I am fairly convinced that thorium rectors can be brought on quickly, and this consortium is putting itself in the running.
I will go further than that. This technology is completely able to displace the uranium based systems once and for all. All the related problems go away and are even consumed. This seems to indicate that we will be looking at a lower cost rather quickly.
Had the nuclear bomb not been the priority in early days it would have been a thorium world from the beginning. Read some of my earlier posts of thorium to get the background.
I suspect that the consortium will access the money. Japan
OCTOBER 01, 2010
They are trying to get $300 million in funding. The first step on the path to commercially available Thorium Energy will be through their 10MW miniFUJI (in 5 years). That will be followed by a larger capacity design called
The
There are agreements and the goals but there does not seem to significant levels of real funding. There maybe a million dollars at this point.
Burn (fission) actinide wastes from LWRs in the MSR
• Each MSR burns 1000 kg per year @ 1 GWe
• Each LWR produces Pu (300 kg/GWe/yr), Np+Am+Cm (30 kg/GWe/y)
Tap into waste management fund
After five days of discussions and negotiations, IThEMS and the Czech Republic molten salt researchers concluded and signed memorandum which lays a foundation for collaboration towards the realization of a miniFUJI in practical use in a near future.
DECEMBER 19, 2007
The Fuji Fuji
-How to exactly modify the Hastelloy N alloy (increasing Cr and reducing Co)
-analyse and test low tensile strength parts like the tubing elbow
The projected costs for the reactor are about 20-25% less than a PWR and a little less than a LWR.
The Encyclopedia of Earth claims that the 100 MWe FUJI MSR design is being developed internationally by a Japanese, Russian and
The attractive features of this MSR fuel cycle include: the high-level waste comprising fission products only, hence shorter-lived radioactivity; small inventory of weapons-fissile material (plutonium-242 being the dominant plutonium isotope); low fuel use (the French self-breeding variant claims 50kg of thorium and 50kg uranium-238 per billion kWh); and safety due to passive cooling up to any size.
Currently nuclear reactors use about 100 to 200 tons of uranium every year. 10,000 to 20,000 kg of uranium per billion kWh. 200 to 400 times more uranium than the french msr design uses. The MSR can generate 1000 times less uranium and plutonium waste and everything else that is left over has a halflife of less than 50 years.
Several of the
The most prominent modular project is the South African-led consortium developing the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) of 170 MWe. In
Each PBMR unit will finally discharge about 19 tonnes/yr of spent pebbles to ventilated on-site storage bins. Eventual construction cost (when in clusters of four or eight units) is expected to be very competitive, and generating cost is projected below US3 cents/kWh. Each 210g fuel pebble contains about 9g uranium and the total uranium in one fuel load is 4.1 t. MOX and thorium fuels are envisaged. With used fuel, the pebbles can be crushed and the 4% of their volume which is microspheres removed, allowing the graphite to be recycled. The company says microbial removal of carbon-14 is possible (also in the graphite reflectors when decommissioning). So ideally PBMR should generate about 1000kg/year (1 ton/yr) of waste or 30,000 kg over 30 years of operation. This is 15 times more waste than the
Generally, modern small reactors for power generation are expected to have greater simplicity of design, economy of mass production, and reduced siting costs. Many are also designed for a high level of passive or inherent safety in the event of malfunction. Traditional reactor safety systems are 'active' in the sense that they involve electrical or mechanical operation on command.
Small-medium reactors with development claimed to be well advanced
NAME Power Type Who is Developing
CAREM 27 MWe PWR CNEA & INVAP, Argentina
KLT-40 35 MWe PWR OKBM, Russia
MRX 30-100 MWe PWR JAERI, Japan
IRIS-50 50 MWe PWR Westinghouse, USA
SMART 100 MWe PWR KAERI, S. Korea
NP-300 100-300 MWe PWR Technicatome (Areva), France
Modular SBWR 50 MWe BWR GE & Purdue University , USA
PBMR 165 MWe HTGR Eskom, South Africa, et al
GT-MHR 285 MWe HTGR General Atomics (USA), Minatom (Russia
Here is the schematic of the larger reactor plant
FURTHER DETAILS:
Most of the information for this article is from the 870 page status report on small reactors pages 821-870 and the rest from the already cited Encyclopedia of Earth.
Accumulated waste over 30 years is about 880kg in the salt and 750kg in the gas. This is very little waste and they are not long life radioactive material
The projected costs for the reactor are about 20-25% less than a PWR and a little less than a LWR.
The proposed project development schedule.
The neutron flux distribution
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