Subject Zero Science - 2024-01-25
Thorium is a great idea but lacks execution. In this video I discuss the reasons it may never happen.
The chemical process for Kirks LFTR specifically (which is what we're talking about here) does NOT look like what you describe here.
There is no fluorine injection, it's basically electrolysis. You put a relatively small voltage across and Protactinium moves from one salt into the other salt while the other electrode is made from Thorium which by this electrolysis dissolves into the salt to replace the Protactinium. The two salts are in separate tanks connected by liquid Bismuth at the bottom which acts as one of the electrodes and allows the Protactinium to travel from one salt to the other.
That purely chemical process is possible too like you say but I believe the electrochemistry wins out by simplicity and lack of maintenance needed. The only parts involved are a liquid metal which is not spent and being liquid no structural damage and the Thorium electrode which is destroyed but that is your refuelling process. The only thing you really need to worry about is keeping the voltage of the process at the right level which is in the modern day VERY easy to do. If you only use the voltage which corresponds to the binding energy of Protactinium you only pull out Protactinium, if you use a higher voltage you pull out things with higher binding energy too. The downside is that the process is probably a LOT slower than the purely chemical approach but should be easily able to keep up with the reactor.
Flibe Energy YouTube channel has a nice introduction video of the "Thorium Fuel Cycle"
This won't get enough attention. Every time someone makes the argument against LFTR it feels like they're parroting things they hear from lobbyists instead of doing research and reporting their findings, you know, the scientific method. "But it will be hard, and we can't make good bombs" is the reasoning that will ensure China & India get it working before we do. We'd rather burn platinum than make affordable, reliable energy that has beneficial byproducts like other fuels we need here and in space. Industry doesn't see the big picture if it doesn't generate profit this quarter.
this is why i just ignore most videos about thorium other than 3 hour presentations by people who actually know almost nobody talks about this they just do some Wikipedia search and make a 10 minute video for views its extremely infuriating but oh well china will sell us back our own technology by 2030
@@cpt_bill366 If we can pop energy out like jelly beans...anywhere in the world... and above it or below the sea... which is the potential here, the reason for all these wars.... and bombs largely goes away. We're just left with the megalomaniacs... and we can develop a pill for that.
This video ignored the fact that a 2MW Thorium pilot power plant has been running since June 2023. It is already happening. Lessens learned from the pilot plant will show the world how to improve the system for a safe and abundant energy source.
@@vxworks66 I didn't even know about that. Is that the chineese one?
In france, the most common molten salt design use NaCl (yeah table salt) to dissolve U238 and plutonium 239.
The corrosion issue is resolved through ceramics coating.
working with a fast spectrum vastly reduces the transUranic generation, while allowing to work with used Mox fuel. It also allows to work as a burner for long life waste.
Using a flouride salt instead of NaCl adds a layer of security since a breakage of the reactor will let the fuel solidify into rocks not dissolvable in water.
The fast spectrum is in itself a technological challenge. At the very least it means you cannot make a small compact reactor, since the size of the fuel and blanket salt necessary to sustain the chain reaction and breeding increase by a lot.
@@migBdk Uranium chloride is solid or liquid if molten or dissolved in water. Uranium fluoride is gas. Solid or liquid are easier to handle than gas in case of accident.
That's only a test reactor. Notice they never even talked of building power plants with that design... Perhaps it did not work as well as you think it did.
There have been dozens of different designs tried as test reactors. Most of them show that other designs are known to work better.
This video ignored the fact that a 2MW Thorium pilot power plant has been running since June 2023. It is already happening. Lessens learned from the pilot plant will show the world how to improve the system for a safe and abundant energy source.
@@migBdkfluoride, fluoride
Another thing is, that all the liquid salts inside and outside the reactor are insanely corrosive at that temperatures. Although there are materials to deal with that, it remains a big headache when it comes to maintenance since every part of the system is contaminated, making any work on the system as a whole a pretty hazardous adventure.
Glad to see someone mention this in the comments. It's much more difficult than the theoretical science makes it out to be. There is much more practicality in simply updating water cooled/moderated reactors like we are seeing with Small Modular Reactors, which are proven to actually be functional, safe, and more affordable.
The corrosion issue has been resolved years ago.
Copenhagen has claimed that they have solved the corrosion problem by eliminating contaminents in the fuel. They have been running Lithium Fluoride salts through their process loops for years with minimum corrosion problems.
@@edding8400 I am aware that the corrosion problems are solved at the technical level, but that was not really the point. I regularly work in chemical plants that produce corrosive products and although one might think that we should have figured out long ago how to deal with simple acids, its still a challenge to keep those reactors in shape for an extended period due to corrosion and stuff you only encounter years into the operation.
Running a molten salt reactor seems like an endeavor for a maintenance crew suited up in full-body suits 24/7 for many years until enough experience is gained for a reliable operation. Suff that works in labs and test stands rarely translate 1 to 1 into the real world. Surely, its possible, but it won't be an out-of-the-box working solution like many seem to think it is.
However, I think we should have done this years ago so we would be already wiser today.
Seems a Tesla bot will have to do it then. :)
ENGINEER HERE{ The real technical problem that is rarely being mentioned is operational experience with Molten Salt Reactors. Being honest this was something I had missed until it was pointed out recently by James Krellenstein on an interview he did with Decoupled Media here on YT.
After they did the MSR experiment at Oak Ridge in Tennessee back in the late 1960s and Early 1970s the entire MSR concept basically was shelved with zero work being done until Kirk Sorenson re-discovered it as part of a project he was doing looking at powering a Lunar base.
With the exception of nuclear fusion we literally have millions of hours of operational and maintenance time with all the other forms of nuclear power - gas cooled, liquid metal cooled, pressure water, CANDU.... etc. By comparison we have almost nothing with respect to any of the molten salt types. None of them were ever put into service so NOBODY actually knows what the ongoing operational or maintenance issues actually are.
This is one of the most fundamental issues with all technologies. Its one thing to build something its another thing to operate it and yet another thing to maintain it AND EVERY technology goes through a learning phase that never really ends. Think about how much experience we now have with cars and aeroplanes and other technologies.
Wasn't one of the reasons MSR's were shelved (and very quickly, too) was because they couldn't produce weapons grade uranium which the government could use?
Sure but it boils down to that we can't have good, safe, cheap nuclear power because we don't have good, safe, cheap nuclear power. We did have Oak Ridge though and I think the results from that are very promising. China is also building one so I have hope that we will finally see what Thorium can do.
