107: A Thorium Thubject - Future of Nuclear Energy

[Music] hey everybody in today's episode of still to be determined we're talking about thorium reactors the progress and bringing them into the real world energy production scheme and can this be a solution to energy needs before we get into that a reminder i'm sean farrell how you all doing i'm matt farrell's older brother matt is of course the talking head behind undecided with matt farrell matt how are you doing i'm good this talking head is doing well that's good we won't make any assumptions about any other parts of our bodies we'll just let everybody know that we think we're doing okay today we're going to be talking about revisiting thorium energy the future of nuclear power question mark we're back on the question mark train and i'm chu chu chu there for it this episode broadcast on february 2022 and since this episode dropped i've been living through the some of the issues that your recent videos have been bringing up regarding energy production energy costs new york is going through there has been a sudden spike in energy costs con ed has been sending out bills in some cases they've been going up as much as 25 suddenly wow above last year and every time well that's that's the question people started getting bills some people were getting bills as much as twice as high as previous months and immediately people started pushing their politicians to say what's going on here the politicians began to push con ed con ed says it is a combination of a colder than usual january and a rise in the cost of natural gas okay what i think is interesting about the argument about january is we here in new york city have seen much milder winters than we have previously yeah while this past january has been cold it is by no means in my experience any colder than any other january so that explanation seems a little like what are you talking about and then there's the natural gas aspect and one of the things that con ed has been saying is ho ho don't worry we are looking into renewable sources as a way of curtailing this kind of issue in the future the governor of governor hochul does not think that their explanations meet the needs of the citizens of new york and there has been a city-wide call for there to be an investigation looking into why this unexpected there was no announcement there it just suddenly people started getting bills that were much higher right so that's the lived experience that's literally the front page news here in new york city and then you drop this little video talking about nuclear maybe there's an option here and along with recent videos we talk about this every week and i couldn't help but think yeah yeah this is this is the kind of discussion that our conversations are very much a part of my alignment with the world in saying that's what our future should hold looking at the horizon saying that's what our future should hold recent lived experience has made me feel like that future needs to get here now now so this video in particular talking about recent advances you're revisiting a subject you talked about in the past and you're trying to give an updated scenario and i thought it was very timely as i said timely not timely enough though it sounds not timely enough but if we if we take a look at the comments we can see that that i'm not alone in saying like okay there's a solution here maybe solutions to multiple problems even another thing you talk about in your video in the fact that there are byproducts out of this technology that are beneficial such as the desalinization specs and then there are positives to it from a it can use the waste products from other energy production yep in creating another layer of energy so right this really does start to feel like my head scratching around nuclear is that really the best option to suddenly how do i build my own thorium reactor i don't own this building so i can't put solar panels on the roof but maybe i've got some space down here in my basement where i could just tuck away a little thorium reactor maybe behind the exercise bike the comments were full of similar thinking to mine not to the idea of building a thorium reactor but there were comments like these from jim denning who wrote matt could you say more about msr's quote burning up radioactive waste from pressurized water reactors i understand this is possible and if so in the near term it may be as important as producing energy so what is this about burning up radioactive waste how does that work with these types of react there's some of these technologies that are being developed that you can take literally the waste product that comes out of a traditional nuclear reactor that's using uranium and use that waste material to power something like what i talked about in this video where it's literally just eating up the radioactive waste you have to store that waste now for 10 000 years it's putting it into another reactor that can then use that waste and produce waste that only you have to store for a few hundred years so there's still a waste product involved but it's you're basically just like a food chain you're just kind of working its way down the line it got a lot of press number years ago because uh bill gates was backing i think it was terrapower i think was the name of the company that promoting this kind of technology and there's other companies are doing the same exact thing so it's like will it become a reality i don't know it still needs to be built into pilot projects to be like take it to a full scale that's part of the problem even with the price i talked about around thorium reactors it's a proposed cost that nobody knows yet because we don't have thorium reactors in operation yet it's like we know how the technology works we know what kind of fuel sources it needs so we can scope out what we think it's going to cost but the reality of the cost is something completely different so it's gonna be interesting to see once china gets theirs running for a few years once we finish building some out around here and we can start to see what the costs look like then we'll see if it aligns with what we think the cost will be as well as what that waste product is like and how we actually manage that waste product so this stuff is it's all intertwined and when you talk about nuclear it's kind of a gigantic umbrella that includes a bunch of technologies underneath it like the one you just brought up from that commenter but we still need to build up pilot projects to actually prove it out that raises the question of has there been any speculation about how many layers to this there could be you talk about okay you take a uranium reactor the waste from that needs to be stored for thousands of years but if that waste can then be used in a thorium reactor it only needs to be stored for maybe 500 years as opposed to thousands is there on the horizon another layer to that which would say okay we can take that waste and we can use it and it shortens the lifespan to even shorter than the previous one or have we reached a point of having depleted the energy production value of that waste to the point where like okay this is it this is the ash we're done i i can't answer that for sure all i can say is based on what