   wall of Steel so half a meter thick steel wall  to protect the reactor from what's coming from   outside but also if something happen inside the  reactor it will protect people outside uh and uh   half a met thick wall of Steel is uh very doable  um a little bit about the onion core so it's it's   roughly 2.3 m in diameter and it's mostly full of  water it's of course heavy water heavy water is   a a really really good moderator and and then  you have a thorum blanket and you see how the   blanket is constructed so that it it encapsulate  the whole reactor core and that's really important   um because this way we optimize the um or minimize  the leakage neutrons uh most reactors especially   fast reactors they have neutrons flying out of  the core like some fast reactor designs have half   of the neutrons flying out of the core and you  know Neutron economy is really really important   if you want to have uh great fuel economy in a  nuclear reactor so how can it be great if half   the neutrons are just lost out uh with this  kind of thign blanket we can get uh Neutron   leakage down to 2% no reactor has ever uh been  this efficient um and uh and of course in the   blanket we breed uranium 233 uh from thorm uh some  people say oh you extract protactinium no we don't   extract protactinium we extract all the different  uranium species in the blanket and then we put   them into the fuel salt uh and the fuel salt of  course being the orange colored channel in the   middle that is where the heat is produced um and  of course the heavy water is there to moderate or   slow down the neutrons uh so how can you have 600°  hot salt right next to cold water well you need a   little bit of insulation we have roughly one in of  insulation between them and that's enough because   the majority of the heat in the water doesn't come  from from uh heat radiating from the hot channels   to the cold channels the vast majority more than  90% of the heat in the water comes from slowing   down the neutrons so I mean we need we need to  cool the water anyway so so we only need a little   bit of insulation like roughly one inch um to make  sure that the water doesn't boil and of course   we have to cool the water all the time so our  reactor if you get look at a 1 gaw power plant it   would look something like this with a an array of  reactors in these cocoons H in this case we would   need 25 reactors for one gaw plant and then some  additional uh empty cocoons so that we can swap   swap things around and the whole idea with this  power plant is that no humans go inside this this   building for 50 years it's running for 50 years of  course you you can go in there if you want to but   uh we don't want to have a human mess of things  so everything in there is remote control like   remote control cranes remote control forklifts and  and and then somebody from the uh you could say   operation room controls what's going on in there  um that building produces heat and then uh and   then we transfer the heat through some pipes over  to some buffer tanks and then you can see there's   a line of steam G generators so if you want to  make Steam you you you can run a steam um turbine   or or use the Steam for some uh industrial process  uh so I said in the beginning how can we how can   we con Str struct a machine that can convert thorm  into energy and I think we are closer than ever to   make that happen this is one of our test reactors  that are now running in Copenhagen when I say   running it's again it's heated by electricity  and it's pumping the salt around it's not uh   fishing uh going on or Chain Reaction going on  yet but uh but we're getting close to that point   um and uh here's a picture from inside where you  see the the onion core and some of the pipes and   the heat exchanges and heaters and other things  pumps um so that was a lot of information and I   don't expect you to remember all of it of course  it will be available on video so you can always   watch this video or other videos on our YouTube  channel uh we try to come out with videos sort   of every month or something so there's a little  bit uh new things but but I I hope that you can   at least remember these free things when you  talk to your neighbor or your colleague next   week uh so because we've developed thorm eny to  a new level we can produce eny at a lower price   price than any other energy technology including  Fusion or wind and soil or oil and gas so we are   not afraid of competition we can beat anyone on  price uh we you also know that nuclear energy uh   for the longest time it has been financed and  operated by governments at least financed for   the most part um or secured by governments but we  think this is going to change we we think that in   the future uh the nuclear industry should become  a commercial industry uh we don't want uh taxpayer   money to run our reactors uh coping atomics will  finance build own and operate the reactors at a   customer site and we believe most of our customers  will be customers that make Commodities such as   ammonia aluminum you know other things hydrogen um  and uh and then we will upate our plant at their   facility but we will finance the capex up front  the capital cost of building it and we will run   it and then we sell the heat to the customer on a  long-term contract and then the final thing I want   to note is that the cing atomics reactor is also  uh capable of running on spent nuclear fuel um   unfortunately it's a little bit difficult to get  approvals to get some nuclear spent nuclear Fuel   and and show that you can run on that so we have  postponed that a little bit into the 2030s to get   that get up and running with that we really happy  to see that cuyu for example spoke earlier today   is working on that um in our reactor design if you  take spent fuel from a classical nuclear reactors   uh we can get 10 times more energy out of that  fuel uh than what came out of it in the in the in   the old reactor so it it's a significant higher uh  say burnup or value coming out of spent fuel then   first time it was used and uh and then we will  store the efficient products for the first say 50   uh 100 years so that the 90% of the radioactivity  from the fishing products has decayed away before   we give the fishing product back to the uh  government or the state where the energy was   produced so we we still want to to take the the  fishing products and give it back to the country   in which we're operating and of course they have  to accept that that's part of the deal um but I   I think it's much easier for a country to get  fishing products that are already 100 years old   and have very little radio activity Le left than  them and fishing products only needs to be stored   above ground for maybe 300 years in total before  you you don't have to protect them anymore uh   so it's it's a very different way of looking at  nuclear waste than how we look at it today from   spent nuclear fuel um yeah so that concludes my my  talk uh I hope some of you have some questions um [Applause]

Channel: Copenhagen Atomics

Views: 157,695

Keywords: nuclear, nuclear power, nuclear energy, thorium, technology, nuclear technology, tech, innovation, nuclear tech, molten salt, thorium molten salt, green energy, greenenergypioneers, industry leaders, future of nuclear, nuclear future, technology of the future, advanced technology, innovative technologies, start up, Denmark, Copenhagen Atomics, founder, business opportunity, energy revolution, energy, renewable energy, renewables

Id: HMv5c32XXoE

Length: 32min 0sec (1920 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024