Comments by "David Elliott" (@davidelliott5843) on "Thorium explained - the future of cheap, clean energy?" video.

  1. The British company Moltex Energy are building a new plant in New Bruswick Canada. it is a fast spectrum reactor that will burn the waste fuel from a legacy nuke power plant next door. It will extract the 96% energy left unused by the old reactor and reduce the 1/2 life from 30,000 years to 30 years. It will naturally follow the load demand so is ideal for supporting renewable generators which have a variable output. They use a simple chemical process to make their fuel salt from irradiated waste fuel pellets. The fuel salt is contained in zirconium plated stainless steel tubes. The fuel tubes are vented to allow gasses like Xenon to escape and sit in a bath of the same species of salt. Byproducts like Iodine 131 and Caesium 137 will themselves form salts so can never escape as dangerous gases. There are no pumps moving radioactive salt. Heat is transferred to the heat exchangers by convection. There is no pressure inside the reactor core. A third salt takes the heat away to power generators. Corrosion is controlled by keeping the salt reducing. Heat exchanger plating is prevented by keeping the fuel in 10mm fuel rods. The reactor tank is molten salt for transferring heat. There is no salt plug and dump tank but there is also no fuel salt pump. These are all huge regulatory issues, so Moltex thought the best component is no component at all. The reactor is intrinsically safe, because it has a highly negative thermal power coefficient. If the operating temperature rises slightly, the power generated falls. It naturally follows the load demand. It can potentially sit with settings at full power (control rods pulled out) AND the cooling circuits disconnected with zero hazard. Truly walk away safe to the extent that boron control rods are only there to keep the regulators happy. The burnt Moltex fuel will have a 1/2 life of 30 years against 30,000 years for the old legacy fuel stuff. Also there is no carbon core to need replacing. That's another source of waste it wont have. Moltex have designs for new uranium fuel and even a thorium breeder. The issues are are not technical just that regulatory approval takes many years. The first version is the easiest to get approved and should be on line by 2028.
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