Design Process
The diagram below shows the prototype implementation of a Thorium based nuclear reactor:
The molten salt chamber does not require the very high temperature and pressure of the uranium nuclear reactors, lowering the risk of a catastrophic failure. Even if the pressure and temperature go too high for a molten salt chamber, there is a safeguard system that immediately freezes the salt, completely stopping the uranium generation from thorium. This thorium chamber needs to be protected against corrosion because of the salinity of the solution inside it. Special inox alloys are required to build this chamber. Since the fission on this reactor is safer than uranium and it requires much less cooling water because of the lower temperature of the molten salt solution chamber, this reactor can be installed in areas far from the seas. This enables such reactors to be built even in desert areas, which is another advantage. It is recommended that this type of reactor also be implemented in smaller scale enabling them to be distributed in several areas lowering the cost of power line installation.
The helium-3 fusion reactor requires two solutions to be operational. The first one is mining the helium-3. As defined earlier, the component is not available in quantity on Earth, but it is plentiful on the Moon. The first solution design is to create a mining process which would work on the Moon as seen on this next diagram:
The harsh environment of the Moon does not allow direct human mining so an automated robot-based mining operation needs to take place. This process will dig the lunar regolith and separate the available helium-3 before using it in the fusion reactor. This reactor would be the second solution design needed as shown in the following diagram:
For the deuterium to fusion with helium-3 it is necessary for the mixture to be in a plasma form that is created by toroidal magnetic coils. To harness energy, the deuterium and helium-3 fusion release the excess energy in the form of charge particles which is then captured by a process called “Direct Collection” that converts the kinetic energy into electrical energy. This is very important in an environment that does not have large quantities of water such as the Moon. Some of those ”Direct Collection” devices are shown below: