World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
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Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#2I'm really glad to see that the concept is starting to take off.
It makes me sad that it's not happening in the US. If some folks in the government and business don't get their heads out of their asses a growth industry is going to bypass us entirely.
Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#3Oak Ridge had a Thorium reactor in 1965. This is not the first.
Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#4Note that this very different to the molten salt LFTR design. With solid fuel it is very hard to prevent protactinium capturing neutrons, which means problems for breeding and waste and probably operational constraints as well.
The LFTR is such a beautiful consistent design but it is very different from ordinary reactors.
Also the title is inaccurate as different thorium reactors have been designed, built and operated. See MSRE and THTR-300 for example.
Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#5I'm really glad to see that the concept is starting to take off. It makes me sad that it's not happening in the US. If some folks in the government and business don't get their heads out of their asses a growth industry is going to bypass us entirely.
Note that you can breed U-233 from thorium and use that in nuclear weapons. The critical mass of U-233 is about 50% higher than Pu-239 but otherwise it's usable in implosion-type bomb designs; the main hazard is the presence of U-232 as a contaminant (which is a high level gamma emitter and makes it dangerous to work with) -- the real question is how they plan to reduce the U-232 contamination level enough to make weapons-safe U-233.
As India is already a nuclear weapons power, this has no immediate proliferation implications ... but moving a nation of a billion-plus people onto an energy cycle that produces weaponizable material as a by-product might be considered unwise by some. Cf. concerns in the 1970s and 1980s about the implications of running a "plutonium cycle" fast breeder energy ecosystem.
Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#6Oak Ridge had a Thorium reactor in 1965. This is not the first.
The situation is actually even worse, here's a wikipedia link to a list of fifteen Th fueled reactors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thor...
Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#7I'm really glad to see that the concept is starting to take off. It makes me sad that it's not happening in the US. If some folks in the government and business don't get their heads out of their asses a growth industry is going to bypass us entirely.
Note that you can breed U-233 from thorium and use that in nuclear weapons. The critical mass of U-233 is about 50% higher than Pu-239 but otherwise it's usable in implosion-type bomb designs; the main hazard is the presence of U-232 as a contaminant (which is a high level gamma emitter and makes it dangerous to work with) -- the real question is how they plan to reduce the U-232 contamination level enough to make we…
If everyone in the world had enough energy to live a developed-world middle-class lifestyle -- and with thorium reactors this might be feasible -- might that not eliminate one of the driving forces behind global conflict?
I'm not saying it's a slam-dunk win for sure.
But I have noticed a lot of general apathy and aversion to violence in the developed world largely because people are just too busy living their lives; they have a lot to lose.
> the real question is how they plan to reduce the U-232 contamination level enough to make weapons-safe U-233
I'm not convinced that anyone has this goal in mind. Maybe they just want to provide power to their countrymen and continue to lift India out of poverty. There might be nothing nefarious about this, unless you consider poor people getting less poor to be a problem.
Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#8Note that this very different to the molten salt LFTR design. With solid fuel it is very hard to prevent protactinium capturing neutrons, which means problems for breeding and waste and probably operational constraints as well. The LFTR is such a beautiful consistent design but it is very different from ordinary reactors. Also the title is inaccurate as different thorium reactors have been designed, built and operate…
I wish I had dug in further. I am substantially less excited now.
Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#9Nice specs!
Where does the Thorium come from and how abundant is it?
Re: World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
#10This is great news. I've read about so many great nuclear projects in the past few years. Three thorium initiatives in China, India and Norway. ITER in Europe. Bussard Electrostatic Fusion. Travelling Wave Reactors. General Fusion's Steam Hammer Design. And there are many more. So it looks like an increasingly bad bet to say that they will all fail. Which is good, because we're going to need lots of energy in the future.