Quote:
Originally Posted by Shazam
India has a thorium reactor.
Thorium reactor research has been around for a while, but liquid salt reactors like what Sorensen was talking about are really, really new.
Also fluoride is somewhat not nice.
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DO you mean fluorine because fluoride isn't a big deal? You aren't talking fluorine but molten metal fluoride salts (i.e. the FLiBe reactors). Completely different beast. The stumbling block to the molten salt reactors is getting the purity the salt to a sufficient level so that the reactions with impurities don't become a concern (you don't want a build up of fission products in your coolant). In particular you need to not only have a generally high purity product but you also need to have the salt highly enriched in Lithium-7. The problem with that enrichment process is (1 ) no one carries out that enrichment in the world today because (2 ) lithium-6 is used in the construction of nuclear weapons (increases the nuclear yield I believe). In order for the western world to produce such salts you need to get the government on board with the idea, have the government transfer over the technology to do the separation, have beyond rigorous mass balance of the lithium, find a non-nuclear weapon market for the lithium-6 (there is one so that actually isn't a big deal) etc etc etc. The government will not do it themselves and will be extremely picky about who they let do it. How picky? We've been negotiating for several years as a former DOE/DOD facility with all the necessary security and requirements and one that has served the commercial nuclear markets for 40 years to get that process. They supposedly want us to have that process from all accounts but actually getting the government to move on something is beyond painful and slow. If we are extremely lucky we might get to begin development of the salt synthesis 5-7 years from now. That would put any salt availability out likely another 5-7 after that (even for pilot scale they need a whole whack of the material).
Internationally, when all is said and done Japan will continue to build new reactors,as well update and improve existing ones. They have no real choice. Germany will never be free from nuclear energy as either they make it themselves or they get it from France which just makes it about semantics at that point. My guess is as always happens in Germany once the election year is forgotten they quietly slip nuclear back into their future energy plans.