A straight forward look at the next generation clean mass power generation
I saw this video link from TVNZ last night (of all places) on Thorium nuclear power generation.
The Wikipedia article around Molten Salt Reactors which use the Thorium fuel cycle can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
The diagram of a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor for medium and large-scale nuclear power generation operations can be seen in the graphic below:
I do recommend watching the video which is around 33 minutes long.
While New Zealand is too small for Thorium nuclear power (although you can make the reactor small enough to fit in a sea container thus portable) and Australia would be the smallest industrial country able to handle a full-scale operation (two reactors each producing 1 Gigawatt (Huntly Coal/Gas fire station produces 1.385 GW when all four boilers and the E3 plant are going full power)) countries like: Germany, USA, UK, Russia, China, and India are best suited for Thorium power.
I do believe Thorium nuclear is part of the solution for a suite of options for both the next stage of power generation away from fossil fuels and conventional uranium nuclear reactor, and trying not to dump all this crap into the atmosphere.
One of the main advantages of Thorium is that the waste can not be used to produce nuclear and thermonuclear (the H-Bomb) weapons. So that sorts the proliferation issue. Also it is believed Thorium reactors can not meltdown like their uranium/plutonium counterparts owing to the physics around the reaction of Thorium. MSR’s are liquid fuel reactors (rather than solid fuel in conventional reactors) that has the fuel intermixed with the coolant. In the case of a “situation” you cut off the fuel/coolant supply to the reactor while dumping the rest of the material already inside the reactor into dump tanks and that is it. No reaction, very little if any latent heat (that even shut down conventional reactors still need to deal with produced from what becomes inert Thorium). As it says in the video to keep a Thorium reactor going you need to constantly add fuel to keep it going (like a fire) while with Uranium you constantly need to keep on top of to stop it racing away even when it is in shut down state inside a nuclear reactor.
So does Thorium have a future in power generation?
From the Americans the answer is at the moment no (check the video) owing to the defence-industrial complex around conventional reactors (see bit about the how the US Navy wanting a reactor design for their subs back in the 50’s) and being able to produce fuel for their nuclear weapon program.
From other countries like China, India and the UK the answer is yes. China is working on MSR thorium type reactors (both solid and the more preferred liquid types) with 2017 a target date for getting an experimental MSR reactor ready for tests before they expand into commercial operation. India which also has some of the largest Thorium deposits in the world is looking at Thorium nuclear generation as the country continues to industrialise and suffers from extensive power blackouts currently.
Lets see where we go with this. Hopefully a bright clean future.
Talking Southern Auckland 