@@cas1652 As an engineer I have to correct or at least clarify your main claims that we can't have good, safe, cheap nuclear power.
1) GOOD as compared to what? because every type of power we use has a number in inescapable side effects. Solar panels are great once they are made but making them is toxic and disposing of spent cells is near impossible. Like nuclear we still haven't found a way to deal with the waste.
2) SAFE as compare to what? Because if you are going to compare nuclear to coal then the fatality rates make coal one of the most lethal substances ever known. Coal mines are some of the most dangerous places any person can work.
By comparison do you know how many people have died from nuclear power or nuclear power accidents?
3) CHEAP again compared to what?
Yes nuclear is damn expensive to construct but once built its operating costs are quite low because it doesn't require a lot of fuel in terms of mass.
Don't get me wrong there are some serious issues with nuclear the most obvious being what to do after wards. Other then the fuel the power stations themselves don't last for ever and cleaning up those sites has proven to be incredibly expensive. BUT I'D ADD cleaning up so many other industrial sites ahs also been incredibly expensive. PLUS we have barely begun to start cleaning up many of the incredibly toxic sites built in the post WW2 era.
I'm Australian and did you know that Sydney harbour one of our great tourist spots is so toxic that NOBODY is allowed to eat any of the fish or seafood in it. Its all due to a Phillips factory that nobody knew was dumping stuff into the ground water system.
I'm not a great fan of nuclear but I also accept we need a a reliable bulk energy system that can back up the renewable systems people want. Sorry but renewables just can't do everything, that's just a fantasy. Plus it will take decades to get all that we need installed.
Nuclear is like so many other things. It can be done safely, reliably and cost effectively. THE PROBLEM is the people who's only interest is milking as much money is possible from it.
HAVE YOU SEEN all the crap at Boeing? That sort of corporate stupidity is rampant through the engineering industries. That's the sort of stupidity that scares me way more than nuclear anything because they DO NOT CARE about the consequences other people have to deal with.
That's what you should be calling out - stupid ridiculous corporate greed because its the REAL PROBLEM.
@@tonywilson4713 i think i agree with. I just think Thorium will be (even?) better than we have now.
1) good: when the corrosion issues are solved, I expect Thorium to be easier and faster to build
2) safe: liquid salt reactors can be passively safe unlike contemporary designs that rely on active cooling with diesel generators in an emergency
3) cheap: thorium is much cheaper then uranium, both in fuel costs and for the nuclear waste
@@cas1652 I'd agree with all 3 of those points. There's just one major issue with thorium, but it is solvable.
RIGHT NOW we have effectively zero experience with Thorium as well as with using MSRs long term.
There's a channel called Decouple Media. I don't always agree with either the host or some of the people he has on because like so many of the pro-nuclear crowd they aren't engineers and don't understand what these issues mean or what it takes to deal with them.
An exception to that is a guy named James Krellenstein who he's had on a number of times. Jame's family has been involved in the Canadian nuclear industry for decades. So there's a wealth of experience behind what he explains.
He's spoken about the pro's and cons of all the different types including CANDU, MSRs and MSRs. A really important interview he gave was on Uranium enrichment. He went through the whole history and why there's now a major issue in that area with capacity. America RIGHT NOW can't even supply its own needs and has to buy enriched Uranium from the Russians. the only enrichment plant in America isn't even owned by Americans its owned by a British, German and Dutch conglomerate. NOBODY else is even speaking about this stuff, which find even more amazing. Not even all the pro nuclear clowns are talking about it. NONE of them are saying anything like: "To get the nuclear industry going we need more mines and more enrichment facilities and better waste disposal."
I think we will need thorium to help boost the baseload power supply and the sooner we get on and sort it out the better BUT ALMOST NO ONE IS SAYING THAT.
This is the sort of thing that as an engineer I find truly aggravating. There's all these clowns who will never have to do a damn thing DEMANDING people like me solve these f*cking issues for them. Worse they will probably take credit when we do solve these issues.
I literally was looking for your channel yesterday to see if you had posted any new cool videos, and I was so sad there hadn't been for a year. BUT TODAY HE HAS RETURNED, WE HAVE BEEN BLESSED
I believe he runs the Bleak Science channel as well, where we get good quality snarky science delivered from time to time.
same!
He has been using his time on another channel of his ( don't remember what is called )
I thought he had abandoned us. Not sure what to think of it.
Edit: It's called "Bleak Science"
This video ignored the fact that a 2MW Thorium pilot power plant has been running since June 2023. It is already happening. Lessens learned from the pilot plant will show the world how to improve the system for a safe and abundant energy source.
@@Hi-Im-RubX thanks bro
I think calling the nuclear industry "plagued by accidents" is a bit extreme.. and that's an understatement..
No it's not. Search "Death rates per unit of electricity production" in Ourwolrdindata. Your welcome
I know right! Like he thinks there have been 3 Chernobyl incidents, 5 Fukushima incidents, and that Three Mile Island was an actual accident and has happened at least twice.
Indeed. There is a reason why the IAEA takes its cues from US Navy Nuclear Program. Thanks to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, there has NEVER been a reactor related accident.
The only problem has been meltdowns caused by a failure of the cooling system for one reason or another. With MSRs that issue is removed.
How many meltdowns happened in non nuclear plants?
You forgot to mention that you can run a lifter like molten salt reactor for urainium also.You can pretty much use any fissile or fertile material in there.
Yes, ThorCon plan to use a mixture of 235U and thorium, so the thorium does not turn it into a real breeder it just reduce the time needed before refuelling.
@seanprice7645 this isn't correct. ThorCon's design is not a modified breeder at all, it's a uranium burner to which thorium is added. You could do this with any nuclear power plant: just replace some of the U238 with Th232. In any case this seems a moot point. Last time I heard, ThorCon have been looking away from using thorium because they can't get the necessary fuel: it's just easier and simplier to run with standard low-enriched-uranium. This turns out to be true for almost any design that uses thorium: it's just easier and cheaper to use uranium. Which is why there is very little real interest (i.e. outside of the internet) in using thorium in any timescale anyone cares about.
CANDU reactors, a design from the 60's, use non-enriched uranium for fuel currently, and are perfectly cable of the Thorium breeding cycle and fuel re-processing with stuff like MOX cycles.
Which is oen reason they are not looking closely at Thorium yet, they are more interested is using waste fuel from older nuclear plants before they start looking at new fuel types.
