Source: Chinese molten salt reactor achieves conversion of thorium-uranium fuel - World Nuclear News On 1 November, the institute announced that TMSR-LF1 achieved the first conversion of thorium and uranium nuclear fuel. "This marks the first time international experimental data has been obtained after thorium was introduced into a molten salt reactor, making it the only operational molten salt reactor in the world to have successfully incorporated thorium fuel," the institute said. "This milestone breakthrough provides core technological support and feasible solutions for the large-scale development and utilisation of thorium resources in China and the development of fourth-generation advanced nuclear energy systems." This is a big deal as they are learning the key engineering data needed to build future molten salt reactors. This is just a 2 megawatt reactor but on the other side of theory moving towards reality: Molten salt, intense neutron flux materials - a HARD problem On site radioactive by product extraction - next hardest problem but key for continuous fuel cycle Chinese nuclear engineers are learning lessons, invaluable lessons, that have a significant payoff if (when) solved. Today’s reactors use solid fuel pellets that hold the nuclear by products in the solid matrix. These are hard to reprocess so a lot of valuable materials remains trapped and stored in pools of water and onsite casks. But liquid salt fuel, intense neutron flux theory, be processed on site to remove or even denature by irradiation into vey small, quantities of radioactive waste. Best of all, the higher temperature means the thermal cycle is more efficient reducing the waste heat lost. This is where our species needs to be focused on. Bob Wilson
Don’t go ‘bat-stuff’ crazy now. Zoono-virus (sp?) are nothing to sneeze at. Avian flu has taken at least one human. Bob Wilson
This really is good news. Thorium is a plentiful resource and reactors running at atmospheric pressure are inherently safer than current NPPs.
Thorium is indeed plentiful: Thorium processing | Uses, Benefits & Risks | Britannica 4.0 Processing Overview - Thorium Energy Alliance China’s Groundbreaking Thorium Discovery: A New Era of 60,000 Years of Limitless Clean Energy - Elnion Endless thorium supply in China can help make unlimited nuclear power Not only in China as some links above may imply. A 2015 publication Thorium: Crustal abundance, joint production, and economic availability Resources Policy 44 (2015) 81–93 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2015.02.002 Lists sources in USA and elsewhere as having Th recoverable at costs from $8 to $417 per kilogram. That publication is paywalled, but not effectively If anyone needs a copy, it could be in your hands. Sorry about that publisher Elsevier. == If you have ever spent a day on beach sand, quartz monazite (and thus Thor) could have been under you. Golly.
