President Biden in his first campaign rally in Philadelphia joined up with Fetterman. A Limerick.
Why Thorium? 22. China is having a massive Thorium program.
China is having a massive Thorium program. The People’s Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology. The thorium MSR efforts aims not only to develop the technology but to secure intellectual property rights to its implementation. This may be one of the reasons that the Chinese have not joined the international Gen-IV effort for MSR development, since part of that involves technology exchange. Neither the US nor Russia have joined the MSR Gen-IV effort either.
China is currently the largest emitter of CO2 and air pollutants by far, and according to the Paris accord was allowed to emit six times as much pollutants as the U.S. by 2030, being a “developing nation”. Their air quality is already among the worst in the world so something had to be done if they were to achieve world dominance by 2025 and total rule by 2030. Only Thorium can solve the pollution problem and provide the clean energy needed for the future. Regular Uranium Nuclear reactors require large amounts of water and Molten Salt Thorium reactors require little water to operate.
Geneva, Switzerland, 21 August 2018 – As the world struggles with a record-breaking heatwave, China correctly places its trust in the fuel Thorium and the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) as the backbone of its nation’s plan to become a clean and cheap energy powerhouse.
The question is if China will manage to build a homegrown mega export industry, or will others have capacity and will to catch up?
For China, clean energy development and implementation is a test for the state’s ability. Therefore, China is developing the capability to use the “forgotten fuel” thorium, which could begin a new era of nuclear power.
The first energy system they are building is a solid fuel molten salt reactor that achieves high temperatures to maximize efficiency of combined heat and power generation applications.
However, to fully realize thorium’s energy potential and in this way solve an important mission for China – the security of fuel supply – requires also the thorium itself to be fluid. This is optimized in the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR).
The TMSR takes safety to an entirely new level and can be made cheap and small since it operates at atmospheric pressure, one of its many advantages. Thanks to its flexible cooling options it can basically be used anywhere, be it a desert, a town or at sea. In China this is of special interest inland, where freshwater is scarce in large areas, providing a unique way to secure energy independence.
“Everyone in the field is extremely impressed with how China saw the potential, grabbed the opportunity and is now running faster than everyone else developing this futuristic energy source China and the entire world is in a great need of.”
– Andreas Norlin, Thorium Energy World
China is not telling all they are doing on Nuclear Energy, but this news item is true:
The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) – part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) – has been given approval by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment to commission an experimental thorium-powered molten-salt reactor, construction of which started in Wuwei city, Gansu province, in September 2018.
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A cutaway of the TMSR-LF1 reactor (Image: SINAP)
In January 2011, CAS launched a CNY3 billion (USD444 million) R&D programme on liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs), known there as the thorium-breeding molten-salt reactor (Th-MSR or TMSR), and claimed to have the world’s largest national effort on it, hoping to obtain full intellectual property rights on the technology. This is also known as the fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (FHR). The TMSR Centre at SINAP at Jiading, Shanghai, is responsible.
Construction of the 2 MWt TMSR-LF1 reactor began in September 2018 and was reportedly completed in August 2021. The prototype was scheduled to be completed in 2024, but work was accelerated.
“According to the relevant provisions of the Nuclear Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China and the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on the Safety Supervision and Administration of Civilian Nuclear Facilities, our bureau has conducted a technical review of the application documents you submitted, and believes that your 2 MWt liquid fuel thorium-based molten salt experimental reactor commissioning plan (Version V1.3) is acceptable and is hereby approved,” the Ministry of Ecology and Environment told SINAP on 2 August.
It added: “During the commissioning process of your 2 MWt liquid fuel thorium-based molten salt experimental reactor, you should strictly implement this plan to ensure the effectiveness of the implementation of the plan and ensure the safety and quality of debugging. If any major abnormality occurs during the commissioning process, it should be reported to our bureau and the Northwest Nuclear and Radiation Safety Supervision Station in time.”
The TMSR-LF1 will use fuel enriched to under 20% U-235, have a thorium inventory of about 50 kg and conversion ratio of about 0.1. A fertile blanket of lithium-beryllium fluoride (FLiBe) with 99.95% Li-7 will be used, and fuel as UF4.
