Exploring Thorium and Molten Salt Reactors

Uranium. A material that strikes unease into our collective subconscious for the catastrophic potential that it can unlock. From long-lived radioactive waste to reactor meltdowns like Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, to the enrichment to produce the most devastating weapon humanity has ever devised, the atomic bomb. Around uranium and nuclear in general, there exists an aura of the taboo. But what if there was a safer alternative that we just haven't really explored yet? Thorium has long fascinated the internet. It's three to four times more common in the Earth's crust, it produces significantly less radioactive waste, its reaction is easier to control to prevent meltdowns, and it's much harder to turn into nuclear weapons. All these points considered explains the number of comments that I've had on past videos asking when I'll cover it. but I like to cover technologies in active development, and I've never found any groups putting forward a serious effort to tackle the thorium challenge. That has now changed. China has just announced the commissioning of the world's first thorium molten salt reactor. That's actually two world's firsts. The first thorium reactor and the first commercial molten salt reactor, scheduled to be online by 2029. And China has enough thorium reserves to power their country's needs. For the next 20,000 years, I want to take a look at how these technologies actually work and what they will potentially unlock for us and ask ourselves, is this the future of nuclear? Let's start with the easy stuff though, how to build a nuclear reactor. You know that non-functioning nuclear reactor you built? Yes. I used it up a little. A molten salt reactor is a type of nuclear reactor where the primary coolant, or even the fuel itself, is a molten salt mixture, typically molten fluoride or chloride salt. There's a good history of experimental designs, but no viable commercial designs have been realized yet. In the mid-20th century, there were two experimental molten salt reactors operated in the United States. The aircraft reactor experiment, which was motivated by the small form factor, that molten salt reactors can achieve, and the slightly uncreatively named Molten Salt Reactor experiment, which aimed to demonstrate a nuclear power plant using a thorium fuel cycle in a breeder reactor. The general design principle of molten salt reactors is centered around a reactor core through which the fuel-coolant mixture is circulated. In the reactor, fission occurs, the breaking apart of unstable heavy elements as they are struck by fast-moving neutrons. This produces lighter elements as well as further fast-moving neutrons, which are the heats we talk about when we say nuclear reactors produce usable energy. These fast neutrons either collide with further fissile elements in the reactor to sustain the fission reaction, or they strike salt particles and increase the temperature of the molten salt as a whole, which is continuously circulated through the system. As this now even hotter fluid leaves the reactor, it moves out into heat exchangers to transfer the heat to a secondary fuel loop which usually drives a steam turbine because secretly everything still runs on steam turbines and we never left the 1800s. The reason molten salt reactors are so attractive to, well, mostly the internet, is because they are in theory much more elegant in their safety. But why exactly is that? Most nuclear reactors use water as a coolant. The job of a coolant is to get rid of excess heat energy. The downside to water is that it has a boiling point of 100 degrees Celsius, meaning that to keep it in liquid form you need to keep it in very high pressure piping. If there is a failure in this system, not only does your coolant escape and you can now no longer cool down your reactor, but that superheated liquid water now turns almost instantaneously and explosively into a hot gas, damaging other systems. This is partly what happened during the Chernobyl disaster. By comparison though, molten salts have a high boiling point, often above 1400 degrees Celsius. This removes the need to keep the coolant in high pressure piping and so reduces the chances of failures and explosions. It also means that if there is a leak in the system, both the coolant and the fuel exit the reactor, further reducing the likelihood of a meltdown. As the fuel and coolant are intermixed and circulated, this also reduces the likelihood of hotspots in the reactor design that could lead to structural damage or failure. Continuous circulation also means that new fuel can be added to the mix without requiring a full shutdown of the reactor for refueling, which is a costly and slow process for solid fuel reactors. By consequence, this also means that any negative fission products can continuously be removed, unlike in traditional reactors. where fission products like Xenon-135 can build up over time, absorbing neutrons and causing reactor instability. And if you're asking here now, why does fission only occur in the reactor and not outside it when the fission fuel is located throughout the system? That's largely a question of the density of those fast neutrons that drive the reactor. There's