Thorium reactors?

Australia don't need nuclear power since we have available more green renewable energy than we could eat.
Unresolved is storage of nuclear waste, that is not only spent fuel but whole structure that is high radioactive.
But there are strong overseas pressure to make Australia world leader in nuclear waste dump.
Since we don't have domestic nuclear waste problem, creating nuclear waste dump on massive scale seems to be irrational.
So we need to build at least one reactor to prove to publice necessity of building nuclear waste storage.
BTW. Cost of energy from nuclear plant is 10x higher then wind or solar, but if you take into account total cost including
removal of reactor after lifetime - that could be 100x more.


Beside that I doubt that government budget could allow another massive waste of money. After covid and war with china in year or two we will be scrapping bottom of barrel . In two years price on iron ore will drop to usual $50/ tone from $250 and 100 bln income evaporate from budget.

I'm still trying to get my head around the Thermomix thread,then l read this.

Select to expand quote

Macroscien said..
Australia don't need nuclear power since we have available more green renewable energy than we could eat.>>>

Macro, did you read the article???
Thorium is much less radioactive than uranium, the half life is waaaaaaaaaaaay shorter, it doesn't have run away problems, and can eat up old radio active waste, you can't make nuclear weapons from it. It also doesn't use water cooling, so can be run in the desert.
The reason thorium hasn't been used, is uranium was developed by the military just because you could make bombs with it.

There's is still a bit of a lag in storage technology, a thorium reactor, would be much more environmentally friendly than the dirty coal fired generators the govt is subsidising.

That original article is 10 years old.
The anti case is presented in this 10 year old article from The Guardian

www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium

It says that thorium reactors are even costlier than uranium.

China is building one out in the Gobi desert due in 2025, so they'll have some idea of the real running cost by 2030

Edit:- and lo and behold, when I go looking for info about the Chinese program, Mr Google tells me to ask Auntie ABC, who writes this article yesterday

www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-28/china-thorium-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-energy/100351932

Select to expand quote

decrepit said..

Macroscien said..
Australia don't need nuclear power since we have available more green renewable energy than we could eat.>>>

Macro, did you read the article???
Thorium is much less radioactive than uranium, the half life is waaaaaaaaaaaay shorter, it doesn't have run away problems, and can eat up old radio active waste, you can't make nuclear weapons from it. It also doesn't use water cooling, so can be run in the desert.
The reason thorium hasn't been used, is uranium was developed by the military just because you could make bombs with it.

There's is still a bit of a lag in storage technology, a thorium reactor, would be much more environmentally friendly than the dirty coal fired generators the govt is subsidising.

I remember an article where the CSIRO developed a proposal to deal with both waste handling an safe transportation, and long term waste storage. The transportation proposal was further developed and is now in use globally, the storage was I believe the gem of the propposals, planning to bury it at a depth of 1000-2000 metres in a specific type of rock found in 7 places in the world, one location bieng in remote Australia, which happens to be the most politically stable location.
The true beauty of the proposal is the fact that Australia has vast supplies of yellowcake, coupled with the ability to accept and store the treated waste from the yellowcake customers would place us in the position of bieng very selective as to who we sold to and enable us to make good money on both ends of the transaction, something no other supplier could do.
Sadly this portion of the proposal was too much for the Kens and Karens of the country and languishes in the archieves to this day.

Until the people who gave us their waste to store stopped paying the bills.

It's not like a self storage facility. We can't just take possession of the waste and auction it off

Select to expand quote

Mr Milk said..
Until the people who gave us their waste to store stopped paying the bills.

It's not like a self storage facility. We can't just take possession of the waste and auction it off

The proposal was more of a permanent entombing at a safe depth in a rock strata that shielded the radiation, not like the storage king model.
The ability to sell the initial comodity for X dollars and then accept the waste for, say X x 10 dollars would provide a good steady national income stream that the arab oil kings could only dream of.

Select to expand quote

UncleBob said..

Mr Milk said..
Until the people who gave us their waste to store stopped paying the bills.

It's not like a self storage facility. We can't just take possession of the waste and auction it off

The proposal was more of a permanent entombing at a safe depth in a rock strata that shielded the radiation, not like the storage king model.
The ability to sell the initial comodity for X dollars and then accept the waste for, say X x 10 dollars would provide a good steady national income stream that the arab oil kings could only dream of.

That notion is still too simple. It's not just irradiated fuel rods that form the waste problem. It's everything in the reactor and the reactor itself. I can't remember the figure off the top of my head for the dismantling of the original reactors in England, but it is many times the construction cost of a new one.
Australia supplies about 10 or 12% of the world's nuclear fuel and that earns the government the princely sum of about $30 million annually.

So I looked for the figures, and I found

UK's nuclear sites costing taxpayers 'astronomical sums', say MPs | Nuclear waste | The Guardian

"The NDA's most recent estimate is that it will cost current and future generations of UK taxpayers £132bn to decommission the civil nuclear sites, with the work not being completed for another 120 years."

^^^^^
So It's the same as coal. We sell the stuff and accept the CO2 back?

That decommissioning cost looks pretty large, but I wondered how much it would cost if it was broken down into cents per kilowatt hour. So I've just done a rough very rough calculation.
Assuming that the reactors that are being dismantled ran for 40 years and collectively averaged 5 GW output for all that time. That would be 200 GW years of electricity. To dismantle them at a cost of 132 gigapounds implies that you have to add about two thirds of the pound per watt year of electricity.
Since there are 8760 hours in a year, the cost comes down to 7.6p per kilowatt hour.
That's 15c/kWh to be added to your power bill if you want nuclear

Select to expand quote

Mr Milk said..

