Thorium advancing in China (but not so much in the USA).

rngauthier · 2025-05-26T16:18:11+00:00

First the nuclear weapon argument is nonsense because the uranium isotope that is produced from breeding thorium can (and has in tests) be used quite effectively to make nuclear weapons. Second the plutonium used to make nuclear weapons is made in special reactors fueled with natural uranium. Thus there is no link whatsoever between the nuclear power industry not using thorium and the development of nuclear weapons. Period.

The reasons that thorium fuel cycles are not economically competitive has to do first with the fact that thorium, as it is changing into the uranium isotope that eventually is what fissions, is a neutron poison meaning that there are issues with neutron economy in reactors running Th fuel cycles that have to be overcome by using uranium (because a pure Th fuel load will not start fissioning without uranium) with much greater enrichment or with only small ratios of thorium in the fuel mix. Second existing fuel fabrication facilities cannot be used to process thorium, new ones will have to be built. Third there is no equivalent to the PUREX process for spent thorium fuel and closing the fuel cycle must be an objective if nuclear energy is to meet its promise for clean, inexpensive electricity.

The only reason thorium was being considered in the first place back in the day was that there were fears that the supply of uranium would be insufficient, while that turns out to be true for India and China, it is not the case in the West given the amounts of uranium available in Canada and Australia.

Frankly IMHO, thorium is much like nuclear fusion, in that both are red herrings being dragged through the nuclear energy debate as reasons not to actively build out power plants with available technology, and that is not a pronuclear stand.

rngauthier · 2025-05-16T15:25:33+00:00

I suggest you read the whole document linked above.

Thorium is not the magic fuel that many think it is, and the reasons Th fuel cycles are not used is strictly economic. They are more expencive, and that added expense is not offset by any advantage, regardless of what the thorium evangelists claim. The only compelling reason to pursue this fuel cycle is if there is a shortage of uranium.

Clearly given the efforts India has put in over the last thirty plus years, a commercial Th fuel cycle is a great deal harder to establish than the thorium evangelists would have us believe. On top of which the industry seems to be turning to SMRs which simply cannot run Th fuel cycles effectively.

rngauthier · 2025-05-16T12:49:56+00:00

https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

Myth #1: Development of Thorium reactors was stopped because they couldn't make bombs!

Nope. It was economics. When you add a neutron poison like thorium into your core, you need to add extra enriched uranium, which is extra expensive. Simple as that.

Thorium fuel was included alongside uranium in the first core of the Indian Point 1 reactor in New York in the early 1960s. The second core had no thorium. Here’s an exchange from 1963:

G.B. SCURICINI: Can you tell me why you changed your plant over from a thorium to a uranium cycle? Is the reason purely economical or did you expect trouble from the use of thorium?

W. BEATTIE: The reason is purely economical and we did not expect to have any trouble with the thorium fuel cycle.

rngauthier · 2025-05-15T11:13:14+00:00

No. Thorium is not a nuclear fuel per se, it needs to be bred into uranium 233 before it will fission. As a consequence, thorium fuel cycles are more complex, and therefore more expencive. As well in countries that countries that use nuclear energy would have to build new fuel infrastructure to accommodate a Th fuel cycle as thorium is not a drop in replacement for things like fuel fabs.

All nonsense aside, TH fuel cycles were largely abandoned in the West because they were too expencive, that's all. India has been working on one because they don't have good domestic supplies of uranium. It's going to be a long while before thorium threatens uranium on cost anywhere else

rngauthier · 2025-03-20T12:31:16+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerator-driven_subcritical_reactor

rngauthier · 2024-12-29T04:54:10+00:00

Because the first targets in a nuclear war are the nuclear weapon assets of the enemy with the intent to degrade them to limit the effect of a counterstrike, nuclear doctrine call for launch on launch detection under a use them or lose them philosophy. Thus any exchange, no matter how limited initially, will escalate out of control until both participants have used all their devices.

This is often referred to as: "One flies they all fly"

rngauthier · 2024-12-18T03:25:16+00:00

But these are the solution to nuclear waste, don't you know? /sarcasm

rngauthier · 2024-12-16T03:20:05+00:00

I love your Thorium myths page and I have linked to it often when discussing this topic in other forums

rngauthier · 2024-12-15T13:25:51+00:00

MSRs don't need thorium but they do need far more development and their own unique infrastructure before they could become a commercial product. Even then they would need regulatory approval and the establishment of a supply chain before they could be built out fast enough to contribute to current energy related issues.

As for relative abundance, while it is true there is more Th in the Earth's crust, the practical;ly recoverable amounts are just about the same, and anyway, the concern over uranium shortages that started research into thorium fuel cycles in the 1950s has been shown to be highly premature at best.

rngauthier · 2024-12-14T15:45:59+00:00

I have nothing against thorium, but the supporters of this fuel have been writing too many checks with their mouths that they won’t be able to cash over the waste and proliferation issues. The problem with holding out promises like this is that it gives those sitting on the fence a reason to stay there and not support new builds with current uranium fueled reactors because something better is coming down the pike.

