A New Kind of Artificial Reef Is Saving Fish

By John R. Platt | Takepart.com 14 hours ago Takepart.com

 New Kind of Artificial Reef Is Saving Fish

 

Build it, and they will come.

That’s not just a line from Field of Dreams. It’s also a real lesson coming out of Australia, where an innovative experiment to create artificial reefs has attracted 50 fish species to waters that just a few years ago only saw 12.
Artificial reefs are nothing new, but most previous efforts to build them were extremely low-tech. Government agencies dropped piles of old tires or cement blocks on the ocean floor—or sank old boats and military vessels—in the hope that they would create habitats for fish and other marine life.
The experiment in the state of Western Australia is a bit different. The state’s Department of Fisheries ordered a series of 60 specifically made 10-foot-high hollow cubes with open sides and a series of supports running from each corner toward the center. Placed on the ocean floor in two locations in 2013, the 22,000-pound reinforced concrete cubes have since provided perfect growing surfaces for algae and some corals. Those, in turn, have helped attract fish—dozens of large, commercially valuable species, including pink snapper, silver trevally, and Samson fish. Even rays and schools of small fish have turned up to enjoy the habitat.
Although the main goal of the artificial reefs is to boost commercial fishing and related tourism, they also play an important environmental role in a world where natural reefs are rapidly disappearing. Australia’s fabled Great Barrier Reef has shrunk by 50 percent over the past 30 years.

Climate change, ocean acidification, fertilizer runoff, and other threats could soon cause even more damage. Next month, UNESCO will meet to determine whether the Great Barrier Reef—a World Heritage Site that is worth more than $4 billion a year in tourism alone and that plays host to hundreds of marine species—should be considered in need of international conservation assistance.

A spokesperson for Department of Fisheries Minister Ken Baston called the artificial reefs “a win for the environment and recreational fishers.” He said the goal was “to provide new, accessible, and safe quality fishing locations for recreational boat fishers.”

The department has invested nearly $1.5 million to build the reefs. The majority of the funding came from fishing license fees. It will now spend another $460,000 monitoring the first two test sites over the next five years. The department also plans to create another 772 square miles of artificial reefs farther out to sea, where they will attract other species, such as barramundi and Spanish mackerel.

Other parts of Australia are paying attention to Western Australia’s success. Last week, the state of South Australia proposed its own $2.6 million artificial reef project.

The nuke that might have been

Difference Engine

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage

Nov 11th 2013, 18:19 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES

DOES the world need more nuclear power or less? Seared by the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in March 2011, Japan has now taken all its commercial reactors offline. The last was powered down on September 16th. Tokyo Electric Power, owner of the ill-fated reactors on the Fukushima coast, still hopes to restart an idled nuclear plant in Niigata prefecture next July—if it can overcome entrenched local opposition.
Meanwhile, measures are underway in Germany and Switzerland to phase out their nuclear stations. Another 11 European countries, plus Australia and New Zealand, remain adamantly opposed to nuclear power. In recent years, more reactors around the world have closed than opened.
Yet nuclear reactors do one thing no other mainstream source of electricity can boast: they generate large blocks of power without producing carbon dioxide in the process. Hydro-electricity is largely carbon-free, but most suitable sites have long since been exploited. Certainly, renewables like solar, wind and biomass can deliver power largely free of greenhouse gases. But renewables are nowhere near reliable nor cheap enough to displace conventional fuels—be they coal, natural gas, oil or nuclear. Nor can they be scaled up fast enough to meet the world’s insatiable demand for electricity.
Overall, opposition to nuclear power—despite the graphic footage of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima—seems to be on the wane. Last year, The Economist held an online debate on whether the world would be better off without nuclear power. Readers voted 61% to 39% in favour of keeping it (see “Debate on nuclear power”, April 15th 2012).
All told, 40-odd countries—mainly in the Middle East and Asia—have now committed themselves to building their first atomic-power plants, or to adding new ones to their existing nuclear capacity. As the poster-child for pollution, China is keenly aware that it cannot go on building dirty coal-fired power stations indefinitely and needs a cleaner alternative. Hence the 32 new reactors China has under construction, which will add 70 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2020. Russia is building ten new ones and India seven. Britain is about to start work on its first nuclear reactor since 1995. With eight of its nine nuclear plants now reaching the end of their lives, Britain plans to build a dozen new ones by 2030.
Today, the nuclear industry’s prospects look brighter than at any time since 1979. That was when a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania sent shockwaves around the world—and further orders for nuclear generating capacity began to dry up. The latest reactor designs are far safer. The AP1000, an “advanced passive” reactor from Toshiba’s Westinghouse division, has a huge reservoir of water above the reactor, which is dumped by gravity into the core in an emergency. Westinghouse claims the AP1000 is 100 times safer than present reactors. The broadly similar European Pressurised Reactor, designed by Areva, a French firm, has four redundant safety systems instead of the more usual two or three.
But to Babbage’s mind, the question is not whether their “passive” designs—ie, emergency cooling systems that work by gravity and natural convection instead of electrical valves, relays and pumps—can make them safer. Of that there is no doubt. The question, rather, is why such an inherently flawed design as the light-water reactor (LWR) is still, after all these years, the preferred technology?
Most of today’s reactors, whether they use boiling water or pressurised water, trace their ancestry back to the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine, launched in 1954. At the time, the LWR was just one of many reactor designs that existed either on paper or in the laboratory—using  different fuels (uranium-233, uranium-235 or plutonium-239), different coolants (water, heavy water, carbon dioxide or liquid sodium) and different moderators (water, heavy water, beryllium or graphite).
The light-water reactor of the day, with its solid uranium-dioxide fuel and water for both moderator and coolant, was by no means the best. But Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of America’s nuclear navy, chose it because it could be implemented faster than any of the others, making it possible for Nautilus to be launched on time. The LWR also appealed to Rickover because it produced a lot of bomb-making plutonium as a by-product.
After that, the die was cast. America’s first commercial reactor, the 60-megawatt Shippingport station in Pennsylvania, which started in 1957 (one year after the Calder Hall power station in Britain), used essentially the same light-water design as Nautilus. Henceforth, the rest of America’s commercial reactors would follow suit. Other countries subsequently copied or licensed much the same light-water technology.
In hindsight, that was a terrible mistake. Producing copious quantities of plutonium is just about the last thing a commercial reactor needs to do. It creates huge handling and storage problems as well as all manner of security and proliferation headaches. On top of that, the LWR’s other drawbacks ensured that commercial reactors would henceforth be more expensive to build and costlier to operate than might otherwise have been the case.
For instance, the cooling water in an LWR is not only radioactive and corrosive, but also under extremely high pressure. As a consequence, light-water reactors need to be housed in fortress-like containment buildings in case the cooling system fails and radioactive steam is released into the atmosphere.
Another problem concerns the bundles of rods that contain the uranium-dioxide fuel. These have to be removed from the core after only a few years of burning and stored in cooling ponds, even though no more than 3-5% of the energy in their uranium has been consumed. Their zirconium cladding swells and distorts as a result of temperature differences and radiation damage. There is always the danger of fuel rods rupturing if left in the reactor too long.
Within the fuel rods themselves, the fissile material becomes steadily poisoned by short-lived byproducts, such as xenon-135. This causes dangerous instabilities that make managing the reactor tricky. Such instabilities are what caused the Chernobyl reactor to explode. As if all that were not enough, dealing with a light-water reactor’s long-lived radioactive byproducts remains a Faustian nightmare.
Passive safety features aside, the new generation of reactors being hawked around the world are still basically old-fashioned light-water reactors with solid-fuel cores that are cooled and moderated by water. “Maddeningly,” say two leading light-water critics, “historical, technological and regulatory reasons conspire to make it hugely difficult to diverge from our current path of solid-fuel, uranium-based plants.”
In what has become a classic account of America’s missed opportunity to make nuclear power cleaner, safer and potentially an alternative to coal, Robert Hargraves of Dartmouth College and Ralph Moir, formerly of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, have made the most compelling case yet (in the July-August 2010 issue of American Scientist) for reactors that use a liquid fuel instead of a solid one. “Knowing what we now know about climate change, peak oil, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the Deepwater Horizon oil well gushing in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2010, what if we could have taken a different path?” asked the authors.
One advantage of liquid fuels is that they are not subjected to the radiation damage or structural stresses that cause the fuel rods in conventional reactors to swell and distort. Also, because they use a liquid fluoride salt for a coolant, there is no high-pressure water to deal with. Operating at atmospheric pressure, no containment vessel is therefore needed. The xenon gas that poisons the fuel rods in a conventional reactor simply bubbles out of a liquid fuel, while other fission products precipitate out and cease absorbing neutrons from the chain-reaction underway.
The spent fuel from a light-water reactor contains radioactive plutonium with a half-life of over 24,000 years. The fuel used in a liquid-fuel reactor is liquid fluoride laced with thorium. The toxicity of what little waste it produces is 10,000 times less than that from a conventional reactor. Overall, the half-life of a liquid-fuel reactor’s byproducts is measured in hundreds rather tens of thousands of years.
The liquid-fluoride thorium reactor, developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee during the late 1960s, ran successfully for five years before being axed by the Nixon administration. The reason for its cancellation: it produced too little plutonium for making nuclear weapons. Today, that would be seen as a distinct advantage. Without the Cold War, the thorium reactor might well have been the power plant of choice for utilities everywhere.
Today, the thorium reactor is a non-starter, at least in America and other countries that have invested heavily in light-water technology. But things are different in India, a country with no uranium but an abundance of thorium. India plans to produce 30% of its electricity from thorium reactors by 2050. Being plentiful and cheap, thorium is the only fuel that stands a chance of generating electricity as cheaply as burning coal. As such, it is the only fuel capable of weaning the world off the biggest single polluter of all.

Thorium-based nuclear power

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A sample of thorium.

See also: Liquid fluoride thorium reactor

 

Thorium-based nuclear power is nuclear reactor-based electrical power generation fueled primarily by the fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium. According to proponents, a thorium fuel cycle offers several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle—including much greater abundance on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced nuclear waste production. However, development of Thorium power has significant start-up costs. Proponents also cite the lack of weaponization potential as an advantage of thorium, while critics say that development of breeder reactors in general (including thorium reactors that are breeders by nature) increase proliferation concerns. Since about 2008, nuclear energy experts have become more interested in thorium to supply nuclear fuel in place of uranium to generate nuclear power. This renewed interest has been highlighted in a number of scientific conferences, the latest of which, ThEC13 ^[1] was held at CERN by iThEC and attracted over 200 scientists from 32 countries.
A nuclear reactor consumes certain specific fissile isotopes to make energy. The three most practical types of nuclear reactor fuel are:

• Uranium-235, purified (i.e. "enriched") by reducing the amount of uranium-238 in natural mined uranium. Most nuclear power has been generated using low-enriched uranium (LEU), whereas high-enriched uranium (HEU) is necessary for weapons.
• Plutonium-239, transmuted from uranium-238 obtained from natural mined uranium. Plutonium is also used for weapons.
• Uranium-233, transmuted from thorium-232, derived from natural mined thorium. That is this article's subject.

