RT: Thorium Revolt: Mineral to replace uranium as nuclear power source?

Mods, post this where you will.

Thought this was a pretty good piece from RT(again... and again).

I had never heard of Thorium.

Thorium ( /ˈθɔəriəm/ THOHR-ee-əm) is a chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is a naturally occurring, slightly radioactive metal. A Thorium atom has 90 protons and 90 electrons, of which 4 are valence electrons. Jöns Jakob Berzelius discovered it in 1828 and named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.

In nature, thorium is found as thorium-232 (100.00%). Thorium decays slowly by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of thorium-232 is about 14.05 billion years. It is estimated to be about three to four times more abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust. It is a by-product of the extraction of rare earths from monazite sands. The formerly widespread uses of thorium, for example as a light emitting material in gas mantles or as an alloying material in several metals, have decreased due to concerns about its radioactivity.
Thorium-232 was used for breeding nuclear fuel – uranium (233), for example, in the molten-salt reactor experiment (MSR) conducted in the United States from 1964 to 1969. After most of the initial test reactors were closed down, Russia, India and other countries are reconsidering the use of thorium fuel cycle for the production of nuclear power.

A couple of previous great threads on Thorium at ATS for more info:
Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium
Thorium Power Plants Could Solve The World's Energy Problems
The Truth About Thorium and Nuclear Power


Think if we didn't spend so much money on war and rich people - we could invest in things like Thorium, or Cold Fusion, or Zero Point Energy, or Magnetic/EM turbines, or Solar, or Geothermal, or Wind, or Tidal, or Hydro.. etc.

And of course anti gravity...

Or perhaps the research is happening in black budget programs? Other countries are researching thats for sure.


Whaddaya think

I once worked in a uranium mine that also had a thorium plant. It only ran for 2 yrs as the market was marginal.
Now It's making a comeback. It's like a deja vu . I never understood what they used it for. We also had Yttrium but that was a rear earth used in color television screens.
It appears that if it doesn't have a military use, it's worthless.

reply to post by ionsoul


Thanks for the insight. I do agree, it is such a shame that so much of societies wealth is squandered and funneled into the military industrial complex.

I am all for a well regulated militia... but the current institution has become a corporate machine usurping all of our resources.

Thorium needs a special type of reactor called a breeder in order to be properly utilized, which needs to be developed. It was good to see the technology on the news, and even better to see Kirk Sorenson on the news. Kirk was an aerospace engineer working for NASA on ways to power space-flight, from this he discovered a reactor that uses Thorium as a fuel, this reactor is known as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. Now he's a nuclear engineer, but I'm unsure what work he does at Teledyne Brown. You can view his website here.

Originally posted by C0bzz
Thorium needs a special type of reactor called a breeder in order to be properly utilized, which needs to be developed. It was good to see the technology on the news, and even better to see Kirk Sorenson on the news. Kirk was an aerospace engineer working for NASA on ways to power space-flight, from this he discovered a reactor that uses Thorium as a fuel, this reactor is known as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. Now he's a nuclear engineer, but I'm unsure what work he does at Teledyne Brown. You can view his website here.

edit on 2/11/10 by C0bzz because: (no reason given)

A thorium reactor has already been developed and tested
it was called the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment
en.wikipedia.org...

Using test data from this reactor and modern materials a even better design can be modeled on a computer for a even better reactor.

there have been other thorium test reactors or test with thorium fuels.
#Between 1967 and 1988, the AVR (Atom Versuchs Reaktor, Nuclear Test Reactor) experimental pebble bed reactor at Jülich, Germany, operated for over 750 weeks at 15 MWe, about 95% of the time with thorium-based fuel.

