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210 comments on Mining the Oceans: Can We Extract Minerals from Seawater?
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210 comments on Mining the Oceans: Can We Extract Minerals from Seawater?
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Russia has had a prototype breeder for many years, and are building a full scale one.
Molten salt reactors etc have already been prototyped as far back as the 60's, and what is involved in building them is well understood.
The main thing holding back more efficient reactors has been the low price of uranium and fossil fuels, and so considering that a relatively small exploration effort has greatly expanded known uranium resources and we know perfectly well how to build reactors to burn the more abundant thorium then very modest progress is required to reach an efficiency at which the extraction of uranium from seawater has a perfectly acceptable EROI by the time we need to do so.
So, as I previously stated, we have sufficient uranium and thorium for our needs at the moment, and as far as we know there are no show stoppers to prevent their making a major contribution to energy supply for many thousands of years.
Thank you for clarifying that in detail.
An alternative to extracting uranium from seawater would be to extract thorium from it, which is much more abundant and so would have a greater EROI without going to a breeder program.
The estimates given here for the abundance of thorium seem excessive, as they show it as 3,000 times more abundant in seawater than uranium!
http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/Th.html
http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/U.html
they nevertheless serve to illustrate that we could, perhaps, simply burn thorium extracted from seawater in CANDU reactors.
There is also a good understanding of how to increase the efficiency of CANDU reactors to very high levels.
I've tracked down better figures for uranium in seawater - the previous source I was suspicions of has it's decimals tangled.
Should be around 3ppm:
http://213.253.134.43/oecd/pdfs/browseit/6608031E.PDF
6608031E.PDF
This sounds reasonable, as thorium being around 3 times as abundant in the sea as uranium would tie in nicely with crustal abundances.
So by simply burning thorium instead of uranium, assuming the technology to get that from seawater is similar, which there seems no reason to doubt, the efficiencies Ugo suggests could be multiplies by 3 times, or maybe 4 if uranium could be extracted in the same process.
Since this has taken a just a few hours to work out, it does not seem as though any suggestion that this article proves the impossibility of ever obtaining all the nuclear fuel we need from the sea would be well founded.
David,
Your link says 3-4 ppb on p. 27, not ppm. This is in agreement with Ugo's table. On the other had, that figure is not better in any sense than what Ugo has given.
Chris
Sorry for the confusion - in any case, the point is that thorium is 3 times as abundant as uranium in the crust and seawater, if the decimal places would behave themselves.
Of course, no research has been done on the practicality of extracting thorium from seawater, as it is so cheap and abundant. if we do need to at some time in the future, decades away at least, at first blush it would appear that the economics of extraction and the EROI would be several times better than Ugo has suggested, even without assuming advanced burning technologies.
David,
I see the difficulty now. No, thorium is much less soluble than uranium: http://www.marscigrp.org/ocpertbl.html
Chris
Thanks for setting me straight on that Chris.
Scratch seawater thorium!
Good job there is plenty on land! ;-)
"simply burning thorium"
Burning thorium isn't that simple, I'm afraid. In short: There were (and are) several attempts to do this in pilot plants, but so far this wasn't successful.
My understanding is that thorium burn has been successful in CANDU reactors:
http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/brat_fuel.htm
If this is in error, perhaps you would supply better data.
Thanks.
I'm not an expert in this technology, but this was my conclusion I remember from a general research on this technology a few months ago. As for your weblink: Keep in mind that this document is from the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, so the author may tend to have a rather optimistic look on the outcome. To be sure you should also check it with statements from neutral or sceptical entities.
I just grabbed the first one that came up on a list by googling, as it is, AFAIK, common knowledge.
If you don't like my link, do you actually have any links at all or information to support your statement?
Yes, of course, but from a certain point I concluded to discard this technology, so I didn't collect much data.
But if you find something that might convince me please free to post it right here or send me a short email.