Some believe thorium is key to developing a new generation of cleaner, safer nuclear power.^[2][3] According to an opinion piece (not peer-reviewed) by a group of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, considering its overall potential, thorium-based power "can mean a 1000+ year solution or a quality low-carbon bridge to truly sustainable energy sources solving a huge portion of mankind’s negative environmental impact."^[4]
After studying the feasibility of using thorium, nuclear scientists Ralph W. Moir and Edward Teller suggested that thorium nuclear research should be restarted after a three-decade shutdown and that a small prototype plant should be built.^[5][6][7] Research and development of thorium-based nuclear reactors, primarily the Liquid fluoride thorium reactor, (LFTR), MSR design, has been or is now being done in India, China, Norway, U.S., Israel and Russia.

Contents

• 1 Background and brief history
• 2 Possible benefits
• 3 Possible disadvantages
• 4 Current projects
  • 4.1 Canada
  • 4.2 China
  • 4.3 Germany
  • 4.4 India
  • 4.5 Israel
  • 4.6 Japan
  • 4.7 Norway
  • 4.8 U.K.
  • 4.9 U.S.
• 5 World sources of thorium
• 6 Types of thorium-based reactors
• 7 See also
• 8 Notes
• 9 External links

Background and brief history

After World War II, uranium-based nuclear reactors were built to produce electricity. These were similar to the reactor designs that produced material for nuclear weapons. During that period, the U.S. government also built an experimental molten salt reactor using U-233 fuel, the fissile material created by bombarding thorium with neutrons. The reactor, built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, operated critical for roughly 15000 hours from 1965 to 1969. In 1968, Nobel laureate and discoverer of Plutonium, Glenn Seaborg, publicly announced to the Atomic Energy Commission, of which he was chairman, that the thorium-based reactor had been successfully developed and tested:

So far the molten-salt reactor experiment has operated successfully and has earned a reputation for reliability. I think that some day the world will have commercial power reactors of both the uranium-plutonium and the thorium-uranium fuel cycle type.^[8]

In 1973, however, the U.S. government shut down all thorium-related nuclear research—which had by then been ongoing for approximately twenty years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The reasons were that uranium breeder reactors were more efficient, the research was proven, and byproducts could be used to make nuclear weapons. In Moir and Teller’s opinion, the decision to stop development of thorium reactors, at least as a backup option, “was an excusable mistake.”^[5]
Science writer Richard Martin states that nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg, who was director at Oak Ridge and primarily responsible for the new reactor, lost his job as director because he championed development of the safer thorium reactors.^[9][10] Weinberg himself recalls this period:

[Congressman] Chet Holifield was clearly exasperated with me, and he finally blurted out, "Alvin, if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it may be time for you to leave nuclear energy." I was speechless. But it was apparent to me that my style, my attitude, and my perception of the future were no longer in tune with the powers within the AEC.^[11]

Martin explains that Weinberg's unwillingness to sacrifice potentially safe nuclear power for the benefit of military uses forced him to retire:

Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. . . . his team built a working reactor . . . . and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.^[12]

Despite the documented history of thorium nuclear power, many of today’s nuclear experts were nonetheless unaware of it. According to Chemical & Engineering News, "most people—including scientists—have hardly heard of the heavy-metal element and know little about it...," noting a comment by a conference attendee that "it's possible to have a Ph.D. in nuclear reactor technology and not know about thorium energy."^[13] Nuclear physicist Victor J. Stenger, for one, first learned of it in 2012:

It came as a surprise to me to learn recently that such an alternative has been available to us since World War II, but not pursued because it lacked weapons applications.^[14]

Others, including former NASA scientist and thorium expert Kirk Sorensen, agree that "thorium was the alternative path that was not taken … "^[15][16]:2 According to Sorensen, during a documentary interview, he states that if the U.S. had not discontinued its research in 1974 it could have "probably achieved energy independence by around 2000."^[8]

Possible benefits

Early thorium-based (MSR) nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s

The World Nuclear Association explains some of the possible benefits^[17]

The thorium fuel cycle offers enormous energy security benefits in the long-term – due to its potential for being a self-sustaining fuel without the need for fast neutron reactors. It is therefore an important and potentially viable technology that seems able to contribute to building credible, long-term nuclear energy scenarios.^[18]

Moir and Teller agree, noting that the possible advantages of thorium include "utilization of an abundant fuel, inaccessibility of that fuel to terrorists or for diversion to weapons use, together with good economics and safety features … "^[5] Thorium is considered the "most abundant, most readily available, cleanest, and safest energy source on Earth," adds science writer Richard Martin.^[16]:7

• Thorium is four times as abundant as uranium, which is as common as lead. It is ~ 570 times as common as uranium-235, the fissile isotope of uranium used for nuclear energy. The Thorium Energy Alliance (TEA) estimates "there is enough thorium in the United States alone to power the country at its current energy level for over 1,000 years."^{[18][19][unreliable source]} "America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining," notes Evans-Pritchard. "Norway has so much that Oslo is planning a post-oil era where thorium might drive the country’s next great phase of wealth. Even Britain has seams in Wales and in the granite cliffs of Cornwall. Almost all thorium is fertile Th-232, compared to uranium that is composed of 99.3% fertile U-238 and 0.7% more valuable fissile U-235. There is enough to power civilization for thousands of years."^[20]

• It is difficult to make a practical nuclear bomb from a thorium reactor's byproducts. According to Alvin Radkowsky, designer of the world’s first full-scale atomic electric power plant, "a thorium reactor's plutonium production rate would be less than 2 percent of that of a standard reactor, and the plutonium's isotopic content would make it unsuitable for a nuclear detonation."^[16]:11[21] Several uranium-233 bombs have been tested, but the presence of uranium-232 tended to "poison" the uranium-233 in two ways: intense radiation from the uranium-232 made the material difficult to handle, and the uranium-233 led to possible pre-detonation. Separating the uranium-232 from the uranium-233 proved very difficult, although newer laser techniques could facilitate that process.^[22][23]

• There is much less nuclear waste—up to two orders of magnitude less, states Moir and Teller,^[5] eliminating the need for large-scale or long-term storage;^[16]:13 "Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium."^[20] The radioactivity of the resulting waste also drops down to safe levels after just a few hundred years, compared to tens of thousands of years needed for current nuclear waste to cool off.^[24]

• According to Moir and Teller, "once started up [it] needs no other fuel except thorium because it makes most or all of its own fuel."^[5] Because it is non-fissile, it can also be used with fissile material, such as uranium and plutonium, as a nuclear fuel.^[18]

• Since all natural thorium can be used as fuel no expensive fuel enrichment is needed.^[24] However the same is true for U-238 as fertile fuel in the uranium-plutonium cycle.

• Comparing the amount of thorium needed with coal, Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia of CERN, (European Organization for Nuclear Research), estimates that one ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3,500,000 tons of coal.^[25] Coal, as the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, makes up 42% of U.S. electrical power generation and 65% in China.^[26]

Summarizing, Martin writes, "Thorium could provide a clean and effectively limitless source of power while allaying all public concern—weapons proliferation, radioactive pollution, toxic waste, and fuel that is both costly and complicated to process.^[16]:13
From an economics viewpoint, U.K. business editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes that "Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium," suggesting a "new Manhattan Project," and adding, "If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke …"^[25] Moir and Teller estimated in 2004 that the cost for their recommended prototype would be "well under $1 billion with operation costs likely on the order of $100 million per year," and as a result a "large-scale nuclear power plan" usable by many countries could be set up within a decade.^[5]

Possible disadvantages

Some experts note possible specific disadvantages of thorium nuclear power:^[27]

• Breeding in a thermal neutron spectrum is slow and requires extensive reprocessing. The feasibility of reprocessing is still open.^[28]
• Significant and expensive testing, analysis and licensing work is first required, requiring business and government support.^[18] According to a 2012 report by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, about using thorium fuel with existing water-cooled reactors, it would "require too great an investment and provide no clear payoff," noting that "from the utilities’ point of view, the only legitimate driver capable of motivating pursuit of thorium is economics."^[29]

• There is a higher cost of fuel fabrication and reprocessing than those that use traditional solid fuel rods.^[18]

• Thorium, when being irradiated for use in reactors, will make uranium-232, which is very dangerous due to the gamma rays it emits. This irradiation process may be able to be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232, which can be used in nuclear weapons to make thorium into a dual purpose fuel.^[30]

Current projects

Research and development of thorium-based nuclear reactors, primarily the Liquid fluoride thorium reactor, (LFTR), MSR design, has been or is now being done in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Brazil, India, China, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, Russia, Canada, Israel and the Netherlands.^[14][16] Conferences with experts from as many as 32 countries are held, including one by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2013, which focuses on thorium as an alternative nuclear technology without requiring production of nuclear waste.^[31] Recognized experts, such as Hans Blix, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, calls for expanded support of new nuclear power technology, and states, "the thorium option offers the world not only a new sustainable supply of fuel for nuclear power but also one that makes better use of the fuel's energy content."^[32]

Canada

CANDU reactors of Atomic Energy Canada Limited are capable of using thorium,^{[33][dead link][34]} and TPC (Thorium Power Canada) has, in 2013, planned and proposed developing thorium power projects for Chile and Indonesia.^[35]

China

At the 2011 annual conference of the Chinese Academy of Sciences it was announced that "China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology."^[36] In addition, Dr. Jiang Mianheng, son of China's former leader Jiang Zemin, led a thorium delegation in non-disclosure talks at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, and by late 2013 China had officially partnered with Oak Ridge to aid China in its own development.^[37][38] The World Nuclear Association notes that the China Academy of Sciences in January 2011 announced its R&D program, "claiming to have the world's largest national effort on it, hoping to obtain full intellectual property rights on the technology."^[18] According to Martin, "China has made clear its intention to go it alone," adding that China already has a monopoly over most of the world's rare earth minerals.^[16]:157[20]
In March 2014, with their reliance on coal-fired power having become a major cause of their current "smog crisis," they reduced their original goal of creating a working reactor from 25 years down to 10. "In the past, the government was interested in nuclear power because of the energy shortage. Now they are more interested because of smog," said Professor Li Zhong, a scientist working on the project. "This is definitely a race," he added.^[39]
In early 2012, it was reported that China, using components produced by the West and Russia, planned to build two prototype thorium molten salt reactors by 2015, and had budgeted the project at $400 million and requiring 400 workers."^[16]:157 China also finalized an agreement with a Canadian nuclear technology company to develop improved CANDU reactors using thorium and uranium as a fuel.^[40]

Germany

The German THTR-300 was a prototype commercial power station using thorium as fertile and highly enriched U-235 as fissile fuel. Though named thorium high temperature reactor, mostly U-235 was fissioned. The THTR-300 was a helium-cooled high-temperature reactor with a pebble-bed reactor core consisting of approximately 670,000 spherical fuel compacts each 6 centimetres (2.4 in) in diameter with particles of uranium-235 and thorium-232 fuel embedded in a graphite matrix. It fed power to Germany's grid for 432 days in the late 1980s, before it was shut down for cost, mechanical and other reasons.

