India Plans for 300 MWe Thorium Fueled AHWRs

Power Technology

Over the next five years, India plans to start building a safe nuclear reactor that can be installed in the heart of Delhi or Mumbai without posing danger to people and environment.

The 300-MWe advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR), whose construction will start in the 12th plan period, would be so safe that it can be erected in the heart of any city, said S A Bhardwaj, director (technical), Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd.

The design of AHWR is such that it does not need any exclusion zone, which is currently a standard practice in nuclear power plant. NPCIL currently acquires 600 acre of land for setting up a nuclear power plant as a large tract of land is used to keep a 5-km exclusion zone around the main plant. _Deccan Herald

Thorium AHWR Physics Design PDF paper

India has the world's largest thorium deposits and with a world hungry for low-carbon energy, it has its eyes on a potentially lucrative export market for the technology.

...the new reactor's trigger will be low-enriched uranium (LEU) – which India is permitted to import under the 2008 Indo-US deal...."The AHWR will eventually have design flexibility, using as fuel either plutonium-thorium or LEU-thorium combinations," said Sinha. "The LEU-thorium version will make the AHWR very much marketable abroad, as it would generate very little plutonium ... making it suitable for countries with high proliferation resistance." _Guardian

The images below provide comparisons between fuel and waste from thorium and uranium, based upon a molten salt reactor design:

The struggle between the uranium cycle and the thorium cycle is likely to go on for several decades, as cleaner, safer, more reliable, and more affordable reactors utilising either cycle are designed and come on the market.

The next 20 years are likely to be a fertile period for nuclear reactor design and manufacture.

Innovative Approaches to Nuclear Power Offer Great Hope

Transatomic Power Team Presentation
In a recent posting at Idaho Samizdat Nuke Notes, Dan Yurman highlights two of the most promising new approaches to nuclear power, for the intermediate term future:

In Massachusetts, Transatomic Power, run by two Ph.D. candidates at MIT, Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, the effort is focused on using uranium-based spent nuclear fuel to provide the energy to run the reactor. Their business model is to license a design to a major reactor vendor or a state-owned reactor development agency.

...Asked why they chose this specific technology, they point to three specific factors - safety, waste, and economics. Massie says the team chose the molten salt design concept because they feel it will provide more bang for the buck, and it will be faster and cheaper for someone licensing their technology to bring it to market.

The most significant reason is that when compared to a new design for a fast reactor, there is no need for fuel design, qualification, and fabrication, a process that could add years to the development timeline.

Financial backing for the firm is coming from private investors as seed funding. Dewan says the hunt is on for early stage funding to establish a stronger financial base.

The real challenge in the next two years is to build a team to complete the design. The firm has gone back to some of the experts who worked on the molten salt reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but what it really needs is a new generation of engineers to work on the design.

"What we offer to a new PhD. or engineering graduate is the excitement and opportunity to develop new aspects of nuclear energy. There is a misconception that there is not a lot of room for innovation," Dewan said. _IdahoSamizdat: Nuke Notes

China may be interested in their approach, but the Transatomic Power team is uncertain whether China would steal control over their innovations and intellectual property.

The other promising innovative approach to nuclear fission is Flibe Energy, Kirk Sorensen's liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR):

Liquid-fluoride reactors operate at high temperature but not at high pressure because they use a chemically stable medium as the fuel and the coolant, making them much safer to operate than conventional reactors.

He says that "Thorium is the only abundant nuclear fuel that can be efficiently utilized in a thermal-spectrum reactor and is uniquely chemically suited for use in a fluoride reactor."

Introduction to Flibe Energy

The market for the design is based on an assessment that there are many remote sites where electrical power is generated by diesel fuel that is transported over great distances and over challenging or hostile terrain. A small modular power source has the potential to reduce the costs, hazards and vulnerability of power supply-lines, saving money and even lives in term of providing power to military bases. _Dan Yurman

Much more at Dan Yurman's Idaho Samizdat Nuke Notes, linked above.

Both approaches are capable of much higher energy efficiencies from a given nuclear fuel -- either uranium or thorium. The thorium approach may offer marginally better fuel costs, once the infrastructure for thorium production is developed and scaled up. But with plans for energy extraction from fuel above 98%, the cost and availability of fuel should be the least of concerns for either company.

Futurist Gerald Celente Proposes that Iran Use Thorium Fission

Russia has intentionally maneuvered Iran to the brink of war over its nuclear reactor program, in order to help raise global oil prices. With Russia's unflagging assistance, Iran is processing its uranium ore so as to produce highly enriched uranium. The most likely indications are that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to build fission bombs in the near future -- again, with Russia's assistance.