significantly more reaction-driving neutrons in the reactor core than in the rest of the system, because there is more reactive material there. In the remainder of the system, the neutron flux just isn't sufficient to sustain an ongoing fission reaction, so it subsides outside of the reactor. This is a good thing in the event of a leak, as although your fuel leaks out with your coolant, it doesn't present the same level of explosive danger as, say, a gas or a fossil fuel leak. In fact, most liquid salt reactors have a simple freeze-plug failsafe below the reactor that is kept cold, preventing the molten salts escape. In the instance of a power failure, the plug unfreezes and the liquid salt empties into sub-critical drain tanks where the reaction stops. As you can imagine this sort of feature is much harder to achieve in solid core reactors that use normal uranium fuel rods. There you need to constantly circulate additional coolant until the reaction dies down, which if you're very unlucky might take hundreds to thousands of years. So now in molten salt reactors we have a really compelling potential reactor design. Why though is thorium so often thought of as the best fuel for the job? I want to answer that question but first I have to thank the most relevant sponsor I have ever had on this channel, Radiacode. Yes, we actually have a GigaCounter sponsor on a video about nuclear reactors, we have nailed it. Radiacode is the maker of the world's first pocket-sized radiation detector and spectrometer to prepare for your future post-apocalyptic scenarios, all with that classic GigaCounter sound. What's really cool about the RadioCode 103, which is the one that I picked up, is that it's not just a counter, but also a gamma ray spectrometer, meaning that you can identify different radioactive isotopes. It even has a mode that syncs to your location so that you can track radiation levels while you're moving around, saving the values on Google Maps for ultimately a safer traversal of the post-apocalyptic wastelands. All of these features can also be viewed on the mobile and PC app, which is really easy to access and use. When I first got the device, I literally went around my entire house testing everything. You could even do a first pass test for radon in your home by collecting dust and measuring the radiation levels. Then of course, obviously get more specific testing done. Luckily, nothing that I found should cause me to sprout an additional limb just yet. This though is an awesome product. It works really well. If you're interested in getting an insider look into the invisible world of radiation, or you know a friend or family member who might, be sure to use the link in the description down below or the pinned comment. I cannot stress how cool this is. this product is, check it out. Now, back to the video. Let's make the case for thorium. Thorium is one of 15 heavy metallic elements in the bottom part of the periodic table, just two spaces to the left from uranium. Holding it in your hand, it's a soft and silvery metal that gradually darkens as it oxidizes in the air. It was first discovered by Swedish chemist Jons Berzelius, whose name I've probably butchered, back in 1828. He named it after the Norse god of thunder, or I guess one of your favorite Avengers. He's a friend from work. Its radioactivity though wasn't discovered for another 60 years until Marie Curie began to study it. It was found that in nature, thorium typically exists in only its most stable isotopic form, thorium-232. It is technically unstable, but it decays incredibly slowly with a half-life of more than 14 billion years, basically the same age as the universe. You can actually find it in small amounts pretty much everywhere, which is one of the advantages it has over uranium. Estimates indicate that thorium is 3-4 times more abundant than uranium on Earth. The vast majority is harvested from a mineral called monzonite, which contains a high percentage of thorium phosphate, created as a byproduct from mining other rare earth metals. But the question is, if it decays very slowly, why does it make for such a good nuclear fuel? Although Thorium-323 isn't very fissile, meaning it's not directly usable to power nuclear fission, it is very fertile, meaning it can be bred into a fissile material, here uranium. Here's how that works. First Thorium-232 is bombarded until it absorbs a neutron, producing Thorium-233. This then undergoes beta decay, converting a neutron into a proton and changing it into another element, proactinium. There it undergoes beta decay again converting another proton into a neutron and producing uranium-233. Uranium-233 is fissile and can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. In fact it's even slightly better than other commonly used nuclear reactor fuels like uranium-235 and plutonium-239 because it absorbs fewer neutrons, allowing it to produce on average slightly more than the two neutrons per split. And now although this entire process sounds complicated and like it adds extra steps, it's actually a real advantage. This breeding process can be done outside of the reactor, but I think it's more interesting when thorium is dissolved within the molten salt mix and this breeding reaction occurs