jaro wrote:
SPM wrote:
I wonder if the choice of reactor type is tied to using imported fuel and non-proliferation controls, and the form of fuel that other countries are willing export to India. Thorium oxide mixed with plutonium and uranium oxides are supposedly difficult to process due to chemical stability of thorium oxide the radioactive decay components of the small amount of U232 produced.
I'm not sure I follow your argument:
India certainly doesn't need to import thorium, as its the one element they've got in spades.
What they're looking for is importing natural uranium, and possibly more LEU, like the fuel that goes into the Russian-built VVER-1000's (~4% U235).
Of course they also want to be able to reprocess the SNF, to get the Pu, to get the Th cycle going...
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Importing uranium as the fissile component is one option. Another possibly better option is to import surplus weapons grade and reactor grade plutonium earmarked for disposal and high level radioactive waste from spent open cycle uranium reactors. These are costing their owners lots of money to keep in storage, and secure from theft. If Uranium fertile material is left out of a thorium reactor, these existing unwanted stockpiles can be incinerated in thorium reactors to produce safe low level waste while breeding U233 for future use in thorium reactors.
I doubt if the US would export these materials on their own, but if plutonium and thorium mixed oxide rods can be produced with say Pu240 added to make the plutonium unsuitable for reactor use, and if they are difficult to process chemically to separate thorium from plutonium (because of the inertness of thorium and the radioactivity of the mixture), then the US and other countries may be persuaded to export plutonium fuel in this form to India.
This would effectively kill three birds with one stone.
1) It incinerates and makes safe existing high level radioactive waste and unwanted plutonium weapons stockpiles, and turns them into low level waste.
2) At the same time it creates fissile U233 which is proliferation safe: it cannot be used for nuclear weapons, and is impossible to smuggle or hide because of it's high gamma radiation signature due to the decay products of a few tens of parts per million of U232 which is a byproduct of producing U233 which cannot be avoided.
3) Using the U233 produced with thorium in a closed fuel cycle, allows the generation clean energy indefinitely with just input of thorium and produces low level waste which returns to background radiation levels of thorium in just 500 years.
I think the US has been thinking of this as the solution of both the nuclear proliferation issue and the global warming/fossil fuel depletion/control of energy resources by the middle-eastern oil states issues. Maybe there was a kind of meeting of minds between US and India as to the use of homogeneous solid fuel rods incorporating thorium plus a fissile material as a tradeable, proliferation safe fuel and spent fuel commodity.
It is easier to separate plutonium in MSR salts because it can be distilled from thorium and uranium compounds, so it presents more of a proliferation risk.
The more I think about it, the more thorium power seems to be THE solution to all our energy and global warming problems. It is actually greener than wind, hydro-electric, solar or wave power, because it also disposes of our current nuclear stockpiles in storage.
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