Posted on November 3, 2019 by beyondnuclearinternational. She is founding president of Beyond Nuclear. (LMFBRs) for federal funding and lost out. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has already, to its disgrace, ‘lost track’ of 96 kilograms of uranium-233. None of these reactors operate today, but Oak Ridge had a ability to productively discuss and debate thorium with knowledge of the basics. It competed with the liquid metal cooled fast breeder reactors Although thorium advocates say that thorium reactors produce little radioactive waste, they simply produce a different spectrum of waste to those from uranium-235. Pingback: The delusion of thorium â Beyond Nuclear International « nuclear-news, Pingback: The delusion of thorium â Beyond Nuclear International « Antinuclear, The delusion of thorium â Beyond Nuclear International « nuclear-news, The delusion of thorium â Beyond Nuclear International « Antinuclear. And because of the complexity of problems listed below, thorium reactors are far more expensive than uranium fueled reactors. Note, however, that the gammas come from the decay chain of U-232, not So concerns over people High-level radioactive waste primarily is uranium fuel that has been used in a nuclear power reactor and is "spent," or no longer efficient in producing electricity. According to questions we have received, proponents claim that thorium reactors produce less waste and its half-life is âonlyâ a few hundred years rather than thousands. The main advantage of thorium is that the waste has a half-life on the ⦠Plutonium has a shorter half-life of about 24,000 years compared to Uranium-235's half-life ⦠DR. It takes almost a year after the reactor shutdown for all of the protactinium-233 to transform into uranium-233. It was in poor condition. Investigators reported an environmental release from many of the 1,100 containers could ‘… be expected to occur within the next five years because some of the packages are approaching 30 years of age and have not been regularly inspected.’, The DOE determined that this building had “Deteriorated beyond cost-effective repair and significant annual costs would be incurred to satisfy both current DOE storage standards, and to provide continued protection against potential nuclear criticality accidents or theft of the material.”. Technetium 99 has a half-life of 300,000 years and iodine 129 a half-life of 15.7 million years. If 232 Th is loaded in the nuclear reactor, the nuclei of 232 Th absorb a neutron and become nuclei of 233 Th. Also, thoriumâs small nuclear waste only has a half-life of 300 years, not 10,000 years. These gamma rays are very hard to shield, requiring more expensive We donât have as much experience with Th. Thorium is a basic element of nature, like Iron and Uranium. heat from these gammas makes weapon fabrication difficult, as it is hard to keep the weapon pit from [wikipedia] (MSRE). reprocessed, reactors could be fueled without mining any additional Thorium itself will not split and release energy. stealing spent fuel are largely reduced by Th, but the possibility of the owner of a Th-U reactor So there is an extraordinarily complex, dangerous and expensive preliminary process to kick-start a fission process in a thorium reactor. Thorium doesnât work as well as U-Pu in a fast reactor. In order to overcome the initial lack of fissile nuclei in a thorium fuel one may add fissile plutonium to this thorium. It takes about the same amount of uranium-233 as plutonium-239 â six kilos â to fuel a nuclear weapon. All of these isotopes are unstable (radioactive), but only 232 Th is relatively stable with half-life of 14 billion years, which is comparable to the age of the Earth (~4.5×10 9 years). major health concern of long-term nuclear waste. So, expect this energy source to become a big deal IN2P3 Uranium-233 has an extremely long half-life of 159,000 years, but too short for be still present on Earth. This means that if the fuel is Thorium fuel is a bit harder to prepare. More neutrons are released per neutron As Australia is grappling with the notion of introducing nuclear power into the country, it seems imperative the general public understand the intricacies of these technologies so they can make informed decisions. Thorium has 6 naturally occurring isotopes. Exotic, but These transuranics are the By this Naturally, it takes some time for enough uranium-233 to accumulate to make this particular fission process spontaneously ongoing. In other words, the thorium nucleus is very stable, with an extremely long shelf-life. This means that the contaminants could be chemically separated and the material publicly known that even reactor-grade plutonium can be made into a bomb if done carefully. The spent U-235 from the reactor contains very radioactive isotopes with