Not a problem, and if I chance on anything authoritative I will forward it, as I have not bothered investigating as AFAIK it is not in question - incidentally the Westinghouse reactor is also supposed to be adaptable to burn thorium.
Perhaps it is worth pointing out though that I believe the conventions of this site, at least as I have observed them, are that when you are asked for your sources for statements such as you made you substantiate or withdraw - not liking the link I gave is on a different level to not having any backing at all.
I am not too bothered about it though, so unless I hear something from you which substantiates in some way your comment, I will continue in my previous persuasion.
I've spotted a more detailed discussion here:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html
Thorium
You are correct in that not every issue is fully resolved especially the high cost of fabrication as thorium is cheap enough that reprocessing issues are hardly critical for the present, but the main reason for the lack of development appear to be the same as for all the more advanced techniques, that uranium is so cheap and plentiful at the moment that no-one has bothered to develop alternatives.
But to conclude from that that the difficulties are so severe as to warrant 'discarding the technology' as you have done is strange, and may perhaps indicate that you were in no mood to reach a favourable conclusion regarding the technology, IOW perhaps looking for an excuse to reject it.
Everything has some level of difficulty, and thorium technology is hardly unique in this.
Wasn't successful? I'm aware of two demonstrations said to be highly successful:
I think you've sucumbed to the hype here about the molten salt reactor. It did not have a breeding blanket. It did run on U233 for a little while.
Chris
what does breeding have to do with burning it? The U-233 bred from Th-232 burned just fine in both, and was bred nicely in Shippingport.
The MSRE did not require a breeding blanket to prove the system. The elements of neutron economy were proven in the reactors which made the U-233 for its test, and Shippingport demonstrated an all-up system in a converted LWR.
The MSRE is an example of the kind of reactors which
Do you propose that the U233 used was derived in a manner that was self-sustaining? If so, please provide details. Otherwise, stand corrected.
Chris
Define your terms, troll.
You're right, Chris.
The 1977-1982 Shippingport mini-reactor contained .55 tons of U-233 bred at a different breeder reactor and 40 tons of thorium to produce 235 MW thermal of power(60 MWe).
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=6972
If you want to evaluate the practicality of a thorium program you should look at India's nuke program which was required to use domestic thorium as fuel. They have 17 existing small(most <<500 MWe) mainly CANDU style heavy water reactors for a total for India of 3779 MWe, which is smaller than the largest single US nuke, Palos Verde and the largest nuke plant Japan's Kashiwazaki is 8500 MW.
The new generation of reactors for India are
uranium based and many of their current reactors
have been running half-loads due a shortage of uranium and are buying model Russian VVER-1000 design LWR instead.
They actually have a goal of 20000 MW of nukes in 2020. I believe they only think they can get there with uranium based technology.
Why is India ABANDONING thorium?
Well, they simply haven't been able to push the technology
and are still desparately dependent of uranium as I'm sure you can see as it is in the news(Singh-Bush agreement).
Thorium is certainly a fuel, but it currently will not satisfy nuclear cornucopians who are addicted to uranium whether they admit it or not.
http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf53.html
You are right to question the practicality of the thorium as a major nuclear program based entirely on thorium in India is switching to
uranium.
Rather than citing theoretical studies I'd like to hear the explanations for why this is happening in India from the thorium lovers.
Also CANDU heavy water reactors require much more heavy water than LWRs because deuterium is required for moderation AND cooling.
Abandoning the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was a very grave error. One hopes that someone will have the guts to repudiate that move.
Chris
Russia current breeder reactor is a commercial size reactor 600 Megawatts.
It generates about 3800 GW·h/year.
Over 25 times bigger than Nevado One (one of the largest solar thermal electricity generators)
It is over 6 times more than all of the solar PV generated in the USA.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table3....