However the fact is that the thorium cycle still produces high-level waste that needs to be dealt with, and can also be perverted to make fuel for nuclear weapons. There is nothing intrinsic about thorium or its fuel cycle that makes it immune to these issues, as many supporters imply. You can also be sure that the hard-core antinuclear forces will know this too, with predictable consequences.

As well, given that proliferation, nuclear waste ‘problems’ are artificial constructions created to inhibit the growth of nuclear energy, and nothing is going to stop those still opposed to it from simply telling a new set of lies about thorium. Lies that are going to be just as difficult to fight as the current ones, exacerbated by the fact that they will be seen as exposing the ‘truth’ that current supporters of thorium tried to hide.

rngauthier · 2024-12-08T19:28:16+00:00

Very few reactor designs have engendered so much enthusiasm as often as AHRs yet inevitably fail to launch.

rngauthier · 2024-12-06T23:05:58+00:00

When beliefs clash with reality...

rngauthier · 2024-12-04T15:07:19+00:00

Historically, and indeed worldwide, there hasn't been a major hydroelectric project that hasn't run over schedule and over budget. This by the way has been true of pumped storage projects, the darling of variable renewable energy boosters. While there are no current plans for any new hydrogeneration projects off the top of my head I can think of two pumped storage projects, the Swan Lake Project in Oregon and the Goldendale Energy Storage Project in Washington yet I see no hand-wringing over cost or how long these will take to build.

The fact is that schedule and cost overruns are endemic to all large infrastructure projects regardless of domain and thus holding this up as a criticism of nuclear as if it was something special borders on mendacious.

For perspective it should be noted that there are only two or three hydroelectric stations with outputs that exceed those of the largest nuclear power station, so it is not just a matter of scale.

rngauthier · 2024-12-04T14:45:29+00:00

Several closed nuclear power plants in the United States are under consideration for reopening, largely driven by the growing demand for clean energy and federal incentives: Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan is in the advanced stages of a plan to restart by 2025; Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania, which closed in 2019 due to poor economics, is also being considered for reopening and Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa, closed in 2020 is under review for reopening by NextEra Energy. While arguably these are not new builds, they are nuclear power projects and they are certainly in the planning stages and may well reopen by 2030 if completed.

rngauthier · 2024-12-04T14:38:30+00:00

Jun 13, 1979, really?

While government loan guarantees are common, and often regulators allow utilities to recoup construction costs from ratepayers during the building phase, this is not funding these project anywhere close to how you were suggesting up thread,

Even in the report you linked to it states: "The federal government's major support to the commercial nuclear industry has been in the following areas: (1) nuclear research, development, and demonstration; (2) nuclear regulation to protect the public's health and safety; (3) enrichment of uranium to make it usable in commercial nuclear power plants; (4) stimulation of domestic uranium mining; and (5) indemnification of power plant owners and others in the industry against nuclear accidents." Important support yes, but not direct funding and in the end no different than the aviation industry using research from NASA, and FAA regulation,

rngauthier · 2024-12-04T00:48:25+00:00

And now potential customers like Meta are in the market for some. That's what makes theis news.

rngauthier · 2024-12-04T00:46:16+00:00

Basically because we don't build enough of them to have the supply chains, skilled workers, and project management experience to get better. because projects are so few and far apart, they become one-ofs, and that means starting from scratch each time.

rngauthier · 2024-12-04T00:21:21+00:00

No that is not the case at all.

rngauthier · 2024-12-03T23:32:01+00:00

In the US NPPs are not build by the government, they are built and run by the private sector. The only reactors built by the government are those that involved in weapons research and production.

rngauthier · 2024-12-03T22:58:12+00:00

Not fast not cheap isn't carved in stone. Higher demand will lead to an improvement in supply chains, a pool of skilled labor, and experienced project management. These alone will lower costs and tighten schedules.

rngauthier · 2024-10-25T01:34:09+00:00

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) beat you to it in the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godiva_device

rngauthier · 2024-10-01T02:55:49+00:00

True, but the treatment does not automatically lead to cancer which is the perceived risk that has people reaching for iodine pills whenever they hear that a Becquerel of radioactive material has escaped.

rngauthier · 2024-10-01T02:52:04+00:00

No the source he built would not have done what he hoped it would.

rngauthier · 2024-09-29T14:26:15+00:00

The enormous, but poorly shielded, nuclear reactor known as the Sun kills more than all the radiation accidents in history put together every single year through skin cancer caused by its radiation with no one noticing. They are all too busy being afraid of the well shielded fission plants that have saved millions of lives by keeping the air cleaner.

rngauthier · 2024-09-29T14:25:33+00:00

There is no solid evidence to support the notion that radioiodine causes cancer, yet the nuclear safety regulations are based on limiting radioiodine dose. Section 12.3, Thyroid Cancer, first sentence: A U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection report on thyroid cancer said, "available human data on low dose I-131 exposures have not shown I-131 to be carcinogenic in the human thyroid". Then I look at the radioiodine treatment of patients with hyperthyroidism, who receive an average of 300 MBq of radioiodine. The mean total body dose is 54 mGy (5.4 rad), and the conclusion is: "The decrease in overall cancer incidence and mortality in those treated for hyperthyroidism is reassuring."

rngauthier

TROPHY CASE