India

In February 2014, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), in Mumbai, India, presented their latest design for a "next-generation nuclear reactor" that will burn thorium as its fuel ore. Once built, with a target date of 2016, they estimate that the reactor could function without an operator for 120 days.^[41]
According to Dr R K Sinha, chairman of their Atomic Energy Commission, "This will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, mostly imported, and will be a major contribution to global efforts to combat climate change." Because of its inherent safety, they expect that similar designs could be set up "within" populated cities, like - Mumbai or Delhi.^[41]
India's government is also developing up to 62, mostly thorium reactors, which it expects to be operational by 2025. It is the "only country in the world with a detailed, funded, government-approved plan" to focus on thorium-based nuclear power. The country currently gets under 3% of its electricity from nuclear power, relying for the rest on coal and oil imports. It expects to produce around 25% of its electricity from nuclear power.^[16]:144 In 2009 the chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission said that India has a "long-term objective goal of becoming energy-independent based on its vast thorium resources."^[42][43]
In late June 2012, India announced that their "first commercial fast reactor" was near completion making India the most advanced country in thorium research." We have huge reserves of thorium. The challenge is to develop technology for converting this to fissile material," stated their former Chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission.^[44] That vision of using thorium in place of uranium was set out in the 1950s by physicist Homi Bhabha.^[45][46] India’s first commercial fast breeder reactor — the 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) — is approaching completion at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu.
As of July 2013 the major equipment of the PFBR had been erected and the loading of "dummy" fuels in peripheral locations was in progress. The reactor was expected to go critical by September 2014.^[47]
The Centre had sanctioned Rs. 5,677 crore for building the PFBR and “we will definitely build the reactor within that amount,” Mr. Kumar asserted. The original cost of the project was Rs. 3,492 crore, revised to Rs. 5,677 crore. Electricity generated from the PFBR would be sold to the State Electricity Boards at Rs. 4.44 a unit. BHAVINI builds breeder reactors in India. India's 300 MWe AHWR (pressurized heavy water reactor) reactor began construction in 2011. The design envisages a start up with reactor grade plutonium that will breed U-233 from Th-232. Thereafter thorium is to be the only fuel.^[48]

Israel

In May 2010, researchers from Ben-Gurion University in Israel and Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York began to collaborate on the development of thorium reactors,^[49] aimed at being self-sustaining, "meaning one that will produce and consume about the same amounts of fuel," which is not possible with uranium in a light water reactor.^[49]

Japan

In June, 2012, Japan utility Chubu Electric Power, wrote that they regard thorium as “one of future possible energy resources.”^[50]

Norway

In late 2012, Norway's privately owned Thor Energy, in collaboration with the government and Westinghouse, announced a four-year trial using thorium in an existing nuclear reactor."^[51] In 2013, Aker Solutions purchased patents from Nobel Prize winning physicist Carlo Rubbia for the design of a proton accelerator-based thorium nuclear power plant.^[52]

U.K.

In Britain, a few organizations are either promoting or examining research on thorium-based nuclear plants. House of Lords member Bryony Worthington is promoting thorium, calling it “the forgotten fuel” that could alter Britain’s energy plans.^[53] However, in 2010, the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) concluded that for the short to medium term, "...the thorium fuel cycle does not currently have a role to play," in that it is "technically immature, and would require a significant financial investment and risk without clear benefits," and concluded that the benefits have been "overstated."^[18] Friends of the Earth UK considers research into it as "useful" as a fallback option.^[54]

U.S.

In its January 2012 report to the Secretary of Energy, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Future notes that a "molten-salt reactor using thorium [has] also been proposed."^[55] That same month it was reported that the U.S. Department of Energy is "quietly collaborating with China" on thorium-based nuclear power designs using a molten salt reactor.^[56]
Some experts and politicians want thorium to be "the pillar of the U.S. nuclear future."^[57] Senators Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch have supported using $250 million in federal research funds to revive ORNL research.^[4] In 2009, Congressman Joe Sestak unsuccessfully attempted to secure funding for research and development of a destroyer-sized reactor [reactor of a size to power a destroyer] using thorium-based liquid fuel.^[58][59]
Alvin Radkowsky, chief designer of the world’s second full-scale atomic electric power plant in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, founded a joint U.S. and Russian project in 1997 to create a thorium-based reactor, considered a "creative breakthrough."^[60] In 1992, while a resident professor in Tel Aviv, Israel, he founded the U.S. company, Thorium Power Ltd., near Washington, D.C., to build thorium reactors.^[60]
The primary fuel of the proposed HT³R research project near Odessa, Texas, USA, will be ceramic-coated thorium beads. The earliest date the reactor will become operational is in 2015.^[61]
In early 2014, some geologists speculated that there was a higher reserve of thorium, least 600,000 tons, in one county in northern Idaho, which they claim is "a higher reserve of thorium . . . than anywhere in the world."^[62]

World sources of thorium

World thorium sources (2007)^[63]

Country	Tons	%
Australia	489,000	18.7%
USA	400,000	15.3%
Turkey	344,000	13.2%
India	319,000	12.2%
Brazil	302,000	11.6%
Venezuela	300,000	11.5%
Norway	132,000	5.1%
Egypt	100,000	3.8%
Russia	75,000	2.9%
Greenland (Denmark)	54,000	2.1%
Canada	44,000	1.7%
South Africa	18,000	0.7%
Other countries	33,000	1.2%
World Total	2,610,000	100.0%

Thorium is mostly found with the rare earth phosphate mineral, monazite, which contains up to about 12% thorium phosphate, but 6-7% on average. World monazite resources are estimated to be about 12 million tons, two-thirds of which are in heavy mineral sands deposits on the south and east coasts of India. There are substantial deposits in several other countries (see table "World thorium sources").^[18]
Another estimate of reasonably assured reserves (RAR) and estimated additional reserves (EAR) of thorium comes from OECD/NEA, Nuclear Energy, "Trends in Nuclear Fuel Cycle", Paris, France (2001).^[64] (see table "IAEA Estimates in tonnes")

IAEA Estimates in tons (2005)

Country	RAR Th	EAR Th
India	519,000	21%
Australia	489,000	19%
USA	400,000	13%
Turkey	344,000	11%
Venezuela	302,000	10%
Brazil	302,000	10%
Norway	132,000	4%
Egypt	100,000	3%
Russia	75,000	2%
Greenland	54,000	2%
Canada	44,000	2%
South Africa	18,000	1%
Other countries	33,000	2%
World Total	2,810,000	100%

The preceding reserve figures refer to the amount of thorium in high-concentration deposits inventoried so far and estimated to be extractable at current market prices; millions of times more total exist in Earth's 3×10¹⁹ tonne crust, around 120 trillion tons of thorium, and lesser but vast quantities of thorium exist at intermediate concentrations.^[65][66][67] Proved reserves are "a poor indicator of the total future supply of a mineral resource."^[67]

Types of thorium-based reactors

According to the World Nuclear Association there are seven types of reactors that can be designed to use thorium as a nuclear fuel. The first five of these have all entered into operational service at some point. The last two are still conceptual, although currently in development by many countries:^[18]

• Heavy water reactors (PHWRs)
• High-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTRs)
• Boiling (light) water reactors (BWRs)
• Pressurized (Light) water reactors (PWRs)
• Fast neutron reactors (FNRs)
• Molten salt reactors (MSRs, LFTRs)
  • The Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed and built a demonstration MSR which operated from 1965 to 1969. It used U-233 (originally bred from Th-232) as its fuel during its final year.
• Accelerator driven reactors (ADS)

Additionally, in the 1958 Atoms for Peace publication entitled Fluid Fueled Reactors, Aqueous Homogeneous Reactors (AHRs) were proposed as a fluid fueled design that could accept naturally occurring uranium and thorium suspended in a heavy water solution.^[68] AHRs have been built and according to the IAEA reactor database, 7 are currently in operation as research reactors.

See also

• Breeder reactor
• Generation IV reactor
• Flibe Energy
• India's three stage nuclear power programme
• Thorium Energy Alliance
• Liquid fluoride thorium reactor

Liquid fluoride thorium reactor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

"LFTR" redirects here. For the American indie rock band "LFTR PLLR", see Lifter Puller.

See also: Thorium-based nuclear power

 

Liquid FLiBe salt

 

The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (acronym LFTR; spoken as lifter) is a type of thermal breeder reactor. LFTRs use the thorium fuel cycle with a fluoride-based, molten, liquid salt for fuel. It can achieve high operating temperatures at atmospheric pressure.
LFTR is a type of thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR). Molten-salt-fueled reactors (MSRs) supply the nuclear fuel in the form of a molten salt mixture. They should not be confused with molten salt-cooled high temperature reactors (fluoride high-temperature reactors, FHRs) that use a solid fuel.^[1] Molten salt reactors, as a class, include both burners and breeders in fast or thermal spectra, using fluoride or chloride salt-based fuels and a range of fissile or fertile consumables. LFTRs are defined by the use of fluoride fuel salts and the breeding of thorium into uranium-233 in the thermal spectrum.
In a LFTR, thorium and uranium-233 are dissolved in carrier salts, forming a liquid fuel. In a typical operation, the liquid is pumped between a critical core and an external heat exchanger where the heat is transferred to a nonradioactive secondary salt. The secondary salt then transfers its heat to a steam turbine or closed-cycle gas turbine.^[2] This technology was first investigated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment in the 1960s. It has recently been the subject of a renewed interest worldwide.^[3] Japan, China, the UK and private US, Czech and Australian companies have expressed intent to develop and commercialize the technology. LFTRs differ from other power reactors in almost every aspect: they use thorium rather than uranium, operate at low pressure, fuel by pumping without shutdown, use a salt coolant and produce higher operating temperatures. These distinctive characteristics give rise to many potential advantages, as well as design challenges.

