Thorium Nuclear Power in Texas
david@txthorium.com
Texas Thorium is poised to lead in safe, clean, cheap, nuclear energy. We are a Texas-based company, with Texas leadership that has already made significant R&D investments and will partner primarily with a Texas university and the state of Texas, and others. Currently, we hold several molten salt reactor patents with other MSR innovations in the patent process. Texas needs its own Thorium facility, similar to its independent electric grid.
The goal of Texas Thorium LLC is to be in full production of molten salt small modular reactors in less than 3 years. This will be done through an innovative approach to existing technologies using Thorium as a fuel source. Texas Thorium's fuel source is cheap, clean, efficient, readily available, carbon-free, and extremely safe compared to other types of power generation. With Nuclear Energy becoming more accepted as a Green Energy, the future looks bright. A thorium reactor is smaller and cheaper than a uranium reactor. Thorium is 4x as abundant as uranium (see picture 3 below). As you can see in picture 4, the reactor will be 1/3 the size vs. an equivalent uranium reactor. We use 1/35 as much fuel as needed in the uranium reactor. This also means Thorium produces 35x less waste than uranium.
In the past, thorium has a 50+ year history as an energy source but has been delayed because of limited technological advancements. Texas Thorium has brought molten salt reactors back to the forefront of clean sustainable energy by applying 21st century technology. Now, with advancements in metallurgy, microchip processors, and 3D printing systems, the energy's full potential can be reached. The Texas Thorium Molten Salt Reactor is ideal for energy production because it is compact and can be placed in any environment since it requires no cooling pond or reservoir.
Texas Thorium is also researching and developing additional benefits of MSRs such as water desalination, recycling of nuclear waste, and the creation of important elements for medical and scientific use.
Key Advantages
The thorium nuclear process is simpler and safer than uranium.
Thorium is 100x more fuel efficient.
Thorium is 100x less expensive and more abundant.
Thorium generates 100x less hazardous nuclear waste with a shorter half-life.
The thorium reactor is always online and comes in a smaller footprint.
Thorium is a cleaner supply with almost no waste.
Thorium is the best Green Energy power source.
Why is nuclear better than solar?
536 A.D. was the worst year our planet endured (read more here: https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/20/health/worst-year-536-scli-intl/index.html). A perfect storm of adverse events caused civilization to lose its primary source of energy—the sun—wiping out nearly 50% of the Mediterranean population. This energy crisis wreaked devastation and deterioration across the planet.
We need technology to defeat the next Dark Age right now. We cannot wait for it to happen again, then develop it. The best energy technology is nuclear. The best nuclear technology is thorium nuclear technology. Get nuclear energy, and you will survive.
Safer
Thorium has a safer and stable reactor processing. It’s a molten-salt process which uses a less pressurized reactor. If reactor power fails, it will automatically shut down orderly.
Thorium does not use a water solution, so it cannot boil over or explode. Instead, a molten-salt solution is used.
The fuel supply for a thorium reactor is 99% less radioactive than the fuel supply for a uranium reactor. You can safely handle it without protection from radioactivity.
More Fuel efficient
Thorium provides a much more fuel efficient process than uranium, coal, oil, natural gas, and any renewable source. If thorium reactors provided all the needed electricity for the US, we would only need 5,000 tons of thorium per year as opposed to 35,000 tons of uranium per year, or 3.5 million tons of coal per year.
Because a thorium power plant is so efficient and does not need an external water source, it can be located almost anywhere electricity and water are needed—such as deserts or steel plants.
Simpler
The thorium process is simpler with in-line fueling and waste removal providing a 100% continuous process operation.
Thorium doesn’t need high pressure water like a uranium reactor. Owing to this, thorium reactors can be smaller and located anywhere.
Thorium reactors are not turned off for refueling like uranium reactors, or when it gets dark like solar, or seasonally like wind and other renewable sources. Because it is simple to operate, we can make smaller power stations that are still easy to run.
Reduced nuclear waste
Since the thorium process is so efficient, the reduced nuclear waste is only about 400 tons from US thorium reactors per year.
Current uranium waste is 30,000 tons per year. Also, thorium’s small nuclear waste only has a half-life of 300 years, not 10,000 years.
Cheaper
Thorium fuel is much cheaper and more abundant than uranium fuel. Thorium is found when mining for rare earths with the current US stockpile of mined thorium exceeding 35,000 tons.
Compared to coal, thorium requires less product to ship-in by a factor of one million. Coal needs thousands of railroad cars to be continually hauling the coal in. Owing to this, thorium is also responsible for one million times less CO2 pollution than coal.
Coal also has liquid waste and gas waste. The only thing coal has going for it is that it is cheap, and yet thorium is even cheaper.
Cleaner
In addition to producing less nuclear waste than uranium reactors, thorium power is 1 million times cleaner than coal. It releases no CO2 and requires significantly less fuel to be transported to the power plant by a factor of one million.
In fact, a byproduct of thorium reactors is the planet’s most precious resource: clean water. Thorium reactors can desalinate water for free.
Compares the raw material needed by thorium, uranium, and coal to produce an equivalent amount of electricity. Thorium is 200 times better than uranium and 3,500,000 times better than coal.
Thorium is an ideal source of energy and is abundant in the US. There is mined thorium rock ready for use stored underground in shipping containers. This is enough thorium to power the world for a decade.
A simple thorium reactor that operates at a low pressure and a temperature of 600ºC with many other safety features.
The comparison reactor process is shown between uranium vs. thorium. Both diagrams produce 1 ton of fission products. Look how much smaller the thorium reactor is and the small amount of fuel it needs.
Shows the four choices (pressure and temperature) in a nuclear reactor. The best choice is liquid salt for low pressure and temperature.
Thorium can supply 198MeV of energy from a single atom.
Technical Advantages:
Inherent, passive safety through fluid fuel form and low pressures.
High temperature operation offers high conversion efficiencies and air cooling offers siting flexibility away from water bodies.
Extremely low fuel preparation costs, no fuel fabrication costs.
Excellent chemistry match with thorium/uranium fuel cycle.
Salts are chemically stable and impervious to radiation damage, enabling unlimited fuel burn-up and continuous solvent recycling.
Uranium-233 fissile fuel is highly unsuitable for weapons diversion and is readily down-blended with depleted uranium in an emergency.
Conclusions:
Thorium is abundant, has incredible energy density, and can be utilized in thermal-spectrum reactors
World thorium energy supplies will last for tens of thousands of years
Solid-fueled reactors have been disadvantaged in using thorium due to their inability to continuously reprocess
Fluid-fueled reactors, such as the liquid-fluoride reactor, offer the promise of complete consumption of thorium in energy generation
The world would be safer with thorium-fueled reactors
Not an avenue for weapons production
The US should adopt a new “business model” for nuclear power for the country’s long-term strategic needs
Thorium can supply energy for Earth, for a thousand years.
Thorium reactor development timeline.