Russia is the main beneficiary of the run-up to war and oil market instability -- its oil profits are keeping its corrupt government afloat. China is a secondary beneficiary, able to buy Iranian oil at a significant markdown. The Iranian people are the big losers, sinking into poverty, drug addiction, and despair.

It is at this time that Gerald Celente -- celebrated futurist and forward thinker -- proposes that Iran turn away from the U235 cycle, to the Thorium cycle. The thorium cycle is much less prone to nuclear weapons concerns. As a bonus, if Iran perfected a modern-day thorium cycle reactor, it would be well positioned to market the technology to any number of other nations.

More from Celente:

The Celente Solution: If Iran is sincere that it seeks only peaceful uses for its nuclear energy, the crisis can easily be defused.

The problem isn’t that Iran seeks nuclear power. The problem is that, like the rest of the world, Iran has made a poor choice of nuclear fuel.

Uranium, the fuel that runs the world’s nuclear reactors, is lethal even when it’s not packed in a bomb. It’s absurdly complicated to handle, its behavior is touchy and unpredictable, and its waste is fatal to humans for millions of years after we’ve wrung the small amount of energy from it that our technology allows.

Instead, Iran can follow the lead of China, India, Brazil, and other nations and turn to thorium.

Thorium is an obscure, mildly radioactive metal produced as a waste product from the mining of rare earth minerals. This waste sits in piles on the ground in China, which produces most of the world’s rare earths; it’s locked away underground in most other countries, which have followed the US’s lead in banning the mining of rare earths because the process produces radioactive waste – in the form of thorium.

Yet when thorium was tested as a nuclear fuel in the 1950s, it was found to be both cleaner and safer than uranium. It can’t melt down or spontaneously explode when a “critical mass” of it is piled up; and it produces mainly alpha radiation, which is so weak that it can’t penetrate skin. Although thorium does produce a trace of radioactive waste that endures for billions of years, the amount is vastly smaller than uranium’s leavings.

Thorium also is more easily accessible around the world than uranium and more plentiful – it’s about three times as abundant as tin. In theory, a lump of thorium the size of a golf ball could supply the lifetime energy needs of a typical American – and more than that of an Iranian.

Even better, the technology to produce thorium is close at hand. International Thorium Energy & Molten Salt Technology, Inc., a private Japanese firm, intends to produce a 10-kilowatt thorium reactor within five years. China and India also are engineering thorium reactors. With some re-engineering, thorium even can be combined with uranium to make cleaner, longer-lived fuel rods for conventional nuclear reactors already in service.

In the years it would take Iran to build a conventional nuclear reactor, with its hundred-foot cooling towers and thousands of miles of plumbing, the nation could make a factory to turn out small thorium reactors. Iran has modest rare earth deposits and China, as Iran’s largest trading partner, could easily supply the reactors’ fuel. China and also India could share their growing technical expertise with Iran, not over international objections but with the approval of the rest of the world.

These small generators would present no regional or global threat and would serve Iran’s internal needs even more effectively than its current plan: the smaller thorium reactors can be made relatively quickly, with consistent quality, in a factory and then shipped and installed right where power is needed – at a factory, a mine, a military base, or as an incremental addition to a conventional generating plan. Iran could quickly achieve a strategic goal of western nations: the simultaneous expansion and decentralization of the electrical grid.

As is often the case, the current crisis is an opportunity. If Iran truly wants only peaceful nuclear power, it can choose thorium as its nuclear option … and the US, Israel, the EU and other nations can choose peace. _Gerald Celente

Celente's proposal is certainly an ambitious one, an idea that would change the world for the better if it were carried out.

Unfortunately, Russia will not permit such a rational smoothing of the Iranian crisis -- a crisis which Russia itself is propping up and enlarging. Russia's corrupt kleptocracy, and its massive ambitions for global power demand that global oil prices be driven ever higher.

Flibe Thorium Energy Goes to the UK

Flibe Energy is Kirk Sorensen's Thorium Energy enterprise. Kirk Thorensen recently traveled to the UK for the launch of the Weinberg Foundation, an NGO founded to promote the development of thorium and molten fueled nuclear reactors. Kirk was able to meet with a number of individuals in the UK who will be key to educating both the public and policy makers in the importance of advanced fission reactors for the future.

