Has a Thorium Powered Nuclear Reactor Ever Been Built?

I once read that thorium (another radioactive element) could be used as a nuclear fuel. Has anyone ever actually bilt a reactor that used it? Thorium is supposed to be pretty abundant-is there more of it around than uranium?

Sort of.

As I understand it, Thorium itself is all isotope 232, which like U-238 is metastable, with a half-life measured in the billions of years. It is not itself “fissionable” – in the specialized atomic-energy meaning of the term, meaning “susceptible enough to natural neutron bombardment to enter into an energy-producing chain reaction.” However, exposed to “slow” neutrons in a breeder reactor, it absorbs a neutron to form Th-233, which beta-decays to U-233, which is fissionable, and a reactor fuel. My impression is that this process is not being done for precisely the same reasons as Pu-239, the other easily-created reactor “fuel” is not being produced.

To read more of this astounding story, pick up a copy of the “Radioactive Boy Scout” by Ken Silverstein. Nobody will ever know just how close he really came to… What? Annihilation? Because as he said: “The garbage got the good stuff. The EPA got the garbage.” He was (is?) an amazing individual.

A good read for a snowy Sunday (I just read it for the 2nd time)

tom

Outside of research reactors, I don’t think there are any operational thorium reactors. It’s cheaper to do it the uranium way for the time being. I believe that there is interest in the thorium fuel cycle in India which is especially rich in thorium.

FWIW,
Rob

He’s apparently having some legal difficulties of late, and possibly still persuing his old hobby.

I vaguley recall the US tried to build a thorium bomb at one point, but don’t remember the details.

Rumor has it his health problems may be more severe than his legal ones. :dubious:

No, he was a village idiot playing about with something that he didn’t really understand. There’s an old thread in which someone who actually served on a Navy ship discussed his questionable understanding of science and math (I believe he was trying to impress a female ensign about his “researches” into the quadratic equations. :rolleyes: )

Regarding thorium reactors, Polycarp has it essentially correct, although the reasons for not producing [sup]239[/sup]Pu have more to do with the complex control and fuel processing steps required to keep from producing higher plutonium isotopes and the proliferation risk. Right now it is significantly cheaper and easier–and the technology is well established–to mine natural uranium and enrich it to fuel grade levels rather than breed fissile [sup]233[/sup]U from [sup]232[/sup]Th. Because of its relatively short half-life and high fissability, [sup]233[/sup]U is also less desireable as a fuel than fuel-grade HEU, and the breeding reaction has to be carefully monitors to prevent side reactions from absorbing too many neutrons and producing [sup]234[/sup]U.

Only nations like India or Norway without significant sources of natural uranium are really interested in thorium reactors, though there was in the early days of nuclear power significant interest in thorium breeder reactors. A number of research reactors were built in the US and possibly the USSR and France for breeding thorium into fissile isotopes, and I believe there was at least one commercial US breeder that used thorium fuel for a time before being converted to a more conventional light water reactor.

Here is a nice, brief, and not too technical discussion about the difficulties of breeding fissile fuel from thorium.

Stranger

That reactor was Shippingport in Pennsylvania.

I realize this is an old thread but current events bring it back into focus
Westinghouse Corp had a WORKING thorium reactor in operation during the
1970’s. It was ultimately shut down for a variety of reasons. None of these
reasons were in the best interests of the Citizens of the United States. Benefactors
included the usual suspects; big oil, big coal, competing nuclear power companies.
The US military nuclear weapons programs.

One could make a valid argument that if the US government and the financial elites
in the US had not conspired against the American people and allowed this technology to mature the human race would not be facing extermination from radioactive fall out.
Fall out that has been magnified 10 fold because the complex was also Japan’s primary
nuclear weapons facility.

Thorium nuclear power technology has been around for 50 YEARS. It was shut down because it was far to cheap, safe and didn’t not allow for nuclear weapons production. Another sterling example of advanced technology that could have benefited all of man kind hidden away so a few really really rich and powerful people could get even richer and more powerful.

Oh dear, I’m all out of tin foil. I wonder if placing a colander on my head will block the government mind control rays.

Stranger

You realize that the conspiracy began when the GovernmentCommieFascists forced all the tin foil manufacturers out of business because it knew their power.

If the holes in the colander are bigger than the wavelength of the N rays they are using yer screwed.

Maybe he can wear TWO colanders.

That might be a strain on his brain.

You DID NOT just post that.

Which is mainly on the plain.

Ok, but I did read in Scientific American a couple years ago that thorium was abandoned because it didn’t make plutonium and in the early days of reactors, it was thought that there would a large demand for plutonium for nuclear bombs. Perhaps that was written by a tin-hat guy, but maybe some doper knows.

Japan has no nuclear weapons program and never has. If they do it’d be incredibly covert and not something they’d ever admit to and you’d certainly never hear about it.

BWA-HA-HA-Ha!

<snort>

<giggle>

No.
Really.

What?:slight_smile: