Nuclear Power, Weapons & Peace.                        August 2014 Click square for index   I learned about nuclear weapons and proliferation from an unlikely source. My post doctoral supervisor at Harvard was George Kistiakowsky. He had been a scientist on the Manhatten project which developed nuclear weapons and was a strong opponent of their use. He had also been President Eisenhower’s science advisor. He was still active in promoting nuclear disarmament. I agreed. So began my participation in advocacy groups and Easter walks and the like to oppose nuclear proliferation. At that time people were careful to distinguish nuclear weapons from nuclear power. It was a lie. They were connected. After 2012 the media began to mention the connection. So for August 2014, when we recall Hiroshima day and Nagasaki day in the context of Ontario’s impending nuclear reactor renewal, the response is different. As the facts play out, one reason for expensive and dangerous uranium reactors is that they provide the necessary material for nuclear weapons.  It seems that the other political issues of power needs and jobs in the nuclear industry could have been better met by the thorium reactor - which was not developed commercially. The pro-thorium lobby claim a single tonne of thorium burned in a molten salt reactor (MSR) – typically a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) – which has liquid rather than solid fuel, can produce one gigawatt of energy. A traditional pressurized water reactor (PWR) would need to burn 250 tonnes of uranium to produce the same amount of energy. The thorium reactor also produces less waste, and has no weapons-grade by-products.  Thorium reactors could consume legacy plutonium stockpiles, and they are meltdown-proof There are a few thorium reactors in operation, and they do have advantages over uranium reactors, though those are easy to exaggerate. One reason thorium reactors are relevant is that there would be insufficient fuel for China to replace its coal-burning power plant with uranium-fueled reactors in the medium term. Therefore it makes sense for the Chinese to develop thorium reactors. Russia, France and the US are also pursuing the technology, while India's department of atomic energy and the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council are jointly funding five UK research programs on it. On closer inspection, there are more thorium-based possibilities than the liquid fluoride reactor and each claims advantages over the current uranium reactors. For example Thorium Power Canada Inc. has been developing a reactor which appears to offer advantages in safety and waste disposal as well as being modular – so small and scalable. This is yet to move to development.   An issue of safe waste disposal remains with thorium. Spent fuel is always terribly active for the first years. When people talk about uranium's spent fuel being worse than that from thorium, they are talking about the long-lived isotopes in uranium reactor spent fuel. Some argue that the development of thorium is an excuse to keep supporting the existing reactors of the nuclear industry in the meantime. Others note the nuclear industry is wedded to the status quo and major players will never support thorium – though there is now an example in Norway that they will. Those who support renewables say they will have come so far in cost and efficiency terms by the time thorium technology is perfected and up scaled that thorium reactors will already be uneconomic. Indeed, if renewables had a fraction of nuclear power's current subsidies they could be light years ahead.  Others argue it would be cheaper and safer for Ontario to simply buy hydro-electric power from Quebec rather than to replace dated uranium nuclear reactors. Right now that may well be so. Yet there are some developments in the status quo which defy the argument that thorium use is not commercially ready.  In Norway, Thor Energy has successfully created a thorium reactor by using thorium in a conventional nuclear reactor.   Natural thorium 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, can be formed into rods and used in conventional nuclear reactors. This does away with uranium but in addition it recycles the plutonium “waste” accumulated from conventional uranium reactors. The thorium-MOX fuel cycle produces no new plutonium, so it lowers the world’s stock piles of plutonium. Thor Energy has built a small test reactor in Halden, Norway, 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. Westinghouse Electric Company, a major producer of nuclear reactors, is one of Thor Energy’s commercial backers. Given all this, I agree with those who say the pressing issue is to reduce energy demand and to add support for a major renewables program. Thorium faces the same problems as current nuclear: it is not renewable or sustainable and cannot effectively connect to smart grids.  However my focus for August and Hiroshima Day is peace. Is thorium nuclear better than Uranium nuclear - only better not good - for avoiding nuclear proliferation? The answer is a hesitant yes. For that small advantage I favour, as part of the energy mix, shifting the science and engineering interests away from another century of uranium nuclear power by getting thorium alternatives to replace the current uranium. In other words, if there has to be any nuclear energy at all, the interests of nuclear non-proliferation dictate that it must be thorium nuclear.  Top  Click:

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