A Thorium Reactor in the Desert Has Rewritten the Rules of Nuclear Power

[felixhammerl]

Did anyone figure out how to handle two fundamental problems of MSRs yet?

1) Molten salt is corrosive as hell and will chew through your pipes.

2) It can't be serviced. If it ever shuts down and solidifies, it cannot restart.

[f_devd]

Copenhagen Atomics claims to have solved 1 [0], I believe point 2 is mentioned but not in detail.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHH8Qf3aO4

[richardatlarge]

the soviets had a mini sub program with reactors like that. the fleet barely made it into service before it was cancelled. I would not even want to tune up a car if it had to be running at the same time

[vanderZwan]

As a physics drop-out any progress in developing thorium reactors is exctiting news to me. However, I don't see how this "rewrites" anything. Doesn't it just confirm what we've basically known for a long time but didn't bother to research because "nuclear = bad" in the public perception?

[tim333]

>Scientists have built the first-ever thorium reactor

is not really true. The Shippingport Atomic Power Station produced power:

>The thorium core was rated at 60 MW(e), produced power from 1977 through 1982 (producing over 2.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity) and converted enough thorium-232 into uranium-233 to achieve a 1.014 breeding ratio. (wikipedia)

Thorium has been around for ages but never seemed profitable which is why the Chinese made a 2MW research reactor rather than a 1GW production one. For comparison they have 57GW of uranium plants working and another 100GW or so planned.

[mikhailfranco]

China (esp. Tibet, but also Xinjiang) and Mongolia have the largest reserves of uranium and thorium. Look at the map of geoneutrinos and subtract regions of active nuclear reactors (e.g. France):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoneutrino

[Fizzadar]

Anyone play Mindustry? Confused for a second there.