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Thorium nuclear power ? it’s irrelevant

February 11, 2013

 — time. It is going to take many decades to  get the thorium fuel cycle happening.  The global nuclear industry has the twin goals of prolonging the life of currently operating nuclear reactors, and of building new ones. Their rationale for this is often that, eventually, the energy solution will be nuclear fusion. So in the meantime, the world needs nuclear power — or so they argue.

The thorium advocates usually promote thorium reactors as a solution to both climate change and energy needs. But in reality, thorium nuclear energy is irrelevant to both.

Again, the first reason is time. Although there are current designs that could be established in 10 to 15 years, the most favoured design – the  Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) – is estimated to have, for a significant deployment, a lead time of 40 to 70 years.

Don’t believe thorium nuclear reactor hype, Independent Austtralia 28 Jan 13,  Thorium reactors are the latest big thing in nuclear spin. Noel Wauchope says: don’t believe the hype.

“…..the present situation of thorium nuclear reactors is a confusing one. While on the one hand, thorium as a nuclear fuel, and thorium reactors are being hyped with enthusiasm in both mainstream media and the blogosphere, the nuclear lobby is ambivalent about this.
The explanation becomes clearer, when you consider that the nuclear industry has sunk $billions into new (uranium or plutonium fuelled) large nuclear technologies, as well as into lobbying governments and media.  Would big corporations like Hitachi, EDF Westinghouse, Toshiba, Areva, Rosatom be willing, or indeed able, to withdraw from the giant international operations that they already have underway? Would they, could they, tolerate a mass uptake of the new thorium nuclear reactors — which is what would be needed, to make the thorium market economical?….

just one concept — time. It is going to take many decades to  get the thorium fuel cycle happening.  The global nuclear industry has the twin goals of prolonging the life of currently operating nuclear reactors, and of building new ones. Their rationale for this is often that, eventually, the energy solution will be nuclear fusion. So in the meantime, the world needs nuclear power — or so they argue.

But nuclear fusion is still little more than  a super- expensive glint in the eye of nuclear boffins. Some other dream is needed — something  that looks a bit more like it might happen. The thorium excitement fits the bill as, once again, the public can be made to believe that, after all the disasters and disappointment, now there really is safe, cheap  nuclear power.

The thorium advocates usually promote thorium reactors as a solution to both climate change and energy needs. But in reality, thorium nuclear energy is irrelevant to both. (more…)

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Thorium nuclear reactors Do bring a weapons proliferation risk

December 28, 2012

 just 1.6 tonnes of thorium metal would be enough to produce 8kg of uranium-233 which is the minimum amount required for a nuclear weapon.

 ”Small-scale chemical reprocessing of irradiated thorium can create an isotope of uranium – uranium-233 – that could be used in nuclear weapons. If nothing else, this raises a serious proliferation concern.”

Thorium: Proliferation warnings on nuclear ‘wonder-fuel’ , Phys Org, December 5, 2012Thorium is being touted as an ideal fuel for a new generation of nuclear power plants, but in a piece in this week’s Nature, researchers suggest it may not be as benign as portrayed.

The element thorium, which many regard as a potential nuclear “wonder-fuel”, could be a greater proliferation threat than previously thought, scientists have warned. Writing in a Comment piece in the new issue of the journal, Nature, nuclear energy specialists from four British universities suggest that, although thorium has been promoted as a superior fuel for future nuclear energy generation, it should not be regarded as inherently proliferation resistant.

The piece highlights ways in which small quantities of uranium-233, a material useable in nuclear weapons, could be produced covertly from thorium, by chemically separating another isotope, protactinium-233, during its formation. (more…)

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The facts on Thorium nuclear reactors – a big con job by the nuclear industry

December 28, 2012

THORIUM REACTORS?  http://fairewinds.org/demystifying, 8 Dec 12 by Peggy Conte
The latest nuclear power industry proposals focus on smaller reactors and the possibility of thorium fueled reactors. As the nuclear industry explores other fission products, Fairewinds Energy Education has been peppered with hundreds of questions regarding the feasibility and safety of thorium reactors that the nuclear industry is touting as a newer safer form of nuclear power.
The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) is being sold as a “market based environmental solution” and advertised by the nuclear industry as cheaper than coal. Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) use a molten salt mixture as the primary coolant, and sometimes the molten salt is even mixed directly with thorium in the reactor fuel.
Since Fairewinds has received so many questions regarding Thorium Reactors, let’s look at the facts about Thorium:  (more…)