a half-life of thousands of years, so the waste has to be stored safely for up to 10,000 years. In these, fuel is not cast into pellets, but is rather neutrons, it will undergo a series of nuclear reactions until it eventually emerges as an isotope of Molten-salt reactors are particularly well-suited for the thorium fuel cycle. In the thorium cycle, fuel is formed when Th captures a neutron (whether in a fast reactor or thermal reactor) to become Th . spent fuel handling and/or reprocessing. Reactors that use thorium are operating on whatâs called the Thorium-Uranium (Th-U) fuel And very importantly, thorium is not fissile. They can actually burn up more radioactive waste than they produce. Thorium is very insoluble, which is why it is plentiful in sands but not in seawater, in contrast to uranium. Thorium As Nuclear Fuel: the good and the bad, Computing the energy density of nuclear fuel, Molten Salt Reactor Experiment Thorium cycles exclusively allow thermal breeder reactors (as This makes stealing Thorium based fuels more challenging. On this page youâll learn some details about these and leave with the Nuclear reactor fuel contains ceramic pellets of uranium-235 inside of metal rods. Thorium-bearing minerals and not as much Uranium. More neutrons are released per neutronabsorbed in the fuel in a traditional (thermal) type of reactor U-235 for reactivity boosts, which means the nuclear fuel resources on Earth can be extended by 2 Era [amazon.com], and there is more info available all over the internet. Four commercial thorium reactors were constructed, all of which failed. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR). opposed to fast breeders). The half-life of 233 Th is approximately 21.8 minutes. One of the biggest is that a much higher fuel burn-up reduces plutonium waste by more than 80%. and the biggest problem with Thorium is that we are lacking in operational experience with it. obtaining bomb material is not. This week, Dr. Caldicott will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. based Physicians for Social Responsibility, one of the organizations she founded. Waste Storage The main whatisnuclear.com website. Reprocessing, as conducted at La Hague in France, involves exposing workers to toxic radioisotopes and still produces high volumes of radioactive waste. Since the thorium process is so efficient, the reduced nuclear waste is only about 400 tons from US thorium reactors per year. Later, the radioactive fuel would be removed from the reactor and reprocessed to separate out the uranium-233 from the contaminating fission products, and the uranium-233 will then be mixed with more thorium to be placed in another thorium reactor. The half-life of thorium-234 is only 24 days. The MSRE successfully proved that the concept has merit and can be operated the thermal spectrum, it is between U-235 and Pu-239 in the fast spectrum. An Energy Department safety investigation recently found a national repository for uranium-233 in a building constructed in 1943 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo: Jean-Marie Taillat for WikiMedia Commons), Vast quantities of highly acidic, highly radioactive liquid waste then remain to be disposed of. (Only 6 kilograms of plutonium-239 can fuel a nuclear weapon, while each reactor makes 250 kilos of plutonium per year. Thorium dioxide melts at 550 degrees higher Thorium reactors also produce uranium-232, which decays to an extremely potent high-energy gamma emitter that can penetrate through one metre of concrete, making the handling of this spent nuclear fuel extraordinarily dangerous. ... and with a half-life of over 24,000 years, it's tricky to store and dispose of. (bigger than uranium) atoms like Plutonium, Americium, Curium, etc. to shut down for fuel management, etc.). is the molten salt reactor (MSR), or as one particular MSR is commonly known on the internet, the Spent fuel is thermally hot as well as highly radioactive and requires remote handling and shielding. be extremely safe, proliferation resistant, resource efficient, environmentally superior (to gammas to come back. Plutonium has a shorter half-life of about 24,000 years compared to Uranium-235's half-life of just over 700 million years. ⢠In the conversion chain of 232Th to 233U, 233Pa is formed as an intermediate, which has a relatively longer half-life (~27 days) as compared to 239Np (2.35 days) in the uranium fuel cycle thereby requiring longer cooling time of at least one year for completing the decay of 233Pa to 233U. The longstanding effort to produce these reactors cost the U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars, while billions more dollars are still required to dispose of the highly toxic waste emanating from these failed trials. The truth is, thorium is not a naturally fissionable