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf98.html
Construction has started on Beloyarsk-4 which is the first BN-800, a new, more powerful (880 MWe) FBR, which is actually the same overall size as BN-600. It has improved features including fuel flexibility - U+Pu nitride, MOX, or metal, and with breeding ratio up to 1.3. However, during the plutonium disposition campaign it will be operated with a breeding ratio of less than one. It has much enhanced safety and improved economy - operating cost is expected to be only 15% more than VVER. It is capable of burning up to 2 tonnes of plutonium per year from dismantled weapons and will test the recycling of minor actinides in the fuel. Further BN-800 units are planned.
Russia has experimented with several lead-cooled reactor designs, and has used lead-bismuth cooling for 40 years in reactors for its Alfa class submarines. Pb-208 (54% of naturally-occurring lead) is transparent to neutrons. A significant new Russian design is the BREST fast neutron reactor, of 300 MWe or more with lead as the primary coolant, at 540°C, and supercritical steam generators. It is inherently safe and uses a U+Pu nitride fuel. No weapons-grade Pu can be produced (since there is no uranium blanket), and spent fuel can be recycled indefinitely, with on-site facilities. A pilot unit is being built at Beloyarsk and 1200 MWe units are planned.
A smaller and newer Russian design is the Lead-Bismuth Fast Reactor (SVBR) of 75-100 MWe. This is an integral design, with the steam generators sitting in the same Pb-Bi pool at 400-480°C as the reactor core, which could use a wide variety of fuels. The unit would be factory-made and shipped as a 4.5m diameter, 7.5m high module, then installed in a tank of water which gives passive heat removal and shielding. A power station with 16 such modules is expected to supply electricity at lower cost than any other new Russian technology as well as achieving inherent safety and high proliferation resistance. (Russia built 7 Alfa-class submarines, each powered by a compact 155 MWt Pb-Bi cooled reactor, and 70 reactor-years operational experience was acquired with these.)
In China, a 65 MWt fast neutron reactor - the Chinese Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) - is under construction near Beijing and due to achieve criticality in 2008. There has been some Russian assistance in its development. R&D on fast neutron reactors started in 1964. A 600 MWe prototype fast reactor is envisaged by 2020 and there is talk of a 1500 MWe one by 2030. CNNC expects the technology to become predominant by mid century.
In India, research continues. At the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research a 40 MWt fast breeder test reactor (FBTR) has been operating since 1985. In addition, the tiny Kamini there is employed to explore the use of thorium as nuclear fuel, by breeding fissile U-233.
In 2002 the regulatory authority issued approval to start construction of a 500 MWe prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam and this is now under construction by BHAVINI. It is expected to be operating in 2010, fuelled with uranium-plutonium oxide (the reactor-grade Pu being from its existing PHWRs) and with a thorium blanket to breed fissile U-233. This will take India's ambitious thorium program to stage 2, and set the scene for eventual full utilisation of the country's abundant thorium to fuel reactors. Four more such fast reactors have been announced for construction by 2020. Initial Indian FBRs will be have mixed oxide fuel but these will be followed by metallic-fuelled ones to enable shorter doubling time.
======= from Wikipedia
Currently operating
Phénix, 1973, France, 233 MWe, restarted 2003 for experiments on transmutation of nuclear waste, scheduled end of life 2014
Jōyō, 1977-1997, 2003-, Japan
BN-600, 1981, Russia, 600 MWe, scheduled end of life 2010
FBTR, 1985, India, 10.5 MWt
Under construction
Monju reactor, 300MWe, in Japan. was closed in 1995 following a serious sodium leak and fire. It is expected to reopen in 2008.
PFBR, Kalpakkam, India, 500 MWe. Planned to open 2010
China Experimental Fast Reactor, 65 MWt, planned 2009
BN-800, Russia, planned 2012
In design phase
KALIMER, 600 MWe, South Korea, projected 2030
Generation IV reactor US-proposed international effort, after 2030
Gas-cooled fast reactor
Sodium-cooled fast reactor
Lead-cooled fast reactor
JSFR, Japan, project for a 1500 MWe reactor begin in 2010