Well Thorium molten salt reactors basically do run on Uranium. Uranium 235 (Neutron source to start the breeder reaction), Uranium 238 and Uranium 233. As well as a hundred ( I have no idea ) other actinides. I have high hopes for LIFTER, but doubt America will be able to do it. Unfortunately the bureaucratic state is much like the USSR and nothing is going to get done.
He has returned.
I subscribed again on my new accnt just today lmao
this video is a propaganda video with zero real input other than plz stop regulating my industry with shit out of Ayn rand's novel like 'oh those Bad actors'? Is this video a joke or wtf
@@jonilappalainen6056 tf are you on about?
escuse me mam are you on drugs? or are you part of the "bad actors"@@jonilappalainen6056
This. Is. Propaganda.
You are indeed an@@unqualified_engineer
Anti nuclear people are halting human progression so much its insane. Also the road to clean, sustainable energy.
Those types of individuals aren't swayed by facts and reason. Only anger and fear.
They've been brainwashed their whole lives and only accept information that confirms their bias.
the dumber people is the one that shout the loudest
A lot of them are astroturfed by Fossil and adjacent companies anyway. I bet these so-called "green activists" probably couldn't even tell you the real answer to what would be the best course of action to solve the climate crisis – which is to cut out consumption of underground carbon (fossil fuels) for electricity.
Imagine Greenpeace actually does what their name indicates and we actively build nuclear reactors in the past 20 years. We'd have solved the majority of CO2 from electricity by now.
The fundamental problem with LFTRs is the same as what killed all previous attempts to make breeder reactors, namely proliferation.
Breeders naturally produce weapon's grade material, and with the chemical separation on these thorium reactors it's even worse, because you essentially have pure U233 on tap.
Thorium fanboys have long claimed that U232 poisoning prevents this, but this ignores the enormous difference in halflife, which allows the U232 to simply be skimmed off before the Pa233 -> U233 decay has barely even started.
"Skimmed off". You're funny. You skimmed over how hard it is to do just that. Trying to separate nearly identical atoms with only a single neutron weight difference. At best breeder reactors won't get you more than 40%-60% purity. Way south of fissile capable. Gotta hit 92% for the boom. Getting the last six percent takes the most herculean efforts.
"Skimmed off". You're funny. You skimmed over how hard it is to do just that. Trying to separate nearly identical atoms with only a single neutron weight difference. At best breeder reactors won't get you more than 40%-60% purity. Way south of fissile capable. Gotta hit 92% for the boom. Getting the last six percent takes the most herculean efforts.
@@brianhirt5027 There is no need to separate them by weight. Stop repeating that myth.
I'm talking about the CHEMICAL separation of U from Pa, which is something a LFTR already does during normal operation.
Because Pa232 has a 20.4x shorter halflife than Pa233, 99.99993% is already long gone by the the time that merely half of the U233 is done processing.
@@Dayanto Go argue with Wikipedia & the NRC about the physics. I'm sure they'll be appropriately impressed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons-grade_nuclear_material
@@brianhirt5027 You separate the U232 from the PA233 before the PA233 decays into U233. Just wait a few months and less than one part per BILLION of PA232 would remain and the PA233 would be down to about 1/8 the original. At that point, very simple chemical separation would allow you to easily produce weapons grade material superior to plutonium.
Dumbass.
Chinese and indian researcher is quite advanced in thorium tech.
India will commission its Prototype Fast breeder reactor in 2024 for our 2nd stage of nuclear programme.
In third stage we intend to using Thorium which is present in abundant supply in India instead of nuclear fuel which is imported
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_8sQ-h6HAU
India and China are leading this "race"!
And China has already turned on its thorium reactor in the Gobi and announced its thorium fueled shipping fleet!
@@stickynorth India is not lagging behind in terms of thorium reactor development, but rather pursuing a different and more comprehensive approach than China. India’s thorium programme is based on decades of research and experience, and has the potential to revolutionise the global nuclear energy scenario.
Jai 😊
@@stickynorthChina also hacked datas from indian thorium reactor 2 years ago
Coming as someone who works with typical U-235 LWRs, my biggest question with Thorium is what do you do to start back up the plant when it inevitably shuts down?
You can't run it forever, equipment (especially pumps) will need maintenance overhauls at some point or some sensor fails and brings you offline.
Is molten salt really going to allowed to solidify in the piping? If so how will you unblock these solid masses of salt to get flow again? I assume a massive amount of heat tracing but haven't seen a commercially viable answer to this.
Just spitballing here, but the nice thing about modular reactors is you can have more than one. So it seems plausible that you could have one shut down for maintenance while others continue to operate.
You can drain the pipes into a heated tank, it doesn't have to solidify in the piping.
Run the salt lines inside larger pipe? It's extra containment, and When plant running such could maybe serve as heat exchanger. To warm up salt... instead of feeding water in...feed in steam.
Nb unlike water, the proposed molten salts are likely to behave as most materials do and and contract on freezing. Lower chance of burst pipes. And for horizontal runs...there'll likely be a small volume of pipe left unfilled by frozen salt, along which hot salt would be able to flow during a restart.
It's a relatively short circuit and limited quantities of fuel, and the heat is about 400*c to keep the salt liquid, no big deal, if one pump stops I guess you can have a secondary parallel circuit implemented as a back up while you repair the main one. We are dealing here with cheap materials at atmospheric pressures.
So to make this reactor work, you need a highly radioactive material, combined with a highly corrosive material, at high temperature, mixing with another pretty radioactive and corrosive material, also at high temperature, and you need to remove another material from all of this otherwise the system fails.
And then to top it all off you have to get the government involved.
Suddenly it all makes sense why this tech has been theoretical for so long.
Good break down on how it breaks down.
These are engineering problems. It isn't theoretical either, a react ran for a number of months in the 60s I believe.
@@antarcticmonkeys Was called the MSRE at Oak Ridge. It was a test reactor and ppl say it was kinda succesful.
It is an unfair characterisation of the technology. First, every reactor uses radioactive material, which gets hot, and even more radioactive during operation. Corrosion happens in every industry including the current PWRs. That is being said water is actually more corrosive than salt I see a lot of confusion about this. The removing of materials breaks down to realtively simple chemical steps. I see, also, not a lot of ppl knows that nuclear fuel reprocessing happens in salts anyway, so unless you prefer throwing away 95-96% of the useful fuel as "high level nuclear waste" that no one wants in their backyard or even under their mountain you already on the side of doing this sort of chemistry on our spent fuels. This proposal merely means they cut out the fabrication step and do reprocessing in situ.