continuously over time. while the reactor operates. To do this, Thorium-232 is combined with a molten salt, then a small amount of Uranium-233 is added to supply the initial neutron flux and start the breeding and reaction process which then self-sustains. Overall, what that gives you is a very efficient fuel that combines the safety layer of unreactive thorium with the quick and safe storage of molten salt reactor designs. As an added bonus to thorium, its neutron absorption characteristics means that it produces fewer actinides, the bottom 15 elements of the periodic table, which are typically very radiotoxic and have very long half-lives. The general rule of thumb that I found whilst researching was that most people's opinion on thorium is that its nuclear waste only stays radioactive for about 500 years. That's instead of the 10,000 years for uranium. And there is about 1,000 to 10,000 times less radioactive. byproducts produced using thorium. So it becomes reasonably clear that thorium molten salt reactors have some definitive advantages over conventional reactors. So the question remains, where on earth are they? This is where the thorium reactor story gets kind of strange. Research into how to build these systems actually stretches back all the way to the end of World War II and continued well into the early 70s. Starting as a project to make compact nuclear flight propulsion systems, Molten Salt Reactor research was led by Alvin Weinberg, director of the Oak Ridge National Lab. Over 20 years, Weinberg and his team researched, built, and operated the first molten salt reactors, motivated by a dream of building a fission-powered desalination plant as part of the Atoms for Peace program. This program unfortunately didn't make it past the 70s, as the US chose to go in the direction of cheaper, less technically challenging uranium reactors instead, which also had the benefit of producing plutonium stockpiles. Today, the Oak Ridge Molten Salt Reactor experiment is viewed as the holy grail of thorium molten salt reactor research, and many modern projects are taking inspiration from it. Countries like India, which have large amounts of thorium but very little uranium, aim to produce 30% of their energy from thorium by 2050. Russia also seems interested, announcing that it has developed some thorium-based nuclear fuels. Today, though, it is China that is leading the world in thorium reactor technology. This is somewhat predicated on the fact that China has massive thorium reserves. The exact size of those reserves has not been publicly disclosed, but it's estimated to be enough to meet the country's total energy needs for more than 20,000 years. They've also made significant investments into the research of these systems as early as 2011, when they invested $450 million to Thorium Salt Reactor research program, inspired by the design of the Oak Ridge Laboratory Reactor. China began construction of the TMSR-LF1 in 2018, an experimental thorium salt reactor which was completed in 2021. And interestingly, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. around 120 kilometers northwest of the city of Wuwei in the Gansan province, in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Another huge advantage of thorium salt reactors is that they can be placed in the middle of sparsely populated deserts like this, because again, they don't need water cooling. Another perk being that if it's in the middle of nowhere and it does explode, fewer people care. The reactor was granted a license to begin operation. back in 2023, initially operating in batch mode using a closed system for the first five to eight years, before then moving into continuous operation where fuel and waste can be continuously topped up or removed. In my books, this one still counts as a largely experimental research activity and can only produce about two megawatt of thermal power and doesn't generate electricity at all. But according to recent reports, the success of this pilot project provided the basis and experience for construction of larger reactors capable of power generation. China is now quickly expanding their scope and ambition for this technology. In fact, it was only inadvertently announced that this new thorium reactor project was on the table, disclosed as part of a construction plan within an environmental assessment report posted on the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics. This reactor facility is scheduled to be commissioned in 2025 and completed and operational in 2029, generating heat at a maximum of 60 megawatts. According to the report, the reactor will be used for research. purposes, primarily serving scientists. However, a wind power base, a solar power base station, a molten salt based energy storage power station, a hydrogen generation system, and a thermal power plant will all also be constructed at the same time as the thorium power plant. These different types of energy will all be integrated into a smart grid to provide low cost, low carbon, stable and sufficient electricity for industrial production. So it does kind of sound like this really is the start of usable thorium power in a commercial setting, if only for industrial applications at first. Starting from 2030 though, the report