…actually contain on removal 8 actinide elements, protactinium (formed from thorium) two isotopes 231 and 233, thorium that was more radioactive than natural thorium since it would have isotopes 228, 229, 230 — three that favor the formation of additional 232U in additional recycles of the same thorium — as well as the natural occurring thorium isotope, 232Th, uranium with six isotopes, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, and 238, neptunium, plutonium with si…
…d, since virtually no mining is done here. Another source of reactor fuel: thorium. We have enough uranium and thorium to run thousands of reactors for thousands of years. Another source of fuel: mixed oxides from weapons stockpiles. I am reading your book, “Our Choice”. I do not understand why you do not back up your claims about nuclear and other resources with citations from science-based, peer-reviewed sources. I do not understand why you rely…
…extremely proliferation resistent if used correctly. India, which has use thorium reserves, intends to build a thorium based fuel infrastructure. CANDU reactors, with their excellent neutron economy, under these circumstances will function as breeders, albeit with a much longer breeding time than fast reactors. I continue to advocate the presence of some fast reactors in the fleet though, mostly as you discussed in the show, to burn-up the even-n…
…focus is on low enriched uranium fuel for the first generation IMSR. Still thorium holds many potential advantages that get pretty good with some re-use and re-cycle of fuel. Thorium may be hard to ignore for the next generation IMSR… Engineer-Poet U-233 is quite reactive, compared to U-235. So a U-235 started Th core will have reactivity swing as U-233 is bred. But which direction, and how fast? Calculating things like the accumulated poisoning…
…had postings on the Energy From Thorium Forum from members of the Chinese Thorium Molten Salt Reactor effort. Thorium may still be having problems getting a hearing before Dr. Chu and decision makers in the current US administration but the Chinese appear to be listening (and organizing a well funded and well led campaign to build molten salt Thorium reactors on a rapid development schedule). (American thorium advocates wish the gifted Chinese te…
…entioning are inherent to MSRs not necessarily to LFTRs and that utilizing thorium in MSRs will not be any kind of significant advantage for MSRs versus LWRs anytime soon, considering how small a portion fuel cost is of the overall levelized cost of generating atomic energy. I generally agree with both Rod and David (and with Kirk Sorensen @ Energy from Thorium and Flibe and Charles Barton @ Nuclear Green). The time-frame and target markets that t…
…elf if uranium gets too costly. When Lightbridge gets its fuel certified, thorium will stop being the waste product of rare-earth refining and become nuclear fuel, displacing mined uranium. There is about 3-4x as much thorium out there as uranium, much of it associated with other valuable materials, and 99.5% of it potentially convertible to energy in thermal-spectrum reactors compared to the 0.5% efficiency of LWRs. If there’s 20 years of uran…
…trivial to supervise the loading of UF4 into a LFTR, and then it can burn thorium indefinitely. Once the thorium fuel cycle is established it will ultimately eliminate the need for enrichment at all, which would be the best result. Even downblending to the highest legal limit is a waste for LEU burners. U-235 is inherently “downblended” after being added to the salt, and adding superfluous U-238 only makes the whole fuel cycle significantly less…
…o possible fuel cycles but none to isotope separation of chlorine: https://thoriumenergyalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ElysiumIndustries_ThoriumEnergyAlliance-2017-8-21.pdf John ONeill That wouldn’t apply to reactors with a homogeneous molten core, rather than fuel rods. The Moltex fast salt reactor, unlike Elysium’s design, does keep the molten salt fuel in tubes similar to standard fuel rods. From what I can understand, a heterogeneous…
…o consume transuranium elements and generate fissile material (U-233) from Thorium. This produces a reactor, which is highly economical in uranium and thorium consumption, and is also efficient at destroying TRUs (only a few grams TRUs per billion KWhe are left in the ultimate AMSTER waste stream to be stored or disposed of). Instead of burning up and destroying Minor Actinide in Spent Nuclear Fuel, AMSTER burns up the Minor Actinides in SNF while…
…lots of those who study it, is the MSR or LFTR – it can run on uranium or thorium, can burn current nuclear waste as fuel, and has plusses too numerous to mention – operates at standard pressure, no meltdowns, higher temperature and hence better efficiency, better use of fuel (by a factor of 300), load following (and hence could replace nat gas peaking plants), easy to start, totally inherently safe (when it overheats, it shuts itself off through…
…the fissile, and then using the fissile to startup a fleet of thousands of Thorium LFTRs creates a long term sustainable chain of energy beneficence where you produce huge amounts of power for hundreds of years in your Thorium reactors and never run out of fuel. Robert Steinhaus DV82XL – I never had a body to be seen in public in tight clothing. Martin Precek I personally participated in the fuel-cycle issue for the Czech research that has now bee…
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