"And then to top it all off you have to get the government involved" so does in case of building highways, fight crime, catastrope relief, provide security, education, healthcare, pension etc. I don't like the goverment not a tiny bit more than you, but ppl tend to forget what we gain by not living in a complete anarchy.
"Suddenly it all makes sense why this tech has been theoretical for so long."
The two thing correlates. If it has been pursued when it was first conceived, we would already either perfected or discarded the technology by now.
Didn't China already built at least one thorium salt reactor?
The biggest problem is gonna be cost. Uranium NPPs already struggle on the market due to their high costs, even in countries that can mine their own Uranium (USA) and Thorium NPPs are going to be even more expensive.
Thorium is much cheaper and there is less waste which can be more easily stored or reprocess.
For me to use thorium just need a just a little uranium as starter just imagine uranium like the stone to begin the fire in a firecamp
@@cas1652 The fuel isn't the prohibitive cost factor.
@@cas1652 Less waste with a reasonable half-life, but it's super hot, so transporting is an issue.
@@sualtam9509 Which is the problem for the nuclear business model.
Worked at GE than two thorium start ups and now with KEPCO.
One major hurdle is what happens if a shutdown is required.
Actually the major hurdle is COST
Anytime you have isotopes that decay this rapidly, you have intense radiation. This sounds like a real "dirty" process.
For dirt you just need to add a bit of detergent, this makes removal of dirt much easier.
You want that over a slow radiation that leaks over 10,000 years
@@linusmlgtips2123 absolutely! we live in a radioactive universe, its everywhere. Even the potassium in a banana has some radio-isotopes.
Because of this, our bodies have evolved the ability to repair radiation damage, up to a threshold value. Rapidly decaying isotopes produce levels far above this threshold. Nuclear engineers look for decay chains that produce long lived isotopes because they are inherently less dangerous.
The faster the easier the storage. Gamma Radiation needs around 60-80cm of concrete shielding at best. Wastes with Beta and Alpha Radiation are safe to store normally (2-8 cm concrete shielding) so that it integrates back into the crust.
"An industry plagued by monumental accidents" ??? There have been three losses of civilian reactors, and exactly one of them had proven deaths and sickness, caused by an operation warned against in the operators manual. Even so, the death toll is under 100, which is hardly monumental.
There was a fire at a reactor of the weapons-producing "pile" type at Windscale in England, and it may have caused a number of deaths from radioactive iodine.
Absolutely! It’s surprising how some people still call nuclear energy “plagued by monumental accidents” when the facts tell a different story. With only three losses of civilian reactors and a death toll under 100, it’s clear that nuclear energy is one of the safest and most effective forms of power we have.
The incidents that did occur often stemmed from specific operational mistakes, not inherent flaws in the technology itself. Modern reactors are designed with multiple safety features to prevent accidents, and the industry has learned valuable lessons from the past.
It seems like only paid, organized opposition groups ignore these obvious facts. They overlook the incredible advancements in safety and efficiency that nuclear energy has achieved. The benefits of clean, reliable nuclear power far outweigh the risks, and it’s time we recognize that!
i mean it is plagued by monumental accidents. the public perception of nuclear power will never not be tarnished by chernobyl and the atomic bomb.
At around 5 minutes, it was mentioned it takes a month to refuel a power plant after 18 months of usage... Depending on the plant, the outage might only last less than a week, with refueling only taking a few days. Other maintenance is way more time consuming in general, from my experience. Usually during refueling all the other work is done, too, taking up most of the outage time
CANDU reactors are not shut down for refueling at all.
This video ignored the fact that a 2MW Thorium pilot power plant has been running since June 2023. It is already happening. Lessens learned from the pilot plant will show the world how to improve the system for a safe and abundant energy source.
@@vxworks66 Got any more specific information on that?
You really should specify what reactor you are talking about. That "month to refuel" could be accurate for LWR, but completely incorrect for most designs of Molten Salt Reactor. Most MSR designs would be refueled while the reactor is running; no removing fuel rods to replace them, because there are no fuel rods in MSR.
"the uranium industry sees thorium as a major threat"
Then why don't they join the thorium industry so they can benefit from it? Like, if you're concerned about some tech outpacing yours, just invest in that tech so you have say in it and profit from it.
Because it's more effort and cost than lobbying.
Funny, because if thorium was everything it was claimed to be, the Uranium Industry would already be a part of that market. The reason they are not is the same reason why Admiral Hyman G. Rickover rejected the Thorium reactor originally installed on the USS Seawolf (SSN-575): it never delivered on the claims of its advocates.
Today's nuclear power industry business model is structured so that the reactors are loss leaders and the profit made from the fuel cycle. Since Thorium is plentiful, dirt cheap and requires little processing, and no reprocessing, where is the profit?
Ok, so while western scientists and “scientists” keep telling us what can’t be done, didn’t the Chinese just announce to go live with one or two of these soon?
I guess the western scientists forgot to tell Chinese colleges that its very difficult to build and maybe even impossible
Absolutely! China is making significant strides in thorium technology, and it's exciting to see their progress. They recently announced the operational launch of the TMSR-LF1, a 2 MW thermal molten salt reactor, which is a groundbreaking development in nuclear energy.
Construction for this reactor began in September 2018 and was completed ahead of schedule in August 2021. The National Nuclear Safety Administration issued an operating permit on June 7, 2023, allowing the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics to operate it for ten years. This reactor will use thorium as a primary fuel source, which is not only more abundant than uranium but also offers enhanced safety features and reduced waste.
China's commitment to thorium technology is impressive. They plan to build a larger reactor with a capacity of 373 MW by 2030, which could significantly contribute to their energy security. With thorium reserves estimated to meet energy needs for 20,000 years, this technology could reshape the future of energy production.
It's clear that while some may doubt the feasibility of these advancements, China is actively demonstrating that thorium reactors can be a viable and safe alternative to traditional nuclear power. Their focus on innovation in this area is something we should all be paying attention to!
China got all their research from the USA we did it in the 50s..
That 2MW (small research reactor) is mostly burning U235 with a little added Th232 to replace some of the U238, but it does not breed enough U233 to run off , still need the U235. It's more of a molten salt experiment to work out the issues in that sort of coolant loops and processing.
It's not a reduced size model of a commercial GW reactor design or Th232 fuel cycle.