# Thorium fuel elements with a 10:1 Th/U (HEU) ratio were irradiated in the 20 MWth Dragon reactor at Winfrith, UK, for 741 full power days. Dragon was run as an OECD/Euratom cooperation project, involving Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland in addition to the UK, from 1964 to 1973. The Th/U fuel was used to 'breed and feed', so that the U-233 formed replaced the U-235 at about the same rate, and fuel could be left in the reactor for about six years.
# General Atomics' Peach Bottom high-temperature, graphite-moderated, helium-cooled reactor in the USA operated between 1967 and 1974 at 110 MWth, using high-enriched uranium with thorium.
# In Canada, AECL has more than 50 years experience with thorium-based fuels, including burn-up to 47 GWd/t. Some 25 tests were performed to 1987 in three research reactors and one pre-commercial reactor (NPD), with fuels ranging from ThO2 to that with 30% UO2, though most were with 1-3% UO2, the U being high-enriched.
# In India, the Kamini 30 kWth experimental neutron-source research reactor using U-233, recovered from ThO2 fuel irradiated in another reactor, started up in 1996 near Kalpakkam. The reactor was built adjacent to the 40 MWt Fast Breeder Test Reactor, in which the ThO2 is irradiated.
# In the Netherlands, an aqueous homogenous suspension reactor operated at 1MWth for three years in the mid-1970s. The HEU/Th fuel was circulated in solution and reprocessing occurred continuously to remove fission products, resulting in a high conversion rate to U-233.
The Fort St Vrain reactor was the only commercial thorium-fuelled nuclear plant in the USA, also developed from the AVR in Germany, and operated 1976-1989. It was a high-temperature (700°C), graphite-moderated, helium-cooled reactor with a Th/HEU fuel designed to operate at 842 MWth (330 MWe). The fuel was in microspheres of thorium carbide and Th/U-235 carbide coated with silicon oxide and pyrolytic carbon to retain fission products. It was arranged in hexagonal columns ('prisms') rather than as pebbles. Almost 25 tonnes of thorium was used in fuel for the reactor, and this achieved 170,000 MWd/t burn-up.
www.world-nuclear.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

But nuclear plants need fuel, which means building controversial uranium mines. Thorium, on the other hand, is so abundant that it's almost an annoyance. It's considered a waste product when mining for rare-earth metals.
www.popsci.com...
The Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine in Calif has plenty in there waste ponds and needs a way to use the thorium.
www.energyfromthorium.com...
www.minersnews.com...

Thanks much for all the info, ANNED and C0bzz.


Here is some more interesting stuff:

Congressman Sestak submitted language directing a study on the use of thorium-liquid fueled nuclear reactors for naval power, an important assessment of an energy source that has shown great potential to be more efficient for our military. As a result, the House Armed Services Committee included funding in the bill for research and development of a nuclear-powered destroyer reactor utilizing thorium energy.

While our nuclear Navy has thrived with a continuing record of zero reactor accidents, thorium may be more efficient than uranium as a fuel source. Massive fuel rods would not have to be utilized, and it produces only 1/2000th the waste of uranium. In domestic applications, waste can even be stored on-site, eliminating the necessity of facilities such as Yucca Mountain. Large deposits of thorium can be mined domestically in States such as Idaho, and we already have 160,000 tons in reserve.

Under a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, any new major combatant vessels for the U.S. strike force is required to be constructed with an integrated nuclear power system unless the Secretary of Defense submits a notification to Congress that the inclusion of an integrated nuclear power system in a given class of ship is not in the national interest. While the Congressman is not yet convinced that nuclear power for Naval ships is always cost-beneficial in the long term, if there are nuclear-powered vessels that continue to be built under Congressional mandate, then all options for the fuel source are worthy of consideration.

Congressman Sestak's Amendments in National Defense Authorization Act Pass House

I wish the US Navy would build a thorium reactored ship and park it in Guam. Plug it into the power grid and we will pay them for power.

Our power bills are much higher than the rest of America's. With the "fuel surcharge" thats now permanent we pay $350-$500 a month for basic electricity. Can't even afford to turn the Jacuzzi on.

well, looks like Thorium was finally making the news, 'bout time.


reply to post by C0bzz


while breeding is a necessity, the configuration of the reactor itself isn't set in stone, which was demonstrated at Shippingport 1977.1982 in a conventional light water reactor.

www.atomicinsights.com/oct95/LWBR_oct95.html

granted, they gained only a few percent over 5 years, but anything above 1 is enough to sustain a power plant for its entire lifetime, which is a big gain over yearly refuels and doesn't tell the whole story, because fissile (U233 concentration) will reach an equilibrium value after some time (1 part U233 to 70 parts Th, iirc, due to fissile cross section of U233 vs absorbtion Xs of Th232 in the high thermal neutron range, but don't quote me on that).

the advantage is of course that you'll never have to adjust reactivity much, leading to safer operation, because you don't need excess reactivity at startup, like you do in today's nukes, compensated by the addition of neutron absorbers like Boron, which only steal neutrons that are needed for breeding more fissile material....