me and my team have researched it looks like this is kind of like the end state the best that can be right now there may be other people that are listening to this or have watched my video that work in the industry and research and they may know that there's actually a different technology that actually does use up everything yeah and so if you if you are in the industry and you do know comment down below in the youtube video shoot me an email i'd love to talk to you about it yeah i can't help but at moments like this talking about like well we we can take the waste from here and use it for this and then maybe there's a potential next step and in my head i see doc brown putting mr soda cans and banana peels into mr fusion the top of the car that's the ideal yeah there was also this comment from richard sleeve who wrote i think given just the challenges in long-distance transmission there is absolutely still a place for a reliable output source like this not to mention the whole desalinization hydrogen thing the latter of which may likely be a big part of decarbonizing transport aircraft they could at the very least build msr powered plants that are mainly for that purpose could they not is that an aspect of this that is being looked at oh yeah definitely like one of the biggest downsides to green hydrogen and technologies like that is it's not a clean process today and creating green hydrogen and other like side effects from things that we need costs a lot of energy a lot of money and so this is a place where green is being applied as a almost like a brand name yeah and it actually doesn't mean i talked about this in the solid hydrogen video that i did a while back and i'm doing another solid hydrogen video where i'm revisiting it and going even more in depth into it to answer a lot of questions but it's one of those there's different aspects of different technologies we need for our green future but producing biofuels producing green hydrogen is still way too expensive today and if you have a system like a nuclear reactor whether it's uranium or thorium or whatever the fuel source is you have waste heat you have waste products that you can just like layer additional things on top of and produce some of these things we need like desalination or producing green hydrogen it's like and it's incremental cost to add that on top is negligible so it's like it's like two birds three birds with one stone which is why it's so appealing when you're looking at something like a nuclear power plant because there's so much stuff we can do beyond just generating electricity for not that much extra cost right there was this from mr f miller f writes thorium reactors could be a good way to augment grid storage as well as emergency backup grid storage isn't where it needs to be yet four hours isn't enough one arctic blast could suck up all the jews and people could be in serious danger problem is neither grid storage nor thorium reactor technologies are where they need to be yet do you see this as i disagree with that but is he missing the mark that's what i was going to ask you i don't think he's missing the mark completely but i think he's not completely i don't know his knowledge bases but there's a lot of stuff going on with energy storage technologies that go beyond lithium ion batteries what he says that four hour mark is really when you're talking about lithium ion but there are so many energy storage technologies that are meant for 24-48 five-day seven-day storage technologies that when you look at the levelized cost of storage and levelized cost of energy it's cheaper than building a nuclear power plant so like there is technology today that's available right now for mass energy storage we just have to build it and just have to start implementing it and that's one of the frustrating parts the more i read into the stuff and learn about this stuff the more frustrated i get because it's like we have the know-how and the knowledge the technology available today to store energy for immense amounts of time immense amounts of power and it's actually cheaper than building a brand new uranium based nuclear reactor why aren't we doing it and so that's the big question with thorium it comes back to cost too it's like if the costs of throwing a plan out it's cost wise it's a little bit better than building out solar wind and the battery but not by much and so it comes back to if we're going to build something that's today that we need today like you're talking about the natural gas prices spiking in new york why aren't they why isn't new york just building out massive you know compressed air storage systems or you know basically rust batteries i talked about in another video it's like there's these different technologies flow batteries there's different technologies available today they have incredible costs when you're talking about multi-day storage and it's we're just not building them yet you've just raised this and you yourself have said the question a couple of times while you were just describing it why hasn't why haven't they built that out why aren't they doing it do you have any speculation as to an answer for that is it is a lack of does storage somehow not sound as enticing to investors as production is storage somehow like like well that's no we're not interested in storing we want to make energy no when you talk about utilities they want to maximize their profits they're going to go where the money is i think it probably i haven't confirmed this is my assumption but i'm assuming it's because of you don't want to be the first mover in this space and invest 5 million dollars building on a system that proves how not to be good and you're waiting for somebody else to prove it out to do it to be who's gonna be the first one to do this that's that i think is what's holding some of this stuff right back like so we're in a situation where it's literally everybody is standing at the edge of the pool waiting for somebody else to be the first one to jump in and say how cold it might be right like i talked about like this liquid air energy storage system that the company is still roughly new but they're building on a pilot project i think it's in new hampshire and so it's like i have a feeling that once that's built and it's been running for a year and all this data showing how efficient it is and how much money it costs and all that kind of stuff i think it's going to leave the dam is going to break and you're going to start to see more people going oh i want that because they can they can point to something that's a grid scale operation that's actually working i think that's what we're waiting for for some of these technologies and there's so many of them that are building pilot projects or have pilot projects in operation right now so if to me it feels like the next three to four years we're gonna start to see a spike because that's the period where we'll start to see actual data and numbers coming out of these pilot facilities that will start to convince more utilities to jump on board because right now it's you're talking about lithium-ion battery pack like the tesla mega packs those have already been proven for that four hour window for cost wise which is why we're seeing more and more of those