Posted on 10/19/2009 10:03:34 AM PDT by Willie Green
PARIS — For decades, scientists have dreamed about turning thorium — an element that is less radioactive and produces less nuclear waste than uranium — into an alternative fuel for nuclear energy. Recent technological developments may be bringing the dream closer to reality.
As a naturally occurring metal that is substantially more abundant than uranium, its most common isotopic form, thorium-232, can be converted by irradiation to uranium-233, which is suitable for use in nuclear fuels.
The United States is estimated to have 400,000 tons of thorium, Turkey 344,000 tons and India 319,000 tons, according to a 2008 joint report by the Nuclear Energy Agency, a body linked to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
There are no commercial thorium reactors in operation. Instead, nuclear reactors use uranium-235 which must be enriched before it can be used as fuel. Uranium-235 accounts for 0.7 percent of the uranium now being mined.
Rajendran Raja, a physicist at Fermilab — the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois — said by telephone that the benefit of adding thorium to the fuel mix would be to create much more fuel using existing abundant resources and to reduce waste.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sounds like breeder-reactors may be coming back into view.
It would be great news if we even had the ability to build Nuclear Power plants in the US anymore. Thanks to the Greenie-Eco-Nazis this technology probably won’t matter.
Nuclear power is already safer and cleaner and we’re not allowed to run the country on it.....so what if there might be a safer and cleaner fuel it’s still NUCLEAR POWER and the enviro-marxists will stifle it like everything else.
the DUmmies are quoting some Norwegian about how thorium is NOT an enviro-friendly alternative. I have little faith in anything Norwegian these days.
Pebble bed reactor?
Breeder reactor designs using thorium go back over 50 years. The argument against them is that you have to re-process the fuel. The French and Japanese re-process fuel all the time, but American greens have prevented us from doing it.
Are there still folks out there who believe our leaders are actually interested in energy solutions?
They WANT to stop industrialization, production, and anything else that might “risk” population growth!
Mankind = BAD
Dirt = GOOD!
I am glad this is finally getting into the mainstream press.
Here is a long, but interesting lecture on this technology. click here
After 5 years of operation it did breed maybe 1 - 2% more U233. Cool science experiment, but it was not really commercially viable with the state of the technology then. The core physics in a LWR make it very complex. And the jury is still out as to if it is viable now. Maybe with a high temp liquid metal reactor.
Pebble bed reactor?
I'm not sure...
It looks like Pebble Bed still has some R&D interest in SA and China...
US support for PBMR intensifies Areva, Westinghouse contest
but I don't think it's ready for prime time yet.
No... it was the old Shippingport Plant (Pressurized Water Reactor) outside of Pittsburgh that had been in operation since 1957. In the mid 70s they shut it down, removed to old core, and loaded a new U 233 core designed at the Westinghouse Bettis Labs. It was an experiment driven by the DoE and Adm. Rickover at the Div. of Naval Reactors.
The experiment ran for 5 years after which the thorium core was removed, taken to Idaho for study, and the Shippingport plant permanently decommissioned.
its most common isotopic form, thorium-232, can be converted by irradiation to uranium-233, which is suitable for use in nuclear fuelsThanks Willie Green.
Musn’t overlook Thallium and Thulium ...
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