material. After absorbing a neutron, thorium-232 is transmuted into thorium-233, which then beta-decays with a half-life of 22 minutes into protactinium-233, which is chemically distinct from the parent thorium. U-233 is Th-232 -> Th-233 -> Pa-233 -> U-233). uranium called U-233, which will readily split and release energy next time it absorbs a neutron. waste is safe for a few times this, weapons are out of the question. Reduced nuclear waste. challenging route, one could obtain weapons material. Thorium-232 is useful in breeder reactors because on capturing slow-moving neutrons it decays into fissionable uranium-233. These reactors could For more information, see the Beyond Nuclear thorium fact sheet. Rather, when it is exposed to It was an unmitigated disaster, as are many other nuclear enterprises undertaken by the nuclear priesthood and the U.S. Government. Contribute to davidfetter/website development by creating an account on GitHub. When non-fissionable thorium is mixed with either fissionable plutonium or uranium-235, it captures a neutron and converts to uranium-233, which itself is fissionable. All of the remaining thorium isotopes have half-lives that are less than thirty days and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than ten minutes. The vast majority of existing or proposed nuclear reactors, however, use enriched uranium U-232 has a 70 year half-life so it takes a long time for these This still includes many dangerous alpha and beta emitters, and isotopes with extremely long half-lives, including iodine-129 (half-life of 15.7 million years). orders of magnitude without some of the complications of fast reactors. In nature, virtually all thorium is thorium-232, and has a half-life of about 14.05 billion years. Besides avoiding plutonium, Thorium has additional self-protection from the hard gamma rays emitted Half a century ago, Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee successfully ran an experimental reactor that demonstrated feasibility. However, uranium-238 is long-lived (its half-life, the time it takes for half of it to undergo radioactive decay, is nearly 4.5 billion years) and thorium-234, the isotope that results from the decay of uranium-238, is more radioactive. It is estimated to be about four times more abundant than uranium in the Earthâs crust. The Th-U cycle What about a thorium reactor design?? year time scale. Whoâs going to start the startup on these? The Th-U fuel cycle has some intriguing capabilities over the traditional U-Pu cycle. The U.S. tried for 50 years to create thorium reactors, without success. The thorium-based fuel also comes with other key benefits. While uranium enrichment is already very expensive, the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from uranium powered reactors is enormously expensive and very dangerous to the workers who are exposed to toxic radioactive isotopes during the process. from U-232 itself. Chris Coles December 29, 2020 02:56 AM. in the not-too-distant futureâ¦. traditional nukes, as well as to fossil fuel obviously), and maybe even cheap. A total of two tons of uranium-233 were manufactured in the United States. The chain reaction heats the salt, which naturally convects Normally, Pa is passed into the fission product waste in the THOREX process, which could have long term ⦠The nuclear industry is quite conservative, [wikipedia], Molten Salt Reactor Experiment [wikipedia], Nuclear Power is our gateway to a prosperous future, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor [wikipedia], Special May 2016 Edition of Nuclear Technology on Thorium. One-millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled, is carcinogenic.). Dr. Helen Mary Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, and military action in general. Hype alert  If someone on the internet told you something unbelievable about Thorium, you might want to check out our Thorium Myths page just to double check it. Additionally, Th is quite inert, making it difficult to chemically process. (U-235) or reprocessed plutonium (Pu-239) as fuel (in the Uranium-Plutonium cycle), and only a Alvin Weinberg discusses the history of this project in Of course, it due to U-232 as discussed above. Thorium reactors are amongst those being suggested at this time. cycle. Can Consume Nuclear Waste. But uranium-233 is also very efficient fuel for nuclear weapons. Mini-PRIMER on THE THORIUM CONCEPT. chemically separated shortly after it is produced and removed from the neutron flux (the path to Bi-212 also causes problems. Thorium exists in nature in a single isotopic form â T⦠already like 4 startups working on them, and China is developing them as well). The Th-U fuel cycle does not irradiate Uranium-238 and therefore does not produce transuranic But it is not a fissile isotope. Up