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The fairy tale about “wonderful” Thorium nuclear reactors

November 4, 2012

There is a rash of misinformation on the net about the supposed merits of the ‘new’ nuclear energy source on the block, thorium. I am sure that in a perfect world where nobody lies, thorium would be the perfect answer to the world’s energy needs as is claimed. This is unfortunately not the case.

Apparently, every time there is a new nuclear catastrophe, the thorium ‘miracle’ is promoted again as the ‘savior’ for the world. The Fukushima nuclear radiation catastrophe was not unique and the thorium misinformation artists have come out in droves. It’s the nuclear industry’s defense mechanism – create a new ‘safety myth’ that regular people can latch onto.

In reality, the thorium nuclear fuel cycle has been under development since the very early days of the nuclear industry. India, for example, has spent decades trying to commercialize it, and has failed. The US, Russia, Germany, and many others tried and failed as well. At best, thorium based nuclear power generation may be commercialized in a few decades.

I doubt it.

Fortunately, there are a number of independent trustworthy and expert sources of information on the internet regarding thorium nuclear. Here they are:

MIT Energy Initiative: The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Last, but hardly least, I highly recommend anyone interested in nuclear energy to readDARyan‘s fabulous “A critical analysis of future nuclear reactors designs” which is an epic overview of the many different nuclear solutions the industry is trying to sell to society.Part 8 covers thorium, molten salt reactors (MSR), and LFTR technologies. Fanatical thorium ‘evangelists’ have taken special aim at the DARyan publications as evidenced by the various abusive comments on the blog. This critical analysis has also appeared in Green Blog.

As expert Jo Abbess states more clearly than anyone, thorium is “quite probably the most well-funded piece of astroturfing propaganda in existence.” Only through awareness and education can we hope to make rational decisions about our energy future. I recommend readers start learning about thorium nuclear from the articles above http://kevinmeyerson.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/thorium-nuclear-information-resources/before making any decisions on the technology.

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Thorium can be used to produce weapons grade uranium 233

November 4, 2012

Thorium Nuclear Bombs (Shorter version)  Kevin Meyerson, kevinmeyerson.wordpress.com 9 Oct 12, Thorium bred Uranium-233 can be used to make atomic bombs, despite what proponents may claim.

You don’t have to trust me on this, see what the experts at various institutions have to say below:

MIT Energy Initiative, The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Appendix A starts on page 181 of the Appendices PDF file. The relevant statement from MIT is:

  • Proliferation And Security Groundrules:
    Irradiating thorium produces weapons-useable material. Policy decisions on appropriate ground rules are required before devoting significant resources toward such fuel cycles. U-233 can be treated two ways.
  • Analogous to U-235. If the U-235 content of uranium is less than 20% U-235 or less than 13% U-233 with the remainder being U-238, the uranium mixture is non-weapons material. However, isotopic dilution in U-238 can significantly compromise many of the benefits.
  • Analogous to plutonium. Plutonium can not be degraded thus enhanced safeguards are used. The same strategy can be used with U-233. A complicating factor (see below) is that U-233 is always contaminated with U-232 that has decay products that give off high energy gamma radiation which requires additional measures to protect worker health and safety. There has been no consensus on the safeguards / nonproliferation benefits of this radiation field.

The point being made here is that thorium can be used to make Uranium-233, which in turn can be used to make bombs. The complicating U-232 contamination mentioned above is what many of the thorium proponents refer to as making thorium resistant to proliferation. MIT has more to say about this proliferation protection in their summary:

On one hand, high radiation dose [from U-232 decay] provides self protection to separated fissile material against diversion and misuse. On the other hand, it makes the U-233 recycling more complex and costly.