Contents

• 1 Background
• 2 Breeding basics
• 3 Reactor primary system design variations
  • 3.1 Single Fluid Reactor
  • 3.2 Two Fluid Reactor
  • 3.3 Hybrid "one and a half fluid" reactor
• 4 Power Generation
  • 4.1 Rankine Cycle
  • 4.2 Brayton Cycle
  • 4.3 Other applications
• 5 Removal of fission products
• 6 Advantages
  • 6.1 Safety
  • 6.2 Economy and efficiency
• 7 Disadvantages
• 8 Recent developments
  • 8.1 The Fuji MSR
  • 8.2 Chinese Thorium MSR project
  • 8.3 Flibe Energy
  • 8.4 Thorium Energy Generation Pty. Limited (TEG)
  • 8.5 The Weinberg Foundation
• 9 See also
• 10 References
• 11 Further reading
• 12 External links

Background

Thorium is relatively abundant in the earth's crust.

Tiny crystals of Thorite, a thorium mineral, under magnification.

Molten Salt Reactor at Oak Ridge

By 1946, eight years after the discovery of nuclear fission, three fissile isotopes had been publicly identified for use as nuclear fuel:^[4][5]

• Uranium-235, which is already fissile, and occurs as 0.72% of natural uranium
• Plutonium-239, which can be bred from non-fissile uranium-238 (>99% of natural uranium)
• Uranium-233, which can be bred from non-fissile thorium-232 (~100% of natural thorium; which has about four times greater abundance in the earth's crust than uranium^[6])

Th-232, U-235 and U-238 are primordial nuclides, having existed in their current form for over 4.5 billion years, predating the formation of the Earth; they were forged in the cores of dying stars through the r-process and scattered across the galaxy by supernovas.^[7] Their radioactive decay produces about half of the earth's internal heat.^[8]
For technical and historical^[9] reasons, the three are each associated with different reactor types. U-235 is the world's primary nuclear fuel and is usually used in light water reactors. U-238/Pu-239 has found the most use in liquid sodium fast breeder reactors and CANDU Reactors. Th-232/U-233 is best suited to molten salt reactors (MSR).^[10]
Alvin M. Weinberg pioneered the use of the MSR at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At ORNL, two prototype molten salt reactors were successfully designed, constructed and operated. These were the Aircraft Reactor Experiment in 1954 and Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment from 1965 to 1969. Both test reactors used liquid fluoride fuel salts. The MSRE notably demonstrated fueling with U-233 and U-235 during separate test runs.^[11](pix) Weinberg was removed from his post and the MSR program closed down in the early 1970s,^[12] after which research stagnated in the United States.^[13][14] Today, the ARE and the MSRE remain the only molten salt reactors ever operated.

Breeding basics

In a nuclear power reactor, there are two types of fuel. The first is fissile material, which splits when hit by neutrons, releasing a large amount of energy and also releasing two or three new neutrons. These can split more fissile material, resulting in a continued chain reaction. Examples of fissile fuels are U-233, U-235 and Pu-239. The second type of fuel is called fertile. Examples of fertile fuel are Th-232 (mined thorium) and U-238 (mined uranium). Often the amount of fertile fuel in the reactor is far bigger than the amount of fissile, but it cannot be fissioned directly. It must first absorb one of the 2 or 3 neutrons produced in the fission process, which is called neutron capture, then it becomes a fissile isotope by radioactive decay. This process is called breeding.
All reactors breed some fuel this way,^[15] but today's solid fueled thermal reactors don't breed enough new fuel from the fertile to make up for the amount of fissile they consume. This is because today's reactors use the mined uranium-plutonium cycle in a moderated neutron spectrum. Such a fuel cycle, using slowed down neutrons, gives back less than 2 new neutrons from fissioning the bred plutonium. Since 1 neutron is required to sustain the fission reaction, this leaves a budget of less than 1 neutron per fission to breed new fuel. In addition, the materials in the core such as metals, moderators and fission products absorb some neutrons, leaving too few neutrons to breed enough fuel to continue operating the reactor. As a consequence they must add new fissile fuel periodically and swap out some of the old fuel to make room for the new fuel.
In a reactor that breeds at least as much new fuel as it consumes, it is not necessary to add new fissile fuel. Only new fertile fuel is added, which breeds to fissile inside the reactor. In addition the fission products need to be removed. This type of reactor is called a breeder reactor. If it breeds just as much new fissile from fertile to keep operating indefinitely, it is called a break-even breeder or isobreeder. A LFTR is usually designed as a breeder reactor. Thorium goes in, fission products come out.
Reactors that use the uranium-plutonium fuel cycle require fast reactors to sustain breeding, because only with fast moving neutrons does the fission process provide more than 2 neutrons per fission. With thorium, it is possible to breed using a thermal reactor. This was proven to work in the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, whose final fuel load bred slightly more fissile from thorium than it consumed, despite being a fairly standard light water reactor. Thermal reactors require less of the expensive fissile fuel to start.
There are two ways to configure a breeder reactor to do the required breeding. One can place the fertile and fissile fuel together, so breeding and splitting occurs in the same place. Alternatively, fissile and fertile can be separated. The latter is known as core-and-blanket, because a fissile core produces the heat and neutrons while a separate blanket does all the breeding.

Reactor primary system design variations

Oak Ridge investigated both ways to make a breeder for their Molten Salt Breeder Reactor. Because the fuel is liquid, they are called the "single fluid" and "two fluid" thorium thermal breeder molten salt reactors.

Single Fluid Reactor

Simplified schematic of a single fluid reactor.

 

The one-fluid design includes a large reactor vessel filled with fluoride salt containing thorium and uranium. Graphite rods immersed in the salt function as a moderator and to guide the flow of salt. In the ORNL MSBR design^[16] a reduced amount of graphite near the edge of the reactor core would make the outer region under-moderated, and increased the capture of neutrons there by the thorium. With this arrangement, most of the neutrons were generated at some distance from the reactor boundary, and reduced the neutron leakage to an acceptable level.^[17] Still, a single fluid design needs a considerable size to permit breeding.^[18]
In a breeder configuration, extensive fuel processing was specified to remove fission products from the fuel salt.^[11](p181) In a converter configuration fuel processing requirement was simplified to reduce plant cost.^[17] The trade-off was the requirement of periodic uranium refueling.
The MSRE was a core region only prototype reactor.^[19] The MSRE provided valuable long-term operating experience. According to estimates of Japanese scientists, a single fluid LFTR program could be achieved through a relatively modest investment of roughly 300–400 million dollars over 5–10 years to fund research to fill minor technical gaps and build a small reactor prototype comparable to the MSRE.^[20]

Two Fluid Reactor

The two-fluid design is mechanically more complicated compared to the "single fluid" reactor design. The "two fluid" reactor has a high-neutron-density core that burns uranium-233 from the thorium fuel cycle. A separate blanket of thorium salt absorbs the neutrons and its thorium is converted to protactinium-233. Protactinium-233 can be left in the blanket region where neutron flux is lower, so that it slowly decays to U-233 fissile fuel,^[21] rather than capture neutrons. This bred fissile U-233 can be recovered by simple fluorination, and placed in the core to fission. The core's salt is also purified, first by fluorination to remove uranium, then vacuum distillation to remove and reuse the carrier salts. The still bottoms left after the distillation are the fission products waste of a LFTR.
The advantages of separating the core and blanket fluid include:

1. Simplified fuel processing. Thorium is chemically similar to several fission products, called lanthanides. With thorium in a separate blanket, thorium is kept isolated from the lanthanides. Without thorium in the core fluid removal of lanthanide fission products is simplified.
2. Low fissile inventory. Because the fissile fuel is concentrated in a small core fluid, the actual reactor core is more compact. There is no fissile material in the outer blanket that contains the fertile fuel for breeding. Because of this, the 1968 ORNL design required just 315 kilograms of fissile materials to start up a 250 MW(e) two fluid MSBR reactor.^[22](p35) This reduces the cost of the initial fissile startup charge, and allows more reactors to be started up on any given amount of fissile material.
3. More efficient breeding. The thorium blanket can effectively capture leaked neutrons from the core region. There is nearly zero fission occurring in the blanket, so the blanket itself does not leak significant numbers of neutrons. This results in a high efficiency of neutron use (neutron economy), and a higher breeding ratio, especially with small reactors.

One design weakness of the two-fluid design was the necessity for a barrier wall between the core and the blanket region, a wall that would have to be replaced periodically because of fast neutron damage.^[23](p29) Graphite was the chosen material by ORNL because of its low neutron absorption, compatibility with the molten salts, high temperature resistance, and sufficient strength and integrity to separate the fuel and blanket salts. The effect of neutron radiation on graphite is to slowly shrink and then swell the graphite to cause an increase in porosity and a deterioration in physical properties.^[22](p13) Graphite pipes would change length, and may crack and leak. ORNL chose not to pursue the two-fluid design, and no examples of the two-fluid reactor were ever constructed.
One additional design weakness of the two-fluid design was its complex plumbing. ORNL thought it necessary to use complex interleaving of the core and blanket piping in order to get a high reactor power level with acceptably low power density.^[22](p4) More recent research has put into question the need for complex interleaving graphite tubing, suggesting a simple elongated tube-in-shell reactor would allow high total reactor power without complex tubing.^[2](p6)
The recovery of high-purity uranium-233 has been raised as a potential nuclear proliferation concern.^[24](p99) A design with no Protactinium separation would ensure that any U-233 is contaminated with U-232 whose decay chain emits 2 MeV gamma rays too hazardous for weapons workers.

Hybrid "one and a half fluid" reactor

A two fluid reactor that has thorium in the fuel salt is sometimes called a "one and a half fluid" reactor, or 1.5 fluid reactor.^[25] This is a hybrid, with some of the advantages and disadvantages of both 1 fluid and 2 fluid reactors. Like the 1 fluid reactor, it has thorium in the fuel salt, which complicates the fuel processing. And yet, like the 2 fluid reactor, it can use a highly effective separate blanket to absorb neutrons that leak from the core. The added disadvantage of keeping the fluids separate using a barrier remains, but with thorium present in the fuel salt there are fewer neutrons that must pass through this barrier into the blanket fluid. This results in less damage to the barrier. Any leak in the barrier would also be of lower consequence, as the processing system must already deal with thorium in the core.
The main design question when deciding between a 1/1.5 fluid or two fluid LFTR is whether a more complicated reprocessing or a more demanding structural barrier will be easier to solve.