and coming nuclear reactor powerhouses China and India both have substantial reserves of During the fission process, two things happen to the uraniu⦠Thorium cycles exclusively allow thermal breeder reactors (asopposed to fast breeders). test reactor of this type in the 1960s called the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment This article originally appeared on Independent Australia and is republished with kind permission of the author. avoiding plutonium altogether, thorium cycles are superior in this regard. Thorium is generally accepted as proliferation resistant compared to U-Pu cycles. One especially cool possibility suitable for the thermal-breeding capability of the Th-U fuel cycle The problem with Thorium is a naturally-occurring, slightly radioactive metal discovered in 1828 by the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. One of the biggest is that a much higher fuel burn-up reduces plutonium waste by more than 80%. Compared to uranium reactors, thorium reactors produce far less waste, and the waste is much less radioactive with a much shorter half-life. (Fast-spectrum molten salt reactors (FS-MSR) can use all isotopes of uranium, not just the 0.7% U-235 in natural uranium â with all the safety and stability of MSR.) well as in summary below. best suited for Molten Salt Reactors, which are discussed on their own page as By Although thorium advocates say that thorium reactors produce little radioactive waste, they simply produce a spectrum of waste that's different from those from uranium 235, which includes many dangerous alpha and beta emitters and isotopes with extremely long half-lives, including technetium 99, with a half-life of 300,000 years, and iodine 129, with a half-life of 15.7 million years. When money is at stake, itâs difficult to get people to change from the norm. Update: See our full page on Molten Salt Reactors for more info. Online chemical This material naturally requires similar stringent security measures used for plutonium storage for obvious reasons. Isotope 232 Th belongs to primordial nuclides and ⦠However, contrary to proponentâs claims Half-life of 233 Pa. Thorium 232 is âonlyâ a fertile material and the main problem can be directly in the breeding of fissile uranium 233. for extended amounts of time. has downsides as well. Finally, unlike U235, thorium is an efficient neutron absorber and producer. Thorium is a naturally occurring element discovered in 1828 and named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. The half-life of thorium 232, its most abundant isotope, is 14 billion years, or about as old as the universe. This then emits another electron and anti-neutrino by a second β decay to become U , the fuel: to be used to fuel a nuclear chain reaction that can run a power plant and make electricity (among absorbed in the fuel in a traditional (thermal) type of reactor. Thorium is therefore called fertile, whereas U-233 is called fissile. Thorium is only weakly radioactive. Like Uranium, its properties allow it Thus, Th-U waste will be less toxic on the 10,000+ The one hypothetical proliferation concern with Thorium fuel though, is that the Protactinium can be That still means hundreds of years of waste. plutonium is that it can be chemically separated from the waste and perhaps used in bombs. It is handful have used thorium. But Molten salt reactors are amazing. No wonder the U.S. nuclear industry gave up on thorium reactors in the 1980s. It is, therefore, necessary to mix thorium with either enriched uranium-235 (up to 20 per cent enrichment) or with plutonium â both of which are innately fissionable â to get the process going. Yes. The 90th element, Thorium, has only one isotope that made it to our planet, Th-232 with a half life of 40 billion years. Irradiated Thorium is more dangerously radioactive in the short term. MSR reactors can be an effective way of getting rid of highly radioactive waste. 4 And with todayâs reactor designs, which in the U.S. are fairly outdated, small disruptions in the process can also lead to catastrophic overheating and meltdowns. Current uranium waste is 30,000 tons per year. The DOE Office of Environmental Management now considers the disposal of this uranium-233 to be ‘an unfunded mandate’. ... much much safer in terms of what do do with the discarded waste....half-life trivial in comparison. would be much easier to work with. (Just kidding, there are Synthetic isotopes have been prepared; thorium-229 (7,880-year half-life), formed in the decay chain originating in the synthetic actinoid element neptunium, serves as a tracer for ordinary thorium (thorium-232). This normally emits an electron and an anti-neutrino ( ν ) by β decay to become Pa . How is Thorium a Fuel? In deep seawaters the isotope 230 Th makes up to 0.04% of natural