The project is expected to start on a batch basis with some online refueling and removal of gaseous fission products, but discharging all fuel salt after 5-8 years for reprocessing and separation of fission products and minor actinides for storage. It will proceed to a continuous process of recycling salt, uranium and thorium, with online separation of fission products and minor actinides. The reactor will work up from about 20% thorium fission to about 80%.
If the TMSR-LF1 proves successful, China plans to build a reactor with a capacity of 373 MWt by 2030.
As this type of reactor does not require water for cooling, it will be able to operate in desert regions. The Chinese government has plans to build more across the sparsely populated deserts and plains of western China, complementing wind and solar plants and reducing China’s reliance on coal-fired power stations. The reactor may also be built outside China in Belt and Road Initiative nations.
The liquid fuel design is descended from the 1960s Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the USA. (Researched and written by World Nuclear News)
Yes, it is true. Their design was given to them free, and now PRC is developing the future energy source including claiming intellectual property rights from a source abandoned in 1969 by U.S.A. because of political infighting, not for economical or national security reasons.
Day 169 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.
Acts 13:1-12. Barnabas and Saul began their first missionary journey with preaching on the island of Cyprus where Saul’s name was changed to Paul. Paul rebuked Elymas the sorcerer and God struck him with blindness.
1 Chronicles 24 shows the divisions of the priests, who served tabernacle duties when, and the other Levites, serving as alternates.
1 Chronicles 25 lists the musicians set apart for temple service in 24 divisions for the different times of service.
Day 168 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.
Acts 12. King Herod persecuted the Church and putting many in prison, even Peter; but Peter miraculously escaped. Herod’s suffered a violent death after giving a speech without giving glory to God.
1 Chronicles 22. David made preparations to build the Temple.
1 Chronicles 23 contains a listing of the Levites and their duties.
Psalm 43. This Psalm may very well be a continuation of Psalm 42. Nevertheless, it is a Psalm of deep depression and yet full of praise and hope.
Why Thorium? 21. India is having an ambitious Thorium program, planning to meet 30% of its electricity demand via Thorium based reactors by 2050.
India has an active Thorium program. • India has a flourishing and largely indigenous nuclear power program and did at one time expect to have 20,000 MWe nuclear capacity on line by 2020 and 63,000 MWe by 2032, but being India and subject to Indian bureaucracy and economic limitation the goals tend to get delayed. It aims to supply over 30% of electricity from nuclear power by 2050. • Because India is outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty due to its weapons program, it was for 34 years largely excluded from trade in nuclear plant or materials, which has hampered its development of civil nuclear energy until 2009. • Due to these trade bans and lack of indigenous uranium, India has uniquely been developing a nuclear fuel cycle to exploit its reserves of thorium. • Now, foreign technology and fuel are expected to boost India’s nuclear power plans considerably. All plants will have high indigenous engineering content. • India has a vision of becoming a world leader in nuclear technology due to its expertise in fast reactors and thorium fuel cycle. • India’s Kakrapar-1 reactor is the world’s first reactor which uses thorium rather than depleted uranium to achieve power flattening across the reactor core. India, which has about 25% of the world’s thorium reserves, is developing a 300 MW prototype of a thorium-based Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR). The prototype was fully operational by 2012, following which five more reactors will be constructed. Considered to be a global leader in thorium-based fuel, India’s new thorium reactor is a fast-breeder reactor and uses a plutonium core rather than an accelerator to produce neutrons. As accelerator-based systems can operate at sub-criticality they could be developed too, but that would require more research. India currently envisages meeting 30% of its electricity demand through thorium-based reactors by 2050.
“[F]ast reactors can help extract up to 70 percent more energy than traditional reactors and are safer than traditional reactors while reducing long lived radioactive waste by several fold,” Yukiya Amano, Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, explained to the Times of India.
Uranium isn’t common in India, but the country has the second largest store of Thorium, so the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) in Kalpakkam uses rods of that element.
Arun Kumar Bhaduri, Director of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam, told the Times of India that the technology is safe: “[F]ast breeder reactors are far safer than the current generation of nuclear plants.”
With the PFBR, India is pioneering a kind of nuclear technology that could potentially be the country’s greatest renewable energy source. That’s a big step, especially since nuclear fission remains the only kind of nuclear reaction we’ve managed to sustain, though efforts to make nuclear fusion viable are still in the works.