It is worth to remind people that nuclear accidents, all of them, are due to human mistakes. Today we don't hire that kind of people anymore. We have 440 nuclear reactors operating today all over the world. People in power need to understand and adhere to standards and FORGET about doing anything corrupt in that sphere of civic engineering. No cutting corners, no mother in laws' brother or sister as an employee because you have the pull to make it happen.
Well that directly rules out every region ever touched by communism.
Here after China launched its first Th based reactor. Let's see what will happen.
That one was only a test too, they are currently building a full scale one with it expected to enter suvice by 2030
Feel like you left out a lot of anti nuclear lobbying is funded and pushed by fossil and wind/solar interests—the companies can “improve” their product by chipping at perceptions of the alternative
Solar-Wind Lobby is probably the most influential terrorist group in the terms of human civilization.
I feel somewhat misrepresented in this video. I am an avid anti nuclear activist, but I never lobbied against Thorium Reactors or Nuclear Fusion or any research projects in Nuclear Fission. I am just against a very badly maintained nuclear reactor (Tihange) built in my vicinity and I know a lot of people in my neighborhood who see things as I do.
More research in nuclear energy technologies will make things safer and why should an (let's call it) anti conventional nuclear powerplant activist be against research?
I am just against nuclear powerplant companies that cut corners, which unfortunately is a thing.
Why should I tolerate that someone is risking the whole landscape I grew up in for a profit margin they should have put in maintaining the powerplant to keep it as safe as possible?
So please don't blame it on me that there might not be Thorium Reactors in our future.
Summary of Tech advance in 21st century.
The west: Finding excuses of why it can't be done.
China: Went ahead and already finished it.
You realize the US had already pioneered Thorium reactor technology on the USS Seawolf(SSN-575)? The main reason why Admiral Rickover rejected it was that it never delivered on the claims. Further, it was an accident waiting to happen should sea water contact the internal components.
It's more like this
The west: Already did it but can't seem to do it again due to political reasons.
China: Builds on what the west already did.
@@davidford3115 that as another commentor said was a molten METAL Na reactor not a MOLTEN SALT reactor two very different things...and yes molten metal Na is dumb
@@bencoad8492 Seawolf was still a thorium reactor and failed to deliver on the power output claims of its advocates.
@@davidford3115 Perhaps the design was bad.
This video was doing all right UNTIL, he decided the pull that worn out old trope, the green(peacers), are largely, if not entirely to blame for any problems, real or imagined in the nuclear energy field. And no, I am not with GP, nor do I know anyone that is in that org. But I do know a strawman when I see them, and its appears here@ 7:32
Yep... I dropped our when he said its safee than wind and hydro....
@@davidfuechtjohann1632 It is safer than wind, solar, etc. Nuclear costs 80-90 lives per GWhe (GWh Electrical) produced. Wind costs 150 and Photovoltaic Solar costs 440. Renewables cost more lives for less reliability, less land efficiency, less stability, and less lifespan.
I worked in the nuclear power industry 1974 to 1989, including 4 years at the Rancho Seco plant near Sacramento, CA. As stated in this video, the chemical processing is going to be the biggest hurdle. The MSR experiment at Oak Ridge revealed many unanticipated problems with molten salt reactors, one of the most difficult being that the the hot, corrosive, and radioactive salt itself was degrading the structural integrity of the Hastelloy piping far more quickly than was anticipated. My gut feeling is that the CANDU reactor offers the most benefit with the fewest "downside" of all of the various reactor designs. On-line refueling with no need to shut down the reactor. The fuel is solid ceramic pellets - we have decades of experience in how to safely handle spent fuel in solid form. There have been studies showing that it may be possible to design a new generation CANDU with the ability to burn mixed oxide fuels, which would be a combination of U-238, U-235, and Pu-239 recovered from spent LWR fuel, and (maybe) Thorium. To use MOX fuel, you still have to re-process spent fuel with the PUREX or a similar peocess, but PUREX processing doesn't require the material you are handling to be an extremely hot and highly radioactive salt. Re-processing spent LWR fuel to create MOX for a CANDU would use spent fuel that had been decaying in storage casks for at least a couple of decades, whereby the extremely dangerous, short-half-life daughter products, like I-131 and Sr-90, would have decayed to (relatively) low levels. Reprocessing spent fuel with PUREX is still not as "safe" as mining and refining native Uranium, but my hunch is that it would be far less hazardous than running an LFTR and having to mitigate leaks of that hot molten salt as it moves through the process piping between the reactor and the processing equipment.
The problem doesn't start with the technology. It starts with public perceptions of nuclear power.
Something that immediately jumped out to me about this design is that the chemical processing plant is outside the primary containment vessel, and contains insanely hot, toxic, corrosive, radioactive, and likely chemically reactive molten salts.
What happens if part of that molten salt rube goldberg machine springs a leak? I'm assuming that flaming hot radioactive poison salt mix would react to atmospheric oxygen with... enthusiasm. My understanding is that thorium reactors are inherently safe from meltdowns, but it still seems like you could end up with a serious radioactive accident on your hands if anything in there fails. I know that's a concern with the primary steam loop in a traditional reactor too, but while the water is radioactive, it's also water. The shit flowing through these pipes would be massively more dangerous than some radioactive steam...
From what I understand the half life of the chain is only something like 60 days, so long term radioactivity isn't an issue.
I'm not a chemist, but I'm not sure oxygen will react strongly; oxygen fluorides would be highly endothermic to create. I also don't know if the byproducts of any such reaction would be gas; if they're solid it won't spread very far.
In short, I imagine a major mishapwould just result in a local poisonous spill that while bad is comparable to any other industrial accident.
not really, the salt would drop to the floor and just freeze, water on the other hand expands rapidly then explodes, showering radioactives all over the place....O2 and water just makes the salt very corrosive that why you have to get it away from the salt otherwise you would corrode your piping too fast..
As pointed out by LFTR advocate Kirk Sorenson, the current, conventional Cro-Magnon technology reactors work on a razor/razor blade profit model. The money is not made by building the plant. It is made by supplying the custom fuel elements/modules. Thus, I will extend that point to say that there is a lobby against reactors like LFTRs where the "fuel elements" can be supplied in drums and/or bags that anyone can make and are not proprietary. Thus, I predict that thorium reactors will originate in China where there isn't a lobby against that.
This video ignored the fact that a 2MW Thorium pilot power plant in China has been running since June 2023. It is already happening. Lessens learned from the pilot plant will show the world how to improve the system for a safe and abundant energy source.