goes on to say that there are further plans for commercial modular thorium-based reactors with an electrical generation capacity of 100 megawatts or more. All of this advancement and activity is part of a much larger vision for energy in China. working towards carbon neutrality in 2060, but also working towards a major commercial advantage over other countries. Ultimately, China plans to sell modular thorium reactors as part of their Belt and Road Initiative, positioning themselves as the global superpower for power creation. As part of a global development strategy aimed to connect trade networks from China to other parts of Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond, it's basically a vast and technologically advanced version of the Silk. road. The question many companies and countries are asking themselves is if China is making such rapid progress with alternative energy sources, should we be doing the same? The US, the UK, Europe and elsewhere. Turns out we aren't completely in the dark here. In the US, we have TerraPower founded by Bill Gates, which has been collaborating with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to restart development of sustainable nuclear energy technologies. The company is moving ahead with building a new Natrium reactor in Wyoming. This is not yet another fuel source, the reactor will use uranium but will incorporate a new type of molten salt system using sodium, hence the name. The technology has been around for a while but they are revisiting it to take advantage of a new energy storage design. This time they're planning to store the heat from the sodium molten salt into a chloride molten salt heat bank. This thermal energy can then be used to make electricity when required, allowing the nuclear power generation to ramp up and down with the power grid demand. This plant is interesting, it's designed to produce an impressive 345 megawatts, and if everything goes well, should be in operation by 2030. In Europe, initiatives like the Nuclear Abundant Affordable Resourceful Energy for All, or NARIA, of France and THORIZEN of the Netherlands, have signed a strategic industrial agreement to advance molten salt reactors, especially modular ones. This partnership is pretty interesting as Narya is combining its expertise in small modular nuclear reactors with Thorizon's knowledge of thorium and molten salt reactors. The naming conventions are terrible, but we'll forgive them for that. What kind of plans do they actually have so far? Narya is planning to develop an extra small... molten salt reactor generating roughly 40 megawatts of energy which they're hoping will be ready for mass production by 2030. the horizon is going in the other direction with a 100 megawatt thorium molten salt reactor with a pilot system ready by 2035 which is probably a lot more reasonable in terms of timeline here i'm always slightly aware of the maybe over optimistic timelines that many of the small modular reactor companies out there have made and the price points that they have tried to hit but ultimately have slipped over time. We'll need to follow these initiatives to see how things pan out. These are certainly promising opportunities, but overall the rate and the energy put into exploring these opportunities doesn't feel to me to be sufficient for any of these projects to become world leaders in their field. Although there are obviously still major challenges to overcome in this technology, from the fact that molten salts are highly corrosive, which poses a challenge for materials and reactor components that must withstand these harsh conditions, to the fact that the regulatory framework and safe operation protocols for commercial reactors just haven't actually been developed yet. Overall, when I hear these timelines coming out from China of 2029 for the on time of their first reactors, I think that feels kind of ambitious, but I do think it is better to be ambitious. in this arena rather than playing catch up. China does have a history now of investing heavily in alternative energy sources. The reason solar is so cheap across the world as of nowadays is largely because of European subsidies and China's initiative to drive mass production. By mid 2024, the total installed solar capacity in China was approximately 700 gigawatts, with 100 gigawatts of new capacity added in just the first half of 2024. alone. There is clearly a commercial and strategic drive to achieve these technological feats as quickly as possible, particularly in the context of the changing energy landscape. But I want to know what you think. I really liked looking deeper into this topic than I have before, and there was a whole bunch of other pieces to the puzzle that I didn't quite have time to cover. Is this a win for the world power transition? Let me know what you think in the comment section down below. And if you like this sort of video, leave us a like. Check out our Patreon if you want to support the channel. I also recently shared some thoughts on another technology giant, the world's largest fusion project, and the funding problems and delays faced by it, and asked, should we keep pushing forward on fusion? Check that out, and thanks as always for watching. I'll see you next week. Goodbye.