thorium. Thorium reactors work by breeding Th-232 through Protactinium-233 (27.4 day half life) and into Uranium-233, which is fissile. Thorium reactors have long been proposed as a cleaner, safer alternative to nuclear energy. That means no matter how many thorium nuclei are packed together, they can not go critical. This still includes many dangerous alpha and beta emitters, and isotopes with extremely long half-lives, including iodine-129 (half-life of 15.7 million years). While U-233 an excellent fuel in Protactinium-233 has a half-life of about 27 days, after which is beta-decays to uranium-233, which is fissile and has impressive properties. Thus, the quantity of U-233 does not change and abundant thorium is consumed in what is called the thorium fuel cycle. successfully tested. The uranium 233 produced in thorium reactors is contaminated with uranium 232, which is produced through several different neutron absorption pathways. Pa-233 is a pretty strong neutron absorber, so the MSBR (basically the LFTR) has to extract it from the core once it is produced and let it ⦠require excellent neutron economy (such as breed-and-burn concepts), Thorium is not ideal. So for reactors that Instead of thorium, a Molten Salt Reactor can use uranium-235 or plutonium waste, from LWR and other reactors. Reprocessing spent fuel requires chopping up radioactive fuel rods by remote control, then dissolving them in concentrated nitric acid from which plutonium is precipitated out by complex chemical means. Uranium 232 has a half-life of 68.9 years, and its daughter radionuclides emit intense, highly penetrating gamma rays that make the material difficult to handle. Let us start with the basic nuclear properties of Thorium, which present some problems for a reactor designer. Although thorium advocates say that thorium reactors produce little radioactive waste , they simply produce a different spectrum of waste to those from uranium-235, which includes many dangerous alpha and beta emitters and isotopes with extremely long half-lives including technetium 99 - half-life of Current and exotic designs can theoretically accommodate thorium. through a heat exchanger to bring the heat out to a turbine and make electricity. Thorium advocates say that thorium reactors produce little radioactive waste, however, they simply produce a different spectrum of waste from traditional reactors, including many dangerous isotopes with extremely long half-lives. Then, it will decay directly to pure U-233. invariably produces some U-232, which decays to Tl-208, which has a 2.6 MeV gamma ray decay mode. Although thorium advocates say that thorium reactors produce little radioactive waste, they simply produce a different spectrum of waste to those from uranium-235. much detail in his autobiography, The First Nuclear Soil contains an average of around 6 parts per million (ppm) of thorium. melting due to its own heat. Thorium-fueled reactors, on the other hand, are fuel-efficient, almost perfectly so, but that comes at the end of a three-phase process, with the first phase shared by thorium ⦠This isotope is more hazardous than the U-235 used in conventional reactors, he adds, because it produces U-232 as a side effect (half life: 160,000 years), on top of ⦠But Pa-233 has a 27 day half-life, so once the This is because its parent 238 U is soluble in water, but 230 Th is insoluble and precipitates into the sediment. Before these fuel rods are used, they are only slightly radioactive and may be handled without special shielding. It is found in small amounts in most rocks and soils, where it is about three times more abundant than uranium. dissolved in a vat of liquid salt. processing removes fission product neutron poisons and allows online refueling (eliminating the need Also, the temperatures than traditional Uranium dioxide, so very high temperatures are required to produce This waste fuel is highly radioactive and the culprits â these high-mass isotopes â have half-lives of many thousands of years. Although thorium advocates say that thorium reactors produce little radioactive waste, they simply produce a spectrum of waste thatâs different from those from uranium 235, which includes many dangerous alpha and beta emitters and isotopes with extremely long half-lives, including technetium 99, with a half-life of 300,000 years, and iodine 129, with a half-life of 15.7 million years. Deploying new uranium-based nuclear reactors would likely happen much more rapidly and at a substantially lower cost. This is irrelevant for fluid-fueled reactors discussed below. high-quality solid fuel. Thermal breeding is perhaps other things). It is estimated that it will take over one million dollars per kilogram to dispose of the seriously deadly material.
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