India used the heavy water, natural Uranium method to produce its Plutonium Nuclear bombs. This is not the cheapest way to produce Nuclear Bombs, but it worked for India as they refused to join the Nuclear proliferation treaty. This technology works slightly better with Thorium rods, as long as a Plutonium sparkplug is provided, but U-233 is not well suited to make nuclear bombs, so the reactors became available. It is very old technology, but it has given India good experience with the Thotium-U-233 breeding, and modern fast breeders is the next step. U.S. should immediately join their development efforts and start very close cooperation developing modern Thorium based reactors.
Why Thorium? 20. Russia has an active Thorium program.
Russia has an active Thorium program.This used to be true, but it was decided that for the Arctisc buildup this barge (below) would be outfitted with regular nuclear power the same type that are in Russia’s nuclear powered ice breakers.
This is a self-contained 7m MW electric or 200 MW heat cogeneration Nuclear Reactor on a barge. Coolant readily available. Hoist it a couple of cables and the town to be serviced will have all the power and heat it needs. This is especially useful in the Arctic. Russia is trying to establish Arctic domination, both commercially and militarily. They have over 30 ice breakers, about half of them nuclear. U.S. has two conventional ice breakers, of which only one is operational.
Now for the good news: Russia is also trying to commercialize hybrid fusion-fission reactors:
Nuclear Engineering International: 29 May 2018
Russia develops a fission-fusion hybrid reactor.
A new fission-fusion hybrid reactor will be assembled at Russia’s Kurchatov Institute by the end of 2018, Peter Khvostenko, scientific adviser of the Kurchatov complex on thermonuclear energy and plasma technologies, announced on 14 May. The physical start-up of the facility is scheduled for 2020.The hybrid reactor combines the principles of thermonuclear and nuclear power – essentially a tokamak fusion reactor and a molten salt fission reactor. Neutrons produced in a small tokamak will be captured in a molten salt blanket located around tokamak. The facility will use Thorium as a fuel, which is cheaper and more abundant than uranium. Moreover, unlike a fusion reactor, a hybrid will not require super high temperatures to generate energy.
- A new paper describes computer simulations of a hybrid fusion-fission reactor that runs on thorium.
- Thorium has benefits compared with uranium reaction and has been endorsed by Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
- In the reactor, plasma fusion generates neutrons that fuel subsequent fission.
Hybrid reactors reduce the impact of the nuclear fuel cycle on the environment. The concept combines conventional fission processes and fusion reactor principles, comprising a fusion reactor core in combination with a subcritical fission reactor. The results of the fusion reaction, which would normally be absorbed by the cooling system of the reactor, would feed into the fission section, and sustain the fission process. Thorium in a molten salt blanket will enable breeding of uranium-233.
Some of the expected advantages include:
- Utilization of actinides and transmutation from long-lived radioactive waste;
- An increase in energy recovered from uranium by a large factor;
- The inherent safety of the system, which can be shut down rapidly; and
- High burnup of fissile materials leaving few by-products.
The hybrid fission-fusion reactor is seen as a near-term commercial application of fusion pending further research on pure fusion power systems.
This is very interesting, and I will follow up when I get more information.
It seems that with the Ukraine war, Russia is preoccupied with other things than to reduce nuclear waste. Ah well.
Day 167 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.
Acts 11 . The Jews did not like that gentiles could receive the Holy Spirit, but Peter explained God’s grace. Barnabas went looking for Saul and when found they went together to Antioch. It was there the believers were first called Christians, and it was from there they sent relief to fellow believers in Judea via Barnabas and Saul.
1 Chronicles 18 lists David’s victories and his officials.
1 Chronicles 19. Wars continued, the Ammonites and the Syrians were defeated.
1 Chronicles 20. Wars went on and on. Rabbah was conquered and the Philistine giants were destroyed.
1 Chronicles 21. David took a census of Israel and Judah. This was a great sin and the LORD gave David three options how the country should be punished. David chose to be in the hands of the LORD, and the nation was punished by being visited by the angel of the LORD. The angel stopped at Araunah’s threshing floor, the future site of the Temple.
