Most of the separative work is needed to go from natural uranium, which has 0.7% uranium-235, to 20% U-235. This is because the liquid fluoride thorium reactors did not produce as much plutonium, needed for developing nuclear weapons, as uranium-powered reactors. There’s little reason to consider thorium, molten salt reactors and Gates’ “traveling wave” TerraPower technology when considering the future of energy. By the time any of these technologies actually see the market, they’ll be like the Christian concept of a god in a world of science, with nowhere to stand and nothing to do. But the chart above highlights the precipitous drop in the price of both wind and solar technologies. You’ll note what isn’t cheapest: nuclear. Most of the reactors in Japan that were shut down won’t be coming back on line. They are all opportunity costs.”. The subsection "List of thorium-fueled reactors" is proposed to be split to a new article List of thorium-fueled reactors for the following reasons: . The New, All New, Really New Toyota Mirai -- It's NEW! More neutrons are released per neutronabsorbed in the fuel in a traditional (thermal) type of reactor We, the government, won’t support it. Cold War-era governments (including ours) backed uranium-based reactors because they produced plutonium — handy for making nuclear weapons. The Russkies built three on the Volga and ran them for 40 years but we didn't. The primary U.S. company advocating for thorium fuel is Thorium Power (www.thoriumpower.com). Nonetheless, the first thorium-based nuclear reactor was built at the Indian Point Energy Center, New York, in 1962. Highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium are nuclear weapons materials. There was a blip of increase due to China finally getting some of its reactors going, but that’s ended as China has delayed most new starts while simultaneously increasing wind and solar. We could have been using MHD coal generators but you can't make bombs with those. […], The thorium crowd likes to point at India and China, but China has committed to only build a couple of molten salt reactors with a 12 MW capacity that might use thorium at some future date, and India has even less ambitious plans. With water cooled reactors, obviously having moisture ingress won't lead to any … Most of the separative work is needed to go from natural uranium, which has 0.7% uranium-235, to 20% U-235. The Curve Appears to Be Flattening on CO2 Emissions. In a once-through mode, it will need both uranium enrichment (or plutonium separation) and thorium target rod production. Nuclear doesn’t get cheaper. He then goes on to offer an alternative to the prevailing view. For instance, the bone surface dose from breathing an amount (mass) of insoluble thorium is about 200 times that of breathing the same mass of uranium. I’m trying to think of something equivalently slow-paced in the world of modern generation technology that isn’t fusion generation and mostly failing. FALSE Like all reactors, Thorium reactors need some fissile material to start up. ... but very little additional work is needed to move from 20% enrichment to 90% enrichment. Advertise with CleanTechnica to get your company in front of millions of monthly readers. This was covered as part of the And then there’s the bad section of CleanTechnica‘s review of his climate action plan (tl;dr: good on carbon tax, meh on other things, really bad on energy). This makes worker protection more difficult and expensive for a given level of annual dose. In this way, thorium reactors not only generate less waste than conventional reactors, but also help to rectify the nuclear waste disposal problem. ... it's an important design criterium. Thorium nuclear power might well be the answer for some countries, though; India and China are investing heavily in its development. The claim is that if the uranium-238 content is high enough, the mixture cannot be used to make bombs without a complex uranium enrichment plant. […]. We have solutions today. “Some of these reactor designs could be demonstrated within the next decade, with commercial deployment beginning in 2030.”. And this--in large part was because the Thorium reactor operated low pressures whereas, water-cooled reactors operated the high … None of these has a chance to help solve the problem, which we need implemented now. Thorium cannot in itself power a reactor; unlike natural uranium, it does not contain enough fissile material to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. That’s an even less enthralling statement. The International Nuclear Agency predicts that the thorium cycle won’t be commercially viable while uranium is still readily available. But the real reason we use uranium over thorium is a result of wartime politics. So the proliferation problem remains — either bomb-usable uranium-233 or bomb-useable plutonium is created and can be separated out by reprocessing. Thorium reactors, some say, can pro... Today we're going to take a second look at a technology that, in the past few years, has become something of a cult icon. Although U-235 is found in nature, it is only 0.7 percent of natural uranium, so the proportion of U-235 must be industrially increased to make “enriched uranium” for use in reactors. U-232 also has highly radioactive decay products. Contrary to the claims made or implied by thorium proponents, however, thorium doesn’t solve the proliferation, waste, safety, or cost problems of nuclear power, and it still faces major technical hurdles for commercialization. Maybe commercial deployment beginning in 12 years. Physicists Detect the "Spooky Popcorn of the Universe", Page-Turning Science Books: The First Female Physicians, Breaking Drug Taboos, and a Look Inside Crime Labs. At the time, the evidence was just as clear. That’s the reality of nuclear technology advances. France has invested € 1 million investigating corrosion problems found when a test reactor in the U.S. was shut down in 1969 after four years of operation. Because we can’t use thorium to make bombs, we have ignored thorium since the 1940s. Similarly, other Gen III reactors in France and Finland are years and billions over budget. As the World Nuclear Association documents, nuclear started its decline in 2006, long before Fukushima. Additionally, there is the persistent perception that thorium reactors are intrinsically proliferation-resistant. Let’s start with what the World Nuclear Association has to say about Gen IV reactors. By Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd In this scenario thorium would be the base fuel in a so-called "breeder reactor." Thorium “fuel” has been proposed as an alternative to uranium fuel in nuclear reactors. Molten salt nuclear reactors. Thorium itself is a neutron poison and needs to be irradiated by neutrons (coming from somewhere) in order to start making good nuclear fuel. If the spent fuel is not reprocessed, thorium-232 is very-long lived (half-life:14 billion years) and its decay products will build up over time in the spent fuel. Using thorium in a nuclear reactor creates radioactive waste that proponents claim would only have to be isolated from the environment for 500 years, as opposed to the irradiated uranium-only fuel that remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Reprocessed thorium creates even more risks due to the highly radioactive U-232 created in the reactor. It should also be noted that inhalation of a unit of radioactivity of thorium-232 or thorium-228 (which is also present as a decay product of thorium-232) produces a far higher dose, especially to certain organs, than the inhalation of uranium containing the same amount of radioactivity. He regularly publishes analyses of low-carbon technology and policy in sites including Newsweek, Slate, Forbes, Huffington Post, Quartz, CleanTechnica and RenewEconomy, and his work is regularly included in textbooks. In fact, India has been trying to develop a thorium breeder fuel cycle for decades but has not yet done so commercially. Thorium may be abundant and possess certain technical advantages, but it does not mean that it is economical. Thorium isn't fissile on its own, but it can absorb a neutron and decay to U-233 (which is fissile). An advantage of thorium is that it absorbs slow neutrons relatively efficiently (compared to uranium-238) to produce fissile uranium-233. Nine Years Later, Many Scientists Still Ignore Their Data, How the U.S. Could Have an All-Renewable Energy Grid, Energy Scavengers: Static Electricity Could Power the World. This is because U-233 is five atomic weight units lighter than U-238, compared to only three for U-235. Maybe in 2002 the thought of competitive nuclear generation was reasonable. He's available for consulting engagements, speaking engagements and Board positions. It’s worth looking at the unsubsidized LCOE for different forms of generation, per Lazard. Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? While the mix of fission products is somewhat different than with uranium fuel, the same range of fission products is created. Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium.According to proponents, a thorium fuel cycle offers several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle—including much greater abundance of thorium found on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced nuclear waste production. 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