The point here is that the U-233 is in fact subject to ‘diversion and misuse’ (like atomic bombs) if it can be separated out from the highly radioactive U-232 contaminants. If the U-232 is not somehow processed out, however, there is no way to operate the reactor for peaceful purposes, or otherwise.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Filtering contaminants out of thorium bred U-233 to make weapons grade fissile material is not rocket science. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) created a process to do this. They kindly wrote about it in a history included in the ORNL Review publication (search the long page for the words “THOREX” or “Uranium-233″):

By 1954, the Laboratory’s chemical technologists had completed a pilot plant demonstrating the ability of the THOREX process to separate thorium, protactinium, and uranium-233 from fission products and from each other. This process could isolate uranium-233 for weapons development and also for use as fuel in the proposed thorium breeder reactors.

There are no technical issues for separating out Uranium-233 for weapons development.

UK National Nuclear Laboratory

The United Kingdom’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) prepared a position paper on the thorium nuclear fuel cycle. It is pretty straightforward:

Contrary to that which many proponents of thorium claim, U-233 should be regarded as posing a definite proliferation risk.For a thorium fuel cycle which falls short of a breeding cycle, uranium fuel would always be needed to supplement the fissile material and there will always be significant (though reduced) plutonium production.

NNL believes that U-233 should be regarded as posing a comparable level of proliferation risk to High Enriched Uranium (HEU) and comparable with the U-Pu fuel cycle at best; this view is consistent with the IAEA, who under the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials, categorise U-233 on the same basis as plutonium. Attempts to lower the fissile content of uranium by adding U-238 are considered to offer only weak protection, as the U-233 could be separated in a centrifuge cascade in the same way that U-235 is separated from U-238 in the standard uranium fuel cycle.


The argument that the high U-232 content would be self- protecting are considered to be over-stated. NNL’s view is that thorium systems are no more proliferation resistant than U-Pu systems though they may offer limited benefits in some circumstances.

Here are some comments from other resources:

Oak Ridge National Labs U-233 Disposition Project Update (PDF, see page 3)

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Toxic fission products from Thorium nuclear reactors

November 4, 2012

the fission products from a Thorium reactor are a worry, Technetium-99 has a half life of 220,000 years, uranium-232 produces thallium-208 (a nasty wee gamma emitter), Selenium-79 (another gamma emitter with a 327,000 year half-life), evenThorium-232 is a problem with its half life of 14 Billion years (and while the T-232 isn’t a major worry, all the time during this 14 Billion years it will be decaying and producing stuff that is!).

Thorium Cycle questions and problems http://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/ca/part-8-msr-lftr/8-3-thorium-lftr/ Questions have also been raised by some nuclear scientists about the Thorium cycle, in particular the proposed one that the LFTR would use. I’m not a nuclear physicist so I’ll merely forward you on to the relevant paper here , and a rebuttal here . The crux of the argument seems to be the proliferation risk (I’ll come back to that one later), the fact that a number of its spend fuel outputs (such as Technetium-99) are “nasty stuff” with a long half life and the fact we’ll still need supplies of Uranium to get Thorium reactors going again whenever we have to turn it off (which will happen at least once a year or so during its annual maintenance shutdown). They also highlight a number of technical issues, which I discussed in the chapter on HTGR’s.

Certainly the fission products from a Thorium reactor are a worry,  (more…)

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Intractable cleanup problem of thorium wastes – Mount Thorium

November 4, 2012

40 years later, toxic waste still haunts pockets of DuPage County Thorium cleanup nears finish line, but federal funds are in doubt January 21, 2012|By Erin Meyer, Chicago Tribune reporter  Lurking beneath the surface of the West Branch of the DuPage River are the remnants of radioactive contamination left behind by a
factory that was shuttered almost four decades ago.

The Rare Earths Facility in West Chicago not only was a major employer in its heyday, but also became the site of a large mound of discarded radioactive waste that locals called Mount Thorium.  The notorious impact the radiation from the factory had on the area eventually led to lengthy cleanups that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The final phases of efforts to remediate the waste from Rare Earths are in sight, but officials say funding sources they have relied on in the past have dried up or are becoming increasingly uncertain due to changing priorities and congressional squabbling.