That notion is still too simple. It's not just irradiated fuel rods that form the waste problem. It's everything in the reactor and the reactor itself. I can't remember the figure off the top of my head for the dismantling of the original reactors in England, but it is many times the construction cost of a new one.
Australia supplies about 10 or 12% of the world's nuclear fuel and that earns the government the princely sum of about $30 million annually.

So I looked for the figures, and I found

UK's nuclear sites costing taxpayers 'astronomical sums', say MPs | Nuclear waste | The Guardian

"The NDA's most recent estimate is that it will cost current and future generations of UK taxpayers £132bn to decommission the civil nuclear sites, with the work not being completed for another 120 years."

That figure could be still optimistic,
based on assumption that we could still find people willing to work
at decommissioning nuclear reactors.
Taking such job, means death sentence most likely.
Since there is not "safe way", even we could not send robots because all electronics is instantly damage by radiation.

Only safe way is leave nuclear plants , decommissioned and powered down but left next hundred years till we have robots to do the job.
Then obviously we finish with irradiated radioactive robots that need another disposal by another

robots.www.popularmechanics.com/science/a37416251/elon-musk-tesla-robot/

Select to expand quote

Mr Milk said..
That notion is still too simple. It's not just irradiated fuel rods that form the waste problem. It's everything in the reactor and the reactor itself. I can't remember the figure off the top of my head for the dismantling of the original reactors in England, but it is many times the construction cost of a new one.
Australia supplies about 10 or 12% of the world's nuclear fuel and that earns the government the princely sum of about $30 million annually.

So I looked for the figures, and I found

UK's nuclear sites costing taxpayers 'astronomical sums', say MPs | Nuclear waste | The Guardian

"The NDA's most recent estimate is that it will cost current and future generations of UK taxpayers £132bn to decommission the civil nuclear sites, with the work not being completed for another 120 years."

The cost of dismantling is usually added to the power production costs, and is squirreled away by the power company for when the time to decommission comes. I'm calling bull**** on The Guardian's "figures" for what it'll cost the tax payers, without a proper source.

Look at it in a positive light -- that's nearly 3 full working lifetimes worth of employment for many people

Select to expand quote

Kamikuza said..

Mr Milk said..
That notion is still too simple. It's not just irradiated fuel rods that form the waste problem. It's everything in the reactor and the reactor itself. I can't remember the figure off the top of my head for the dismantling of the original reactors in England, but it is many times the construction cost of a new one.
Australia supplies about 10 or 12% of the world's nuclear fuel and that earns the government the princely sum of about $30 million annually.

So I looked for the figures, and I found

UK's nuclear sites costing taxpayers 'astronomical sums', say MPs | Nuclear waste | The Guardian

"The NDA's most recent estimate is that it will cost current and future generations of UK taxpayers £132bn to decommission the civil nuclear sites, with the work not being completed for another 120 years."

The cost of dismantling is usually added to the power production costs, and is squirreled away by the power company for when the time to decommission comes. I'm calling bull**** on The Guardian's "figures" for what it'll cost the tax payers, without a proper source.

Look at it in a positive light -- that's nearly 3 full working lifetimes worth of employment for many people

I like that last note of yours.
Since life time of nuclear power plant could be 30 years, 10 years will be adequate life span of single employee .
But that could solve the retirements costs .
If reactor could also incinerate that could be another saving on cremations.
Actually the molten salt will be ideal to dissolve completely without any trace or waste.


ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-****ushima

Select to expand quote

Can we just sell small portions of spent uranium
to farmers so they can irradiate strawberries, it'd be nice if they last more than a day.

Select to expand quote

Harrow said..

Macroscien said..
But we don't have even transmission lines.

That's right. All those towers and conductors you see crossing the Australian country side are just art installations. For the last 30 years I've been telling big fibs....I'm no power system engineer....I'm an artist!!!

That video is 800 kV. We have plenty of 500 kV lines in Australia, hundreds of kilometres of it. Why don't we have 800 kV? The reason certainly has zero to do with technical capability - the design process is the same, you just end up with different dimensions if you design for the different voltage, there's nothing difficult about it. It simply doesn't make economic sense to build an 800 kV line in our power system at present. We could do it tomorrow, but do you want your electricity bill to be higher for no practical reason?

Indeed.We are not able to power NSW from WA on the day the is windy, or sun is not shining in the other part of Australia.
This is sort of installation I am talking about.
Not something to power Christmas tree.
Magistrale that could shift whole load from one state to another.Not even for people in city but industry steel , aluminium mills , processing plants.With access energy produced in one place and lack in another.
Sending electricity from Perth to Sydney- doesn't require motorways full of tracks, railways, shipping containers.If we are unable this electricity we need to convert it into hydrogen , send to Japan and they will convert it back to electricity .Effi9ciency of such system is very low, the price we have for kwh possibly a 1c per kwh.
Beside price consumer pay for domestic electricity already is disassociated with costs -represent rather greed of all electric distribution companies that could add 20c on top of every kwh you get paid at rate 4c and send to your neighbor on same street.


My point is that we should invest now quickly in massive projects to transfer electric power - means more work for you and money.Huge solar farm projects are delayed indefinitely because have nothing to connect to. Aluminium smelters turned off because lack of juice to power it.

BTW. What is the most annoying. You artwork hanging on wooden poles all around main city streets, most exclusive suburbs like there was 19 century not twenty first. Instead of putting it all into undergrounds tunel , wires and cables hang everywhere for everybody to see.