Thorium: the future of nuclear power?

[izentrop]

Whatever you think, the race for mini power plants with molten salts is well underway https://lenergeek.com/2017/03/22/mini-c ... s-energie/

[sen-no-sen]

It makes perfect sense.
Nuclear power plants built in the 1970/2000 period obeyed the principles K: very large structures financed by monopoly companies in periods of stability.
Nowadays, given the economic instability of the environment and recent events (Fukushima), the nuclear sector is moving towards a strategy r: small infrastructures that will multiply according to different funding methods (private or public) within a particularly competitive sector (gas, renewable energies, coal, oil, biomass).

[ENERC]

12 tonnes of radioactive 000 m deep
How do you say "red caps" in the jargon of sinners?
It's sure that sea professionals will love it!

Well it's developed by EDF and Areva, so everything is fine. As we know, they have no financial worries

[izentrop]

Yes, Flexblue is the least ecological project since it is only 25% profitable and warms the surrounding sea. These are the most advanced Chinese projects, it goes without saying.

[izentrop]

One step closer to liquid fission:
"Terrestrial Energy yesterday received notification from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) that the first phase of the vendor design review for the Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) has been successfully completed." https://fissionliquide.fr/author/fissionliquide/

"International energy agencies recognize that intermittent renewable energies such as wind and solar cannot meet all the requirements of a clean global energy system and agree that nuclear power will play a crucial role in meeting our future energy needs. Advanced reactors offer a set of new and transformative nuclear technologies with zero emissions, a much larger industrial application, and which make nuclear power plants more economical and easier to finance. ”

[izentrop]

In a pressurized water reactor, the loss of the ability to cool the reactor is a serious malfunction which can result in a core meltdown.

Which requires stacking security measures

The atomic architects who are at work in the design of molten salt reactors have a different paradigm. To reduce the cost of a plant, the design can be simplified if the hazards are reduced or eliminated.
With a liquid fuel, a whole bunch of elegant and ingenious tools, tips and solutions are available which are simply impossible to implement when the fuel is a solid.

I'll let you read more.

Liquid fission prunes all the dangers of nuclear power, but what are we waiting for to act the right way? https://fissionliquide.fr/2018/02/09/el ... s-dangers/

[thibr]

did you see the report on Arte?
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/050775-000-A/thorium-la-face-gachee-du-nucleaire/

[izentrop]

did you see the report on Arte?
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/050775-000-A/thorium-la-face-gachee-du-nucleaire/

It has already been cited, but thank you for the reminder.

The videos of the documents are extracted from this documentary, such as the intervention of the scientific director of the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety who explains how reactivity is managed with a molten salt reactor

Sodium, in its ionic form and combined with another reactive element - chlorine - you have it in your kitchen.

It is precisely because the salts are composed of very reactive elements that when combined with an ionic bond they form chemically very stable substances.

What happens if there is a leak in a molten salt reactor?

[Remundo]

thorium in molten salts is probably more reassuring than the REP sector.

That said, it does not solve the problem of fission products ...

[Bardal]

It is not the fission products that pose a problem, even those with a very long lifespan (which in principle are not very radiotoxic); all are manageable on a "historical" scale and very quickly go down to an emission level lower than that of ore ...

What poses a problem are the transuranics (mainly the minor actinides); but they are produced only in tiny quantities in this type of thorium reactor (1000 to 10000 times less than in the uranium sector); better still, this type of reactor is capable of transmuting, or of splitting, the waste currently produced ... Concretely, it is capable of "burning" them, at the cost of a slight drop in efficiency, and of extract energy.