THORIUM AS BASE MATERIAL |
Thorium as base material
It is possible to use Thorium in a nuclear reactor. When the process is started it will continue forever as long as there are Thorium left in the reactor. The first Thorium reactor was built in 1951. In 1959 a thorium reactor was built that was working for 6 years at 30 MW, demonstrating the process. Over the years there have been several reactors working and all without problems. The reason for using Thorium is that Uran is more difficult to find and Thorium is only mildly radioactive and therefore easy to handle. It is estimated that there is Thorium enough in the world to last for the worlds need for power for 5 to 10.000 years. Using Thorium is a solution for the future. Molten Salt cooled Reactor A molten salt cooled reactor can use waste material from traditional nuclear power-plants, and a traditional Uran reactor only use 1 to 5% of the material this means that a salt cooled reactor can burn around 82 % of the waste. In practice can a salt cooled reactor clean the earth and generate power at the same time. Thorium is a material that generates more power than Uranium in a reactor. When salt is used as cooling material there is created a stable reactor working at a given temperature and if the reactor is generating too much power the salt will heat up and it will expand. This will slow the process and stop the reactor producing heat. If the energy is used the salt will cool, this will contract the salt and the process will accelerate and generate more energy. The process will have a natural equilibrium and in practice it is fail safe. This will make it possible to have the reactor run for 10 to 20 years before it has to get more Thorium, so in practice the unit will function like a battery giving energy when needed. |
Waste from the Thorium power plant
The amount of waste from the powerplant is minimal. One gram of Thorium will generate all the energy one person in Denmark will use for one year. This means that we will need 6000 kg Thorium for 6 mill people pr year to generate all the needed energy. A salt cooled reactor will use 85 to 87% of the material in the reactor. This will give 15% waste from all the energy production in Denmark, or totally 900 kg. Of these 900 kg most of the radioactive material will be harmless after 10 years only 3% will have to be stored around 300 years before it is harmless. 3 % the 900 kg waste is 27 kg and the weight of one liter is 11.5 kg so the waste is around 2.5 liter. One kilo of thorium can generate same amount of energy as 3.500.000 kilos of Coal. Security from the power-plant Nuclear power is one of the safest forms of energy production. If we take the amounts of accidents with different energy productions forms, nuclear is clearly one of the safest known to man. But the mini reactor is even around 200 times safer than traditional nuclear energy, and traditional nuclear energy is 1.500 times safer than Coal generated power. If the reactor is blown up under a terror attack or war, then the molten salt will stiffen and the contamination of the surrounding area will be minimal. The contaminated salt can be collected and used again. Waste from the reactor cannot be used for nuclear bomb material, this was the reason the technology was not developed further back in 1958 where the first salt cooled reactor using Thorium was started and did run for 4 years. Germany had a reactor running from 1978 to 1986 at 25 MW, also without problems. The task is to reinvent the process, and get it production matured and get a volume production up standing. |