Flibe Energy in the UK Part I

Flibe Energy in the UK Part II, Parliament, House of Lords

Flibe Energy in the UK Part III British Science Festival

Better Nuclear Fuels; Better Biomass to Fuels Approach

Conventional nuclear power plants are able to burn only a small fraction of nuclear fuel. They are then forced to store the lion's share of this expensive fuel indefinitely, as "nuclear waste." Far from being waste, most of this unused material is incredibly valuable. How could nuclear reactors burn fuel more efficiently? Two candidates suggest themselves: thorium and depleted uranium, burned in safe, advanced breeder reactors.

Los Alamos National Labs has devised a new approach for refining thorium for nuclear fuel, which shaves almost 99.5% of the cost of processing -- reducing the cost from $5000 a kg to only $30 per kg. This LANL breakthrough is just one of several which will be necessary, before thorium can become the dominant nuclear fuel.

NextBigFuture presents an exclusive interview with Robert Petroski -- engineer for the Terrapower "traveling wave reactor" approach being spurred by Bill Gates and other Microsoft luminaries. Petroski discusses how abundant depleted uranium -- U238 -- can be used efficiently in advanced nuclear reactors, to replace the more rare and expensive fuels which rely on highly refined U235.

These breeder reactor approaches use much cheaper and safer fuels than are used in conventional reactors, and burn them almost completely, with far less waste left over. If all the money being thrown down the rat hole by governments for programs of carbon hysteria -- big wind, big solar, climate hysteria bureaucracies, etc -- were devoted to more rational energy strategies, these advanced nuclear approaches could stave off global energy shortages for many centuries or longer.

More: The Integral Fast Reactor has much in common with the evolving Terrapower approach. It is another approach to burning almost 100% of nuclear fuel -- primarily depleted uranium.

And for those who would like to believe in biofuels, but who cannot separate the idea of biofuels from the wasteful green agendas of the Obamas, Merkels, etc. -- there is the up and coming IH2 technology from CRI Catalyst. IH2 is "integrated hydropyrolysis and hydroconversion," an advanced biomass-to-liquid fuels approach which has been covered favourably at Al Fin Energy in the past.

Now New Zealand algae company Aquaflow is working with CRI Catalyst of Texas, to efficiently convert algal biomass to liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Prolific species of algae are far more easily grown for their biomass -- at very high rates. Contrast such cheap and dirty high-yield algal biomass production with the more expensive, finicky, and complex process of trying to grow algae for oil production. All that was missing was a practical way of converting prolific algal biomass into valuable liquid fuels -- and IH2 appears to be a promising approach.

Advanced pyrolysis and hydro-treatment of biomass is not as sexy as breeder reactors, of course, but far more practical for decentralised production almost anywhere on Earth -- at a far cheaper price than nuclear reactors would cost.

It is good to know that science and engineering are working on several different fronts to provide the abundant energy that the future will demand.

New Forbes Blog: The Future of Energy by Kirk Sorensen

Kirk Sorensen has operated the Energy from Thorium blog for over 5 years now, and has recently begun to blog for Forbes magazine in "The Future of Energy". Here is an excerpt from one of Kirk's recent TFoE postings:

In 10000 atoms of natural uranium, only 72 of them will be uranium-235. If the red marbles represented uranium-235 and the white marbles represented uranium-238, then the picture above (taken with my wife’s cake pan) would be a pretty good depiction of how rare uranium-235 is in natural uranium.

As I mentioned, uranium-235 is the only naturally-occuring fissile material in the world. It’s really too bad that there isn’t some way to release all of that energy from the rest of the uranium, right? Well, it turns out that there is.

Uranium-238 will transmute into plutonium-239 over the course of a few days if it absorbs a neutron. Plutonium-239 is fissile, uranium-238 isn’t. But uranium-238 is cheap and abundant, accounting for 9927 of 10000 atoms of natural uranium. So there’s a way to make uranium-238 into fissile material, but it takes a neutron.

...Most fissions release two or even three neutrons and that opens up an exciting possibility. Like the Midas touch, these neutrons can turn worthless uranium-238 nuclei which aren’t fissile into plutonium-239 nuclei which are fissile. And this new fissile material that has been made is even better than turning lead to gold–made from something cheaper than lead into something worth six times more than gold.

There’s another way to exercise this Midas touch, using natural thorium. If thorium is struck by a neutron it will turn into uranium-233 over a period of about 40 days. Uranium-233 is fissile and will release energy too.