Calculated nuclear performance of 1000-MW(e) MSBR design concepts[23](p29)
Design concept	Breeding ratio	Fissile inventory
Single-fluid, 30 year graphite life, fuel processing	1.06	2300 kg
Single-fluid, 4 year graphite life, fuel processing	1.06	1500 kg
1.5 fluid, replaceable core, fuel processing	1.07	900 kg
Two-fluid, replaceable core, fuel processing	1.07	700 kg

Power Generation

The LFTR with a high operating temperature of 700 degrees Celsius can operate at a thermal efficiency to electrical of 45%.^[21] This is higher than today's light water reactors (LWRs) that are at 32–36% thermal to electrical efficiency.

Rankine Cycle

Rankine steam cycle

Main article: Rankine cycle

 

The Rankine cycle is the most basic thermodynamic power cycle. The simplest cycle consists of a steam generator, a turbine, a condenser, and a pump. The working fluid is usually water. A Rankine power conversion system coupled to a LFTR could take advantage of increased steam temperature to improve its thermal efficiency.^[26] The subcritical Rankine steam cycle is currently used in commercial power plants, with the newest plants utilizing the higher temperature, higher pressure, supercritical Rankine steam cycles. The work of ORNL from the 1960s and 1970s on the MSBR assumed the use of a standard supercritical steam turbine with an efficiency of 44%^[23](p74), and had done considerable design work on developing molten fluoride salt – steam generators.^[27]

Brayton Cycle

Closed-cycle gas turbine schematic

 

Main article: Brayton cycle

The working gas of a Brayton cycle can be helium, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide. The high-pressure working gas is expanded in a turbine to produce power. The low-pressure warm gas is cooled in an ambient cooler. The low-pressure cold gas is compressed to the high-pressure of the system. Often the turbine and the compressor are mechanically connected through a single shaft.^[28] High pressure Brayton cycles are expected to have a smaller generator footprint compared to lower pressure Rankine cycles. A Brayton cycle heat engine can operate at lower pressure with wider diameter piping.^[28] The world's first commercial Brayton cycle solar power module (100 kW) was built and demonstrated in the Israel's Arava desert in 2009.^[29]

Other applications

In addition to electricity generation, concentrated thermal energy from LFTR can enable other applications:

• Industrial process heat for many uses
• Desalination of water^[30]
• Hydrogen production by water splitting
• Combined heat and power
• Nuclear marine propulsion^{[31][unreliable source?]}

Removal of fission products

The LFTR needs a mechanism to remove the fission products from the fuel salt and recover at least the fissile material. Some fission products in the salt absorb neutrons and reduce the production of new fissile fuel. Especially the concentrations of some of the rare earth elements need to be kept low, as they have a large cross section for neutron capture. Some other elements with a small cross section like Cs or Zr can be tolerated in much higher concentrations, so they may accumulate over years of operation.
Removal of fission products is similar to reprocessing of solid fuel elements, without the need to remove and rebuild the fuel cladding. As the fuel of a LFTR is a molten salt mixture, it is attractive to use pyroprocessing, high temperature methods working directly from the hot molten salt. Pyroprocessing does not use radiation sensitive solvents and is not easily disturbed by decay heat. It can be used on the highly radioactive fuel directly from the reactor.^[32] Having the chemical separation on site, close to the reactor avoids transport and keeps the total inventory of the fuel cycle low. Ideally everything except new fuel (thorium) and waste (fission products) stays inside the plant.
On site processing is planned to work continuously, cleaning a small fraction of the salt every day and sending it back to the reactor. There is no need to make the fuel salt very clean, the purpose is to keep the concentration of fission products and other impurities (e.g. oxygen) low enough.
The more noble metals (Pd, Ru, Ag, Mo, Nb, Sb, Tc) do not form fluorides in the normal salt, but form fine metallic particles in the salt. They can plate out at metal surfaces like the heat exchanger or some kind of high surface area filters that are easier to remove. Still there is some uncertainty where these noble elements end up, as the MSRE only provided a relatively short operating experience and independent laboratory experiments are difficult.^[33]
Some elements like Xe and Kr come out easily as gas, assisted by a sparge of helium. In addition a part of the "noble" metals are removed together with the gas as a fine mist. Especially the fast removal of Xe-135 is important, as this a very strong neutron poison and makes reactor control more difficult if left in the reactor. Removal of Xe also improves neutron economy. The gas (mainly He, Xe and Kr) is held up for about 2 days until a large fraction of the Xe-135 and other short lived isotopes have decayed. Most of the gas can then be recycled. After an additional hold up of several months, radioactivity is low enough to separate the gas at low temperatures into helium (for reuse), xenon (for sale) and krypton. The krypton needs storage (e.g. in compressed form) for an extended time (several decades) to wait for the decay of Kr-85.^[16](p274)
For cleaning the salt mixture several methods of chemical separation were proposed.^[34] Compared to classical Purex reprocessing, pyroprocessing can be more compact and produce less secondary waste. The pyroprocesses of the LFTR salt already starts with a suitable liquid form, so it may be less expensive than using solid oxide fuels. However, because no complete molten salt reprocessing plant has been built, all testing has been limited to the laboratory, and with only a few elements. There is still more research and development needed to improve separation and make reprocessing more economically viable.
Uranium and some other elements can be removed from the salt by a process called fluorine volatility: A sparge of fluorine removes volatile high-valence fluorides as a gas. This is mainly uranium hexafluoride, containing the uranium-233 fuel, but also neptunium hexafluoride, technetium hexafluoride and selenium hexafluoride, as well as fluorides of various highly radioactive short-lived fission products such as iodine-131, ⁹⁹molybdenum, and ¹³²tellurium. The volatile fluorides can be further separated by adsorption and distillation. Handling uranium hexafluoride is well established in enrichment. The higher valence fluorides are quite corrosive at high temperatures and require more resistant materials than Hastelloy. One suggestion in the MSBR program at ORNL was using solidified salt as a protective layer. At the MSRE reactor fluorine volatility was used to remove uranium from the fuel salt. Also for use with solid fuel elements fluorine volatility is quite well developed and tested.^[32]
Another simple method, tested during the MSRE program, is high temperature vacuum distillation. The lower boiling point fluorides like uranium tetrafluoride and the LiF and BeF carrier salt can be removed by distillation. Under vacuum the temperature can be lower than the ambient pressure boiling point. So a temperature of about 1000 °C is sufficient to recover most of the FLiBe carrier salt.^[35] However, while possible in principle, separation of thorium fluoride from the even higher boiling point lanthanide fluorides would require very high temperatures and new materials. The chemical separation for the 2-fluid designs, using uranium as a fissile fuel can work with these two relatively simple processes:^[36] Uranium from the blanket salt can be removed by fluorine volatility, and transferred to the core salt. To remove the fissile products from the core salt, first the uranium is removed via fluorine volatility. Then the carrier salt can be recovered by high temperature distillation. The fluorides with a high boiling point, including the lanthanides stay behind as waste.
The early Oak Ridge's chemistry designs were not concerned with proliferation and aimed for fast breeding. They planned to separate and store protactinium-233, so it could decay to uranium-233 without being destroyed by neutron capture in the reactor. With a half-life of 27 days, 2 months of storage would assure that 75% of the ²³³Pa decays to ²³³U fuel. The protactinium removal step is not required per se for a LFTR. Alternate solutions are operating at a lower power density and thus a larger fissile inventory (for 1 or 1.5 fluid) or a larger blanket (for 2 fluid). Also a harder neutron spectrum helps to achieve acceptable breeding without protactinium isolation.^[2]
If Pa separation is specified, this must be done quite often (for example, every 10 days) to be effective. For a 1 GW, 1-fluid plant this means about 10% of the fuel or about 15 t of fuel salt need to go through reprocessing every day. This is only feasible if the costs are much lower than current costs for reprocessing solid fuel.
Newer designs usually avoid the Pa removal^[2] and send less salt to reprocessing, which reduces the required size and costs for the chemical separation. It also avoids proliferation concerns due to high purity U-233 that might be available from the decay of the chemical separated Pa.
Separation is more difficult if the fission products are mixed with thorium, because thorium, plutonium and the lanthanides (rare earth elements) are chemically similar. One process suggested for both separation of protactinium and the removal of the lanthanides is the contact with molten bismuth. In a redox-reaction some metals can be transferred to the bismuth melt in exchange for lithium added to the bismuth melt. At low lithium concentrations U, Pu and Pa move to the bismuth melt. At more reducing conditions (more lithium in the bismuth melt) the lanthanides and thorium transfer to the bismuth melt too. The fission products are then removed from the bismuth alloy in a separate step, e.g. by contact to a LiCl melt.^[37] However this method is far less developed. A similar method may also possible be with other liquid metals like aluminum.^[38]

Advantages

Thorium-fueled molten salt reactors offer many potential advantages compared to conventional solid uranium fueled light water reactors:^{[6][18][39][40][41][42]}