Washington State Gov Insley has approved three modular reactors to be built by Amazon and Google by 2030 which they are going to pay for. They are needed for AI power planning.
@@vxworks66 He didn't ignore anything - it's you who hasn't watched until the end of the video. He said only three countries have it currently running: China, Russia, and India. And at the very end of this video, he said "I don't trust anything China is doing."
So the major hurdle for Thorium Salt Reactors, is overcoming the corrosive nature of high heat and salt solution?
Can they not coat exposed or parts with the likelihood of coming in contact with both hazards. With the same stuff they put on Space Shuttles, Space bound rockets, or even the International Space Station?
Is this "juice", that special and or expensive?
Nice thinking 99! Yes, exactly. GR3535 and GH3535 - two special metails developed in the last 10 years totally corrosion proof. Check them out... Who by? China of course.
They can coat it with multiple alloys like Hastelloy-N, a well-know Nickel Alloy. They can also use different salts other than Lithium fluoride and Beryllium fluoride, such as Sodium fluoride, Potassium fluoride, etc. which as safer due to no Tritium Breeding possibility (Lithium can go simple fission to form Tritium with neutrons) and no toxic materials (Beryllium is pretty toxic), while being far cheaper to manufacture, with the trade-off being very slightly less neutron efficiency.
20 years from now a factory in China will be shipping small Thorium reactor power plants every month. 10 years later, the thorium power generation market will drive out all other types of power plants and electricity & heat will be half current prices.
Meanwhile back in reality
@@SunShine-xc6dh no that will be reality, tho China might have us bent over, charging way more for it then if we had done it ourselves...
@bencoad8492 that why they still building new fossil fuel plants over there... China only can steal already tech, whatever they building is a knock off of the stuff that we already have built...
@@bencoad8492 lol nah well a have the unlimited free energy of fusion figured out by then that's 'only 20 years away' too
China approved building a thorium salt reactor last year.
Partially correct: China approved building a 2 MWthermal thorium molten salt reactor (MSR) 3-4 years prior to last year. It started up in August 2023. It is about 1/4th the size of the Oak Creek test MSR reactor of the 1960's.
The key purpose is to see if we now have a suitable "super-alloy" along with a side stream chemical separation process that works well enough to control the corrosion rate to an acceptable level that would allow construction of a future 40+ year operating life power plant reactor in the future. It will be many years before we know the answer to that question.
The Oak Creek MSR reactor had a huge issue with corrosion as the daughter products from splitting atoms and the chemical compounds they form are extremely corrosive. The key reason there was never a 2nd generation MSR test reactor was that no known alloy of the day could withstand the corrosion rate of the "in use" circulating molten salt mixture.
@@perryallan3524 You bring up an interesting point about China’s 2 MW thermal thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR) that started up in August 2023. It’s important to recognize that this project is part of a much larger and ambitious thorium program initiated by China several years ago.
China's interest in thorium reactors began in earnest around 2011 when the Chinese Academy of Sciences launched a comprehensive R&D initiative focused on developing TMSR technology. They sought to leverage historical data and insights from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the United States, which operated the first thorium reactor prototype in the 1960s. This collaboration allowed China to access valuable knowledge from past experiments, particularly regarding reactor design and operational challenges.
The TMSR-LF1 prototype, which is the 2 MW reactor you mentioned, was constructed in Wuwei City, Gansu Province. It was designed to test the viability of thorium as a fuel source and achieved criticality in October 2022. The successful operation of this prototype marks a significant milestone, as it is the first thorium reactor to achieve sustained fission since the MSRE at Oak Ridge was completed. (and the program hastily shut down by the fossil fuel and nuclear weapons industry)
Looking ahead, China plans to build larger commercial reactors capable of generating up to 60 MW thermal by 2029, with expectations for commercial deployment by 2030. These reactors will not only provide electricity but also aim to produce hydrogen through high-temperature processes.
The advantages of thorium MSRs are substantial. They offer enhanced safety features compared to traditional reactors, significantly less long-lived nuclear waste, and utilize a fuel source that is abundant and incapable of proliferatio.
With China's substantial thorium reserves, estimated to meet energy needs for over 20,000 years, this program positions China as a potential leader in advanced nuclear technologies.
In summary, while the TMSR-LF1 is smaller than earlier prototypes like Oak Ridge's MSRE, it represents an important step forward in realizing the potential of thorium as a sustainable energy source.
China's commitment to this technology could have far-reaching implications for global energy production and nuclear safety.
@@perryallan3524 china is currecntly building a full scale one with it expected to be operational by 2030
@@seductive_fishstick8961 No they are not. China built a 2 mw thermal MSR test reactor, when online late summer 2023. They have plans for about a 20 MWthermal test reactor next, assuming things go well.
Yes there are people who talk about full sized power plants - but the people actually running the program are not an know that it will be at least a decade before they can even build a small likely 30-50 MWe scale up power plant.
If you want to look at companies who are talking about full sized MSR power plants you need to look at the Canadian Nuclear Regulator website and the USA NRC website to see companies who have been working through a license development pre-approval process to be able to submit a license application for a MSR.
There is actually a company in Canada who has completed the pre-license application review process who could submit a license application for a MSR. But, they are encasing the fuel containing molten salts in fuel rods which can be changed out every 4-6 years while a non-fuel containing molten salt solution is just the heat carrier.
They address the corrosion issue by changing out the fuel rods periodically and the main piping and reactor itself material life is not challenged.
@@seductive_fishstick8961 No they are not. China built a 2 mw thermal MSR test reactor, when online late summer 2023. They have plans for about a 20 MWthermal test reactor next, assuming things go well.
Yes there are people who talk about full sized power plants - but the people actually running the program are not an know that it will be at least a decade before they can even build a small likely 30-50 MWe scale up power plant.
If you want to look at companies who are talking about full sized MSR power plants you need to look at the Canadian Nuclear Regulator website and the USA NRC website to see companies who have been working through a license development pre-approval process to be able to submit a license application for a MSR.
There is actually a company in Canada who has completed the pre-license application review process who could submit a license application for a MSR. But, they are encasing the fuel containing molten salts in fuel rods which can be changed out every 4-6 years while a non-fuel containing molten salt solution is just the heat carrier.
They address the corrosion issue by changing out the fuel rods periodically and the main piping and reactor itself material life is not challenged.
