Nuclear scientists are being urged to develop thorium as a new fuel indicating that the radioactive element may prove much safer in nuclear power reactors than uranium. It is also more difficult to use thorium for the production of nuclear weapons.
Some in the British nuclear Scientists at the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) have been encouraged by the government to help research on an Indian thorium-based reactor, and on a test program in Norway. The Norway tests at the OECD’s nuclear trials facility in Halden are conducted in a Bond-style underground bunker by a private firm, Thor Energy (the element itself was discovered in Norway in 1828 and named after the Norse god of thunder). The company hopes to get thorium licensed alongside uranium in current water-cooled reactor plants. Staff from NNL have been advising Thor on the use of mixed oxide fuels (MOX). NNL has also been helping the Indian authorities develop a thorium reactor, as India sits on top of the world’s biggest thorium reserves.
The British government says it would be useful to increase the fuel options for nuclear operators, as thorium is believed to be three times more plentiful than uranium. It is also currently being produced as a by-product from mining rare earths.
Thorium is an alternative to uranium, which either fuels directly or is the basis for the fuel in current nuclear reactors. Many advantages are claimed for thorium over uranium: greater safety margins, better safeguards against proliferation of nuclear weapons, shorter-lived waste products. But to get the best out of it would require a type of nuclear reactor which has never been built, and whose development was halted four decades ago.
Large sums of money should be invested in a technology which has huge potential, but whose intricacies are uninvestigated.
There are some research on the use of thorium as fuel in certain types of advanced nuclear power reactors under development in India and in Norway. There are six new prototypes of nuclear power reactors under development in different countries. One of these reactors is the so-called Lead Cooled Fast Reactor. The system can be used as a burner to consume actinides from spent fuel and a burner/ breeder with thorium. Another nuclear reactors that can use thorium-32 in conjunction with uranium-32 as fuel is the so-called Very High Temperature Fast Reactor. It is expected that some of these nuclear power reactors will be in market around 2030-2050. For more information about these new advanced nuclear power reactors see my paper entitled New Technologies Associated to the Construction of Nuclear Power Plants.
For updated information see Wikipedia: Thorium-based nuclear power
Also: http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1016061/candu-signs-expanded-agreement-with-china-to-further-develop-recycled-uranium-and-thorium-fuelled-candu-reactors
This may Help:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/nov/01/what-is-thorium-nuclear-power
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