What is forming is a global consensus around thorium reactor
development. I think that this is a milestone in terms of general
credibility and ultimate introduction of the developing technology.
This is extremely important.
1 not said here is that a working thorium salt reactor can be used to
consume all spent nuclear fuel because it bathes the atoms in
neutrons and speeds decay. Thus even if we no longer need nuclear
power, we need thorium reactors to mop up the spent fuel.
2 They provide effectively bullet proof heat engines because of the
natural fail safes.
3 The decay process itself ends in benign byproducts.
Had we not been so excited about making bombs, thorium would have led
the nuclear age for just these reasons. Now we need thorium to clean
up the mess.
China and India is also leading this initiative and that means we are
the beneficiaries rather than the other way around. Get over it and
say thankyou.
JUNE
27, 2012
DOE
is quietly collaborating with China on an alternative nuclear power
design known as a molten salt reactor that could run on thorium fuel.
China plans to have a 5 megawatt molten salt reactor in 2015.
DOE’s
assistant secretary for nuclear energy Peter Lyons is co-chairing the
partnership’s executive committee, along with Jiang Mianheng from
the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), according to a March
presentation by CAS on thorium molten salt reactors. Beijing-based
CAS is a state group overseeing about 100 research institutes. It and
the DOE have established what CAS calls the “CAS and DOE Nuclear
Energy Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding.”
Outside of the DOE, at least three companies in the West are privately developing thorium reactors: Flibe Energy, Huntsville, Ala, which has dusted off 1960s ORNL technology; Thorenco, San Francisco; and Ottawa Valley Research, Ottawa. Baroness Bryony Worthington of the UK House of Lords has emerged as the West’s political champion for thorium. India, home to huge reserves of thorium, also has ambitious plans. Japanese utility Chubu Electric is considering it.
2. India Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman R K Sinha said - India is planning to establish a nuclear power plant that uses thorium as main fuel instead of uranium, which is used in conventional reactors.
Sinha said the country already has the technological know-how to use thorium. However, for large-scale use of thorium, the country will need two decades. "We have to assess the thorium-powered reactor on various aspects in the long-term before replicating similar models in bigger ways," he added.
U.S.
partners with China on new nuclear
By Mark
Halper | June 26, 2012, 9:10 PM PDT
The
U.S. Department of Energy is quietly collaborating with China on an
alternative nuclear power design known as a molten salt reactor that
could run on thorium fuel rather than on more hazardous uranium,
SmartPlanet understands.
DOE’s
assistant secretary for nuclear energy Peter Lyons is co-chairing the
partnership’s executive committee, along with Jiang Mianheng from
the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), according to a March
presentation by CAS on thorium molten salt reactors. Beijing-based
CAS is a state group overseeing about 100 research institutes. It and
the DOE have established what CAS calls the “CAS and DOE Nuclear
Energy Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding.”
As
SmartPlanet reported late last year, Jiang - the son of former
Chinese leader Jiang Zemin - led a Chinese delegation visiting
DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to discuss ORNL’s
thorium molten salt reactor (MSR) technology. Some sources
identify him as a vice president of CAS. ORNL developed a thorium MSR
in the 1960s.
The
48-page presentation, entitled “TMSR Project of CAS” (TMSR stands
for thorium molten salt reactor) is dated March 12, 2012 throughout,
except on the cover page, which gives a March 18 date. It names the
author as Xiaohan Yu from CAS’ TMSR Research Center, based at the
Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics.
The
abbreviation “UCB” also appears on the cover page, suggesting
that Yu (I believe his Chinese name is Yu Xiaohan, Americanized to
Xiaohan Yu in the presentation) delivered his talk at the University
of California Berkeley on the 18th. One of the scientists working in
the alliance is John Arnold, a UC Berkeley chemistry professor. I’ve
sent emails over the last day to Lyons, Jiang, Arnold and several
other principles, requesting confirmation and elaboration. No
additional information came back by publication time.
A
DOE spokeswoman told me, “we are working on responses now and will
let you know as soon as possible.”
Proponents
of thorium MSRs, also known as liquid thorium reactors or sometimes
as liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs), say the devices beat
conventional solid fuel uranium reactors in all aspects including
safety, efficiency, waste and peaceful implications.
Among
the claimed benefits: thorium waste cannot be easily shaped into a
bomb; the waste lasts only hundreds of years rather than tens of
thousands for uranium; thorium in liquid form burns more efficiently
than solid uranium; liquid thorium reactors do not operate at
dangerous high pressure; liquid thorium reactors cannot melt down.
