LibDem's for LFTR

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liquid fluoride thorium reactor or 'lifter' is a completely different way of doing nuclear fission, much cheaper and safer than existing nuclear reactors. We need lots of them

Website: http://energyfromthorium.com
Members: 5
Latest Activity: Aug 14, 2011

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All new nuclear power should be LFTR. Don't bother with new 'old school' systems 3 Replies

The more I learn about this, the more amazing it is hardly anyone knows about it. 'Lifters' have the potential not just to solve the energy crisis but also provide a solution to our long term…Continue

Tags: thorium, nuclear, energy

Started by Chris Huang-Leaver. Last reply by Chris Huang-Leaver Aug 14, 2011.

What's it all about... 4 Replies

Can you explain your passion, Chris? From what I've read in the past there hasn't been much investment in thorium reactors - mainly because they're not useful for nuclear weapons programmes!? - but…Continue

Started by Adam C. Last reply by Chris Huang-Leaver May 28, 2011.

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Comment by Luke Collie on June 1, 2011 at 22:00: Another safety advantage worth mentioning is that fluoride salts - liquid or not - are very chemically stable, and have no tendency to react with anything else in the reactor. In an accident water can react with the overheated fuel rods, releasing the radioactive contents and forming explosive hydrogen. No water, no Fukushima-like explosions

Comment by Chris Huang-Leaver on May 31, 2011 at 10:02: Fusion reactors may well be the future, but they are too far into the future to really be any use for the current energy crisis. I think we need to revise our participation in ITER, the funding needs to be pooled like the LHC funding was, etc. but that is long term.

We have a triple crisis looming, shortage of energy, climate change and storage of nuclear waste. LFTR has already been proven to work, albeit at the experimental stage, so you could say that LFTR is already at the stage fusion will be when ITER is complete.

Kirk Sorensen does a good sales pitch at TED:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw

One of my other posts has a link to much longer lecture he gave at a university which goes into more detail.

The benefits over conventional (solid fuel) reactors from a planning point of view are as follows;

They run at just over 1 atmosphere pressure. This means you don't require a 9 inch thick pressure vessel which can only be made in one factory on the planet; in Japan. All your welds and piping need to be 'very toxic chemical plant' standard, not the near impossible standard required by high pressure water reactors.

Firing a machine gun at the side of the reactor would just mean the fuel would leak out, drain into the drain tank and freeze. It's not at pressure, so there's no explosive decompression, as with a light water reactor, which means the housing needs to be big enough to hold the reactor + enough space to access for maintenance. Making placing it underground a realistic proposition.

It's also worth mentioning that *all* nuclear accidents to date involve the cooling system / water at pressure going wrong in some way, this is a big deal.

And of course, they can't 'melt down' because they always 'melt down', on purpose. Hence the 'Liquid' part of the name!

Follow @energyfromth and like www.facebook.com/energyfromthorium its exciting stuff.