About $21 million is needed for work scheduled this year on the West Branch of the DuPage River and an adjacent creek, officials say. But more than a third of that is still up in the air….. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-21/news/ct-met-superfund-cleanup-20120118_1_thorium-cleanup-kress-creek-radioactive-waste

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Hype in favour of Thorium nuclear reactors does not stand up to scrutiny

September 2, 2012

Thorium Nuclear Information Resources  http://kevinmeyerson.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/thorium-nuclear-information-resources/ (2012/04/29):   There is a rash of misinformation on the net about the supposed merits of the ‘new’ nuclear energy source on the block, thorium. I am sure that in a perfect world where nobody lies, thorium would be the perfect answer to the world’s energy needs as is claimed. This is unfortunately not the case.

Apparently, every time there is a new nuclear catastrophe, the thorium ‘miracle’ is promoted again as the ‘savior’ for the world. The Fukushima nuclear radiation catastrophe was not unique and the thorium misinformation artists have come out in droves. It’s the nuclear industry’s defense mechanism – create a new ‘safety myth’ that regular people can latch onto.

In reality, the thorium nuclear fuel cycle has been under development since the very early days of the nuclear industry. India, for example, has spent decades trying to commercialize it, and has failed. The US, Russia, Germany, and many others tried and failed as well. At best, thorium based nuclear power generation may be commercialized in a few decades.

I doubt it.

Fortunately, there are a number of independent trustworthy and expert sources of information on the internet regarding thorium nuclear. Here they are:

MIT Energy Initiative: The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Last, but hardly least, I highly recommend anyone interested in nuclear energy to readDARyan‘s fabulous “A critical analysis of future nuclear reactors designs” which is an epic overview of the many different nuclear solutions the industry is trying to sell to society.Part 8 covers thorium, molten salt reactors (MSR), and LFTR technologies. Fanatical thorium ‘evangelists’ have taken special aim at the DARyan publications as evidenced by the various abusive comments on the blog. This critical analysis has also appeared in Green Blog.

As expert Jo Abbess states more clearly than anyone, thorium is “quite probably the most well-funded piece of astroturfing propaganda in existence.” Only through awareness and education can we hope to make rational decisions about our energy future. I recommend readers start learning about thorium nuclear from the articles above before making any decisions on the technology.

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Thorium reactors not a practical possibility, for many reasons

September 2, 2012

Thorium: Why We Don’t Want It   http://nowarnow.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/thorium-why-we-dont-want-it/ By No War Now / 3 August, 2012  
“….. Thorium is just another nuclear industry way of persevering their jobs in an energy production method that does not make sense for our planet. Thorium requires mining rare earth elements. Thorium requires the changing of laws to process monazite, currently categorized as “‘prescribed substance’ and the sole domain of the government” per the Atomic Energy Act (Canada and China work in thorium, http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/08/canada-and-china-work-on-thorium-candu.html).

Thorium continues the predatory practice of extracting public money to support its development and operations. Of course, you won’t learn this from the schills and trolls who want to convince you that thorium is the answer to our energy needs and ought be part of our “clean energy” package. Mining is not, and has never been, a clean energy production practice. Especially when it involves uranium.

To whit: “According to an official in the Mines Ministry, the DAE proposed to make amendments to the Atomic Energy Act so that beach sand miners could hand over the monazite tailings to IREL for further processing into thorium and possibly uranium, if economically feasible.” Canada and China work in thorium.

In 2008, India reported on their thorium venture, Q&A: Thorium Reactor Designer Ratan Kumar Sinhahttp://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/qa-thorium-reactor-designer-ratan-kumar-sinha/0 and, as of June 27, 2012, India [is] planning [a] thorium reactor, says Atomic Energy Commission chiefhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-27/bhubaneswar/32440256_1_thorium-nuclear-power-plant-kudankulam. Thorium has a long history in India, but has yet to prove its worth. Nuclear Power in India http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf53.html. With commitment to thorium made in 2002, the nuclear industry in India has yet to produce one kilo watt of energy for public consumption. Be sure to read Nuclear Power in India with an eye on R&D and operational costs to date.

