Energy From Thorium

Top 10 Attributes

Here is a resource paper/technology summary on the top ten basic attributes/reasons why LFTRs (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) should be pursued. This is a very easy to use resource to have handy when you are talking to a legislator or talking to a friend, neighbor, or family member. While Thorium’s use in a LFTR has many benefits we feel these top ten are the easiest to convey to someone knowing little about the technology in order to peak their interest.

THORIUM AND LFTR TOP TEN ATTRIBUTES

The abundance of the element thorium throughout the Earth’s crust promises widespread energy independence through Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) technology. A mere 6,600 tonnes of thorium could provide the energy equivalent of the combined global consumption of 5 billion tonnes of coal, 31 billion barrels of oil, 3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, and 65,000 tonnes of uranium. With LFTR, a handful of thorium can supply an individual’s lifetime energy needs; a grain silo full could power North America for a year; and known thorium reserves could power advanced society for many thousands of years.

LFTR is based on demonstrated technology with sound operational fundamentals proven by 20,000 hours of reactor operation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the late 1960′s. Despite recognized, compelling advantages, LFTR development stalled when political and financial capital were concentrated instead on fast-spectrum plutonium breeding reactors.

LFTR operates at low pressure, is chemically and operationally stable, and passively shuts down without human intervention. Low pressures eliminate the need for massive and costly pressure containment vessels and alleviate safety concerns about high-pressure releases to the atmosphere. LFTR offers significant gains in safety, cost and efficiency with greatly reduced environmental impact relative to existing light-water reactors (LWRs).

LFTR is more efficient, using 99% of the thorium-derived fuel and extracting significantly more energy from abundant, inexpensive thorium than other reactors can from more scarce and costly uranium. LWRs burn scarce fissile reserves as a one-time consumable; LFTR consumes fertile thorium, using fissile reserves only to start the thorium fuel-cycle.

LFTR can use a range of nuclear starter fuels and can consume plutonium and other actinides from legacy spent nuclear fuel stockpiles. Molten salt reactors were started on all three fuel options and once operational, LFTR can continue operation with just thorium.

LFTR produces safe, sustainable, carbon-free electricity and a range of radioisotopes useful for medical imaging, cancer therapy, industrial applications and space exploration. LFTR waste heat can be used to desalinate sea water and high primary heat can drive ammonia production for agriculture and fuels or synthesis of liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

Most LFTR byproducts stabilize within a decade and have commercial value; the minor remainder has a half-life of less than 30 years, stabilizing within hundreds rather than tens of thousands of years. LFTR waste is primarily fission products and does not include unspent fuel, fuel cladding, or long-lived transuranics typical of legacy spent nuclear fuel.

LFTRs can be mass-produced in a factory and delivered and reclaimed from utility sites as modular units. Modular LFTR production offers reduced capital costs and shorter build times. Modular installation near the point of need also eliminates long transmission lines. Higher temperatures and turbine efficiencies enable air-cooling away from water bodies.

LFTR and thorium are proliferation resistant. Thorium and its derivative fuel, uranium-233, are impractical and undesirable for weaponization efforts relative to well-known uranium enrichment and plutonium breeding pathways. Thus, despite 60 years of thorium research, none of the world’s tens-of-thousands of warheads are based on the thorium fuel-cycle.

Liquid salt fuels cannot fail or meltdown. The liquid salt fuels have a thousand-degree liquid range, eliminating the possibility of fuel failure scenarios from overheating or meltdown like at Fukushima. The liquid fuel form is a key differentiator from conventional solid-fueled LWRs with LFTR’s liquid salts serving as both a fuel carrier and coolant. The salts are not reactive with water or the atmosphere like some existing fuels and coolants. Fuel can be added to the salts and byproducts removed while the reactor remains online.