Safety

• Inherent safety. LFTR designs use a strong negative temperature coefficient of reactivity to achieve passive inherent safety against excursions of reactivity. The temperature dependence comes from 3 sources. The first is that thorium absorbs more neutrons if it overheats, the so-called Doppler effect.^[43] This leaves fewer neutrons to continue the chain reaction, reducing power. The second part is heating the graphite moderator, that usually causes a positive contribution to the temperature coefficient.^[43] The third effect has to do with thermal expansion of the fuel.^[43] If the fuel overheats, it expands considerably, which, due to the liquid nature of the fuel, will push fuel out of the active core region. In a small (e.g. the MSRE test reactor) or well moderated core this reduces the reactivity. However in a large under-moderated core (e.g. the ORNL MSBR design) less fuel salt means better moderation and thus more reactivity and an undesirable positive temperature coefficient.
• Stable coolant. Molten fluorides are chemically stable and impervious to radiation. The salts do not burn, explode, or decompose, even under high temperature and radiation.^[44] There are no rapid violent reactions with water and air that sodium coolant has. There is no combustible hydrogen production that water coolants have.^[45] However the salt is not stable to radiation at low (less than 100 C) temperatures due to radiolysis.
• Low pressure operation. Because the coolant salts remain liquid at high temperatures,^[44] LFTR cores are designed to operate at low pressures, like 0.6 MPa^[46] (comparable to the pressure in the drinking water system) from the pump and hydrostatic pressure. Even if the core fails, there is little increase in volume. Thus the containment building cannot blow up. LFTR coolant salts are chosen to have very high boiling points. Even a several hundred degree heatup during a transient or accident does not cause a meaningful pressure increase. There is no water or hydrogen in the reactor that can cause a large pressure rise or explosion as happened during the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.^{[47][unreliable source]}
• Leak Resistance.^{[citation needed]}Due to the low pressure operation and low pressure differences through the primary heat exchangers, the potential for large leaks is also greatly reduced.
• No pressure buildup from fission. LFTRs prevent pressure buildup due to gaseous and volatile fission products. The liquid fuel allows for online removal of gaseous fission products, such as xenon, for processing, thereby these decay products would not be spread in a disaster.^[48] Further, fission products are chemically bonded to the fluoride-salt, including iodine,^{[dubious – discuss]} cesium, and strontium, capturing the radiation and preventing the spread of radioactive material to the environment.^[49]
• Easier to control. A molten fuel reactor has the advantage of removal of xenon-135. Xenon-135, an important neutron absorber, makes solid fueled reactors difficult to control. In a molten fueled reactor, xenon-135 can be removed. In solid-fuel reactors, xenon-135 remains in the fuel and interferes with reactor control.^[50]
• Slow heatup. Coolant and fuel are inseparable, so any leak or movement of fuel will be intrinsically accompanied by a large amount of coolant. Molten fluorides have high volumetric heat capacity, some such as FLiBe, even higher than water. This allows them to absorb large amounts of heat during transients or accidents.^[34][51]
• Passive decay heat cooling. Many reactor designs (such as that of the Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment) allow the fuel/coolant mixture to escape to a drain tank, when the reactor is not running (see "Fail safe core" below). This tank are planned to have some kind (details are is still open) of passive decay heat removal, thus rely on physical properties (rather than controls) to operate.^[52]
• Fail safe core. LFTRs can include a freeze plug at the bottom that has to be actively cooled, usually by a small electric fan. If the cooling fails, say because of a power failure, the fan stops, the plug melts, and the fuel drains to a subcritical passively cooled storage facility. This not only stops the reactor, also the storage tank can more easily shed the decay heat from the short-lived radioactive decay of irradiated nuclear fuels. Even in the event of a major leak from the core such as a pipe breaking, the salt will spill onto the kitchen-sink-shaped room the reactor is in, which will drain the fuel salt by gravity into the passively cooled dump tank.^[17]
• Less activated waste.^{[citation needed]} LFTRs have very little structural material inside the core. Only the fuel salt, graphite, and small amounts of metals or composites are inside the actual reactor core. This reduces the amount of neutrons lost to structural components, improving the neutron economy, and reducing the amount of activated structural waste. Fluorine, lithium and beryllium do not have significant long term neutron activation.^[51]
• Less long lived waste. LFTRs can dramatically reduce the long-term radiotoxicity of their reactor wastes. Light water reactors with uranium fuel have fuel that is more than 95% U-238. These reactors normally transmute part of the U-238 to Pu-239, a toxic transuranic isotope. Almost all of the fuel is therefore only one step away from becoming a transuranic long lived element. Plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,000 years, and is the most common transuranic in spent nuclear fuel from light water reactors. Transuranics like Pu-239 cause the perception that reactor wastes are an eternal problem. In contrast, the LFTR uses the thorium fuel cycle, which transmutes thorium to U-233. Because thorium is a lighter element, more neutron captures are required to produce the transuranic elements. U-233 has two chances to fission in a LFTR. First as U-233 (90% will fission) and then the remaining 10% has another chance as it transmutes to U-235 (80% will fission). The fraction of fuel reaching Neptunium-237, the most likely transuranic element, is therefore only 2%, about 15 kg per GWe-year.^[53] This is a transuranic production 20x smaller than light water reactors, which produce 300 kg of transuranics per GWe-year. Importantly, because of this much smaller transuranic production, it is much easier to recycle the transuranics. That is, they are sent back to the core to eventually fission. Reactors operating on the U238-plutonium fuel cycle produce far more transuranics, making full recycle difficult on both reactor neutronics and the recycling system. In the LFTR, only a fraction of a percent, as reprocessing losses, goes to the final waste. When these two benefits of lower transuranic production, and recycling, are combined, a thorium fuel cycle reduces the production of transuranic wastes by more than a thousand-fold compared to a conventional once-through uranium-fueled light water reactor. The only significant long lived waste is the uranium fuel itself, but this can be used indefinitely by recycling, always generating electricity. If the thorium age ever has to be shut down, part of the reactors can be shut down and their uranium fuel inventory burned out in the remaining reactors, allowing a burndown of even this final waste to as small a level as society demands.^[54] The LFTR does still produce radioactive fission products in its waste, but they don't last very long – the radiotoxicity of these fission products is dominated by cesium-137 and strontium-90. The longer half-life is cesium: 30.17 years. So, after 30.17 years, decay reduces the radioactivity by a half. Ten half-lives will reduce the radioactivity to two raised to a power of ten, a factor of 1,024. Fission products at that point, in about 300 years, are less radioactive than natural uranium.^[55][56] What's more, the liquid state of the fuel material allows separation of the fission products not only from the fuel, but from each other as well, which enables them to be sorted by the length of each fission product's half-life, so that the ones with shorter half-lives can be brought out of storage sooner than those with longer half-lives.
• Destruction of existing long lived wastes. LFTRs can use existing transuranic wastes for their initial fissile startup charge better than any solid fueled reactor for various technical and physical reasons.^[46] Because the fuel is a liquid homogeneous solution, it is always perfectly mixed, impervious to radiation damage and can accept any composition of plutonium, neptunium, americium and curium up to the solubility limit. Solid fueled reactors, such as solid fueled fast reactors, while theoretically outperforming the LFTR in burning of these higher actinides, can only accept limited amounts of these higher actinides (neptunium, americium and curium are often called minor actinides). This is because the fuel is not perfectly mixed, as it is confined in solid fuel elements, and also because the coolant void coefficient (coolant overheating) can become positive for too high levels of minor actinides.^[57] In addition, manufacturing solid fuels with high amounts of americium and curium is also difficult due to decay heat generation and helium production rates.^[46] As a result, solid fueled reactors usually only use reprocessed plutonium but do not use the americium and curium, which constitute a large portion of the radiotoxicity of the long lived waste.^[58]
• Proliferation resistance. The LFTR resists diversion of its fuel to nuclear weapons in four ways: First, the thorium-232 breeds by converting first to protactinium-233, which then decays to uranium-233. If the protactinium remains in the reactor, small amounts of U-232 are also produced. U-232 has a decay chain product (thallium-208) that emits powerful, dangerous gamma rays. These are not a problem inside a reactor, but in a bomb, they complicate bomb manufacture, harm electronics and reveal the bomb's location.^[59] The second proliferation resistant feature comes from the fact that LFTRs produce very little plutonium, around 15 kg per gigawatt-year of electricity (this is the output of a single large reactor over a year). This plutonium is also mostly Pu-238, which makes it unsuitable for fission bomb building, due to the high heat and spontaneous neutrons emitted. The third track, a LFTR doesn't make much spare fuel. It produces at most 9% more fuel than it burns each year, and it's even easier to design a reactor that makes 1% more fuel. With this kind of reactor, building bombs quickly will take power plants out of operation, and this is an easy indication of national intentions. And finally, use of thorium can reduce or even eliminate the need to enrich uranium. Uranium enrichment is one of the two primary methods by which states have obtained bomb making materials.^[6]

Economy and efficiency

Comparison of annual fuel requirements and waste products of a 1GW uranium-fueled LWR and 1GW thorium-fueled LFTR power plant.^[60]

• Thorium abundance. A LFTR breeds thorium into uranium-233 fuel. The Earth's crust contains about three to four times as much thorium as U-238 (thorium is about as abundant as lead). It is a byproduct of rare-earth mining, normally discarded as waste. Using LFTRs, there is enough affordable thorium to satisfy the global energy needs for hundreds of thousands of years.^[61]
• No shortage of natural resources. Sufficient other natural resources such as beryllium, lithium, nickel and molybdenum are available to build thousands of LFTRs.^[62]
• Reactor efficiency. Conventional reactors consume less than one percent of the mined uranium, leaving the rest as waste. With well working reprocessing LFTR may consume about 99% of its thorium fuel. The improved fuel efficiency means that 1 tonne of natural thorium in a LFTR produces as much energy as 35 t of enriched uranium in conventional reactors (requiring 250 t of natural uranium),^[6] or 4,166,000 tonnes of black coal in a coal power plant.
• Thermodynamic efficiency. LFTRs operating with modern supercritical steam turbines would operate at 45% thermal to electrical efficiency. With future closed gas Brayton cycles, which could be used in a LFTR power plant due to its high temperature operation, the efficiency could be up to 54%. This is 20 to 40% higher than today's light water reactors (33%), resulting in the same 20 to 40% reduction in fissile and fertile fuel consumption, fission products produced, waste heat rejection for cooling, and reactor thermal power.^[6]
• No enrichment and fuel element fabrication. Since 100% of natural thorium can be used as a fuel, and the fuel is in the form of a molten salt instead of solid fuel rods, expensive fuel enrichment and solid fuel rods' validation procedures and fabricating processes are not needed. This greatly decreases LFTR fuel costs. Even if the LFTR is started up on enriched uranium, it only needs this enrichment once just to get started. After startup, no further enrichment is required.^[6]
• Lower fuel cost. The salts are fairly inexpensive compared to solid fuel production. For example, while beryllium is quite expensive per kg, the amount of beryllium required for a large 1 GWe reactor is quite small. ORNL's MSBR required 5.1 tonnes of beryllium metal, as 26 tonnes of BeF₂.^[62] At a price of $147/kg BeF₂^[51](p44), this inventory would cost less than $4 million, a modest cost for a multi billion dollar power plant. Consequently a beryllium price increase over the level assumed here has little effect in the total cost of the power plant. The cost of enriched lithium-7 is less certain, at $120–800/kg LiF.^[2] and an inventory (again based on the MSBR system) of 17.9 tonnes lithium-7 as 66.5 tonnes LiF^[62] makes between $8 million and $53 million for the LiF. Adding the 99.1 tonnes of thorium @ $30/kg adds only $3 million. Fissile material is more expensive, especially if expensively reprocessed plutonium is used, at a cost of $100 per gram fissile plutonium. With a startup fissile charge of only 1.5 tonnes, made possible through the soft neutron spectrum^[2] this makes $150 million. Adding everything up brings the total cost of the one time fuel charge at $165 to $210 million. This is similar to the cost of a first core for a light water reactor.^[63] Depending on the details of reprocessing the salt inventory once can last for decades, whereas the LWR needs a completely new core every 4 to 6 years (1/3 is replaced every 12 to 24 months). ORNL's own estimate for the total salt cost of even the more expensive 3 loop system was around $30 million, which is less than 100 million in today's money.^[64]
• LFTRs are cleaner: as a fully recycling system, the discharge wastes from a LFTR are predominantly fission products, most of which have relatively short half lives compared to longer-lived actinide wastes.^[59] This results in a significant reduction in the needed waste containment period in a geologic repository. After 300 years the radiotoxicity of the thorium fuel cycle waste is 10,000 times less than that of the once through uranium/plutonium fuel cycle waste.^[6]
• Less fissile fuel needed. Because LFTRs are thermal spectrum reactors, they need much less fissile fuel to get started. Only 1–2 tonnes of fissile are required to start up a single fluid LFTR, and potentially as low as 0.4 ton for a two fluid design.^[2] In comparison, solid fueled fast breeder reactors need at least 8 tonnes of fissile fuel to start the reactor. While fast reactors can theoretically start up very well on the transuranic waste, their high fissile fuel startup makes this very expensive.^{[citation needed]}
• No downtime for refueling. LFTRs have liquid fuels, and therefore there is no need to shutdown and take apart the reactor just to refuel it. LFTRs can thus refuel without causing a power outage (online refueling).
• Load following. As the LFTR does not have xenon poisoning, there is no problem reducing the power in times of low demand for electricity and turn back on at any time.
• No high pressure vessel. Since the core is not pressurized, it does not need the most expensive item in a light water reactor, a high-pressure reactor vessel for the core. Instead, there is a low-pressure vessel and pipes (for molten salt) constructed of relatively thin materials. Although the metal is an exotic nickel alloy that resists heat and corrosion, Hastelloy-N, the amount needed is relatively small.
• Excellent heat transfer. Liquid fluoride salts, especially LiF based salts, have good heat transfer properties. Fuel salt such as LiF-ThF₄ has a volumetric heat capacity that is around 22% higher than water,^[65] FLiBe has around 12% higher heat capacity than water. In addition, the LiF based salts have a thermal conductivity around twice that of the hot pressurized water in a pressurized water reactor.^[51][66] This results in efficient heat transfer and a compact primary loop. Compared to helium, a competing high temperature reactor coolant, the difference is even bigger. The fuel salt has over 200 times higher volumetric heat capacity as hot pressurized helium and over 3 times the thermal conductivity. A molten salt loop will use piping of 1/5 the diameter, and pumps 1/20 the power, of those required for high-pressure helium, while staying at atmospheric pressure^[67]
• Smaller, low pressure containment. By using liquid salt as the coolant instead of pressurized water, a containment structure only slightly bigger than the reactor vessel can be used. Light water reactors use pressurized water, which flashes to steam and expands a thousandfold in the case of a leak, necessitating a containment building a thousandfold bigger in volume than the reactor vessel. The LFTR containment can not only be smaller in physical size, its containment is also inherently low pressure. There are no sources of stored energy that could cause a rapid pressure rise (such as hydrogen or steam) in the containment.^{[47][unreliable source]} This gives the LFTR a substantial theoretical advantage not only in terms of inherent safety, but also in terms of smaller size, lower materials use, and lower construction cost.^[6]
• Air cooling. A high temperature power cycle can be air-cooled at little loss in efficiency,^[68] which is critical for use in many regions where water is scarce. No need for large water cooling towers used in conventional steam-powered systems would also decrease power plant construction costs.^{[42][unreliable source?]}
• From waste to resource. There are suggestions that it might be possible to extract some of the fission products so that they have separate commercial value.^[69] However, compared to the produced energy, the value of the fission products is low, and chemical purification is expensive.^[70]