...So unlike gold that can only be sold for money once, fissile material if properly used has the Midas touch–it can keep turning worthless uranium-238 or thorium into fissile material indefinitely.

The bad news is that we are not using fissile material properly in today’s nuclear reactors. We’re wasting its Midas touch. The good news is that we can build new reactors that will be able to exercise this amazing ability. They will change the world. They will be the future of energy. _KirkSorensen

This excerpt allows you to get the feeling of Kirk's approach on his Forbes blog. Oriented toward the general public, the language is non-technical and easy to understand. The mood is extremely up-beat -- a refreshing change from the general doom and gloom approach to energy taken by mainstream journalists.

For those who are interested in thorium energy and require a more technical information fix, the Energy from Thorium blog contains an immense repository of technical downloads and links, as well as videos. We should all hope that Kirk's Forbes blog captures a large public following, for the sake of future energy supplies.

A Brief Overview of Thorium Energy

For humans to enjoy a clean and abundant energy future, they will need to move to energy from nuclear reactions -- which means nuclear fission, for now. Thorium is the main alternative to uranium as a large-scale nuclear fuel. Here are some basic facts about thorium:

Thorium is a naturally-occurring, slightly radioactive metal discovered in 1828 by a Swedish chemist, Jons Jakob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. The silvery white metal is found in small amounts in most rocks and soils, where it is about three times more abundant than uranium. Typical garden variety soil commonly contains an average of around 6 parts per million (ppm) of thorium.


Applications
Thorium oxide, also called thoria, has one of the highest melting points of all oxides at 3300°C. When this oxide is heated in air, thorium metal turnings ignite and burn brilliantly with a white light. Because of these properties, thorium has found applications in welding electrodes, heat-resistant ceramics, light bulb elements, lantern mantles and arc-light lamps. Glass containing thorium oxide has a high refractive index and dispersion and is used in high quality lenses for cameras and scientific instruments.
Sources and geographical distribution

The most common source of thorium is the rare earth phosphate mineral, monazite, which may contain up to about 12 percent thorium phosphate; however, the average is closer to a 6-7 percent range. Monazite is found in igneous and other rocks but the richest concentrations are in placer deposits, concentrated by wave and current action with other heavy minerals. World monazite resources are estimated to be about 12 million tonnes, two-thirds of which are in heavy mineral sands deposits on the south and east coasts of India. Australia is estimated by the USGS to host approximately 24 percent of the world’s thorium reserves. A large vein deposit of thorium and rare earth metals have been discovered in the Lemhi Pass region of Idaho and Montana.

Going nuclear
Although not fissile itself, thorium has started to reemerge as a tempting prospect to employ as fuel in nuclear power reactors. Thorium 232 will absorb slow neutrons to produce uranium 233, which is fissile (and long-lived). The irradiated fuel can then be unloaded from the reactor, the uranium 233 separated from the thorium, and fed back into another reactor as part of a closed fuel cycle. Alternatively, uranium 233 can be bred from thorium in a blanket, the uranium 233 separated, and then fed into the core.

The use of thorium-based fuel cycles has been studied for about 40 years, but on a much smaller scale than uranium or uranium/plutonium cycles. Basic research and development has been conducted in Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA. China and India have been among primary catalysts in research efforts to use it. Test reactor irradiation of thorium fuel to high burn-ups has also been conducted and several test reactors have either been partially or completely loaded with thorium-based fuel.
Thorium can be used in Generation IV and other advanced nuclear fuel cycle systems.

China has been working on developing the technology for sodium cooled fast reactors which are a type of liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs). The advanced breeder concept features a molten salt as the coolant, usually a fluoride salt mixture. This is hot, but not under pressure, and does not boil below about 1400°C. Much research has focused on lithium and beryllium additions to the salt mixture. In mid-2009, AECL signed agreements with three Chinese entities to develop and demonstrate the use of thorium fuel in the Candu reactors at Qinshan in China. _UraniumInvesting

The best ongoing source for information on thorium energy is Kirk Sorensen's blog "Energy from Thorium".

Kirk is featured in the introductory video below. You can click on the YouTube icon on the video below to watch the vid at YouTube, and to find links to several related videos -- some of them well over an hour in length.

Another blog dedicated to the molten salt reactor is the Nuclear Green blog.

Here's more on thorium, from a piece in Popsci from last summer:

An abundant metal with vast energy potential could quickly wean the world off oil, if only Western political leaders would muster the will to do it, a UK newspaper says today. The Telegraph makes the case for thorium reactors as the key to a fossil-fuel-free world within five years, and puts the ball firmly in President Barack Obama's court.