Day 166 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.
Acts 10. Cornelius, a Roman centurion called for Peter to come. That same day Peter had a vision about eating all food, including unclean food. Peter protested, but the voice in the vision told him “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.“ Peter followed Cornelius’ servants from Joppa to Caesarea, where he met Cornelius and presented the Gospel to Cornelius’ household. They all believed, the Holy Spirit fell on them and they were baptized, and so they became the first gentiles to be converted.
1 Chronicles 16. The Ark was placed in the Tabernacle, and David’s song of thanksgiving is recorded. After that the regular worship resumed.
1 Chronicles 17. David wanted to build a temple for the Lord rather than the tabernacle, and God’s covenant with David was that his son would be allowed to build it.
Why Thorium? 19. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will lessen the need for an expanded national grid.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will lessen the need for an expanded national grid. The National Electric grid is at the breaking point. It needs to be expanded, but neighborhood resistance is great in many areas where they need an expanded grid the most. The grid is also sensitive to terrorism activities.
As we can see the national grid is extensive. It is also under severe strain at peak demand. Wind power will only increase the strain since most wind power is generated where few people live and work. A way to lessen the dependency on the national grid is to sprinkle it with many small to medium sized Thorium Nuclear Power generators. They can be placed on barges in rivers and along the coast where the need is greatest, giving the grid maximum flexibility to respond in case of an emergency. LFTR’s do not depend on water for their cooling, so they can be placed anywhere, even in extreme arid areas. Since LFTR can be placed very close to urban centers, transmission losses are kept low. (The Texas grid is separately controlled from the rest of the grid.)
With the present push to convert energy sources to green energy, Thorium Nuclear energy is greener than both solar and wind energy if one includes the necessary mining to extract the materials needed for both solar and wind power. In addition thw wind blows where few people live or want to live, and the electric need is largest in the winter in the north when the sun is largely absent and the snow covers the solar panels, and the need in the south is largest in the summer when the wind blows less except for storms and hurricanes. This requires long transmission lines, and the grid is divided up in sections. The only way to solve this is to expand the grid through a HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current Network. This will be done through 1 MV cables, preferably using existing railroad rightaways when possible. One proposal is shown below. This would connect the Eastern, Western and the Texas network and significantly lessen transmission losses. (Transmission losses in the U.S. electrical grid is more than 50 Billion dollars yearly)
Transmission losses in a HVDC network are far less. Better yet is to place the energy source near the energy consumer. LFTR Thorium power would solve this problem. As we switch from gasoline powered to electric cars, the need to expand the grid will be more and more urgent, and the resistance to build more transmission lines is already great and growing, especially in already overloaded urban areas.
Why Thorium? 18. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will work both as Base Load and Load Following power plants.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will work both as Base Load and Load Following power plants. LFTR’s operate at a much higher temperature than conventional power plants and operate at up to 45% electricity conversion efficiency, as opposed to 38% or lower for steam generators. In addition, because of the higher operating temperature it is ideal for hydrogen generation. The reactor would use the electricity generation to satisfy the current demand and produce hydrogen during times of low demand. This hydrogen would be temporarily stored and used for electricity production at peak demand. And hydrogen fuel cells produce only water whenoxidized, no CO2 or polluting fumes are generated. With the objective of reducing the cost of hydrogen production, solid oxide electrolyser cells (SOECs) are especially well suited. SOECs operate at high temperatures, typically around 800 °C. At these high temperatures a significant amount of the energy required can be provided as thermal energy (heat), and as such is termed High temperature electrolysis.
Many years ago, I worked in a bakery as a helper, and we had a stone oven, heated at night when the electricity rates were a fraction of day rates, and in the morning when the oven was hottest we baked danishes, followed by buns, ended up with bread and cookies as the day wore on. Stone ovens make really good bread. Stone storage can store a lot of heat. They are used as heat storage in solar concentrators, up to 100 GWh. there may be a great future for heat storage with Thorium Nuclear plants. When demand is low it is kept at full temperature, up to 550 C and the gas, normally run through a generator is heating the storage tank or building, ready to be providing heat for the generators at high demand. This would help to limit the need for large batteries to stabilize electric output and provide fast response to varying load demands.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 