Learn more at www.energyfromthorium.com

David Amerine has 45 years of experience in the nuclear industry. He began his career in the U.S. Navy, after graduating from the United States Naval Academy and obtained a Masters in Management Science from the Naval Post Graduate School while in the Navy.  After leaving the Navy, he joined Westinghouse at the Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Site.  There he worked as a shift operations manager and then as the refueling manager for the initial core load of the Fast Flux Test Facility, the nation’s prototype breeder reactor.  Mr. Amerine furthered his career in the commercial nuclear power industry throughout the 1980’s, first as the Nuclear Steam Supply System (NSSS) vendor, Combustion Engineering, Site Manager at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station during startup of that three-reactor plant and then as Assistant Vice President Nuclear at Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station. There he led special, interdisciplinary task forces for complex problem resolutions involving engineering and operations during recovery period at that facility back in the late 1980’s.

Davis-Besse was the first of eight nuclear plants where he was part of the leadership team or the leader brought in to restore stakeholder confidence in management and/or operations. In the DOE Nuclear Complex these endeavor recoveries included the Replacement Tritium Facility, the Defense Waste Processing Facility, and the Salt Waste Processing Facility projects. In addition to Davis-Besse in the commercial nuclear industry, in 1997 he was brought in as the Vice President of Engineering and Services at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station where he was instrumental in leading recovery actions following the facility being shut down by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).  His responsibilities included establishing robust Safety Conscious Work Environments (SCWE) programs.

In 2000, Mr. Amerine assumed the role of Executive Vice President of Washington Government, a $2.5 billion business unit of Washington Group International (WGI). In this role, Mr. Amerine was responsible for integrated safety management, conduct of operations, startup test programs, and synergies between the diverse operating companies and divisions that made up WGI Government. Mr. Amerine was then selected as the Executive Vice President and Deputy General Manager, CH2M Hill Nuclear Business Group, where he supported the President in managing day-to-day operation of the group, which included six major DOE sites, three site offices, and numerous individual contracts in the international nuclear industry.  He was charged with improving conduct of operations and project management, expenditures and staffing oversight, goal setting, performance monitoring, and special initiatives leadership.

Mr. Amerine came to B&W in 2009 where he was subsequently selected as President of Nuclear Fuel Services in early 2010 after the NRC had shut down that facility which is vital to the security of the United States since it is the sole producer of fuel for our nuclear Navy.  He led the restoration of confidence of the various stakeholders including the NRC and Naval Reactors.  The plant was restored to full operation under Mr. Amerine’s leadership.  He retired from NFS in 2011.

THORIUM: energy cheaper than coal has just been published and is available from Amazon. Click on the cover image for more information, including hundreds of links for reference or further study.

Thorium energy can help us

Here are three of the talks from the first day of the 4th Thorium Energy Alliance Conference, edited by Gordon McDowell.

Energy from Thorium reader Raul Parolari thought that some of our posts should be presented in other languages, so he offered this translation to French.
French translation follows…

In the recent Nuclear Ammonia article post, ammonia was illustrated as a fuel that could propel vehicles in a zero carbon era. Despite our best efforts in developing new internal combustion engines and direct ammonia fuel cells, there will continue to be a role for carbonaceous fuels. Gasoline and jet fuel have double the volumetric energy capacity of liquid ammonia. A given fuel tank can only contain half as much ammonia combustion potential energy as gasoline combustion potential energy. Fuel tank size is very important in aircraft. Decades of engineering of airframes and turbine engines have optimized aircraft performance using diesel-like JP8 jet fuel.
Click to read full post…

Eifion Rees wrote an article for the Ecologist and later republished it in the Guardian. The article was called “Don’t believe the spin on thorium being a ‘greener’ nuclear option.”

I wrote a rebuttal to the article here.

I would tend to agree with Mr. Gates:

“In a conversation with Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson today at the magazine’s third annual Business Conference, Gates said that one of the best aspects of nuclear power at the moment is its lack of innovation thus far, which leaves it ripe for disruption in the coming years.”

Full article at VentureBeat.

LFTR can be that disruptive technology that he seeks, and it will be much simpler to engineer and operate than the travelling wave reactor, because its thermal-neutron spectrum requires 10-15 times less fissile fuel per unit of electrical output than the fast-neutron spectrum of the travelling-wave reactor or the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR).

Great visual depiction of the magnitudes of radiation exposure from Scientific American.