Thorium has long fascinated the internet. It's three to four times more common in the Earth's crust, it produces significantly less radioactive waste, its reaction is easier to control to prevent meltdowns, and it's much harder to turn into nuclear weapons. All these points considered explains the number of comments that I've had on past videos asking when I'll cover it.

but I like to cover technologies in active development, and I've never found any groups putting forward a serious effort to tackle the thorium challenge. That has now changed. China has just announced the commissioning of the world's first thorium molten salt reactor. That's actually two world's firsts. The first thorium reactor and the first commercial molten salt reactor, scheduled to be online by 2029. And China has enough thorium reserves to power their country's needs.

For the next 20,000 years, I want to take a look at how these technologies actually work and what they will potentially unlock for us and ask ourselves, is this the future of nuclear? Let's start with the easy stuff though, how to build a nuclear reactor. You know that non-functioning nuclear reactor you built?

Yes. I used it up a little. A molten salt reactor is a type of nuclear reactor where the primary coolant, or even the fuel itself, is a molten salt mixture, typically molten fluoride or chloride salt.

There's a good history of experimental designs, but no viable commercial designs have been realized yet. In the mid-20th century, there were two experimental molten salt reactors operated in the United States. The aircraft reactor experiment, which was motivated by the small form factor, that molten salt reactors can achieve, and the slightly uncreatively named Molten Salt Reactor experiment, which aimed to demonstrate a nuclear power plant using a thorium fuel cycle in a breeder reactor.

The general design principle of molten salt reactors is centered around a reactor core through which the fuel-coolant mixture is circulated. In the reactor, fission occurs, the breaking apart of unstable heavy elements as they are struck by fast-moving neutrons. This produces lighter elements as well as further fast-moving neutrons, which are the heats we talk about when we say nuclear reactors produce usable energy.

These fast neutrons either collide with further fissile elements in the reactor to sustain the fission reaction, or they strike salt particles and increase the temperature of the molten salt as a whole, which is continuously circulated through the system. As this now even hotter fluid leaves the reactor, it moves out into heat exchangers to transfer the heat to a secondary fuel loop which usually drives a steam turbine because secretly everything still runs on steam turbines and we never left the 1800s. The reason molten salt reactors are so attractive to, well, mostly the internet, is because they are in theory much more elegant in their safety. But why exactly is that? Most nuclear reactors use water as a coolant.

The job of a coolant is to get rid of excess heat energy. The downside to water is that it has a boiling point of 100 degrees Celsius, meaning that to keep it in liquid form you need to keep it in very high pressure piping. If there is a failure in this system, not only does your coolant escape and you can now no longer cool down your reactor, but that superheated liquid water now turns almost instantaneously and explosively into a hot gas, damaging other systems.

This is partly what happened during the Chernobyl disaster. By comparison though, molten salts have a high boiling point, often above 1400 degrees Celsius. This removes the need to keep the coolant in high pressure piping and so reduces the chances of failures and explosions. It also means that if there is a leak in the system, both the coolant and the fuel exit the reactor, further reducing the likelihood of a meltdown.

As the fuel and coolant are intermixed and circulated, this also reduces the likelihood of hotspots in the reactor design that could lead to structural damage or failure. Continuous circulation also means that new fuel can be added to the mix without requiring a full shutdown of the reactor for refueling, which is a costly and slow process for solid fuel reactors. By consequence, this also means that any negative fission products can continuously be removed, unlike in traditional reactors. where fission products like Xenon-135 can build up over time, absorbing neutrons and causing reactor instability.

And if you're asking here now, why does fission only occur in the reactor and not outside it when the fission fuel is located throughout the system? That's largely a question of the density of those fast neutrons that drive the reactor. There's significantly more reaction-driving neutrons in the reactor core than in the rest of the system, because there is more reactive material there.