Thorium, named for the Norse god of thunder, is much more abundant than uranium and has 200 times that metal's energy potential. Thorium is also a more efficient fuel source -- unlike natural uranium, which must be highly refined before it can be used in nuclear reactors, all thorium is potentially usable as fuel. _Popsci

Another basic overview on thorium

An overview of thorium by Wired magazine

More 6July11: A debate about the promise of thorium, including discussion of the topic of subcritical accelerator-driven thorium nuclear reactors

Nuclear News and Oddities

Nuclear News of note can be found at:

The 52nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy at ANS Nuclear Cafe

Brian Wang's Next Big Future Nuclear Update

Nuclear Street Nuclear Portal

Nuclear Town Hall

An interesting nuclear oddity popped up on the radar screen: An unconventional fusion researcher, Bodgan Maglich (inventor of Migma Fusion Cells), has re-emerged in connection with the recently announced Exyder Cell -- a 10" fusion neutron breeder which creates fissile Uranium 233 from fertile Thorium 232.

”India has 360,000 tons of thorium against only 45,000 tons of natural uranium… Installing one or two exyder type mini breeders to serve each nuclear power plant operating on Thorium/U-233 cycle would eventually render the power station self sufficient…” Computer simulation indicated that one Exyder module could economically produce 100grams/day, 35 kg/year of U-233, at electric energy cost of $50/Kg vs. $300/Kg for U-238. CANDU type reactor of 235 megawatt burns 10 Kg of U-233/year. “Even sub-engineering’ energy breakeven fusion systems which consume a net amount of electric energy to generate fissile U-233, can play a critical role in cutting the production cost.” _Businesswire

This use of fusion -- to create neutrons for use in breeding fissile fuel from fertile fuel -- may find common use in the future, if it is found to facilitate a more economical, safe, and sustainable nuclear fuel cycle.

Another potential approach to a safe "breeder-reactor" is the sub-critical reactor which is powered by a nuclear accelerator, and spallation neutrons. Both of these approaches (fusion-powered breeders and accelerator-powered breeders) may well also represent solutions to the nuclear storage problem and some potential proliferation problems (via re-cycling).

Thorium is more common globally than Uranium, and is distributed somewhat differently. This means that nations and regions which do not have abundant Uranium supplies, may well have plenty of thorium to fuel fission plants for hundreds of years.

Another approach to a Thorium cycle reactor, is the Molten Salt Reactor. Charles Barton at Nuclear Green covers the molten salt reactor regularly.

It is crucial to understand the energy density advantage of nuclear fuels and nuclear reactions. When one also understands the central role of abundant energy to the advancement of humans as a species and as a cosmic enterprise, one's short, intermediate, and long-term energy goals should be much clearer.

Molten Salt Reactors: Requirement for Fissionable Starting Material

Thorium 232 is a fertile element in abundant supply within the Earth's crust. Thorium can be jump-started into a fissionable fuel, U 233, with enough neutron bombardment. Thorium needs a quantity of fissionables -- as neutron donors -- to start the initial fission reaction. More from Brian Wang:

Molten salt reactors require anywhere from 500 kg to upwards of 5 or more tonnes per GWe plant (whether one runs a more thermal neutron spectrum or a more fast one). 1500 kg is considered typical. Any molten salt reactor can start on bomb grade or reactor grade Plutonium (roughly the same amount needed as U233). Plutonium is expensive to isolate and of finite supply in spent fuel (600 to 1000 tonnes worldwide?) Any MSR can also start on highly enriched uranium U235 (i.e. old weapons supply). HEU (Highly enriched uranium) is also limited and would be very politically unattractive to be shipping around. Potentially the simplest startup fuel would be Low Enriched Uranium (LEU is under 20% U235 and useless for weapons) because we can produce this in great amounts (we already do) but this is where I have to qualify my answer.

There are two main classes of molten salt reactors that produce all their own fissile fuel after startup, the better known Single Fluid design has everything in one fluid has a very hard time starting on LEU but Oak Ridge National Labs proposed such a design in the late 1970s (DMSR Breeder). Another way to run is called Two Fluid which has separate salts for the fissile U233 and fertile Thorium (which greatly simplifies the removal of fission products). In this design, favored by many these days, startup on LEU is fairly straightforward. You simply run LEU in the central fuel salt for a few years while building up and saving U233 produced in the thorium blanket salt. Once you have enough U233 saved up, you remove (and sell) any remaining LEU in the fuel salt and replace it with your saved up U233 and from then on run on the pure Thorium to U233 cycle.

