BBC Focus Magazine

[The Beige Avenger]

So, are they as good as they say they are and if so, why are we not investing in them?

A lot of the info out there seems to be anecdotal tales of awesome essentially indicative of conspiracy theory quacks... But some of them are convincing.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Its simply an under developed area of technology Mr.A, the early Uranium reactors were built with the primary purpose of producing weapons grade fissile material with electricity a useful bi-product. Trouble is this sidelined the Thorium system so little developmental work has been done but I am pretty sure the Japanese were working on a prototype up until this year at least and if the reports are accurate the Chinese are actually way ahead of anyone else so if I was going to bet on the subject I reckon they will be the first to get one up and running and possibly even within the next 15-20 years?

Thorium is very much more abundant than Uranium, is not actually fissile itself so is much safer to use and dispose of than Uranium and creates almost no Plutonium and less secondary contamination, and by using the 'molten salt' method for fuel and coolant transfer they can actually be made much smaller than Uranium reactors, which gets around the problem of huge demands being put on a national grid as they could be made more local, always supposing people will take to having one 'just down the road' as it were?? I personally do not see a down side to it, expect that we have lost a good 60 years of potential development whilst messing about with Cold War systems that have, through a series of unfortunate accidents, put large numbers of people of the idea of nuclear power altogether.

[...]

never heard of them, what are they and whats the downside

[M Paul Lloyd]

Well this site helps explain what they are
http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_reacto ... ctor_1.php
And this
http://www.chemistryexplained.com/eleme ... orium.html
For a tree huggy view point
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/b ... foundation

And as for a downside.... well, as I see it the biggest problem, indeed probably the only one really worth worrying about, is that we have wasted 60 good years when we could have been benefiting from them and developing the technology further.

[KingPhillip]

The sad part is the USA a few years back invested heavily towards developing a fusion reactor without science having demonstrated the possibility exists. Meanwhile, proposed MSFR's offer solutions to a plethora of problems our world faces. I hope China, if no one else, is successful in developing its MSFR technology.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Their is this to take into account,
post5544.html?hilit=Thorium#p5544
although I think the 'molten salt' system is probably more practical if only because it has been developed further.

These people are obviously quite serious about it all.
http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/

[Healerman]

Meanwhile, we have a new and untried EPR to be built just down the road, at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

Problem: government and big business like big and centralised, never mind the inefficiencies of large scale grid distribution. (There is also the possible political expediency of investing in the potential need to re-arm in the future).

A great many well respected scientists, since the very beginnings of nuclear power, have expressed their concerns over the sighting of reactors on the coast to get at all that lovely cooling water. Fukushima was a great big "I told you so".

I've been following the thorium "thread" for some time and it looks very hopeful, and I'd frankly much rather have an experimental reactor of this type than an EPR sitting on the Atlantic coast, just down the road from me. Potentially cleaner, safer and not needing a huge 480 acre site to put it on.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Likewise Mr.H, a localised system would make far more sense and well, we have seen what a mess 'big business' has made of the world already so perhaps we, the taxpayer, should start to insist that our money goes where we want it to for a change?

Besides if they want a stockpile of Plutonium 'for potential needs' they could manage quite nicely with just one plant to supply all they could ever possibly want.

I think Thorium is slowly starting to gain the publics attention and I note with a not insignificant degree of pleasure that it features in the Q&A section of the January edition of Focus.

[Shadowwolf]

The sad part is the USA a few years back invested heavily towards developing a fusion reactor without science having demonstrated the possibility exists.

Forgive me if I am misunderstanding something here, but fusion does exist, prime example sitting one AU away. The issue has been getting more energy out of it than goes in and there is a ways to go there.

Besides if they want a stockpile of Plutonium 'for potential needs' they could manage quite nicely with just one plant to supply all they could ever possibly want.

One would wonder why they would need any supply at all but that's a different story.

[M Paul Lloyd]

One would wonder why they would need any supply at all but that's a different story.

Indeed.

[Hayden]

Actually, they are thermal breeders. This is what is unique about the U-233/Th-232 fuel cycle: unlike plutonium, you can achieve a positive breeding ratio (that is, a net increase in fissile atoms) with thermal (cold) neutrons. In India's nuclear program, they are designing heavy-water reactors (like CANDUs) to run on thorium. This is the "Advanced Heavy Water Reactor" (AHWR) design; I'm not sure how far advanced it is, but they have not built any yet. However, they have tried thorium fuel (partially) in existing HWRs, and they operate a pure-U233 research reactor (KAMINI), so there is substantial progress.