30 years of R&D [actually, more than 40] have gone into thorium around the world without one single kw produced for consumption by end users whose taxes fund entities via subsidies to conduct that research (Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the USA) Thorium Fuel Research & Developmenthttp://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_research_and_development/thorium_research_and_development.php. When I asked the two schills for data and a resource on cost, risk, benefit analysis, they told me to do the research. One claimed there were private investors willing to fund the project. Where are these investors? Why don’t schills back up their opinions with data? So many questions. So few answers.

For more on why we don’t want thorium, see Nuclear Free Planet’s page 1 in this report:http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/categories/thorium.html In addition, a friend of mine pointed me to a couple of critical articles on thorium, and had this to say:

The basic problem with sodium cooled reactors like the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor is the safety problem inherent in the use of sodium as a coolant. Sodium reacts chemically with both air and water, and will burn strongly with either. Hence sodium leaks become a significant issue with sodium cooled reactors. The history of sodium cooled reactors give scant comfort to those who argue that they are safe.

Sodium as coolant seems a little bit counter intuitive in my mind just as basic chemistry . There are two enemies to everything near the ocean , sodium and chlorine . We don’t need more molten salt cooled reactors any more than we need salt water cooled reactors like the three at Fukushima.

Molten salt Reactors Disadvantages, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Disadvantages
Liquid Sodium Reactors, http://energyfromthorium.com/2008/03/27/liquid-sodium-reactors/

Be sure to read Rasmussen’s information and Weinberg’s comments in Liquid Sodium Reactors.

Thorium is the nuclear industry’s attempt at preserving their rapidly sinking industry in a quickly changing world. We have no need for uranium or thorium based energy production. We are smarter than that, we are beyond that. We do not want thorium.

For details on failed breeder reactors, read about  Fermi I Fuel Meltdown Incident.PDF – you may find more Fermi information here as well http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/nucacc.html

If that doesn’t convince we don’t need fast breeders, then read about Three Mile Island and Santa Susana

Wiki Three Mile Island Accident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
Wiki Santa Susana Field Laboratory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory and A Nuclear Incident “Worse Than Three Mile Island” http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=06-P13-00003&segmentID=1 and Calif. nuke meltdown site finally set for cleanup: Cold War-era workers tested 30,000 rockets, experimented with reactors http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39003284/ns/us_news-environment/t/calif-nuke-meltdown-site-finally-set-cleanup/

Bonus points: Wiki List of nuclear power accidents  by Countryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country…..

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Thorium nuclear reactors not viable

September 2, 2012
Thorium: Not ‘green’, not ‘viable’, and not likely   Oliver Tickell, April / May 2012. 1. Introduction ”With uranium-based nuclear power continuing its decades-long economic
collapse, it’s awfully late to be thinking of developing a whole new fuel cycle  whose problems differ only in detail from current versions.” Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute, March 2009.
A number of commentators have argued that most of the problems associated with  nuclear power could be avoided by both:
 using thorium fuel in place of uranium or plutonium fuels
 using ‘molten salt reactors’ (MSRs) in place of conventional solid fuel reactor
designs.
The combination of these two technologies is known as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium  Reactor or LFTR, because the fuel is in form of a molten fluoride salt of thorium and  other elements.
In this Briefing, we examine the validity of the optimistic claims made for thorium  fuel, MSRs and the LFTR in particular.
We find that the claims do not stand up to  critical scrutiny, and that these technologies have significant drawbacks including:
 the very high costs of technology development, construction and operation.
 marginal benefits for a thorium fuel cycle over the currently utilised uranium /
plutonium fuel cycles
 serious nuclear weapons proliferation hazards
 the danger of both routine and accidental releases of radiation, mainly from
continuous ‘live’ fuel reprocessing in MSRs
 the very long lead time for significant deployment of LFTRs of the order of half  a century – rendering it irrelevant in terms of addressing current or medium  term energy supply need….
…. We therefore see little prospect that LFTRs will present an economic solution if and  when they are ever ready for large scale deployment. Any money invested in LFTRs,
whether by governments, utilities or other investors, is likely to be wasted.
Far better to invest in the renewable technologies that are already shaping our national  and global future, and whose cost is rapidly falling – in the process developing  valuable UK-based expertise and technologies, and accelerating the renewables  revolution. http://www.nuclearpledge.com/reports/thorium_briefing_2012.pdf

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