whether you like liquid fuelled and fast neutron designs or not, there will have to be a way to power existing plants well into the future and thorium based fuels should be used in existing reactors, too, even if they aren't terribly useful in eliminating partially spent fuel ('nuc waste') - even if reprocessing was actually centered around fuel, rather than plutonium for bombs. without bombs, Th should have and probably would have been used from the start, because breeding U233 from Th it is much easier than producing Plutonium.

think about it: PUREX (Pu Extraction, literally) leaves all transuranic elements ín the fuel along with the fission products, even though they could be burned in any existing reactor. The only reason i can think of is that all early nuclear power programs were slaved to weapons production. Pyroprocessing [1], [2] otoh could extract fission products (half life of decades rather than millenia) while leaving all useful actinides in the fuel.


here's an older post on the subject, with a slightly different angle:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

this isn't new tech. by any stretch

reply to post by Long Lance


I appreciate the reply, you are obviously more familiar with the topic than I am.

Are you involved in this deeper? Or just privy to the info through personal research?

The detractors from Thorium energy in the video has been discovered:

John Large, Greenpeace Hired Gun

Our first question is who is John Large? The answer is that John Large is a consulting nuclear engineer who appears to have acted on a number of occasions as a hired gun expert for Greenpeace. (For example, see here, here, and here.) Some expert hired guns are genuine experts who stick to facts and logic, while others employ logical fallacies, and misrepresentations of fact, to further the cases that they are attempting to make. Facts and logic, are not generally speaking Greenpeace strong points, and thus Mr. Large's statements cannot be automatically credited with adhering to the highest professional standards.

As far as I have been able to determine, the Russia today interview, represented John Large's first statement on the use of thorium as a nuclear fuel, and about thorium breeding nuclear technology. Since Large does not offer evidence to back up any of his statements, and in fact has made any public statements orally or in writing, about thorium or thorium breeding technology, it is impossible to know why he makes the claims he makes. Further more a number of the statements he made in the RT interview, were contrary to known facts. For example there were, contrary to Large, thorium based reactors operated after the 1950's. At least some thorium based reactors were not by any means failures. Finally, ORNL gave a great deal of attention to thorium fuel reprocessing in the 1960's and 70's. And while hey did find some difficulties, the difficulties were not overwhelming, and ORNL researchers made steady progress toward solving them. In the absence of greater specificity, we must conclude that a number of Large's claims were based on inaccurate information. of course, Large may offer us the information that he has so far withheld in support of his questionable statements.

nucleargreen.blogspot.com...

while breeding is a necessity, the configuration of the reactor itself isn't set in stone, which was demonstrated at Shippingport 1977.1982 in a conventional light water reactor.

I am somewhat perplexed on the LWBR - I don't see any reason why the technology shouldn't be pursued especially after it has been demonstrated to work. The only serious attempt at utilizing this technology is taking place in India, with their Advanced Heavy Water Reactor. With that said, it's obvious that a new reactor design is required to lower the cost of nuclear, and increase resource efficiency by a factor of around 200 - something like LFTR and advanced reprocessing would be required to do so. This is what Kirk Sorenson was advocating in the original video.

Th should have and probably would have been used from the start, because breeding U233 from Th it is much easier than producing Plutonium.

To my understanding the Th-U233 cycle is advantageous because it creates a significantly small amount of problematic actinides, breeding is possible with thermal designs (the total fissile inventory of a thermal reactor is significantly lower than a fast reactor). On the other hand, fast breeders can have higher breeding ratios and can use a solid fuel because the Xenon & Protactinium (iirc) doesn't have to be continually removed

think about it: PUREX (Pu Extraction, literally) leaves all transuranic elements ín the fuel along with the fission products, even though they could be burned in any existing reactor.

PUREX seems like a rather large waste compared to other more advanced fuel cycles.

I was also under the impression transmuting existing nuclear waste in existing reactors is highly problematic or even not possible at all because in a thermal spectrum the problematic wastes are more likely to absorb a neutron rather cause a fission, hence more waste will be created than destroyed. I believe a thermal thorium breeder also has the potential to destroy nuclear waste, however that is more suited to a fast reactor since it can directly use most TRU's as fuel. Thorium in a breeder shouldn't have issues with waste because the problematic wastes are not created in the first place.