Disadvantages

LFTR's are quite unlike today's operating commercial power reactors. These differences create design difficulties and trade-offs:

• Mothballed technology—Only a few MSRs have actually been built. Those experimental reactors were constructed more than 40 years ago. This leads some technologists^[who?] to say that it is difficult to critically assess the concept.^{[citation needed]}
• Startup fuel—Unlike mined uranium, mined thorium does not have a fissile isotope. Thorium reactors breed fissile uranium-233 from thorium, but require a considerable amount of U-233 for initial start up. There is very little of this material available. This raises the problem of how to start the reactors in a reasonable time frame. One option is to produce U-233 in today's solid fuelled reactors, then reprocess it out of the solid waste. A LFTR can also be started by other fissile isotopes, enriched uranium or plutonium from reactors or decommissioned bombs. For enriched uranium startup, high enrichment is needed. Decommissioned uranium bombs have enough enrichment, but not enough is available to start many LFTRs. It is difficult to separate plutonium fluoride from lanthanide fission products. One option for a two-fluid reactor is to operate with plutonium or enriched uranium in the fuel salt, breed U-233 in the blanket, and store it instead of returning it to the core. Instead, add plutonium or enriched uranium to continue the chain reaction, similar to today's solid fuel reactors. When enough U-233 is bred, replace the fuel with new fuel, retaining the U-233 for other startups. A similar option exists for a single-fluid reactor operating as a converter. Such a reactor would not reprocess fuel while operating. Instead the reactor would start on plutonium with thorium as the fertile and add plutonium. The plutonium eventually burns out and U-233 is produced in situ. At the end of the reactor fuel life, the spent fuel salt can be reprocessed to recover the bred U-233 to start up new LFTRs.^{[citation needed]}
• Salts freezing—Fluoride salt mixtures have melting points ranging from 300 to over 600 degrees Celsius. The salts, especially those with beryllium fluoride, are very viscous near their freezing point. This requires careful design and freeze protection in the containment and heat exchangers. Freezing must be prevented in normal operation, during transients, and during extended downtime. The primary loop salt contains the decay heat-generating fission products, which help to maintain the required temperature. For the MSBR, ORNL planned on keeping the entire reactor room (the hot cell) at high temperature. This avoided the need for individual electric heater lines on all piping and provided more even heating of the primary loop components.^[16](p311). One "liquid oven" concept developed for molten salt-cooled, solid-fueled reactors, employs a separate buffer salt pool containing the entire primary loop.^[71] Because of the high heat capacity and considerable density of the buffer salt, the buffer salt prevents fuel salt freezing and participates in the passive decay heat cooling system, provides radiation shielding and reduces deadweight stresses on primary loop components. This design could also be adopted for LFTRs.^{[citation needed]}
• Beryllium toxicity—The proposed salt mixture FLiBe, contains large amounts of beryllium, which is toxic to humans. The salt in the primary cooling loops must be isolated from workers and the environment to prevent beryllium poisoning. This is routinely done in industry.^{[72](pp52–66)} Based on this industrial experience, the added cost of beryllium safety is expected to cost only $0.12/MWh.^[72](p61) After start up, the fission process in the primary fuel salt produces highly radioactive fission products with a high gamma and neutron radiation field. Effective containment is therefore a primary requirement. It is possible to operate instead using lithium fluoride-thorium fluoride eutectic without beryllium, as the French LFTR design, the "TMSR", has chosen.^[73] This comes at the cost of a somewhat higher melting point, but has the additional advantages of simplicity (avoiding BeF
  2 in the reprocessing systems), increased solubility for plutonium-trifluoride, reduced tritium production (beryllium produces lithium-6, which in turn produces tritium) and improved heat transfer (BeF
  2 increases the viscosity of the salt mixture). Alternative solvents such as the fluorides of sodium, rubidium and zirconium allow lower melting points at a tradeoff in breeding.^[2]
• Loss of delayed neutrons—In order to be predictably controlled, nuclear reactors rely on delayed neutrons. They require additional slowly-evolving neutrons from fission product decay to continue the chain reaction. Because the delayed neutrons evolve slowly, this makes the reactor very controllable. In a LFTR, the presence of fission products in the heat exchanger and piping means a portion of these delayed neutrons are also lost.^[74] They do not participate in the core's critical chain reaction, which in turn means the reactor behaves less gently during changes of flow, power, etc. Approximately up to half of the delayed neutrons can be lost. In practice, it means that the heat exchanger must be compact so that the volume outside the core is as small as possible. The more compact (higher power density) the core is, the more important this issue becomes. Having more fuel outside the core in the heat exchangers also means more of the expensive fissile fuel is needed to start the reactor. This makes a fairly compact heat exchanger an important design requirement for a LFTR.^{[citation needed]}
• Waste management—The very radioactive waste must be managed. Because some fission products, in their fluoride form, are highly water soluble, fluorides are a less suited long term storage form. For example, cesium fluoride has a very high solubility in water. For long term storage, conversion to an insoluble form such as a glass, could be desirable.^{[citation needed]}
• Uncertain decommissioning costs—Cleanup of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was about $130 Million, for a small 8 MW(th) unit. Much of the high cost was caused by the unexpected evolution of fluorine and uranium hexafluoride from cold fuel salt in storage that ORNL did not defuel and store correctly, but this has now been taken into consideration in MSR design.^[75] In addition, decommissioning costs don't scale strongly with plant size based on previous experience,^[76] and costs are incurred at the end of plant life, so a small per kilowatthour fee is sufficient. For example, a GWe reactor plant produces over 300 billion kWh of electricity over a 40 year lifetime, so a $0.001/kWh decommissioning fee delivers $300 million plus interest at the end of the plant lifetime.
• Noble metal buildup—Some radioactive fission products, such as noble metals, deposit on pipes. Novel equipment, such as nickel-wool sponge cartridges, must be developed to filter and trap the noble metals to prevent build up.
• Limited graphite lifetime—Compact designs have a limited lifetime for the graphite moderator and fuel / breeding loop separator. Under the influence of fast neutrons, the graphite first shrinks, then expands indefinitely until it becomes very weak and can crack, creating mechanical problems and causing the graphite to absorb enough fission products to poison the reaction.^[77] The 1960 two-fluid design had an estimated graphite replacement period of four years.^[2](p3) Eliminating graphite from sealed piping was a major incentive to switch to a single-fluid design.^[16](p3) Replacing this large central part requires remotely operated equipment. MSR designs have to arrange for this replacement. In a molten salt reactor, virtually all of the fuel and fission products can be piped to a holding tank. Only a fraction of one percent of the fission products end up in the graphite, primarily due to fission products slamming into the graphite. This makes the graphite surface radioactive, and without recycling/removal of at least the surface layer, creates a fairly bulky waste stream. Removing the surface layer and recycling the remainder of the graphite would solve this issue.^{[original research?]} Several techniques exist to recycle or dispose of nuclear moderator graphite.^[78] Graphite is inert and immobile at low temperatures, so it can be readily stored or buried if required.^[78] At least one design used graphite balls (pebbles) floating in salt, which could be removed and inspected continuously without shutting down the reactor.^[79] Reducing power density increases graphite lifetime.^[80](p10) By comparison, solid-fueled reactors typically replace 1/3 of the fuel elements, including all of the highly radioactive fission products therein, every 12 to 24 months. This is routinely done under a protecting and cooling column layer of water.
• Graphite-caused positive reactivity feedback—When graphite heats up, it increases U-233 fission, causing an undesirable positive feedback.^[43] The LFTR-Design must avoid certain combinations of graphite and salt and certain core geometries. If this problem is addressed by employing adequate graphite and thus a well-thermalized spectrum, it is difficult to reach break-even breeding.^[43] The alternative of using little or no graphite results in a faster neutron spectrum. This requires a large fissile inventory and radiation damage increases.^[43]
• Limited plutonium solubility—Fluorides of plutonium, americium and curium occur as trifluorides, which means they have three fluorine atoms attached (PuF
  3, AmF
  3, CmF
  3). Such trifluorides have a limited solubility in the FLiBe carrier salt. This complicates startup, especially for a compact design that uses a smaller primary salt inventory. Solubility can be increased by operating with less or no beryllium fluoride (which has no solubility for trifluorides) or by operating at a higher temperature^{[citation needed]}(as with most other liquids, solubility rises with temperature). A thermal spectrum, lower power density core does not have issues with plutonium solubility.
