Design of World's first Thorium based nuclear reactor is ready

This article from India is describing a Thorium reactor.

Thorium is said to be safer and more plentiful than uranium.

I hope somebody can explain the detail, as I am no expert.

Is this for real? Or is something missing here?

India Today Online brings you the first look of design and prototype of the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, also termed as AHWR.

It is the latest Indian design for a next-generation nuclear reactor that will burn thorium as its fuel ore.

The design is being developed at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), in Mumbai, India and aims to meet the objectives of using thorium fuel cycles for commercial power generation.

Design of World's first Thorium based nuclear reactor is ready

This technology is a lot safer. It would mean more reactors but they can be turned off almost instantly, having the reactor right in the city. I think this is a good idea. Along with this have solar panels on homes and some windmills and hydroelectric facilities. I think that this technology would be cheaper in the long term and much safer.

I have read about this before, but no reactors were planned yet.

reply to post by xuenchen


The Moltern Salt Reactor at Oak Ridge used moltern Thorium salts as fuel and operated for four years from 1965 to 1969.

I think it gets the official 'first' Thorium reactor designation.

reply to post by xuenchen


Early atomic bomb research was based on the use of Thoreum but the more unstable and potentially more explosive Plutonium became the element of choice once it became obtainable.
So there may be some truth but it would still be radioactive waste and likely requiere far larger ammount's of whatever thorium isotope they used than the equivelent uranium based reactor and more material means more waste.
That waste may be less radioactive but in far higher quantity's meaning larger waste disposal and more isotope based radio active decay, so at first glance I do not see the benefit.

chr0naut
reply to post by xuenchen

 

The Moltern Salt Reactor at Oak Ridge used moltern Thorium salts as fuel and operated for four years from 1965 to 1969.

I think it gets the official 'first' Thorium reactor designation.

Had it not been for uranium being developed for weapons we would be using thorium instead of uranium in our power plants. Once again the military industrial complex screwed America over.

chr0naut
reply to post by xuenchen

 

The Moltern Salt Reactor at Oak Ridge used moltern Thorium salts as fuel and operated for four years from 1965 to 1969.

I think it gets the official 'first' Thorium reactor designation.

Well this reactor doesn't seem to be a molten salt reactor, it is simply a new type of heavy water reactor. The reactor you are referring to was a liquid fluoride thorium reactor. Maybe this new heavy water design is safer or more efficient, but some how I doubt it. The liquid fluoride thorium reactor is probably too efficient so they have redesigned it to better conform with modern day nuclear plant efficiency in order to make more profit from it. Can't have energy being too cheap now can we.

reply to post by xuenchen


There are even companies designing cars around thorium. Its said that these cars can runn for a 100 years on just one gram of thorium.

If you ask me thorium is the future

reply to post by xuenchen


Haven't read the article but I don't think that calling it the first is exactly correct, there have been experimental t-reactors before in never took into commercial electric production because of the uranium cycle being linked to weapon production.

Thorium has a manageable half life versus the tens of thousands of years thorium by fuels are stored and become stable more in the realm of 50 to 100 years

LABTECH767
reply to post by xuenchen

 

So there may be some truth but it would still be radioactive waste and likely requiere far larger ammount's of whatever thorium isotope they used than the equivelent uranium based reactor and more material means more waste.
That waste may be less radioactive but in far higher quantity's meaning larger waste disposal and more isotope based radio active decay, so at first glance I do not see the benefit.

edit on 15-2-2014 by LABTECH767 because: (no reason given)

Thorium is very efficient at producing energy. 500 MW output from a half gram. A fistful of Thorium could power a city the size of London for a week. Building new reactors is substantially cheaper as you need virtually no shielding unlike a traditional Uranium or Plutonium reactor. Another added bonus is that to be able to sustain fusion, you need to add 10% plutonium to it(90% Thorium/10% Pu). This Pu comes from the waste of Uranium plants thereby recycling that waste and lessening the need for storage of that waste further reducing environmental impact. Thorium mining produces a single pure isotope, whereas the mixture of natural uranium isotopes must be enriched to function in most common reactor designs. The same cycle could also use the fissionable U-238 component of the natural uranium, and also contained in the depleted reactor fuel;Thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming, so fission stops by default in an accelerator driven reactor. This makes a meltdown impossible. There is right now, enough Thorium in the United States to meet all of its power needs at the current rate of consumption for 10, 000 years.

reply to post by xuenchen


here the thorium reactor in 5 min vs. uranium reactor


and because we are here at ATS, here is why thorium reactors are not so popular


BTW: this whole propaganda thing with Iran... why ?? they want nuclear power without possibility to create a weapon, why not thorium reactor in Iran ?

Yup thorium is far better as a fuel than other nuclear metals.

They really should be spending all that cash on researching this tech more than uranium or plasma reactors.

reply to post by peter vlar


I stand humbly corrected, Well Thorium may indeed be what we need, I suspect the half life is shorter than Uranium as well.

Iv been reading up on thorium power.


I want to kick the USA and every other nation in the nutz for not going with this in the first place. All because you cant use it to make bombs....

Pathetic.

reply to post by xuenchen


In Norway we've been feeding Thorium into our (research) reactors for years. What's interesting with India is that they plan on doing it full scale. Good idea, they should have done it long time ago. Better fuels for a better future.

KrzYmaBTW: this whole propaganda thing with Iran... why ?? they want nuclear power without possibility to create a weapon, why not thorium reactor in Iran ?

edit on 16-2-2014 by KrzYma because: (no reason given)

I made this argument. USA haters blasted me for daring to suggest it.

Thorium is the way to go.

crazyewok
I want to kick the USA and every other nation in the nutz for not going with this in the first place. All because you cant use it to make bombs....

Murder like sex, sells.

Sell a sexy weapon and you are made for life. Till somone catches up with you and uses it against you of course. What kill around comes around.

Well, I am not really sure that nuclear waste is really such a big problem in general. If you look at general scales, as a race we are producing many many orders of magnitude of toxic chemical waste and yet we have no problem dumping it in the sea, sticking it into drums and putting them into warehouses where they will stay and be dangerous... FOREVER unless they are taken and reacted into something safe.

But that isn't a big deal because we are so used to chemicals, chemicals are something we understand right, and they are safe in comparison to this magic thing called Radiation.

Did you know that if you take 1 cubic meter of rock from the Earth and extract every radioactive atom out of it. The result is that 10cubic centimetres of it is purely radioactive. Oh god shock horror!

So anyway, in terms of waste, I don't see what the big deal is, sure it is more concentrated but if it is put back into the ground and capped to be sure it doesn't get into the water table... I really don't see what the big deal is.

Radiation is something that is only spooky because most people don't understand anything about it really. Fact of the matter is that radiation levels around the world (exceeding some hot spots (natural hot spots before you start)) range by a factor of about 1000. Including the hotspots its about a factor 5000x and yet what? we get people posting videos claiming to see fukashima fallout because their radiation monitor goes up by 2x when it rains... (dust... look up what dust is made of )

That aside, if this is real then it would be great to see a safer alternative while we get fusion up and running.

Here is a pretty decent video on thorium reactors. This guy used to work for NASA and has been a huge advocate for thorium technology for years.

Kirk Sorensen


Thorium is key to the future of America and the world

Ahh, yes, thorium to the rescue. Guess we'll just ask (nicely) for the whole nuke industry and bomb industry et al to shelve itself and start alll over. They won't mind. Shouldn't be too costly right?

Meanwhile we'll endure the usual fallout until they can "switch over".

This makes the usual nukes more okay in everyones minds. Back to your treadmills…