But nuclear plants need fuel, which means building controversial uranium mines. Thorium, on the other hand, is so abundant that it's almost an annoyance. It's considered a waste product when mining for rare-earth metals.

This statement is incorrect. Thorium will only be massively more efficient than a conventional once-through Uranium cycle if it is utilized in a reactor with a breeding ratio of 1 or more, and it is combined with advanced reprocessing. Similar increases in efficiency can be seen if Uranium is utilized in a fast breeder reactor combined with pyroprocessing - the US already has 600 years of electricity of DU already mined if utilized in a FBR. The advantages in terms of fuel efficiency of a thorium breeder with reprocessing hold true only against our current reactors, but not against FBR reactors where the differences are essentially trivial. A thorium reactor capable of doing this still needs to be developed (some test reactors are not commercial) and are probably further away than Fast Breeder Reactors (which also need development).

reply to post by C0bzz


Interesting Greenpeace connection, I did not know who that Large guy was - but it did seem to me that he was talking out of his ass... a real establishment attitude.

Originally posted by beebs

Are you involved in this deeper? Or just privy to the info through personal research?

no, i'm not involved, the information is available freely on the web, as you can see, i just followed the leads. the Energy from Thorium website's forums for example are an interesting source of details, but beware, it's full of 'strangelovesque' people who'd put reactors into locomotives... so don't take everything at face value.

Originally posted by C0bzz

while breeding is a necessity, the configuration of the reactor itself isn't set in stone, which was demonstrated at Shippingport 1977.1982 in a conventional light water reactor.

I am somewhat perplexed on the LWBR - I don't see any reason why the technology shouldn't be pursued especially after it has been demonstrated to work. The only serious attempt at utilizing this technology is taking place in India, with their Advanced Heavy Water Reactor. With that said, it's obvious that a new reactor design is required to lower the cost of nuclear, and increase resource efficiency by a factor of around 200 - something like LFTR and advanced reprocessing would be required to do so. This is what Kirk Sorenson was advocating in the original video.

join the club, this run-of-the-mill (slightly modded?) Gen I or II reactor ran five years without refuel. element life will still be a problem, though, along with high pressure gaseous fission products, but noone claimed you couldn't use enclosed s[speculation] liquid fuel capable of absorbing these gases or just some spare room in small, pellet like containers to retrofit existing designs and mitigate these issues. [/speculation].

wrt MSRs, the concept needs a long term test, imho, to determine if materials can withstand the neutron bombardment AND hot salt at the same time and whether 1 or 2 fluid designs should be used. until then, there's no way to tell. it'll be interesting how the Indian program fares, though.

To my understanding the Th-U233 cycle is advantageous because it creates a significantly small amount of problematic actinides, breeding is possible with thermal designs (the total fissile inventory of a thermal reactor is significantly lower than a fast reactor). On the other hand, fast breeders can have higher breeding ratios and can use a solid fuel because the Xenon & Protactinium (iirc) doesn't have to be continually removed

thermal breeding is comparably wasteful of neutrons, breed to Am244 and it takes what? 6 neutrons from 238 and 11 from 233 (miniscule chance of that happening, might as well forget about it) and you're not getting that many from eventual fission. still, when you consider the use of absorbers like boron and gadolinium for reactivity control, these absorptions might have their place, after all.

removal of Xenon will improve your neutron budget, but so will the use of breeding (Th) absorbers as a substitute for Gd, Cd and B while Protactinium removal would also improve the purity of the fuel, (no captures to 234..) but i doubt people would approve of process yielding highest quality U233 ('proliferation' even though it's notoriously useless for bombs. fyi: if one used a chloride salt, it'd boil off easily:

www.energyfromthorium.com...

of course chlorine has a long lived isotope, not very desirable.

I was also under the impression transmuting existing nuclear waste in existing reactors is highly problematic or even not possible at all because in a thermal spectrum the problematic wastes are more likely to absorb a neutron rather cause a fission, hence more waste will be created than destroyed. I believe a thermal thorium breeder also has the potential to destroy nuclear waste, however that is more suited to a fast reactor since it can directly use most TRU's as fuel. Thorium in a breeder shouldn't have issues with waste because the problematic wastes are not created in the first place.

well, you'd get a constant TRU load for every operating reactor, rather than every refuel. burnup increases with concentration, so the remaining question is probably whether reactivity control would suffer under an equilibrium load of TRUs. i have no idea, tbh.

