LFTRs in 5 minutes - Thorium Reactors

A short video of Kirk Sorensen taking us through the benifits of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, a revolutionary liquid reactor that runs not on uranium, but thorium. These work and have been built before. Search for either LFTRs or Molten Salt Reactors (MSR).

FAQ
The main downsides/negatives to this technology, politics, corrosion and being scared of nuclear radiation. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors were created 50 years ago by an American chap named Alvin Weinberg, but the American Government realised you can't weaponise the by-products and so they weren't interested.

Another point, yes it WAS corrosive, but these tests of this reactor were 50 years ago, our technology has definately improved since then so a leap to create this reactor shouldn't be too hard.

And nuclear fear is extremely common in the average person, rather irrational though it may be. More people have died from fossil fuels and even hydroelectric power than nuclear power.
I added this video for a project regarding Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, watch and enjoy.

No, it would not collapse the economy... just like the use of uranium reactors didn't... neither did coal... This is because you wouldn't have an instant transition from coal... oil... everything else to thorium. We could not do that. Simply due to the engineering. Give it 50 years we might be using thorium instead of coal/oil (too late in terms of global warming, but thats another debate completely), but we certainly won't destroy the earths economy. Duh.

And yes he said we'd never run out. Not strictly true... bloody skeptics ... LFTRs can harness 3.5 million Kwh per Kg of thorium! 70 times greater than uranium, 10,000 greater than oil... and there is over 2.6million tonnes of it on earth... Anyone with a calculator, or a brain, will understand that is a lot of energy!!

Any more questions I will try and ask but read this first =)


Here is a petition for those interested in the US, take a look.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/peti...

Here is a petition for the UK, please sign! http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petit...
It won't take long.




Thanks for watching. And please, please share this video with as many people as you can. The more that know about this, the greater chance of change.

R.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[123ross456]

You don't know how much I think it'll cost. You find me some land, some solar panels, and harness the same amount of energy that one nuclear reactor can, and then you come back to me with some costs. Because whilst yes there are costs found with wastage, there are also solutions. Oh, and what happens when the sun sets, or have you also costed in enough batteries to store all this energy? I love solar power, trust me, i have panels on my house. But we need a solution and it can't ignore nuclear.

[TommyNerdlands]

I hate how they cut his sentences every 5 seconds.

[Nickolas Davies]

this is a bullet point brake down of a much longer vid

[Al R.]

The editing is poor making this a 5 minute run-on sentence and one heck of a headache listening to this guy.

[mazin2892]

...i replied to your other comment and i just saw this...read it

[mazin2892]

Also i want to add that many European countries have enough sun shine to generate a decent amount of elec. And on top of that america could generate a whole lot as well. in fact america is leading CSP/PV at the moment.

But i guess africa isn't the best place to be doing anything like that for the time being....unless of course they are doing it for them selves. And on top of that middle eastern countries (specifically UAE, Saudi, Qatar etc) have pretty good relations with the west.

[mazin2892]

look, i can see where you are coming from, and i am FOR thorium plants.

But read my comments and research solar power.

CSP can provide 24hr elec, also even counting losses lets say 50%...we still only use 2-3% surface area. and about the paper....it uses pretty basic maths to calculate how much is needed. I could do it if i was bothered and im sure you could as well. The only issue IS politics. but then using anything that isnt coal is going to trouble the moronic public.

[Zyamaman]

There are big countries behind it - China is doing it, India is doing it. Russia is doing it in some capacity, and I think some countries in the EU are on it, too.

Not the US, though.

I, for one, am starting to learn Chinese...

[Zyamaman]

Yeah, I'm almost ready to discount this paper as bogus.

It seems it's based on a whole lot of wishful thinking by a bunch of aspies with zero real world understanding.

They want to place most of Europe's power generating capacities in NORTHERN AFRICA The same place that fought for independence from European intervention for decades!

And there's not a single word on energy lost to grid inefficiency - on the distances they propose to transport it, the loss should a LOT more than the current 30%.

[Zyamaman]

I found the paper this claim originated from, I'll read it in detail, but just from skimming it I can see some MAJOR issues.

a) I don't see a SINGLE word accounting for the fact that sun only shines HALF the day. What are we gonna do at night? Light candles and campfires?

b) They IGNORE international politics. The idea is to place those arrays in just a few countries, that will supply the all the world's energy. Yet no one stops to ask what would happen in the even of war between countries.

[mazin2892]

I apologise for any mistakes ive made in the previous message,

PV's have been said to be able to provide enough for the world using 1%, i think the figure for csp is about 2%.

Look it up, it was said by a professor...

Also your an idiot if you think it would take the surface area of china...

either way if every country with decent amount of sunlight invested in solar power and deserst were also used then solar could easily provide for the world. Csp provides 24 hr elec and it will last forever

[Zyamaman]

I'm sorry, but what you said is just not true - CSP take up ENORMOUS swaths of land!

1% of earth's deserts? That's just bogus.

Realistically, we're gonna need to take up an area the size of china to supply the world's energy, and that's a very optimistic estimation, and it doesn't account for the grid power loss, which in solar is even larger than today's 30% average.