Can nuclear be safe? China thinks so
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In the days and weeks following the still unfolding disaster at Japan’s Fukushima uranium reactors, governments and people around the world looked nervously at Japan and the cry became “no more nukes.” A few weeks before the earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, China announced it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium.
China’s Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a “thorium-based molten salt reactor system”. The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s. Thorium-232 was used for breeding nuclear fuel – uranium-233, for example, in the molten-salt reactor experiment (MSR) conducted in the United States from 1964 to 1969. Most of the initial test reactors were closed down. However, countries including Russia, India, as well as China, have plans to use thorium for their nuclear power, partly because of its safety benefits.
Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster. “The reactor has an amazing safety feature,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert.
“If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself,” he said.
“They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don’t have the sort of hydrogen explosions we’ve seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release.”
Thorium is a silvery metal named after the Norse god of thunder. The metal has its own “issues” but no thorium reactor could easily spin out of control in the manner of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or now Fukushima.
The earth’s crust holds 80 years of uranium at expected usage rates. Thorium is as common as lead. America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining. Norway has so much that Oslo is planning a post-oil era where thorium might drive the country’s next great phase of wealth. Even Britain has seams in Wales and in the granite cliffs of Cornwall. Almost all the mineral is usable as fuel, compared to 0.7pc of uranium. There is enough to power civilization for thousands of years.
US physicists in the late 1940s explored thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation.
The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs. As a happy bonus, it can burn up plutonium and toxic waste from old reactors, reducing radio-toxicity and acting as an eco-cleaner.
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Finally a little glimmer of sanity when it comes to energy production, sadly its the Chinese and not the western world. Yes, the nuclear disaster in Japan is horrific but global warming is the 1000 pound gorilla in the room that threatens all of human civilization. And I am sorry but I have yet to read a real scientific report that says wind and solar energy can carry all of our energy requirements.
With fusion always 50 years away for the forseeable future some form of nuclear fission will have to be used.
There is no realistic way the planet will survive if China starts using carbon fuels at the same rate as the rest of the West does. I was hoping they’d opt for something more clean and green, like wind or solar.
After checking out the links, thorium does have a better reputation than uranium, the big plus NO PLUTONIUM, therefore no weapons can be linked to a thorium reactor.
I’m not certain the Chinese place the same value on human life, so I suspect they are willing to take more risk. What would take 100 years to get approved in America might be “approved” overnight in China.
What an interesting post! The Asians seem to be a little smarter than those of us in the Western World when it comes to technology, or perhaps they are just better educated.