Cultural Perspectives: The Future of Energy

Thorium Reactors The Future of Nuclear Energy?

As of now, Nuclear power produces approximately 12.3% of the worlds
electricity, with 30 countries currently using it. Since the nuclear disaster at
Fukushima, already existent concerns about the safety of such power has been
highlighted, as well as other commonly cited issues with nuclear power: nuclear
waste and the possibility of a nuclear reactor being used as a weapon. All of this
has created an appetite for a safer, greener and possibly cheaper alternative to
the Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 reactors present today, which is exactly
what Thorium is being touted as by some. In this essay, I will be investigating
these claims, in the hope of discovering whether thorium reactors really are the
future of nuclear energy.
The type of thorium reactor which will be the focus of this essay is LFTR Liquid
Fluoride Thorium Reactors. The basic premise of such reactors is the use of
molten fluoride fuel salts, in conjunction with the creation of Uranium-233 from
thorium in order to generate electricity. LFTR have a heated salt core reactor,
which is surrounded by Thorium-232. The breeding of Thorium-232 into Uranium233 heats the salt which then passes out of the fission changer and transfers its
heat energy to an exchanger which then powers a turbine. The molten salts that
transfer the heat energy also cool the reactor. Finally, below the salt core reactor
is an emergency dump tank.
So what are the benefits to such a system? Firstly, the model of this thorium
reactor means that pressurised water is not needed to cool the reactor,
eliminating the possibility of a hydrogen explosion resulting in a disaster like that
at Fukushima. The amount of nuclear waste produced is miniscule, 100 times
less than that of the nuclear reactors currently in use today. The danger that the
waste itself poses is far lower as well, with LFTR wastes radioactivity reaching
safe levels in just hundreds of years, in stark contrast to the tens of thousands of
years required for waste from nuclear reactors present today. Thorium is far more
abundant than its nuclear counterparts. Some believe that there is enough
thorium to satisfy global energy demand for a very long time. The difficulty in
creating a nuclear weapon from such a reactor comes from the fact that while
mostly Uranium-233 is formed in the reactor, a small fraction becomes Uranium232, extremely hard to separate from Uranium-233. The intense radiation of
Uranium-232 makes manufacturing a bomb highly impractical.
Undeniably, there are drawbacks. The replacement of the current nuclear
infrastructure would be extremely expensive, and to some this makes it
unfeasible. In addition to this there are numerous technological issues to resolve
before the widespread implementation of LFTR is even possible. One example is
how to get the start-up fuel required for such reactors: Uranium-233, which is in
short supply. These issues have created concerns about the feasibility of
designing a LFTR that can overcome these hurdles. In the words of Professor
Zhongmao These projects are beautiful to scientists but nightmarish to
engineers.
The drive to the implementation and development of LFTRs is happening not in
the US, UK or other European countries, rather in China and India. Earlier in
2014, Shanghai scientists working on the development of LFTRs announced they

are aiming to create a fully functional thorium reactor within 10 years. The
project is a massive one, planning to employ over 750 scientists, engineers and
the like and starting with almost half a billion dollars in funding. This sense of
urgency comes from China not wanting to be reliant on imported fuel. The
success or failure of projects like these are likely to determine whether or not
thorium reactors really will be the future of nuclear energy.
By Khalid Hassan