Norway is building thorium reactor

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 3:41 pm

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulleti ... party/6421

kurt9 · Post by **kurt9** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 5:26 pm

There may be hope for the Europeans yet.

KitemanSA · Post by **KitemanSA** » Sun Dec 02, 2012 12:09 am

It is another attempt to use thorium in a solid fuel reactor, not unlike trying to use diesel in a gasoline engine. LFTRs cousins, LFTRs.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Sun Dec 02, 2012 12:39 am

I think the motivation behind it is to introduce Thorium trough the backdoor to an industry that has been completely averse to change in any way in the past 50 years, or so. The NRC has never certified a new reactor design. They have no interest in doing that. The whole nuclear power industry has no interest in doing so. By introducing Thorium without big changes to the reactor design, they get a foot into the door. Once the industry has (slowly, very slowly) adapted to this little change, they might be more receptive towards new reactor designs that actually use this new fuel more effectively.

KitemanSA · Post by **KitemanSA** » Sun Dec 02, 2012 11:09 am

The NRC has allowed a number of thorium charges, all of which worked, after a fashion, but all of which (in the solid fuel form) had unacceptable issues. Liquid fuel is the way to go.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Sun Dec 02, 2012 6:57 pm

The NRC has allowed a number of thorium charges, all of which worked, after a fashion, but all of which (in the solid fuel form) had unacceptable issues. Liquid fuel is the way to go.

Yes, the NRC allows thorium charges, but no new reactor designs. The entire industry is averse to change. This is why they are slowly introducing thorium first and then will later introduce the reactor designs to get the most out of it.

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:55 pm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 132246.htm

Enginerd · Post by **Enginerd** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 5:41 pm

jcoady wrote:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 132246.htm

Oh no. Nation states might do bad things using their custom designed expensive reactors.

In the production of U233 from thorium-232, it is unavoidable that one will invariably produce small amounts of uranium-232 as an impurity, because of parasitic (n,2n) reactions on uranium-233 itself, or on protactinium-233. Uranium 232 is really, really bad stuff.

The decay chain of U232 quickly yields a number of different strong gamma radiation emitters, which makes manual handling in a glove box with only light shielding (as commonly done with plutonium) too hazardous. Not only will it kill you dead, its presence will also poison your weapon yield, and it will alert anyone who cares to look exactly where your weapon site is.

The thing is, any nation (or terrorist group?) with the money and the resources needed could produce weapons more cheaply and with less risk to their workers by enriching U238 into Plutonium 239, which is much better for making weapons anyway.

I think the article is fear mongering at best. Is their a proliferation risk? Sure. An exceedingly impractical risk imho.

KitemanSA · Post by **KitemanSA** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:09 pm

Absolutely!

Backup evidence. U235 & Pu239 bombs existent ~20,000.
U233 bombs existent = 0... ZERO.

This should tell us something.

Enginerd · Post by **Enginerd** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 10:30 pm

KitemanSA wrote:Absolutely!

Backup evidence. U235 & Pu239 bombs existent ~20,000.
U233 bombs existent = 0... ZERO.

This should tell us something.

According to wikipedia:

The United States detonated an experimental device in the 1955 Operation Teapot "MET" test which used a plutonium/U-233 composite pit; this was based on the plutonium/U-235 pit from the TX-7E, a prototype Mark 7 nuclear bomb design used in the 1951 Operation Buster-Jangle "Easy" test. Although not an outright fizzle, MET's actual yield of 22 kilotons was significantly enough below the predicted 33 that the information gathered was of limited value. In 1998, as part of its Pokhran-II tests, India detonated an experimental U-233 device of low-yield (0.2 kt) called Shakti V.

So it has been attempted, and seems to have badly fizzled with both efforts. The bomb makers with deep pockets have quite rightly given up in disgust. If some well funded terrorist group or nation state is going to bother with trying to make a bomb, they are going to buy or steal U239 or they will build themselves a uranium reactor, then frequently load and unload fresh fuel rods so they can extract plutonium. Nobody is likely to ever again give bomb making with U233 much additional effort.

Anybody trying to extract the Protactinium from a LFTR in the hope of making U233 will find the neutron economy is such that they simply have to load all that U233 right back into the reactor or the thing will shut down.

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 4:04 pm

Came across this thorium blog post.

http://rein.pk/thorium/

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 5:38 pm

There are a lot of links that you can follow from the above post. Here are some of them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... orium.html
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/ ... ar-future/

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelli ... egin/15816

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... ear-future

http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/ ... -Paper.pdf