Thanks for the Thorium review, good to see your video. Material Science has come a long way, though I understand maintance on a corrosive system like that will be problematic. I hope it comes about some day, would be nice to have safer energy being produced, at least until we figure out how to tap Zero Point energy like the other cool fantasy aliens do....
You don't need StarGate technology.
https://youtu.be/10Dt4nr5g_c?si=4X7ySk6QRXMpWxDl
Powered by Plasmoids
(looks around, see if anyone is watching) (makes some Zero Point energy)
This video ignored the fact that a 2MW Thorium pilot power plant has been running since June 2023. It is already happening. Lessens learned from the pilot plant will show the world how to improve the system for a safe and abundant energy source.
Safer than wind? Curious! I'm not doubting that that might be the case, I'd just love to hear more/read the evidence on that!
A little bird told me... :)
Don't get your hopes up, that's just BS...
it is, deaths are low and the amount of energy produce is frigging high(per mass), compared to wind which has a very low energy output(per mass), especially when compared to coal which is about medium output but high deaths(over small amount per day all the year with very few spikes)
@dasgibmekker768according to Ritchie (2020), the human mortality rate (as a result of accidents and pollution) per terawatt-hour is .04 for wind, and .03 for nuclear. The only safer source is solar, at .02.
People die while setting up the wind turbines, it's pretty high from the top, same thing with solar, working on roofs is dangerous
India is building 6 Thorium reactors RIGHT NOW! India has the worlds largest Thorium deposits on their Western beaches.
Shutting down a conventional rod reactor every 18 months isn't as bad as having to replace flow structures in a molten salt reactor sometimes as often as every 200 days. The cool thing about water being the moving part in conventional reactors is that unless things go way way off the rails the water is stupid safe and doesn't tear up the pipes. Molten salt reactors just add an absurd step of ALSO moving the fuel around. If you think liquid salt fuel that is liquified by the radioactive fissile action internally is somehow going to "cool off" when it isn't moving through a cooling system or especially if the cooling system fails and you end up with elephant feet inside the reactor system I'll be more than happy to take seed money for my new outlet expander that doubles the amount of power available from 15A to 30A on a conventional household outlet!
The "corrosive" Trop has been used for decades. A thorium reactor ran for years back in the 1960s. The fuel salt is ionized which reduces its corrosive process against metal alloy. The reason that thorium fluoride molten salt process is not used because the current uranium fuel processing is run by GE or Westinghouse which have captured the nuclear regulatory agencies around the world. These agencies make it cost prohibitive to generate power from the thorium fluoride molten salt process.
Thorium cycle has a nasty hard gamma ray spectrum that will need some engineering to protect against. Not a game-ender, but important.
put it underground or whatever, not an issue.
Continuing to gloss over this issue and not even mentioning it in most sunshine pumping essays such as "whatever, not an issue", is a big issue.
@@WilhelmGuggisberg Gamma rays can be reflected. A well-designed processing plant would make sure that any reflections go upward into the sky and get dispersed. Put it underground and you guarantee that any reflections will go into the plant. Putting one at the bottom of a disused quarry, now that's a possibility.
Most problems with nuclear have been about human error or neglect, corporate capture etc. France has been using nuclear for some time without problems.
Except the 50% that had to shutdown last summer due to climate change high river water temps
France is the worst example to use here when the vast majority of their fleet was down last year due to neglecting maintenance...
@@jghifiversveiws8729 They also had to shut many down due to elevated river water temperatures caused by climate change
@@clarkkent9080 And that's why you move away from water cooled designs duh, the whole video is about non water cooled designs
@@Perrirodan1 Thorium has been tried 4 times in the U.S and in many other countries. India with Thorium reserves and no Uranium reserves is the only place where it makes sense. How many Thorium reactors do you see today when they were tried and rejected in the 1970. All this current pro Thorium is not new and has been going on for decades.
Yes they do work and have operated but PWRs and BWR overall have more advantages than disadvantages.
Good to see you back Sir😄.
Try to keep animations simple & easy to render in order to make your production process faster and focus more on the core topic of the video sir.
We would love to see more from you🙂.
Me too. I'm so happy. I know these are expensive for him to produce, but I hope he keeps going
This video ignored the fact that a 2MW Thorium pilot power plant has been running since June 2023. It is already happening. Lessens learned from the pilot plant will show the world how to improve the system for a safe and abundant energy source.
This guy seriously beliefes:
1) Environmental groups have influence on governments.
2) A private Industrie would suppress a superior technology in their own field.
The reason why they don't do it, is that this technology is, as has correctly been stated, expensive to R&D. Combine that with an uncertain outcome of said research, and you know why private industry doesn't touch that (in general). There is no working prototype of a LIFTR. That's the main issue.
If there were, the atom-boys wouldn't talk about anything else.
Sure... 🤣🤣🤣
Sorry, but this is cut short in so many ways. First of all: thorium reactors have been built test wise and they were found to be problematic because of the insane high corrosion due to the salt. This means, that these reactors need repairs after around 2 years. That means draining the reactor, cleaning it, replacing the parts and the starting it up again. This alone is a big reason why it is economical not feasible. The other part is, that any nuclear reactor comes with very high building times, as when compared to solar or wind, you may need a couple of years. The safer and faster return of investment here is clear. All that together makes it hard to find anyone investing in it, if its the government (because of ideological reasons) or private investors, for which the sums are waay to high for that kind of uncertainty. Current already established research is going to make wind and solar probably even cheaper, and energy storing techniques are improved every day, so we can buffer them. I would like to see a video from you about that, actually. Otherwise cool animations!
Indeed. All of these advocates of Thorium reactors seem to ignore that the US Navy has already tested the designs in the USS Seawolf (SSN-575). There is a reason why Admiral Hyman G. Rickover rejected it.
Solar and wind will never work in regions closer to the poles. Heck, go close enough to either pole and the sun will be gone half a year. Wind is not reliable, usually when the temperatures drop, the wind dies down, precisely the time when you need the most energy. The only thing that delivers at times like that is oil and nuclear, to lesser degree hydropower.
The same country that made solar cheap (China) is the one heavily investing in Thorium...
So SMR got funding and approval and then in the next sentence you say that it can never happen for Thorium because of the anti-nuclear lobby? That makes 0 sense.
But didn't China just open its first Thorium Power plant last year and isnt it planning a 24,000 TEU cargo ship fleet powered by Thorium SMR's?
Yes and Yes. The Chinese Thorium (test) reactor was licensed on June 7, 2023 and is located in the Gobi desert region. It is operational.