In the remainder of the system, the neutron flux just isn't sufficient to sustain an ongoing fission reaction, so it subsides outside of the reactor. This is a good thing in the event of a leak, as although your fuel leaks out with your coolant, it doesn't present the same level of explosive danger as, say, a gas or a fossil fuel leak. In fact, most liquid salt reactors have a simple freeze-plug failsafe below the reactor that is kept cold, preventing the molten salts escape.

In the instance of a power failure, the plug unfreezes and the liquid salt empties into sub-critical drain tanks where the reaction stops. As you can imagine this sort of feature is much harder to achieve in solid core reactors that use normal uranium fuel rods. There you need to constantly circulate additional coolant until the reaction dies down, which if you're very unlucky might take hundreds to thousands of years.

So now in molten salt reactors we have a really compelling potential reactor design. Why though is thorium so often thought of as the best fuel for the job? I want to answer that question but first I have to thank the most relevant sponsor I have ever had on this channel, Radiacode. Yes, we actually have a GigaCounter sponsor on a video about nuclear reactors, we have nailed it.

Radiacode is the maker of the world's first pocket-sized radiation detector and spectrometer to prepare for your future post-apocalyptic scenarios, all with that classic GigaCounter sound. What's really cool about the RadioCode 103, which is the one that I picked up, is that it's not just a counter, but also a gamma ray spectrometer, meaning that you can identify different radioactive isotopes. It even has a mode that syncs to your location so that you can track radiation levels while you're moving around, saving the values on Google Maps for ultimately a safer traversal of the post-apocalyptic wastelands.

All of these features can also be viewed on the mobile and PC app, which is really easy to access and use. When I first got the device, I literally went around my entire house testing everything. You could even do a first pass test for radon in your home by collecting dust and measuring the radiation levels. Then of course, obviously get more specific testing done. Luckily, nothing that I found should cause me to sprout an additional limb just yet.

This though is an awesome product. It works really well. If you're interested in getting an insider look into the invisible world of radiation, or you know a friend or family member who might, be sure to use the link in the description down below or the pinned comment.

I cannot stress how cool this is. this product is, check it out. Now, back to the video. Let's make the case for thorium. Thorium is one of 15 heavy metallic elements in the bottom part of the periodic table, just two spaces to the left from uranium.

Holding it in your hand, it's a soft and silvery metal that gradually darkens as it oxidizes in the air. It was first discovered by Swedish chemist Jons Berzelius, whose name I've probably butchered, back in 1828. He named it after the Norse god of thunder, or I guess one of your favorite Avengers. He's a friend from work. Its radioactivity though wasn't discovered for another 60 years until Marie Curie began to study it. It was found that in nature, thorium typically exists in only its most stable isotopic form, thorium-232.

It is technically unstable, but it decays incredibly slowly with a half-life of more than 14 billion years, basically the same age as the universe. You can actually find it in small amounts pretty much everywhere, which is one of the advantages it has over uranium. Estimates indicate that thorium is 3-4 times more abundant than uranium on Earth.

The vast majority is harvested from a mineral called monzonite, which contains a high percentage of thorium phosphate, created as a byproduct from mining other rare earth metals. But the question is, if it decays very slowly, why does it make for such a good nuclear fuel? Although Thorium-323 isn't very fissile, meaning it's not directly usable to power nuclear fission, it is very fertile, meaning it can be bred into a fissile material, here uranium.

Here's how that works. First Thorium-232 is bombarded until it absorbs a neutron, producing Thorium-233. This then undergoes beta decay, converting a neutron into a proton and changing it into another element, proactinium.

There it undergoes beta decay again converting another proton into a neutron and producing uranium-233. Uranium-233 is fissile and can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. In fact it's even slightly better than other commonly used nuclear reactor fuels like uranium-235 and plutonium-239 because it absorbs fewer neutrons, allowing it to produce on average slightly more than the two neutrons per split. And now although this entire process sounds complicated and like it adds extra steps, it's actually a real advantage.

