Make Econ Scientific

Thorium Reactors? Or, Molten Salt?

An excellent discussion of the promise of molten salt reactors (MSRs) by a nuclear engineer who’s pioneering them (Click gear to speed up)

I’ve been curious about thorium for years. Lots of hopeful rumors and iffy speculations about why it hasn’t happened. Thorium is more plentiful than uranium and takes much less processing. India is rich in thorium and is building a thorium reactor. The Chinese are on an even more aggressive thorium path with hopes to commercialize it by 2030.

China had 46 operating nuclear power plants in 2019 with 11 under construction. So its program should be taken seriously. Less so, Andrew Yang’s proposal to spend $50 billion researching thorium molten salt reactors by 2025.

One advantage of molten salt (thorium fluoride, instead of table salt, which is sodium chloride) reactors (MSRs) is that, unlike 2nd-generation, light-water reactors, they operate at normal atmospheric pressure rather than at super-high pressures. Hence they are passively safe. (How an MSR works.)

But uranium-based MSRs are actually on a faster track. Several MSR designs are nearing deployment readiness in various countries, including the US and Canada as well as thorium-based MSRs in China. But these are still demonstration plants.

Besides being operationally safer, such plants do not provide fuel for terrorist bomb-making, don’t have to be shut down every year or two for refueling, are much better at ramping up and down to follow changing electricity needs, and produce higher temperatures that are much better for producing hydrogen — a potential clean-energy fuel.

Also, they produce much less radioactive waste and it is less hazardous. Some of these designs can actually burn existing radioactive waste as well as the vast stockpiles of depleted uranium (U-238) leftover from bomb production. 

Anyone serious about stopping climate change should be a strong advocate of rapid research into these new technologies. But let’s not put all our eggs in a thorium basket, even though it may prove best in the long run.


Thorium vs Molten Salt Reactors

2 Responses

  1. I retired from a catbird-seat middle management position at SCE during the de-regulation debacle of the mid ’90s. I observed power generation by every available resource to the company, power purchasing, system loads, operating paradigms and generation resource maintenance from my multi-year occupation of that seat.

    I wouldn’t invest a red cent into nuclear generation after actually working in one of them, acquiring some knowledge of the monetary and social costs plus the real risks associated with their operation, maintenance, refueling and ultimately their retirement and demolition.
    I won’t belabor my assertion by throwing out a bunch random capital letters like NRC, FERC, OSHA, CALOSHA, SCAQMD, EDF and CPUC. These still just roll around in my head after all these years and I imagine I ran across other rein holders back then, but memory does fade.
    I don’t advocate for coal or oil at all — but natural gas and hydro highly tuned and managed for the long haul are, in my opinion, the only way to fly. Especially if combined with natural actual and social cost offsets like trash fueled plasma steam generators, desalination, fish farming, shrimp farming, salt production, corn production, turkey farming, environmental reengineering and hydro-generation peak shaving to name a few.
    But no nukes —never again. And if not natural gas then coal gas once the cost makes better sense with offsets.

    1. Thanks for the comment. I was critiquing the de-regulation during the mid 1990’s and I must say SCE was not exactly blameless, although they were much better than PG&E.
      So to your proof by random capital letters I would add SCE. Of course it is SCE and PG&E that have the most influence over the regulators you dislike.

      But the point is that you probably didn’t even read the post to find out how Thorium reactors are different.
      Natural gas is good for the transition, but it will not be here for the long haul. Turkey farming will be. Good luck with that.