There is also talk that China might use a Thorium reactor in a future aircraft carrier.
No doubt they will! I think the public cargo/military evacuation ships are probably first before the out and out military applications like aircraft carriers are coming, but they are a coming!@@ltribley
The host of this channel is biased against China. He said "I'm skeptical of everything China does". I don't know, this is supposed to be a science channel, not politics or Chinese hating channel. He decided to ignore the achievements because they are from China. Mind boggling!!!!
They're a ways off from commercial power generation.
"SINAP aims for a 2 MWt pilot plant (TMSR-LF1) initially, then a 10 MWt experimental reactor (TMSR-LF2) by 2025 [The Gobi reactor] , and a 100 MWt demonstration plant (TMSR-LF3) with full electrometallurgical reprocessing by about 2035, followed by 1 a GW demonstration plant."
I don't think the uranium mining industry can be particualrly in the way of "building up thorium infrastructure". Thorium is an abundant byproduct of rare earth mining and right now for the most part considered as a nuisance. One of the big advantage of the plan to use thorium is then we talk about material already mined and just sitting in piles as unwanted byproduct.
It's probably a byproduct of uranium mining too; if anything, they'd probably be more in favor of thorium power industry than against it.
You raise an excellent point about Thorium being an abundant byproduct of rare earth mining! It's true that Thorium is often considered a nuisance in the rare earth element (REE) industry, and this presents a unique opportunity for its utilization in nuclear energy.
Thorium is indeed found in significant quantities alongside rare earth elements. For instance, the Bayan Obo mine in China, which is the largest REE mine globally, has produced over *70,000 tons of radioactive Thorium* as a byproduct. This thorium is often left in tailings, creating an opportunity to utilize material that is already mined and sitting unused.
Utilizing thorium from existing rare earth mining operations can significantly reduce the costs associated with mining and processing. Since thorium is often extracted as a byproduct, the primary costs are already incurred during the extraction of REEs. This means that the additional costs for processing Thorium are relatively low, making it an economically viable option for nuclear fuel.
Moreover, using Thorium can help mitigate some of the environmental issues associated with rare earth mining. Currently, for every ton of rare earth produced, approximately 2,000 tons of waste are generated. By repurposing Thorium from these processes, we can potentially reduce waste and improve sustainability in the mining sector.
Global Thorium Reserves
Globally, thorium resources are estimated to be around *6* million metric tons, with significant reserves located in India, Brazil, Russia and Australia. India alone possesses about 25% of the world's known thorium reserves, estimated at around 340,000 tons. This abundance positions Thorium as a promising alternative to uranium for future nuclear energy production.
Leveraging Thorium as a byproduct from already produced rare earth mining not only provides access to an abundant resource but also aligns with economic and environmental goals. Utilizing this existing material plays a crucial role in building a sustainable energy future. Your insight into this aspect highlights an important pathway for integrating Thorium into our energy infrastructure!
Molten Salt Reactors have already been built and are providing energy in a number of countries including Indonexia, which bought a ship borne MSR from an American company called ThorCon, and China put at least one online last year. India is setting up several and we have a couple pilot projects underway in the U.S. Terrapower is setting up a Natrium (fluoride sal) reactor in Wyoming on the site of a former coal plant and Flibe Energy is constructing one at the Pacific Northwest Nuclear Laab in Hanford, WA. Because of footdragging by the NRC, we are ten years behind China!
Correction, the Natrium reactor is not an MSR. It is a fast spectrum, metallic fueled, liquid sodium cooled pool type reactor along the lines of the EBR-II. The thermal storage scheme uses molten salts to provide wide load following ability, but they not involved in the operation of the reactor itself.
@@richardbaird1452 Fast Reactors have known problems. Modular Reactors are better. Washington State has just slated three for construction by 2030. They can be MSR's if desired. Kirk Sorensen is involved in LFTR projects, and ThorCon has built a ship bourne MSR. So it isn't true that Terrapower is the "first" or only. India has several running and China just started one up earlier this year. Here is a past from Terrapower's site. (Unlike today's Light Water Reactors, the Natrium reactor is a 345-megawatt sodium fast reactor coupled with TerraPower's breakthrough innovation — a molten salt energy storage system, providing built-in gigawatt-scale energy storage. This makes the plant a perfect support for high-renewable penetration grids where variable power output is a concern.)
@@richardbaird1452 Look at this post;
@louismechler4338
8 months ago
In france, the most common molten salt design use NaCl (yeah table salt) to dissolve U238 and plutonium 239.
The corrosion issue is resolved through ceramics coating.
working with a fast spectrum vastly reduces the transUranic generation, while allowing to work with used Mox fuel. It also allows to work as a burner for long life waste.
When it comes to public perception of nuclear power, what are the steps that have been taken for nuclear power to be seen in positive light?
Facts, facts and more facts... Just look at Visual Capitalst and their section on nuclear power... That alone should snap into focus the realities of the industry... It's as clean as solar, wind or geothermal but almost always available... I am pro renewables but I am also pro nuclear. Whatever decarbonizes the world as fast as possible, I am all for!
Knowing that molten salt needs to be run under very high temperatures, what about energy loss from the dissipation of heat?
"what about energy loss from the dissipation of heat?"
The heat goes into making electricity.
The laws of thermodynamics mean that if the difference between input and output temperatures is large, then the efficiency of power generation is greater. So very high temperatures are a benefit. You just have to make sure that there's a lot of insulation on the pipes between the reactor and the turbines generating electricity so you don't waste all that heat.
Also the high temperature means you can use the Sulphur-Iodine cycle to make hydrogen more efficiently than converting heat into electricity and then using the electricity to electrolyse water.
🤣
@ultradimensions - 2024-01-25
Most people don't understand nuclear power plants are safer than coal or oil.
@kevinclark2813 - 2024-01-25
Try living next to one.
@NotSomethingIsNothing - 2024-01-25
It'd still be safer than living beside a coal power plant@@kevinclark2813
@theflyingwelshman5338 - 2024-01-25
@@kevinclark2813 I’d do that in a heartbeat. It beats living next to a coal power plant and being exposed to mercury vapor.
@crestofhonor2349 - 2024-01-25
@@kevinclark2813plenty of people already do. France itself is mostly nuclear and the US and Germany have quite a few as well. There is no issue living nearby
@CraftyF0X - 2024-01-25
@@kevinclark2813 Actually I would very much like to, as nuclear power plants tend to provide very stable reliable well paid jobs which is kinda something nowdays.