Thorium, the Next Nuclear Fuel?

mrshermanoaks writes "When the choices for developing nuclear energy were being made, we went with uranium because it had the byproduct of producing plutonium that could be weaponized. But thorium is safer and easier to work with, and may cause a lot fewer headaches. 'It's abundant — the US has at least 175,000 tons of the stuff — and doesn't require costly processing. It is also extraordinarily efficient as a nuclear fuel. As it decays in a reactor core, its byproducts produce more neutrons per collision than conventional fuel. The more neutrons per collision, the more energy generated, the less total fuel consumed, and the less radioactive nastiness left behind. Even better, Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. The design is based on the lab's finding that thorium dissolves in hot liquid fluoride salts. This fission soup is poured into tubes in the core of the reactor, where the nuclear chain reaction — the billiard balls colliding — happens. The system makes the reactor self-regulating: When the soup gets too hot it expands and flows out of the tubes — slowing fission and eliminating the possibility of another Chernobyl. Any actinide can work in this method, but thorium is particularly well suited because it is so efficient at the high temperatures at which fission occurs in the soup.' So why are we not building these reactors?"

Comments

Problems

[SteveAstro]

I am working on the very periphery of the problem, designing equipment to measure the properties of hot radioactive molten fluorides - in the region between 900-1700 C, for European nuclear researchers. Clearly one of the problems which should be obvious is that we are looking at cutting edge material technology to work at these temperatures and neutron fluxes !

Because nuclear is still "scary"

[Rehnberg]

I brought this article up in my government class a few weeks ago (we spend more time discussing what the government is doing than how it's set up), and I couldn't convince a single person that this new kind of reactor was safe. Let's face it: years of not building reactors combined with years of scare tactics from our government about other countries building reactors can't be undone with science. Propaganda > Science

Re:Why not build a "not that bad"-technology?

[QuoteMstr]

We want a decentralized energy production to become independent from big energy companies and to produce the energy more safely

Without realizing it, you've stuck upon the real psychological motivation behind the "decentralized everything" movement: it's political. It's a reflective reaction against the complexity of modern society, and against globalization.

Every honest intellectual person knows that sometimes centralization is desirable. Centralization is cheaper, more efficient, and often cleaner and safer as well. It's a lot cheaper for one building on campus to generate steam than for shack to have its own heater. It's easier to scrub the output of 100 coal plants than that of 10,000 automobiles.

Yet there are otherwise-intelligent people arguing for community-run, small, decentralized infrastructure even where it's batshit insane, like for nuclear power plants. This is not the product of honest reasoning, but an expression to live out the fantasy of living in a commune in the woods.

You want to stem the power of large corporations? I'm with you. Regulate them. But sometimes scaling up an operation is a no-brainer.

The attitude that small is always beautiful is the product of a small mind.

Re:Thorium's Better But Also Harder To Work With

[Bigjeff5]

India seems to have come to the complete opposite conclusion with their thorium reactor.

It makes sense too, given that thorium requires no pre-processing and produces reactor-grade Uranium as its primary byproduct. By using the Uranium as well (which they have found difficult to import) they extend the life of the cores out to two years, which is practically unheard of.