Friends of Oak Ridge National Lab to hear about thorium molten-salt reactors Sept. 12
Kirk Sorensen, an engineer and long-time public advocate for thorium fuel for nuclear reactors in lectures across four continents, will bring his message to Oak Ridge at noon Tuesday, Sept. 12.
A resident of Alabama, he will speak on “Thorium Molten-Salt Reactors and the Challenge of Affordable Nuclear Energy” at the monthly hybrid meeting of Friends of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His talk is open to the public.
He will deliver his lecture at the University of Tennessee Resource Center, 1201 Oak Ridge Turnpike. Attendees may bring their own lunch to eat. To view the virtual noon lecture, click on the talk title on the homepage of the www.fornl.org website and then click on the Zoom link near the top of the page describing the lecture. The founder of Flibe Energy (https://flibe.com/energy/), Sorensen and his team of engineers, chemists and nuclear physicists have been developing lithium-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR) as a potential source of electricity, heat and important materials. He gave this summary of his talk.
“The challenge of meeting world energy needs with a clean, reliable and scalable source of energy seems nearly impossible with present technologies. But naturally occurring thorium has been known to be an energy option of sufficient magnitude for this challenge since 1944.
“Its potential inspired research pioneers like Glenn Seaborg, Eugene Wigner and Alvin Weinberg. Their work in the 1950s and 1960s showed that a revolutionary type of reactor using liquid fluoride salts could safely and efficiently unlock the energy-generating potential of thorium.
“An integrated chemical processing system allowed the entire thorium fuel cycle to be realized in the reactor. While the design had tremendous technical appeal, it was and continues to be underappreciated by conventional nuclear designers.
“Many of today’s approaches to nuclear energy rely on higher assays of uranium than are currently commercially available. Some also rely on expensive forms of nuclear fuel. These will present challenges in the generation of affordable, competitive nuclear energy.
“In my talk I will discuss these problems and the way that the thorium molten-salt reactor design currently being developed by Flibe Energy shows great promise for overcoming these challenges.”
Since 2006 Sorensen has been a public proponent of thorium reactor technology, giving numerous talks across Europe and North America, as well as in Asia and Australia. After founding Flibe Energy in 2011, he led the company’s efforts in developing the LFTR and carrying out an industry-funded conceptual study for the Electric Power Research Institute.
Previously, he was chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering in Huntsville, Alabama. From 2000 to 2010, he worked for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville; during that time, he completed a two-year assignment to the U.S. Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command.
Sorensen holds master’s degrees in nuclear engineering from UT and in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Utah State University.
This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Friends of ORNL to hear about thorium molten-salt reactors Sept. 12