ramp up but we're not probably seeing the 24-hour ones because right they're just waiting for somebody else to go first right there was this interesting comment from mark davitch who wrote that at nine minutes three seconds into your video quote while thorium is more plentiful than uranium it is more expensive to mine close quote is not exactly accurate the ram is a byproduct a nuisance in fact that has to be separated out of other commercial mining processes in other words there are stockpiles of the stuff just waiting for something to be done with it also it is in a rare earth metal like uranium in regards to the waste life waste half-life being 500 years it's also worth noting that the fuel cycle in an msr can further exhaust that fuel we can use an msr to eliminate existing stockpiles of nuclear waste while benefiting from the useful waste isotopes for medical purposes space flight and many other applications that come back to what you said earlier yeah it goes back to something we started the conversation with but as far as the sourcing his comment of the thorium being a byproduct and that there being stockpiles of the stuff is that something you've seen in your own research yes and is your comment more along the lines of regarding its expense in mining if it in fact becomes your goal it's harder to mine for was that your your statement there or was it were you aware of the existence of thorium stockpiles and or are they less than mr david might be laying out to be i don't think it's one of those he is right or wrong or i'm right or wrong i think we're looking at it from two different points yeah that comment i made was about specifically about the mining right there are stockpiles but there's still a huge cost involved of processing those stockpiles it's not like oh it's here oh we got it it's easy you have to have somebody that can process that stuff and it's still costly to process refinement right and refine it so it's like it's not free you still gotta it's the cost is still expensive it's still there you still have to deal with it so it's i probably in the video should have brought that up and looked into what the costs actually work out to be versus mining versus refining what's already there and it's going to be cheaper than mining but it's still not going to be free by any stretch so i think maybe that's a jumping off point for maybe a future video taking mr davitch's comment and using it as a leaping off point for in these new technologies that it would use various fuel sources what are the existing stockpiles for those fuel sources is there a argument being made for x y or z technology that would be benefit because there's already plentiful amounts being held by people or is in fact the opposite the case i know you've talked about in other videos where the push to make certain types of batteries is running headlong into shortages yeah and so that's maybe maybe something to not take a look at it from the technology angle but take a look at it from the resource angle yeah i've actually been thinking about doing a video specifically on the supply chain of these different technologies right and showing how like yeah this stuff is the best thing since sliced bread but actually making it a reality can be really hard because there's no supply chain in there to help support it and i also just want to say his comment is great because it's like i love comments like that that make me raise awareness like i hadn't thought it from that angle so it's like okay probably should have so the next time i touch on either this topic or a topic like it that's gonna be in the back of my head so i love getting the feedback from viewers and their points of view on it yeah just a reminder these kinds of comments they they feed this channel and they feed they feed matt's future production of other videos so always when you have that light bulb moment scroll below his video and leave a comment there or if you're listening to us and you have a response to what we're saying you can on youtube scroll below the video and leave a comment on our video or if you're listening to us as an audio only podcast you'll find the podcast notes include our contact information you can reach out to us that way and as a last comment that i wanted to share it follows in the same vein as mr davitch's in that it i think proposes an interesting future video for you to think about this one's from stan thorgason who writes there's been an announcement by oakridge that they have 3d printed a thorium reactor using ceramics which are stable under neutron radiation this would be a great subject for your podcast oh my god i had not come across that at all that's awesome so that comment i thought was was a great idea for something for you to jump off in the future have you i know you've dealt with 3d printing in other subject areas is 3d printing in authorium react or something you've come across before no or is this the first year you heard of it this is the first i've heard of it and i love it 3d printing is becoming one of my favorite subjects for myself to read into because like we're getting the point now where we are literally 3d printing everything it's like right we're 3d printing rockets we're 3d printing semiconductors hence oh here's a thorium reactor for you it's i i love this it's like it's it's a whole direction that we're heading towards that star trek future where it's like right you have a factory that can just like spit out whatever you want it to spit out and it doesn't take all this immense retooling to do different things removing the limitations of multi-dimensional production that then has to fit together being able to do it start to finish as a as a single unit really does change save on time saves on cost saves on the design scope materials yeah materials the the idea that a thorium reactor could be 3d printed not only would it have efficiencies in production but most of the time when we talk about things failing in nuclear reactors we're talking about literally leaks we're talking about joints that don't keep a seal the space shuttle accident when the challenger blew up that existed because of again a seam that broke that was the cause of that accident so when we are talking about something as simple as well is it a single piece or is it two pieces welded together you want a single piece and so the idea of a thorium reactor being built out of a 3d printed single piece mechanism that to me sounds right out of like you mentioned right out of star trek a reminder if you're interested in supporting the show please do consider reviewing us on apple podcast google podcast or wherever you listen we are available in a number of different locations i won't go on and list them all you know where you found us so go back there and give us a review we'd appreciate it and if you'd like to more directly support us you can go to still tbd.fm and you can click on this become a supporter button there it allows you to throw coins at our head and we enjoy having coins lobbed at us you can also click join on youtube and you can become a member there all of that really does help support the show thank you so much for listening everybody [Music] you

2022-02-20 01:28

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