This breeding process can be done outside of the reactor, but I think it's more interesting when thorium is dissolved within the molten salt mix and this breeding reaction occurs continuously over time. while the reactor operates. To do this, Thorium-232 is combined with a molten salt, then a small amount of Uranium-233 is added to supply the initial neutron flux and start the breeding and reaction process which then self-sustains. Overall, what that gives you is a very efficient fuel that combines the safety layer of unreactive thorium with the quick and safe storage of molten salt reactor designs. As an added bonus to thorium, its neutron absorption characteristics means that it produces fewer actinides, the bottom 15 elements of the periodic table, which are typically very radiotoxic and have very long half-lives.

The general rule of thumb that I found whilst researching was that most people's opinion on thorium is that its nuclear waste only stays radioactive for about 500 years. That's instead of the 10,000 years for uranium. And there is about 1,000 to 10,000 times less radioactive. byproducts produced using thorium.

So it becomes reasonably clear that thorium molten salt reactors have some definitive advantages over conventional reactors. So the question remains, where on earth are they? This is where the thorium reactor story gets kind of strange. Research into how to build these systems actually stretches back all the way to the end of World War II and continued well into the early 70s. Starting as a project to make compact nuclear flight propulsion systems, Molten Salt Reactor research was led by Alvin Weinberg, director of the Oak Ridge National Lab.

Over 20 years, Weinberg and his team researched, built, and operated the first molten salt reactors, motivated by a dream of building a fission-powered desalination plant as part of the Atoms for Peace program. This program unfortunately didn't make it past the 70s, as the US chose to go in the direction of cheaper, less technically challenging uranium reactors instead, which also had the benefit of producing plutonium stockpiles. Today, the Oak Ridge Molten Salt Reactor experiment is viewed as the holy grail of thorium molten salt reactor research, and many modern projects are taking inspiration from it.

Countries like India, which have large amounts of thorium but very little uranium, aim to produce 30% of their energy from thorium by 2050. Russia also seems interested, announcing that it has developed some thorium-based nuclear fuels. Today, though, it is China that is leading the world in thorium reactor technology. This is somewhat predicated on the fact that China has massive thorium reserves.

The exact size of those reserves has not been publicly disclosed, but it's estimated to be enough to meet the country's total energy needs for more than 20,000 years. They've also made significant investments into the research of these systems as early as 2011, when they invested $450 million to Thorium Salt Reactor research program, inspired by the design of the Oak Ridge Laboratory Reactor. China began construction of the TMSR-LF1 in 2018, an experimental thorium salt reactor which was completed in 2021. And interestingly, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere.

around 120 kilometers northwest of the city of Wuwei in the Gansan province, in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Another huge advantage of thorium salt reactors is that they can be placed in the middle of sparsely populated deserts like this, because again, they don't need water cooling. Another perk being that if it's in the middle of nowhere and it does explode, fewer people care.

The reactor was granted a license to begin operation. back in 2023, initially operating in batch mode using a closed system for the first five to eight years, before then moving into continuous operation where fuel and waste can be continuously topped up or removed. In my books, this one still counts as a largely experimental research activity and can only produce about two megawatt of thermal power and doesn't generate electricity at all.

But according to recent reports, the success of this pilot project provided the basis and experience for construction of larger reactors capable of power generation. China is now quickly expanding their scope and ambition for this technology. In fact, it was only inadvertently announced that this new thorium reactor project was on the table, disclosed as part of a construction plan within an environmental assessment report posted on the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics.

This reactor facility is scheduled to be commissioned in 2025 and completed and operational in 2029, generating heat at a maximum of 60 megawatts. According to the report, the reactor will be used for research. purposes, primarily serving scientists.

However, a wind power base, a solar power base station, a molten salt based energy storage power station, a hydrogen generation system, and a thermal power plant will all also be constructed at the same time as the thorium power plant. These different types of energy will all be integrated into a smart grid to provide low cost, low carbon, stable and sufficient electricity for industrial production. So it does kind of sound like this really is the start of usable thorium power in a commercial setting, if only for industrial applications at first. Starting from 2030 though, the report goes on to say that there are further plans for commercial modular thorium-based reactors with an electrical generation capacity of 100 megawatts or more. All of this advancement and activity is part of a much larger vision for energy in China.

working towards carbon neutrality in 2060, but also working towards a major commercial advantage over other countries. Ultimately, China plans to sell modular thorium reactors as part of their Belt and Road Initiative, positioning themselves as the global superpower for power creation. As part of a global development strategy aimed to connect trade networks from China to other parts of Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond, it's basically a vast and technologically advanced version of the Silk. road.

