The Thorium Dream

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by ChaoticOrder

 

The cost of building 1 GW nuclear power plant is now about 2 billion (based on GE ABWR). LFTR powerplant can cost 30-50% less, according to Kirk Sorensens presentation, that is cca 1,2 bn. So if it produces 750 million worth of electricity per year, with fuel cost of only 50 000, thats return time of less than 2 years!

Invest in Flibe Energy, guys!

(of course there is also paying for staff and maintenance, but thats not going to be high).

The first new nuclear power station in a long time in the USA will be Vogtle units 3&4 based on the AP1000 design. It is projected to cost about 6.2 billion dollars per gigawatt. The second will be VC summer units 2&3 of the same type and should cost about 4.5 billion dollars per gigawatt. On the other hand China is building identical reactors at 2.2 billion dollars per gigawatt and older french reactors for about 1.5 billion dollars per gigawatt (!). Olkiluoto unit 3 under construction in Finland is a financial disaster (50% over budget and years late) and will cost about 5.5 billion dollars per gigawatt. As far as I know these figures include cost of finance. The costs vary depending on reactor type, where they're build, whether they're on schedule or not, scales from building multiple units and how expensive the loans needed are.

Also remember that power stations produce electricity at wholesale rates, the figures of 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour is the average retail rate which is the figure I used. The actual cost of electricity from a power station depends on maintenance cost, fuel cost, and things like capital cost. LFTR has potential to become a lot cheaper but it depends on all of the same variables of a normal nuclear plant which obviously vary a lot. Conventional nuclear reactors have the potential to reach coal in terms of cost of electricity, LFTR has the potential to undercut that significantly.

Here's a levelized cost of electricity calculator:

www.nrel.gov...

Read the "Data and Charts for Download" part for comparison to other sources and remember that it is valid for the USA and maybe similar nations only. The total O&M (fuel and maintenance) cost of todays nuclear is about $0.022 per kilowatt hour, I don't know how much of that is fixed and how much of that is fuel. Discount rate should be a more realistic 7.5-%10% and remember that nuclear plants are now designed to last 60 years. Also with this calculator enter in the cost before financing.

reply to post by C0bzz


I disagree with the part that it is not very informative:

Why was the project abandoned?
What are the economic differences?
Why does it not cover more in depth the existing thorium reactors and the different approaches.

It seems very empty of real content, almost as a propaganda for a particular company, a particular process, and to the benefits of the use of thorium.

Without more information I see it as having not much contentment beyond some historical references. I've learned more from reading the Wikipedia related articles.

Informative and I support the concept (gave a flag and a star), but agree with the opinion that the video is not very useful.

I thought this interview with Sherrell Greene was interesting. He recently retired from Oak Ridge National Laboratory after 33 years employment. Sherrell was ORNL's Director for Nuclear Technology Programs from 2004 through 2010, and Director of ORNL's Research Reactor Development Programs from 2010 through his retirement in 2011. Oak Ridge is where they researched the LFTR:

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

I'll copy and paste the most interesting parts in my next post after I've finished reading it all.

AHTR = Very similar to LFTR but uses uranium and solid fuel instead. Should be able to be developed quicker.

2. What was your biggest disappointment at ORNL?

Probably my inability in recent years to convince Lab management to aggressively re- embrace its high temperature advanced reactor development legacy and aggressively pursue fluoride-salt cooled (FHR) and molten salt reactor (MSR) system concept development.

6. How do you view the performance of the Fukushima reactors from a nuclear safety perspective?

Well, I think the primary containments of Units 1-3 have held together remarkably well given the challenges presented to them. It’s a testament to their fundamental design.

11. What other safety features would you like to see in future Light Water Reactor designs that are not included in current designs?

[skipped]

Another area I would like to see explored in future plants is the concept I call “Centurion Reactors”. A few years before Alvin Weinberg died, I had the privilege of spending the better part of an afternoon with him at his home in Oak Ridge. We discussed his career, his dreams, and his failures. During the later years of his life, he was passionate about the concept of “Immortal Reactors”. His idea was that commercial power plants are capitally-intensive investments that actually yield inter-generational benefits. Once their capital cost is amortized, today’s LWRs produce electricity at less than 5 cents / kilowatt- hr. That’s a huge benefit that lasts as long as the plant operates and accrues to its customers – the children and grandchildren of its builders. Before Dr. Weinberg died, he sent me his file on Immortal Reactors. After some thought, I concluded a realistic near- term goal would be to design nuclear power systems for an operating lifetime of 100 years. Thus the term “Centurion Reactors”. The entire plant would be designed by integrating design-for-life, design-for-maintenance, design-for-monitoring, and design- for-replacement technologies and architectures, with the goal of enabling the plants to be licensed for and operator for 100 years.

17. Does the AHTR have a potential cost advantage compared to the LWR?

Yes. Their low pressure character translates to less metal in their construction. The coolant doesn’t interact energetically with air/water. This means one is not driven to massive containments. Less concrete. SmATHR could benefit enormously from factory fabrication. However, there are off-setting issues. I’ve already mentioned that fluoride salt coolant is really expensive. The nickel alloy structural materials aren’t cheap either.

ORNL and UC-Berkeley have both published analyses that indicate the FHRs should be competitive or superior in cost performance to modern LWR technologies. However, I would caution that due to the relative immaturity of the AHTR and SmAHTR concepts, it isn’t feasible to do the detailed bottoms-up cost estimates that support a truly compelling case at this point. We need to bring the concepts along to a higher degree of fidelity before that is really possible.

36. What changes would you view as desirable in the current business-as-usual pattern of the nuclear technology industry?

This is probably the most important question we’ve discussed! I don’t pretend to have many answers. But I’m thinking a lot about this issue.

I’ve been privileged to work in one of the world’s premier energy research laboratories for over three decades. I’ve seen the ins and outs of the Department of Energy, and its national laboratories. I’ve been involved in major long-term international collaborations. I’ve supported the NRC. I worked with the nuclear industry. All of these venues are populated with extraordinarily bright, committed people with noble motives. Yet “business-as-usual” doesn’t seem to be working very well in the US.

The environment in today’s nuclear energy enterprise is hostile to innovation. Not by intent, but in reality nevertheless. The industry is highly regulated. It is very costly to do research, development, and demonstration. It’s a very capital-intensive business. The barriers to entry are incredibly high. The down-side risks of innovation are more easily rendered in practical terms than the upside gains. Often it seems everyone in the enterprise (federal and private sectors) are so risk-averse that innovation is the last thing on anyone’s mind. In this environment, “good-enough” is the enemy of “better”. Humans learn by failing. It’s the way we learn to walk, talk, and ride a bicycle. Our environment today has little tolerance for failures at any level. There’s no room for Thomas Edison’s approach to innovation in today’s world. On top of all of this, or perhaps because of it, the nuclear industry invests less on R&D, as a percentage of gross revenues, than practically every other major industry you might name.

A group of Australian and Czech companies have come together to develop a thorium fuelled molten salt reactor.

Spokesperson for SDH and the Australian/ Czech consortium, Phil Joyce, told Australian Mining that work has already begun on developing a 60MW pilot plant in Prague, with preparatory work on the prototype to be finalised next year.

Development is slated to cost around $300 million.

"The first stage will involve mapping the international environment in which we are required to operate, followed by the verification of the methodology. Arrangements will be discussed with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) which is responsible for monitoring the activity and progress," Joyce said.

"The time for planning and building thorium fuelled base-load energy plants has come and we are looking forward to developing the first working model that will be connected to the grid."

www.miningaustralia.com.au...

Good news.