Saturday, August 3, 2013

ITER: How it works - 09 October 2009 - New Scientist

New Scientist

quote:

Future fusion power plants will have to produce their own tritium. They will use "tritium breeding modules" made from lithium, which turns into tritium when bombarded by neutrons from the fusion reaction. Lithium is a light metal, as abundant as lead.
comment:

ITER is therefore, a breeder.  They are building a super sophisticated breeder reactor.

There's a much simpler way to do breeding, and it was proven in the lab over 40 years ago.  It is called the molten salt reactor.  Adapt this to thorium, and you have a "thermal" breeder.  That's in comparison with the "fast" breeder, in which the terms- "fast" and "thermal" - relate to the velocity of the neutrons which do the breeding work.

 In a further comparison with ITER, tritium is bad stuff.  It's really bad if it gets into the environment.  Thorium floride isn't so scary.  However, when it is bred, it makes fissionable uranium, and you don't want to mess around with this stuff.  But in normal form, it is a solid, and a lot easier to control, I would think.  In contrast, tritium is a gas, and it can leak.  As a matter of fact, being that tritium is a form of hydrogen, it is all but impossible to keep it from leaking.  That's what makes it really bad stuff.

So, ITER is being presented as safe, but is it really?  On the other hand, molten-salt reactors aren't considered safe.  Why not?  If ITER is safe, molten salt reactors are just as safe, if not safer?  Not to mention, the technology is already proven.

There simply is no reason not to develop the molten-salt reactor.


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