....startup fissile requirement is not a roadblock to building thousands of GWe of molten salt reactors like it is for something like metal cooled fast breeders that need ten to twenty times as much starting fissile material. _NextBigFuture_quoting_DavidLeblanc

David Leblanc's 11 page paper giving more details via Brian Wang

Norway and Sweden Team Up to Test Thorium Reactor

Although Norway separated from Sweden in 1905, the two countries can still get together for special occasions and projects. Alf Bjorseth, founder of a large solar energy company Renewable Energy Corporation (REC), is promoting an important reactor test of thorium energy concepts by the energy startup company Thor Energy PDF. The project is being sponsored by Swedish utility Vattenfall, and will be conducted at a Norwegian reactor site.

The experiments by Thor Energy are aimed at generating vital data to test the feasibility of safe, large-scale power production using the thorium cycle.

Thorium, he noted, isn't perfect. Thorium power plants do create radioactive waste. The nuclear waste from a thorium reactor, however, would mostly consist of unspent fuel. It does not result in materials that can be upgraded into weapons easily. (This slide deck from Thor has more info.)

"It is still a nuclear reaction, but we don't get plutonium at the end," he said.

Plutonium, in fact, could be mixed into the thorium fuel rods so the reactors could effectively help reduce the stockpile of nuclear waste while generating power. Additionally, the 232-isotope material that is needed for a thorium reactor occurs naturally, eliminating the need to enrich it.

The Indian government, small outfits like Thorium Power and TerraPower in the U.S. and even some established nuclear companies have discussed the possibilities of thorium for years. NuScale Power, which has created a modular reactor, is said to be examining thorium. Coastal thorium reactors potentially could even be exploited to power desalination plants. Senators Orrin Hatch and Harry Reid have promoted thorium in the U.S. -- that's a thorium accelerator in the picture.

Although some early reactors burned thorium, the industry shifted to uranium because of the large amounts of heat generated by that fission reaction, which in turn throws off the capital-per-gigawatt calculation. Thorium proponents [hope] those controversial side effects, combined with more information about thorium, could change the picture.

"We believe it is not a technical challenge. The challenge is to generate the data," he said. _GreentechMedia

It is telling that one of the world's leading proponents of solar energy finds it necessary to invest a significant amount of time and effort into developing a form of nuclear energy. If the experiments are successful, and point the way toward large scale utilisation of the thorium cycle, it is likely that China, India, and perhaps Japan and France, will be in a position to scale the technology up.

The US, under Obama - Pelosi, has been in full-scale energy starvation mode toward any viable forms of large-scale power and energy production. The US will almost certainly be caught flat-footed under the current administration.

Thor Energy powerpoint slides PDF

Exploring the Magic of Thorium Energy

At the end of this effort, we will have destroyed our 100 tonnes of highly-enriched uranium from weapons. We will have destroyed our 100 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium from decommissioned weapons. We will have destroyed the 700 tonnes of plutonium and other actinides in the spent nuclear fuel. We will have essentially eliminated the issue of spent nuclear fuel as a concern. We will have replaced the coal and gas electrical generation in the country. We will have added enough additional electrical generation to the nation’s grid to power electric cars rather than gasoline-powered ones. We’ll have cleaner air. We’ll have cleaner water. We’ll keep hundreds of billions of dollars in our country because we’ll be energy-independent. And we will have solved the energy crisis permanently.

All of this is unlocked by the fundamental properties of thorium. We can make it happen. May we have the wisdom to do so. _KirkSorensen

Kirk Sorensen wants to shift energy production away from fossil fuels toward a sustainable method of nuclear fission based upon thorium. Thorium is three times more plentiful than uranium, is less prone to being used for nuclear weapons proliferation, and can be used sustainably while burning up dangerous weapons-grade nuclear materials, and potentially hazardous nuclear waste from more conventional fission plants.

Thorium can be used in accelerator driven nuclear reactors, can be utilised in liquid fluoride thorium reactors, and now comes news that a company called Thorium One is developing a thorium - plutonium - MOX fuel that can be used in "existing infrastructure for nuclear reactors."

The Vancouver, Canada-based company is attempting to fund the development of a new fuel design—called Thorium Plutonium MOX—that it says can be used in existing infrastructure for nuclear reactors in the production of nuclear energy that does not create bomb-usable waste.