The question many companies and countries are asking themselves is if China is making such rapid progress with alternative energy sources, should we be doing the same? The US, the UK, Europe and elsewhere. Turns out we aren't completely in the dark here.

In the US, we have TerraPower founded by Bill Gates, which has been collaborating with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to restart development of sustainable nuclear energy technologies. The company is moving ahead with building a new Natrium reactor in Wyoming. This is not yet another fuel source, the reactor will use uranium but will incorporate a new type of molten salt system using sodium, hence the name.

The technology has been around for a while but they are revisiting it to take advantage of a new energy storage design. This time they're planning to store the heat from the sodium molten salt into a chloride molten salt heat bank. This thermal energy can then be used to make electricity when required, allowing the nuclear power generation to ramp up and down with the power grid demand.

This plant is interesting, it's designed to produce an impressive 345 megawatts, and if everything goes well, should be in operation by 2030. In Europe, initiatives like the Nuclear Abundant Affordable Resourceful Energy for All, or NARIA, of France and THORIZEN of the Netherlands, have signed a strategic industrial agreement to advance molten salt reactors, especially modular ones. This partnership is pretty interesting as Narya is combining its expertise in small modular nuclear reactors with Thorizon's knowledge of thorium and molten salt reactors. The naming conventions are terrible, but we'll forgive them for that.

What kind of plans do they actually have so far? Narya is planning to develop an extra small... molten salt reactor generating roughly 40 megawatts of energy which they're hoping will be ready for mass production by 2030. the horizon is going in the other direction with a 100 megawatt thorium molten salt reactor with a pilot system ready by 2035 which is probably a lot more reasonable in terms of timeline here i'm always slightly aware of the maybe over optimistic timelines that many of the small modular reactor companies out there have made and the price points that they have tried to hit but ultimately have slipped over time. We'll need to follow these initiatives to see how things pan out. These are certainly promising opportunities, but overall the rate and the energy put into exploring these opportunities doesn't feel to me to be sufficient for any of these projects to become world leaders in their field.

Although there are obviously still major challenges to overcome in this technology, from the fact that molten salts are highly corrosive, which poses a challenge for materials and reactor components that must withstand these harsh conditions, to the fact that the regulatory framework and safe operation protocols for commercial reactors just haven't actually been developed yet. Overall, when I hear these timelines coming out from China of 2029 for the on time of their first reactors, I think that feels kind of ambitious, but I do think it is better to be ambitious. in this arena rather than playing catch up.

China does have a history now of investing heavily in alternative energy sources. The reason solar is so cheap across the world as of nowadays is largely because of European subsidies and China's initiative to drive mass production. By mid 2024, the total installed solar capacity in China was approximately 700 gigawatts, with 100 gigawatts of new capacity added in just the first half of 2024. alone. There is clearly a commercial and strategic drive to achieve these technological feats as quickly as possible, particularly in the context of the changing energy landscape.

But I want to know what you think. I really liked looking deeper into this topic than I have before, and there was a whole bunch of other pieces to the puzzle that I didn't quite have time to cover. Is this a win for the world power transition?

Let me know what you think in the comment section down below. And if you like this sort of video, leave us a like. Check out our Patreon if you want to support the channel.

I also recently shared some thoughts on another technology giant, the world's largest fusion project, and the funding problems and delays faced by it, and asked, should we keep pushing forward on fusion? Check that out, and thanks as always for watching. I'll see you next week.

Goodbye.

Transcript for:Exploring Thorium and Molten Salt Reactors

Transcript for:
Exploring Thorium and Molten Salt Reactors