Can thorium nuclear energy make a comeback?

What's your take on thorium and molten-salt reactors?

Sam O'nella first, guys! 😂 Our chad really changes the world 🎉

No way out boy Sam O Nella got a spot in DW. When will our boy come back? God damn it!

We already developed the alloy needed, and it has been approved. The current issues are mostly related to filtering the molten salt to remove elements created in the reaction while operating. This is one of the main advantage of molten salt reactors over conventional light water reactors where you have to shut light water reactors down periodically, reshuffle the rods, and replace some rods. Molten salt is supposed to be able to just keep running and have small amounts of Thorium put in while it is operating for perhaps years on end. If you don't filter it, it will have to be shut down now and then to get it filtered some other way. They could just take out the old and put in new, and restart. Then clean the old stuff while it is using the new stuff, but as he mentioned, the start-up is complicated, and requires uranium and such. If we get all the filtering working, the thing practically does not need anyone to operate. Of course, there will be people in actuality.

One has to question the integrity of presenting a bunch of nuclear explosions in association with reactors. Nuclear weapons are not reactors, reactors are not nuclear weapons and can't detonate like them. It is also ignored how safe nuclear reactors are already. They are the safest form of energy we have. There are far more deaths with anything else.

Germans were just goofy to shut down their reactors after Fukushima. Not only do they not have major earthquake faults, but even with 3 worst-case meltdowns, no one died from radiation. Imagine if they shut down all the windmills after one technician fell to his death. In reality, lots of people have died working on windmills. And lots of people have fallen off buildings to their deaths installing solar, but even the imagination of someone dying of radiation is enough to scrap dozens of perfectly good reactors. Coal is killing thousands of Germans a year, but it is just shrugged off. I used to think Germans were rational, common-sense people.

India is a leader in Thorium research. Currently Fast breeder reactor is in final stages of construction. Also India is the only country with a plan on how to deal with nuclear waste. It will be fed into Fast breeder reactors.

I think there is a LOT of potential here.

The biggest hurdle is in the materials, which have improved by an order of magnitude since the Oak Ridge MSR experiment was shut down. It's possible, for instance, that advanced ceramics may be even better-suited than the metal alloys of the original experiment.

It would have been nice to delve more into the Chinese test MSR than 7 seconds. It’s already been built and was approved for testing for almost a year. Everyone else is talking years before they build a test reactor, and China has already built one.

india has a one of the largest reserves of thorium, so it has carried out a lot of research on it. And it is developing reactors for thorium

Lotta folks in the comments don’t seem to under that alot of tech is already developed for it, it’s simply lack of investment

Thorium reactors are worth a look. But video stories like this overlook some important facts: the benefits of molten salt reactors are not unique to thorium. The same could be done with uranium. Thorium waste is much more radioactive and dangerous for a shorter period of time. Uranium reactor waste is less radioactive, but for a much longer time. Thorium is more abundant at the surface, but uranium is much more abundant overall including the sea floor.

The disparity of funding between Fusion Power and Thorium is mind boggling. If they put 10% of such funding to Thorium, will likely have useful technologies much much sooner. Secondly, Canada is scheduled be having Throium running in a Candu Reactor this year, albeit not using Molten Salt but still very interesting. Third, waste heat from molten salt reactors can be used for industrial purposes, replacing the need for Natural Gas such as fertilizer production.

"nuclear energy gets a bad rap, and for good reason" names literally the only 3 incidents in over 75 years of nuclear energy, none of which were caused by the actual nuclear technology but by the humans running and building the plants.

In Germany there was the THTR-300, working with thorium but not as molten salt. It was very expensive, didn't work very well and generally seen as a failure.

I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary, it provided valuable insights and presented the information in a compelling manner. Great work!

0:44 OHHH MY GOOODDDDDDD SAMMY WHEN I HEARD THORIUM I REMEMBERED HIS VIDEO

Thank you for talking about this.

I believe molten salt reactors have a definite place, especially for countries that already have a lot of spent fuel that could be used up. It would be great if the West were to match China and India is trialing these designs, especially the design similar to Oak Ridge. Molten salt also gives operators process heat which can run desalinators, another of our urgent needs.

It's simply not true that thorium reactors cannot be used to produce weapons-grade fissionable materials.

Excellent video! Many thanks for the information. 😊

I used to be a Thorium miner back then in my WoW's days