To electrify everything, the Grand Strategy proposes the world needs 12,000 GW of electricity. The world now consumes on average almost 3000 GW of electric power. We will need many more power plants that generate reliable, clean, ample, cheap electricity.
Current world average power consumption is under 3,000 GW, mostly powered by burning coal and natural gas. Replacing them over 30 years would require building 100 GW of power plants per year. Each of the two ThorCon plants in this slide can generate 0.5 GW.
The four largest shipbuilding companies are in South Korea.They have built thousands of large ships. A single shipyard has the capacity to build 40 ThorCon hull-mounted power plants per year. The industry has capacity to build 200 such units, or 100 GW of power plants annually.
Atomic fission power plants generate heat from splitting fissile atoms. The emitted neutrons proceed to fission other atoms, creating a chain reaction. The fission product atoms are imparted with kinetic energy. Many such moving atoms are heat energy. As the reactor heats up, fission decreases, controlling the release of energy. The heat is transformed to electricity by a heat engine.
1 MeV is one million electron volts. The 200 MeV from one fission is only 0.000000000032 joules.
Fermi gets credit for the first controlled fission reaction at the University of Chicago, but natural fission reactors existed on Earth 2 billion years ago. Uranium-235 decays naturally, so U-235 today represents only 0.7% of uranium, with U-238 being the remaining 99.3% of natural mined uranium.
Slow neutrons split U-235 better than fast ones hot from a fission. Fast neutrons slow down (moderate their speed) when colliding with the light hydrogen (H) atoms in water, then they fission an atom. As the water heats and boils away, there are fewer H atoms to slow down neutrons, so not enough fissions to maintain the chain reaction. Eventually the natural reactor cools, ground water leaks in, and the cycle restarts.
Aside: The GE boiling water reactor works on this principle.
The new company ThorCon has precisely the objective of mass-producing emission-free power plants at global scale, sufficient to solve the energy/climate crisis. The plant is specifically designed for shipyard mass production.
ThorCon plans to build plants cheaply and generate electricity that is so inexpensive that economics alone persuades countries to choose fission plants, not build fossil fuel burning plants.
The benefits of success are checking global CO2 emissions and helping poor people in developing nations rise to a level of modest prosperity, checking population growth.
Alvin Weinberg of Oak Ridge National Laboratory led the project that became the liquid fission, molten salt reactor. He also held the patent for his design of the pressurized water reactor (PWR), and educated Rickover, who led the project to power the submarine Nautilus with it. The PWR was well suited to naval uses. Weinberg’s team built two prototype MSRs. The ThorCon team still refers to the documents archived by Weinberg‘s team.
The technicians pictured are assembling the graphite moderator rods. Molten fluoride salts with dissolved uranium fluoride will flow up through graphite moderator channels, which slow neutrons which cause the chain reaction, only when the flowing salt is within the graphite moderator. Outside the moderator the salt cools by transferring its heat energy away, then returns to the moderator.
This is a section of the Table of Nuclides, a version of chemistry’s Periodic Table of the Elements that includes elements’ isotopes, too. Fissionable Uranium-235 in the middle has a nucleus with 92 protons and 143 neutron, totaling 235 nucleons. Uranium-238 is not easily fissioned but can absorb a neutron to make U-239, which decays to Neptunium-239, which decays to Plutonium-239, which is a fissile fuel, too. Thorium-232 converts to fissile U-233 the same way.
Breeder reactors would make all their fissile fuel from fertile U-238 and/or Th-232. ThorCon is only a converter, getting half its energy from U-235 fuel, which must be replaced in operation.
This is the graphite core of Oak Ridge’s second molten salt reactor, used for 4 years in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE).
Serpent is a European set of computer programs used to simulate the individual reactions of neutrons in a fission reactor. Each simulated fission event might lead to many different outcomes, which are simulated using random numbers, hence the term Monte Carlo simulation. An engineer might run a million simulations, then tweak the design, then repeat.
Besides modeling neutron interactions, engineers compute the hydraulics of the flowing molten salt and how heat is transferred within the graphite and salt.
1. Like the Oklo or GE BWR reactor, letting the fuel temperature rise reduces or stops fission.
2. Some fission reactors, including the ThorCon prototype planned for Indonesia, have shutdown rods of gadolinium or other metals that can be dropped to absorb neutrons, quenching the fission chain reaction.
3. Another way to stop fission is to drain out the molten salt containing the fuel.
The ThorCon power plant design has the reactor part in the replaceable red Can, suspended within (not touching) an annular cold-wall cooled by passive, naturally convecting water. Radiative cooling from the drain tanks to the cold wall keeps everything from overheating from fission product decay after the the Can drains.
ThorCon’s reactor is designed to be passively safe, not requiring operators to take corrective actions if parts fail.
The ThorCon cold-wall cooling water naturally circulates to a radiator at the bottom of a cooling pond open to the air.
This cutaway of ThorCon’s two Cans illustrates secondary molten salt in green piping, flowing to a silver heat exchanger to heat another sort of molten salt in lavender piping, that flows to the silver steam generator that makes high pressure, superheated steam to power a turbine.
The steam turbine is a large, precision, expensive, two-stage heat engine that spins the electricity generator.
Transformers and circuit breakers are in the hall on the left, feeding the transmission lines on the towers above deck.
To meet the objective of persuading developing nations to choose 24×7, clean fission generated electricity rather than coal-fired generators, ThorCon’s capital cost, fuel cost, and electricity cost are less than coal’s.
The fundamental reason is that the energy density of uranium-235 is a million times that of coal.
ThorCon’s designers and managers are experienced at specifying ships for shipyard construction. ThorCon’s hull is small, relative to the capabilities of shipyards.
competition among east Asian shipyards resulted in new construction technology using special steel fabrication machinery that reduces costs and time for shipbuilding. This is the reason it’s possible for a single shipyard to build 40 ThorCon power plants per year, generating 20 GW.
On the left is a shipyard capable of building ThorCon power plants. The entire plants will be towed to the installation site.
ThorCon and Indonesia plan to site the prototype power plant in that island nation.
In operation the Can containing the reactor per se will be replaced every 4 year, using the special purpose CanShip.
Recall this capability of a large shipyard.
12,000 GW is the electric power needed in the Grand Strategy for Electrifying Our World.
By building 12,000 GW of liquid fission power plants in 30 years, we can potentially check global warming.
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