@_G_R_
According to the established rule of thumb, we can safely say: since Matt made a video about it, the technology will not develop at all
@john_in_phoenix
A note about the "only 200 years of uranium" concept. When "burned" in a nuclear reactor, less than 2% of the fuel is actually consumed, and another 2% or so is converted to byproducts that poison the reaction. The other 94 to 96% of the "spent" fuel can be separated and reused. France does this, most of the world (including the USA) do not, and store the 94% usable fuel as waste for thousands of years. I reality we have more than 1,000 years of uranium if we decide to use it.
@GamaheaMusic
Been hearing about Thorium for decades. It's about time someone did something to make it useful.
@IOUaUsername
Indonesia are probably buying in not because they want the power, but because they want the project to work out. The British tin mining industry left huge piles of thorium rich sand behind in Indonesia and Malaysia, and a functional thorium reactor makes this a valuable commodity that's easily sold since it has already been dug up, plus also deals with a toxic waste issue since this sand isn't great to live near.
@XAn0nymousX0
Man we had Thorium like 20 years ago in world of warcraft. They got a whole Brotherhood going over it and everything.
@douglasbaty3097
June2025: While in college in the early '70s, my atomic professor suggested putting "hot" nuke waste in a sealed capsule and dropping it in a large tank of water to keep the building we were sitting in warm. The heat would last more than a lifetime as the nuke waste automatically decays. Think of 100 lbs of waste sealed in a 2 ton chamber burried in the basement.
There are concerns that it could be stolen and used to make a TNT bomb into a dirty bomb. Outside of that you get free heat with no fossile fuel bill every month. At the end of 100 years the nasty nuke waste is 80% less radioactive (but still deadly).
Retired in Sacto.
@LogicalNiko
Copenhagen Atomics took the most brilliant approach, I started seeing their stuff pop up around 2018. They basically decided to leave the thorium reactor part last in their approach. They knew there would be lots of roadblocks and regulations and no one was willing to accept allowing a company doing oak ridge style tests. So they took the research from Oak Ridge and said "What are all the difficulties they called out as non-thorium problems. Thus they tackled the metallurgy problem, that molten salts are highly corrosive to most steels. Thus they worked on researching alloys. They focused on the water problem, even the slightest hint of moisture is a big problem with sodium salts. Thus they developed sealed components that required zero servicing in the reactor lifetime. They developed pumps designed to operate continuously in the high temperatures of molten salts. They designed custom monitoring systems. They did temperature, viscosity, and flow research modeling piping sizes, heat jacketed systems, cooling systems, reaction chamber design, etc. They then even tackled refueling and extraction of thorium and uranium out of molten sodium. And finally they handled production and assembly. The only thing they now need is a country (other than Denmark due to their strict anti-nuclear laws) to give them the licensing to run tests.
@IanZainea1990
0:10 "closer than ever" ... So... Still on the horizon. Lol.
@emilemil1
Saying that something is "closer than ever" is such a nothingburger of a statement.
@TheGearhorn
I did not know that I needed nuclear reactors to come in Lego flavor, but apparently I did. Look at how well those stack together.
@JohnSmith-gu9gl
Important note why 3 tanks are used!: Three tanks are used when the plug melts down because a chain reaction can only occur if a critical mass is reached. With other words, when everything is divided by 3, there is no critical mass and the chain reaction stops much faster. I would like to know how the core is swapped and recycled and replaced. It is hard to imagine how this is done in a highly radioactive scenario.
@zeftv7795
Very exciting. I will admit my one concern is the 5y shelf-life for upgrades and maintenance. The quote in the video speaks to it as if that's a benefit, instead of using 50+ year old tech. While true it's nice to have the option to swap out, it's also a benefit to have systems that are good enough to last through 50+ years. One of the most important pieces of modern design, is getting back to making things that last. Anyone that's bought an appliance and replaced it 2-3x in the past 20 years understands that issue.
@polodog7458
The realist in me knows that practical, commercial thorium reactors won't happen in my lifetime, but… dammit, I love watching every video that comes out talking about them, solid-state batteries, fusion reactors, and graphene. Please keep making em
@impudentdomain
Just want to point out that I have been hearing promises like this since the 1970's.
@MysterySemicolon
There's a lot of benefits you get from a Thorium cycle that the US energy commission knew full well about back in the 60s. The reason they didn't go with it then was because it doesn't enrich for weapons. The current pursuit of modular, continuous development is really intriguing for me. A company can use the heat for their plastic recovery process. One can use it for desalination. Another can use it for heating entire neighbourhoods. A lot of different applications and functions aside from the power generation traditional nuclear plants are limited to.
@imdagrizz
anyone interested in this tech Kirk Sorenson has been speaking around the world about this for over a decade. There is GREAT talk on youtube "Kirk Sorenson at Protospace", its long but it gives you a realy great understanding of this whole thing. Thank you Matt for bringing this to a larger audience.
@OleksandrKononenko-l4m
First half of video I was wondering how they have handled corrosion. As it is the nemesis of a molten salt reactors. Turns out - they don't)) They just let it corrode and exchange the whole reactor. It's ok, if this is an economically feasible. But what about handling reactor afterwards? It's gonna be highly radioactive
@4thorder
I have been watching this for years now - I am very pleased to see that progress is finally being made at this scale. The fact that it is so much more safe, is so much smaller, can use previous waste, are just a few positive attributes.
@ExpectDragons
Two things killed off thorium reactor research. Metals at the time would corrode but that was overcome decades ago. But more importantly for cold war US, it's harder to make nukes from the fissile uranium Thorium reactors produce. The US military had the aircraft nuclear propulsion (ANP) program, which started in the 1940s, aimed to develop a nuclear-powered bomber with an extremely long range. While a nuclear reactor was successfully tested on a modified Convair NB-36H bomber, and a molten salt reactor was developed, it was ultimately cancelled.
@UndecidedMF