THORIUM BUILDER WORKSHOP SERIES
Molten Salt Reactors are Generation IV nuclear fission reactors that use molten salt as either the primary reactor coolant or as the fuel itself they trace their origin to a series of experiments directed by Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor is a type of Molten Salt Reactor. NE-19-18706, Metal Organic Frameworks for Noble Gas Management in the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. One with the Pacific National lab and one with Oak Ridge. In 2019, Flibe Energy gotten two GAIN vouchers ($50K-500K with 20% cost sharing). In 2018, Flibe Energy was awarded $2.6M by the DOE to Develop NF3 Fluorination. Kirk founded Flibe Energy to develop liquid flouride thorium nuclear reactors. I, Brian Wang, emailed and spoke with Kirk Sorensen over many years. Nextbigfuture has covered Thorium, liquid flouride thorium reactors and molten salt nuclear reactors and other advanced nuclear reactors since 2005. Nextbigfuture bets India slips to about 2024 start and a 2030 completion. Construction of the first one is due to start 2017 for operation about 2022 2020 for operation about 2025. It is mainly a thorium-fuelled reactor but is versatile regarding fuel. The design of the 300 MWe AHWR (920 MWt, 284 MWe net) was completed early in 2014 at BARC. India has the design of an Advanced Heavy Water Reactor that would use thorium. The nuclear power in France which powers 70% of french electricity was built in the 1980s and provides energy that is about three times cheaper than the build up of solar and wind that has been going on in Germany since 2000. Those reactors are being built in 4 to 6 years and at three times lower cost than recent US and European reactors. 80% of the new reactors being built are being built in or by China, South Korea and Russia. Conventional nuclear can be built at very low cost. Conventional nuclear fission reactors are the safest energy in terms of deaths per terawatt hour. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors can be ultra-safe, no nuclear waste, hyper-efficient and very low cost. A small molten salt reactor was built and operated by the US in the 1960s. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors are technically more developed than nuclear fusion. In the rest of this article, I will review the status of the US, China and Indian Thorium reactor projects. The Thorcon molten salt reactor seems like a design that could scale to 100 GW per year of construction. There would be a lot of push for the molten salt reactors that use Uranium. If there was that level of subsidy, then the other advanced nuclear projects would complete for it. Yang has proposed nuclear subsidy-$50 billion over five years. It is also possible to have more conventional reactors or pebble bed reactors adapted to use some thorium. China also has an extensive molten salt and thorium reactor program. If Flibe Energy was fully funded then they could build their planned 20-50 MW modular nuclear reactor by 2027. There is a US startup working on a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. Yang has also talked about making a prototype thorium reactor by 2027. Andrew Yang mentioned Thorium Nuclear Reactors as one of the advanced nuclear fission reactor concepts.
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