The Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor: Why Didn't This Happen (and why is now the right time?)

Uploaded by GoogleTechTalks on Dec 22, 2011

Kirk Sorensen explains what went wrong with the nuclear power industry and what needs to be done to set it right again.  That is to say, let's move forward with LFTRs ( Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors).

The first part of the video is fairly technical.  But the thing that goes wrong is the politics during the Nixon Administration.  It continued through the subsequent administrations until the technology was forgotten.  A key challenge is to reeducate the public on the advantages of the technology, which has already been proven in the laboratory.  It only needs to pick up where it left off so that it can be commercialized.  The world needs this.

If you are impatient with highly technical discussions, just skip over the first part of the video.  Skip to about 8:35 minutes into the video, where the discussion about funding of various approaches to nuclear energy.  I recommend watching all of the video, but if the first part is too technical, start about at the 8:35 mark and watch from there.

At about 12:00 into the video, President Nixon audio and video is played.  He wanted to go into the direction of fast breeder as opposed to molten salt ( slow breeder) reactors.

In short, it was a political development, not a technical problem with molten salt reactors.  The country took the fast breeder direction and the molten salt reactor technology was forgotten.