The U.S. under
President Richard Nixon chose uranium over thorium in part because
uranium reactors provided the weapons grade waste that was desirable
during the Cold War. That set the stage for a uranium-based nuclear
industry. Today, solid uranium fuel powers almost all of the world’s
434 commercial reactors.
The
CAS presentation describes a China that’s keenly interested in
thorium as a future CO2-free source of power in a country choking on
the emissions of its coal fired power plants.
One
reason for China’s interest in thorium: It has an ample supply
of the substance, which occurs in monazite, a mineral that also
contains rare earths, the metals that are vital across industries
ranging from missiles to wind turbines to iPods. China, which
dominates the world’s rare earth market, is believed to be sitting
on substantial stockpiles of thorium that it has already extracted
from the rare earths that it has mined and processed.
The
CAS presentation also points out that China has far more thorium than
uranium. It notes that China imported 95 percent of the uranium ore
it used in 2010. To address its uranium shortfall, China has
been buying up foreign uranium mines, including taking control of
Namibia’s Husab mine in March.
Nuclear
currently provides less than 2 percent of China’s electricity. But
as SmartPlanet has noted,its share will surge as China builds as many
as 100 new reactors - nearly a quarter of the world’s current
total - over the next 20 years.
Those
will include conventional uranium reactors as well as alternative
designs such as thorium MSRs and fast neutron reactors. (Bill Gates’
TerraPower is developing a type of FNR known as a traveling wave
reactor. Gates has also discussed a possible Chinese co-operation,
with China National Nuclear Corp). FNRs are expected to
play a big role in China by 2050.
China
is developing at least two thorium reactors, and is looking at molten
salt technology as well as at another approach that triggers a
thorium reaction by using a particle accelerator - a technique
pioneered by Nobel Prize winning physicist and former CERN director
Carlo Rubbia.
It
is now linking up with DOE in an effort to better understand the
workings of the molten salt variety. The collaboration is also
investigating “nuclear fuel resources” and “nuclear hybrid
energy systems,” according to anorganization chart (see
below) included in the CAS presentation. The DOE’s Stephen
Kung and CAS’ Zhu Zhiyuan serve as “technical co-ordination
co-chairs,” supporting their bosses Lyons and Jiang, who co-chair
the “MOU Executive Committee.”
Scientists
from ORNL, MIT, the University of California Berkeley, Idaho National
Laboratory (INL) and several branches of CAS including the Shanghai
Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) and Shanghai Advanced Research
Institute are on the MOU committee (again, see chart below). Two of
the U.S. labs - ORNL and INL - are co-managed for DOE by Battelle
Memorial Institute, the Columbus, Ohio non-profit science and
technology group.
What’s
not clear is what, exactly, the U.S. will get from the collaboration.
While
China has declared an interest in building thorium reactors -
including CAS’ January 2011 approval of a TMSR project - the U.S.
has not. The partnership with China suggests that the U.S.
acknowledges a possible role for thorium in its energy future.
But
some skeptics worry that the U.S. is foolishly abetting Chinese
efforts to advance a crucial energy technology that China could soon
control, and thus give China hegemony in two vital areas: rare earths
and energy. ORNL, the 1960s thorium molten salt pioneer, has no
clear path to commercialization given the U.S. government’s lack of
commitment to the technology.
Outside
of the DOE, at least three companies in the West are privately
developing thorium reactors: Flibe Energy, Huntsville, Ala,
which has dusted off 1960s ORNL technology; Thorenco, San Francisco;
and Ottawa Valley Research, Ottawa. Baroness Bryony Worthington
of the UK House of Lordshas emerged as the West’s political
champion for thorium. India, home to huge reserves of thorium,
also has ambitious plans. Japanese utility Chubu Electric is
considering it. And thorium is picking up attention with the recent
publication of the book SuperFuel, by author Richard Martin.
Many
of those supporters urge the use of thorium reactors not only for
generating electricity, but also for providing carbon-free heat to
power industrial processes such as extracting oil from tar sands, or
in the metals, chemicals and cement sectors, among others.
They
also point out that the reactors could power water desalination, and
that they have valuable byproducts that could be used as fertilizers
and for medical applications.
China
clearly sees many of those benefits as well.
The
CAS presentation describes the possible use of thorium reactors as a
heat source for various applications, including hydrogen and methanol
production.
CAS
also points out that molten salt, germane to liquid thorium reactors,
can also serve as heat storage in solar thermal power plants in which
parabolic mirror warm a fluid that eventually drives a turbine. By
storing the fluid’s heat, molten salt technology can potentially
answer one of the main criticisms of solar power: that it cannot
generate electricity at night.
Like
thorium nuclear, that would be a development that should equally
interest either country. Let’s see if technology truly flows in
both directions in this new partnership.
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