There are currently 440 nuclear reactors operating in the world with uranium-based nuclear energy (see Nuclear power is green power, says expert).

...The company is on a mission to become an integrated international nuclear fuel company, developing its product for nuclear utilities using the chemical element thorium, instead of uranium.

“Thorium can be used as a nuclear fuel that can act as a supplement to uranium in nuclear reactors,” he said.

The waste product of the thorium fuel cycle, uranium-233, can be separated and reprocessed or recycled for use in new fuel, Thorium One said. _CleanTech_via_NextBigFuture

The best source for learning about the promise of thorium power is Kirk Sorensen's website, Energy from Thorium (EfT). The archives of EfT are loaded with well written tutorials on various aspects of thorium power. The sidebar has links to useful videos, articles, websites, books, and piles of PDF documentation dealing with thorium energy and other aspects of nuclear energy.

Thorium offers an opportunity to turn weapons and waste into useful and abundant, clean, sustainable energy.

Why haven't we heard more about Thorium from our government, our news media, our thought leaders in academia and punditry, and the rest of the "leading lights" of society?

Thorium Power: What You Can Learn From Comments

Wired magazine published an interesting article on Thorium nuclear reactors last month.  If you have not brushed up on Thorium reactors recently, you may enjoy reading the article.  A better way of learning about Thorium power is by reading the blog Energy from Thorium.  

Kirk Sorensen, the proprietor of Energy from Thorium, is featured in the recent Wired article, but he is more thoroughly featured in the comments following the article. A particularly fascinating exchange of views occurred in the comments between Sorensen and George Herbert -- a self-proclaimed anti nuclear proliferation advocate.

Reading the exchange between the two gentlemen will give you an idea of the types of objections that anti-nuclear activists will present, in an attempt to shut down even safer forms of nuclear energy such as Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs).

No matter what innovations a person attempts to promote to solve problems of energy shortages, there will always be activists and advocates of one persuasion or another seeking to use legal and political leverage to shut you down. Thorium energy is no exception, apparently. Even with energy grids crashing due to lack of baseload and dispatchable power sources, political activists will continue trying to shut down all reliable forms of energy.

President Obama recently made noises suggesting that he would promote increased funding guarantees for nuclear power. Always look for the hidden motive and for the later "I never said that" flip flop. Look for whose palms may be greased, and who may reap the golden harvest of government graft. Because wherever the "Chicago Way" is involved, somebody's gonna get the business.

Compressed Intensives on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors

This approach to fission power really looks like the safest and most sustainable approach humans have discovered so far. Why isn't it being used? Have I ever mentioned that we are living in an Idiocracy? That is why LFTRs aren't being used.

25 Minute Intensive Intro to Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors

16 Minute Intensive Intro to Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors


H/T Charles Barton

I recommend watching the 25 minute video first, then watch the 16 minute video to reinforce the basic points. At that point, you should be ready to watch all three of the roughly 1 hour long intros to LFTRs here, here, and here.

Then go and read the archives of Energy from Thorium blog and Nuclear Green blog. 

On the recent topic of the Hyperion small reactor, in this post, Charles Barton looks at the Hyperion small nuclear reactor, and compares it to the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). By the time I got to the end of the this short posting, I was convinced that the LFTR approach was better than Hyperion's approach.

Previously published at Al Fin

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor Video Primer

Each lecture is about an hour long, on liquid fluoride thorium reactors. Via The Nuclear Green blog.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor

Google Tech Talk Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
The world needs safe nuclear energy by the Gigawatt and Terawatt. Since Thorium is far more abundant than Uranium, and less prone to being turned to nuclear weapons uses, the Thorium fuel cycle makes sense. The following Peswiki editorial discusses using the liquid fluoride thorium reactor in conjunction with coal gasification and solid oxide fuel cells, to provide the energy and fuel needed for the next few centuries -- or until cheap abundant nuclear fusion comes along.

For those individuals who understand the global energy situation the answer is quite clear and it involves advanced technology, chemistry, money, and political support. The comments in the clean coal comic truly express a viable technological solution which will lead to the realization of a long term solution going beyond the hundreds of years which coal and other fossil fuels would provide.

