IN A NEW TYPE OF ENERGY PRODUCTION!
China is finally leading the world out of the wilderness and into the light and warmth that Thorium energy provides. They are leading the way in developing this new technology to create almost unlimited cheap clean power from Thorium that China needs so much.
Oil, gas and coal seriously pollute the planet, but influential businessmen and governments resist any change. But China has a real problem – serious pollution in its major cities caused by the burning of fossil fuels in transport, homes and to power its major industries. It has to find a reliable, safe, clean source of fuel. Chinese people are dying in their own pollution! But also, scientists and professionals around the world, are speaking to people in large meetings and warning that renewables; wind and solar and even hydro, are not reliable enough to satisfy present day commercial and industrial needs and business conditions. Clearly, the Chinese Government agrees with this assessment and have taken action.
The Chinese have taken action and invested heavily in modern, up to date designs for using Molten Salt Thorium to produce heat and generate electricity.
The Americans ran a Thorium experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, and successfully ran a heat producing plant non-stop for five years, in the 1960’s providing proof of principle. It was a game changer. However, the researchers had met with some serious problems such as corrosion of the reactor vessel walls by the fluoride salts used, and corrosion of the materials of which the reactor control valves were made. Also they had the problem of being unable to measure the high operating temperatures of around 500oC. But now, with advancements in metallurgy and instrumentation, these are no longer serious obstacles. This method of generating heat can be made to work successfully and it promises to become dirt cheap – by using widely available dirt! Energy from Thorium is a game changer. Importantly, the waste products are only dangerous for 300 years unlike the uranium waste from the old pressurized water power plants, and so, safe storage is much less expensive.
In a molten salt nuclear reactor the fissile material is dissolved in heated fluoride salt (=liquid) in the reactor core. This liquid salt acts as a coolant in place of water but works at atmospheric pressure. Fission occurs in the reactor core, generating heat. The hot coolant is passed through a heat exchanger with water, so producing steam. This steam drives a turbine which generates electricity. Engineers like fluoride, lithium and beryllium salt mixture as a coolant, hence ‘FLIBE energy.’
Also with thorium there are no high pressure chambers of steam to explode and runaways are impossible because thorium reactors have walk-away safety features and if there is overheating, fusible drain plugs melt and drain the hot fluid to emergency dump tanks, below.
The Shanghai Institute of Applied Sciences, supervised by the Chinese Academy of Science, have been active. In 2011 they employed around 700 PhD researchers to investigate and design new Thorium reactors based on the Oak Ridge reactor design, and in 2017 they built their first experimental 2 Megawatt prototypes in the Gobi desert, in Wuwai, Gansu province, for operational and material testing. Because of the success they have had with these prototypes, now they plan a 10 megawatt power plant to go into service in 2025 and a 100 megawatt to start work by 2035. China hopes to go carbon neutral in 2060.
Because these plants are scalable, they can be built large or small to suit their application. They plan to build Thorium power plants and sell them to their favoured customers. These can be managed and run by Chinese or locally trained operators. All nations need to recruit and train graduate chemical engineers in preparation for this new technology and not be dependent on the Chinese! Jobs for graduates! At present, 1 % of world energy comes from wind and solar and 75% comes from fossil fuels, but those percentages are not improving much each year. The whole world must move away rapidly from fossil fuels, and also, we need large amounts of energy to develop and grow our economies. Thorium is the ‘Holy Grail’ of energy production. We have to bring this technology to Sri Lanka,
Submited by R.O.S