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Page added on July 6, 2013
Thorium nuclear reactor trial begins in Norway
At a test site in Norway, Thor Energy has successfully created a thorium nuclear reactor — but not in the sense that most people think of when they hear the word thorium. The Norwegians haven’t solved the energy crisis and global warming in one fell swoop — they haven’t created a cold fusion thorium reactor. What they have done, though, which is still very cool, is use thorium instead of uranium in a conventional nuclear reactor. In one fell swoop, thorium fuel, which is safer, less messy to clean up, and not prone to nuclear weapons proliferation, could quench the complaints of nuclear power critics everywhere.
In a conventional nuclear reactor, enriched uranium fuel is converted into plutonium and small amounts of other transuranic compounds. There are ways to recycle plutonium, but for many countries, such as the USA, it is simply a waste product of nuclear power — a waste product that will be dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. While the safety of nuclear power plants is hotly contested, no one is arguing the nastiness of plutonium. Any technological development that could reduce the production of plutonium, or consume our massive stocks of plutonium waste, would be a huge boon for the Earth’s (and humanity’s) continued well-being. (See: Nuclear power is our only hope, or, the greatest environmentalist hypocrisy of all time.)
Enter thorium. Natural thorium, which is fairly cheap and abundant (more so than uranium), doesn’t contain enough fissile material (thorium-231) to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. By mixing thorium oxide with 10% plutonium oxide, however, criticality is achieved. This fuel, which is called thorium-MOX (mixed-oxide), can then be formed into rods and used in conventional nuclear reactors. Not only does this mean that we can do away with uranium, which is expensive to enrich, dangerous, and leads to nuclear proliferation, but it also means that we finally have an easy way of recycling plutonium. Furthermore, the thorium-MOX fuel cycle produces no new plutonium; it actually reduces the world’s stock of plutonium. Oh, thorium-MOX makes for safer nuclear reactors, too, due to a higher melting point and thermal conductivity.
Thor Energy’s thorium reactor in Halden, Norway. The rod in the middle of the picture contains thorium-MOX pellets, and is being inserted into the reactor (which is underground).
Thorium-MOX, in short, is about as exciting as it gets in the nuclear power industry. Before it can be used, though, Thor Energy needs to make sure that the thorium fuel cycle is fully understood. To do this, the company has built a small test reactor in the Norwegian town of Halden, where rods of thorium-MOX provide steam to a nearby paper mill. This reactor will run for five years, after which the fuel will be analyzed to see if it’s ready for commercial reactors. (See: 500MW from half a gram of hydrogen: The hunt for fusion power heats up.)
The first batch of thorium-MOX pellets, which are inside the rods, was made in Germany; the next batch of pelles will be made in Norway; and the final, hopefully commercial-grade pellets will be made by the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory. Westinghouse Electric Company, one of the world’s largest producers of nuclear reactors, is one of Thor Energy’s commercial backers.
(And yes, just in case you were wondering, the element thorium really is named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. And yes, Norse mythology originated from Norway, where Thor Energy is based. Coincidence, I think not!)
7 Comments on "Thorium nuclear reactor trial begins in Norway"
rollin on Sat, 6th Jul 2013 2:23 pm
Something to power them through those long dark winters.
Arthur on Sat, 6th Jul 2013 4:08 pm
The US and Russia ignored thorium at the beginning of the nuclear age because no bombs could be made with it. That’s were Norway comes in: does not want to bomb anyone. They were involved in the production of heavy water in the thirties, so they have a ‘nuclear culture’. No reason why this could not work. The energy picture is lightning up a bit.
“Nuclear power is our only hope”
BS.
From the comments of the original article:
“India has two thirds of the world’s thorium deposits.”
Are the British already preparing for recolonization of India?
Concerned on Sat, 6th Jul 2013 9:12 pm
Cool so you only need plutonium mixed with thorium and problem solved.
Where is the plutonium coming from to power this cornucopian future for 7 billion people currently? With a growth based economic paradigm!
I did some very brief searching and it appears Plutonium is not found in nature, it must be produced artificially. Err from uranium.
DC on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 4:36 am
Thorium has long been the nuclear fan-boys goto technology when it comes to salvaging the ‘nuclear’ age. However, despite the glowing hopium this article throws out, there are no active commercial thorium reactors and even if the worlds nuclear terrorists, GE, Toshiba, the US of A, and others, did an abrupt 180 and said-“Its thorium all the way now!”, it would take decades and trillions of dollars, with no guarantee of success.
Nor would the introduction of thorium(if successful) do a thing to deal with the CURRENT pile of 400+ nuclear time bombs and the 100s of thousands of tons of n-waste created by the last batch of faulty dangerous nuclear engineering our geniuses devised that is still laying around waiting to blow up in our collective faces.
This article implies Thorium reactors would act as nuclear vacuum cleaners and make all our ‘old’ nuclear techs problems go away. This is clearly a false assumption and claim to be making.
File this under Hopium or tech-NO-fix, whichever you prefer.
BillT on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 5:57 am
“extreme tech” = Techie porn. Another hit for Arthur … lol. Wake me when the dream is over, please.
Arthur on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 9:13 am
You should learn to read Bill. I do not endorse Thorium for the short term. No time left for that anyway. Solar and wind + hydro storage work now, so we should go for it as fast as we can. Other options can be considered when we have stabilized society, many decades from now, on a likely much lower level than today. But indeed, I am not necessarily against other energy options, if workable and unproblematic, even nuclear like thorium or even fusion. And I can sympathise with those who are not too keen seeing the landscape littered with windturbines and fields with solar panels. But for now we are too late for anything else. So it is going to be at least one generation of wind and solar until that stuff is written off and possible but not necessarily replaced by something else.
Robert Hargraves on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 2:55 pm
A new book has much more information about thorium. Read the reviews of THORIUM: energy cheaper than coal at Amazon. [just search “thorium”]