A 1000 MW nuclear reactor could produce 18,000 barrels of fuel a day with technology which currently exists. There have been several different Thorium reactors in operation within the past 40 years. So what happened? The era when these reactors were brought online was during the cold war. Uranium-fueled nuclear power plants are the suppliers of weapons grade plutonium which we use within our nuclear arsenal [hence their being favored]. The Yucca Mountain project is simply a nuclear weapons storage silo in disguise. The question I ask, which is more important, being whether we will destroy our planet or save it from our destruction?

There will always be a need for man to have the capability of defending itself but at what expense?

The thorium nuclear fission cycle eliminates the risk of meltdown and weapons proliferation while the byproducts have a reduced half-life on the order of 1/2 century rather than thousands of years. Thorium can be recycled and poses no direct risks to our environment unless the facilities themselves were attacked. Even in this situation we would not have another Chernoble. People fear nuclear energy because of the Three Mile Island incident and what they see on the History Channel. Thorium nuclear reactors have demonstrated their viability in the past so what is the problem? _Peswiki

Future energy needs will be filled using multiple energy sources. Biomass and microbe energy will be very important. But nuclear reactors of several types and sizes will be integral to the transition to clean and sustainable energy, power, and fuels. Coal, kerogens (oil shale), bitumens (oil sands and heavy oils), and various forms of gaseous fossil fuels will be critically important, using newer cleaner technology. Fuel cells will provide important improvements in efficiency in utilising liquid and gaseous fuels (solids too).

Looking at modern political planners who call themselves "green", we see that green is scarcity and death. The "green" approach is no cleaner and is far less sustainable than the wise multiple source approach. Today's leaders in Europe, the US, Australia, and other countries are stupidly green -- adherents of scarcity and death. We cannot afford these leaders or their bigoted and genocidal policies.

Molten Fuel Thorium Reactors

The human brain is a pattern recognition engine. And thanks to evolution, humans are made to recognise problems and to find ways to solve them. The prosperity of human society depends upon their ability to creatively and skilfully use energy in large amounts. The summer of 2008 was a clear example of the blow to human economies when energy is priced too high, creating artificial energy scarcity. Unfortunately, the governments of Europe, Australia, and the United States are united in the scheme to make energy permanently scarce. This philosophy is unsustainable -- incompatible with a prosperous human future or any concept of a singularity.

Brian Westenhaus has posted an excellent treatment of the molten fuel thorium reactor, and its many safety features. The video above comes from Brian's article, as are many useful pointers to more information. Go check it out.

Speaking of nuclear energy, be sure and visit Brian Wang's website to learn more about affordable nuclear space launch. If we can live through the age of the Obama zombie, we may just make it to the age of limitless possibilities on the other side.

Cross-posted to Al Fin

Update 6 March 09: Brian Wang has a recent posting on the movement to mass produce liquid fuel thorium reactors that is worth a look

Generation IV Nuclear--Toward an Environmentally Friendlier Nuclear Fission Reactor

Nuclear energy is a likely alternative to the increased use of coal, as oil supplies begin to plateau over the next few decades. Next generation nuclear fission reactors will not have the massive need for coolant water, and will thus be environmentally friendlier. Their safer designs--when compared to contemporary reactors--should reduce some public concerns about moving toward more nuclear power plants.

The US government energy labs are actively soliciting new reactor designs, in the knowledge that there are few alternatives to nuclear energy over the next half century, if humans are to significantly move away from fossil fuels.

The Energy Department's Idaho National Laboratory is conducting the program that seeks to use cutting-edge technology in building a high temperature reactor capable of producing hydrogen, electricity and/or process heat. Officials said such a nuclear power plant would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by enabling nuclear energy to replace fossil fuels in the petrochemical and transportation industries.

"Proceeding with conceptual design for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant brings the Department of Energy another step closer to developing this advanced new technology," Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon said. "Through this effort, (the department) will foster a public-private partnership to complete this development and spur the commercial scale deployment of advanced clean and safe nuclear energy as quickly as possible."

Source

Read more about next generation fission here, here, and here.

The last link, Energy from Thorium, is particularly thought provoking, because it introduces a reactor concept that will not add to the concern over the propagation and breeding of weapons grade fissionable materials. Thorium does not breed Plutonium.

High temperature reactors that do not use water as the primary coolant should allow the use of nuclear energy in more arid climates, where cooling water is scarce. These designs should also be more useful in mining both oil sands and shale oils in situ.

China has already begun the planning and development process for a rapid expansion of
Chinese nuclear energy capacity. And although recent Japanese earthquakes are causing the Japanese to re-think their commitment to nuclear, for less earthquake-prone areas in the developed world, nuclear is a natural.