Th should produce significantly less TRUs in a thermal reactor, but not zero, right?

...The advantages in terms of fuel efficiency of a thorium breeder with reprocessing hold true only against our current reactors, but not against FBR reactors where the differences are essentially trivial. A thorium reactor capable of doing this still needs to be developed (some test reactors are not commercial) and are probably further away than Fast Breeder Reactors (which also need development).

very true, but U238 breeding requires faster neutrons, which precludes water cooling, thereby causing all sorts of problems.

n cross sections of TH232 and U238 www.ncnr.nist.gov...

join the club, this run-of-the-mill (slightly modded?) Gen I or II reactor ran five years without refuel. element life will still be a problem, though, along with high pressure gaseous fission products, but noone claimed you couldn't use enclosed s[speculation] liquid fuel capable of absorbing these gases or just some spare room in small, pellet like containers to retrofit existing designs and mitigate these issues. [/speculation].

On one hand it might kill fuel cycle revenues for organizations such as Areva where fuel cycle activities make up around one-third of its revenue. But on the flip side, they could also sell more reactors if they were more efficient.

very true, but U238 breeding requires faster neutrons, which precludes water cooling, thereby causing all sorts of problems.

In my view one of the limitations of water is that although it has a high heat capacity, it has a rather low boiling point, hence to keep the core covered in water during operation, the system must be pressurized. If there is a leak, complex and diversified systems are required to cover the core in water, and a large containment is required to contain the radioactive steam. Low temperatures can also only be used in water cooled reactors which limits thermal efficiency to around 35%. In my opinion a gas coolant, or something with a significantly higher boiling point should be used - such as Liquid Metal. In a pool type liquid metal reactor, the entire primary loop is inside essentially a vat at atmospheric pressure, and when combined with a metallic fuel, many of the safety systems can be eliminated because they are no longer needed. Sodium seems OK, I question the notion of it being a fire hazard considering a containment inerting system will be used, usually argon gas (almost all incidents so far are within the secondary loop). The disadvantage is of course, containment required for liquid sodium, and the control rods have a lot of worth which means they must be seismically isolated.

Th should produce significantly less TRUs in a thermal reactor, but not zero, right?

Not sure.

I asked some questions on the energy from thorium forum, doubt I'll get a response though.

1. Could a LWBR combined with reprocessing increase the utilization of the fuel by a factor of well over 100? Is the final waste only fission products as it would be with LFTR & IFR?
2. Would a LWBR be able to consume existing nuclear waste, leaving only fission products?
3. If I recall correctly, the advantage with the LFTR is that the Protactinium and Xenon can be continuously removed from the reactor - what fuel cycle advantages does this have over a LWBR?

www.energyfromthorium.com...

You know more than myself on the topic, if you have any ideas to the above questions then please share.

no, i'm not involved, the information is available freely on the web, as you can see, i just followed the leads. the Energy from Thorium website's forums for example are an interesting source of details, but beware, it's full of 'strangelovesque' people who'd put reactors into locomotives... so don't take everything at face value.

Who?

fwiiw, i'll try to explain my POV, but please remember that i'm just an armchair analyst...

Originally posted by C0bzz

I asked some questions on the energy from thorium forum, doubt I'll get a response though.

1. Could a LWBR combined with reprocessing increase the utilization of the fuel by a factor of well over 100? Is the final waste only fission products as it would be with LFTR & IFR?

with pyroprocessing and optimized fuel for longetivity, you'd eventually fission all the thorium you put in, but transuranic residues would remain, due to lack of fast neutrons. your ability to start new reactors would also be limited due to low breeding ratio....

2. Would a LWBR be able to consume existing nuclear waste, leaving only fission products?

input as many as you can and if the max. point is above equilibrium you can wait until it comes down then refill. not viable, processing would suck, iow, NO. not in a business environment.

3. If I recall correctly, the advantage with the LFTR is that the Protactinium and Xenon can be continuously removed from the reactor - what fuel cycle advantages does this have over a LWBR?

prodactinium 233 removal means pure u233 fuel (no breeding of x-234) and more neutrons. good, but pure u233 will arouse fear. Xe: less poison, better breeding.

let's see what the eft forum says.