• Proliferation risk from reprocessing—Effective reprocessing implies a proliferation-risk. LFTRs could be used to handle plutonium from other reactors as well. However, as stated above, plutonium is chemically difficult to separate from thorium and plutonium cannot be used in bombs if diluted in large amounts of thorium. In addition, the plutonium produced by the thorium fuel cycle is mostly Pu-238, which produces high levels of spontaneous neutrons and decay heat that make it impossible to construct a fission bomb with this isotope alone, and extremely difficult to construct one containing even very small percentages of it. The heat production rate of 567 W/kg^[81] means that a bomb core of this material would continuously produce several kilowatts of heat. The only cooling route is by conduction through the surrounding high explosive layers, which are poor conductors. This creates unmanageably high temperatures that would destroy the assembly. The spontaneous fission rate of 1204 Bq/g^[81] is over twice that of Pu-240. Even very small percentages of this isotope would reduce bomb yield drastically by "predetonation" due to neutrons from spontaneous fission starting the chain reaction causing a "fizzle" rather than an explosion. Reprocessing itself involves automated handling in a fully closed and contained hot cell, which complicates diversion. Compared to today's extraction methods such as PUREX, the pyroprocesses are inaccessible and produce impure fissile materials, often with large amounts of fission product contamination. While not a problem for an automated system, it poses severe difficulties for would-be proliferators.^{[citation needed]}
• Proliferation risk from protactinium separation—Compact designs can breed only using rapid separation of protactinium, a proliferation-risk, since this potentially gives access to high purity 233-U. This is not easy, but is a possible path to weapons-grade material. Because of this possibility, commercial power reactors may have to be designed without separation. In practice, this means either not breeding or operating at a lower power density. A two-fluid design might operate with a bigger blanket, and keep the high power density core (which has no thorium and therefore no protactinium).^{[citation needed]}
• Proliferation of Neptunium-237—In designs utilizing a fluorinator, Np-237 appears with uranium as gaseous hexafluoride and can be easily separated using solid fluoride pellet absorption beds. No one has produced such a bomb, but Np-237's considerable fast fission cross section and low critical mass imply the possibility.^[82] When the Np-237 is kept in the reactor, it transmutes to Pu-238, a high value fuel for space radioisotope thermal generators.^[83] A single gram is worth thousands of dollars. Pu-238 is itself an excellent proliferation deterrent. Because of this, Np-237 could be returned to the reactor and transmuted. Vacuum distillation does not separate neptunium. All reactors produce considerable neptunium, which is always present in high (mono)isotopic quality, and is easily extracted chemically.^[82]
• Neutron poisoning and tritium production from lithium-6—Lithium-6 is a strong neutron poison; using LiF with natural lithium, with its 7.5% Lithium-6 content, prevents reactors from starting. The high neutron density in the core rapidly transmutes lithium-6 to tritium, losing neutrons that are required to sustain break-even breeding. Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, which is nearly identical, chemically, to ordinary hydrogen.^[84] In the MSR the tritium is quite mobile because, in its elemental form, it rapidly diffuses through metals at high temperature. If the lithium is isotopically enriched in lithium-7, and the isotopic separation level is high enough (99.995% lithium-7), the amount of tritium produced is only a few hundred grams per year for a 1 GWe reactor. This much smaller amount of tritium comes mostly from the lithium-7 – tritium reaction and from beryllium, which can produce tritium indirectly by first transmuting to tritium-producing lithium-6. LFTR designs that use a lithium salt, choose the lithium-7 isotope. In the MSRE, lithium-6 was successfully removed from the fuel salt via isotopic enrichment. Since lithium-7 is at least 16% heavier than lithium-6, and is the most common isotope, lithium-6 is comparatively easy and inexpensive to extract. Vacuum distillation of lithium achieves efficiencies of up to 8% per stage and requires only heating in a vacuum chamber.^[85] However, about one fission in 90,000 produces helium-6, which quickly decays to lithium-6 and one fission in 12,500 produces an atom of tritium directly (in all reactor types). Practical MSRs operate under a blanket of dry inert gas, usually helium. LFTRs offer a good chance to recover the tritium, since it is not highly diluted in water as in CANDU reactors. Various methods exist to trap tritium, such as hydriding it to titanium,^[86] oxidizing it to less mobile (but still volatile) forms such as sodium fluoroborate or molten nitrate salt, or trapping it in the turbine power cycle gas and offgasing it using copper oxide pellets.^[87](p41) ORNL developed a secondary loop coolant system that would chemically trap residual tritium so that it could be removed from the secondary coolant rather than diffusing into the turbine power cycle. ORNL calculated that this would reduce tritium emissions to acceptable levels.^[84]
• Corrosion from tellurium—The reactor makes small amounts of tellurium as a fission product. In the MSRE, this caused small amounts of corrosion at the grain boundaries of the special nickel alloy, Hastelloy-N. Metallurgical studies showed that adding 1 to 2% niobium to the Hastelloy-N alloy improves resistance to corrosion by tellurium.^{[24](pp81–87)} Maintaining the ratio of UF
  4/UF
  3 to less than 60 reduced corrosion by keeping the fuel salt slightly reducing. The MSRE continually contacted the flowing fuel salt with a beryllium metal rod submerged in a cage inside the pump bowl. This caused a fluorine shortage in the salt, reducing tellurium to a less aggressive (elemental) form. This method is also effective in reducing corrosion in general, because the fission process produces more fluorine atoms that would otherwise attack the structural metals.^{[88](pp3–4)}
• Radiation damage to nickel alloys—The standard Hastelloy N alloy was found to be embrittled by neutron radiation. Neutrons reacted with nickel to form helium. This helium gas concentrated at specific points inside the alloy, where it increased stresses. ORNL addressed this problem by adding 1–2% titanium or niobium to the Hastelloy N. This changed the alloy's internal structure so that the helium would be finely distributed. This relieved the stress and allowed the alloy to withstand considerable neutron flux. However the maximum temperature is limited to about 650 °C.^[89] Other alloys also showed promise.^[90] The outer vessel wall that contains the salt can have neutronic shielding, such as boron carbide, to effectively protect it from neutron damage.^[91]
• Long term fuel salt storage—If the fluoride fuel salts are stored in solid form over many decades, radiation can cause the release of corrosive fluorine gas and uranium hexafluoride.^[92] The salts must be defueled and wastes removed before extended shutdowns and stored above 100 degrees Celsius.^[75] Fluorides are less suitable for long term storage because some have high water solubility unless vitrified in insoluble borosilicate glass.^[93]
• Business model—Today's solid fuelled reactor vendors make long term revenues by fuel fabrication.^{[dubious – discuss]} Without any fuel to fabricate and sell, a LFTR would adopt a different business model.
• Development of the power cycle—Developing a large helium or supercritical carbon dioxide turbine is needed for highest efficiency. These gas cycles offer numerous potential advantages for use with molten salt-fueled or molten salt-cooled reactors.^[94] These closed gas cycles face design challenges and engineering upscaling work for a commercial turbine-generator set.^[95] A standard supercritical steam turbine could be used at a small penalty in efficiency (the net efficiency of the MSBR was designed to be approximately 44%, using an old 1970s steam turbine).^[96] A molten salt to steam generator would still have to be developed. Currently, molten nitrate salt steam generators are used in concentrated solar thermal power plants such as Andasol in Spain. Such a generator could be used for an MSR as a third circulating loop, where it would also trap any tritium that diffuses through the primary and secondary heat exchanger^[97]

Recent developments

The Fuji MSR

The FUJI MSR was a design for a 100 to 200 MWe molten-salt-fueled thorium fuel cycle thermal breeder reactor, using technology similar to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Reactor Experiment. It was being developed by a consortium including members from Japan, the United States, and Russia. As a breeder reactor, it converts thorium into nuclear fuels.^[98] Like all molten salt reactors, its core is chemically inert, under low pressures to prevent explosions and toxic releases.^[99] An industry group presented updated plans about FUJI MSR in July 2010.^[100] The projected cost is 2.85 cents per killowatt hour ^[101]

Chinese Thorium MSR project

The People's Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology.^[102] It was formally announced at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) annual conference in January 2011. Its ultimate target is to investigate and develop a thorium based molten salt nuclear system in about 20 years.^[103][104] An expected intermediate outcome of the TMSR research program is to build a 2 MW pebble bed fluoride salt cooled research reactor in 2015, and a 2 MW molten salt fueled research reactor in 2017. This would be followed by a 10 MW demonstrator reactor and a 100 MW pilot reactors.^[105][106] The project is spearheaded by Jiang Mianheng, with a start-up budget of $350 million, and has already recruited 140 PhD scientists, working full-time on thorium molten salt reactor research at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics. An expansion to 750 staff is planned by 2015.^[107]

Flibe Energy

Main article: Flibe Energy

Kirk Sorensen, former NASA scientist and Chief Nuclear Technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering, has been a long time promoter of thorium fuel cycle and particularly liquid fluoride thorium reactors. He first researched thorium reactors while working at NASA, while evaluating power plant designs suitable for lunar colonies. Material about this fuel cycle was surprisingly hard to find, so in 2006 Sorensen started "energyfromthorium.com", a document repository, forum, and blog to promote this technology. In 2006, Sorensen coined the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor and LFTR nomenclature to describe a subset of molten salt reactor designs based on liquid fluoride-salt fuels with breeding of thorium into uranium-233 in the thermal spectrum. In 2011, Sorensen founded Flibe Energy, a company that initially intends to develop 20–50 MW LFTR small modular reactor designs to power military bases. (It is easier to promote novel military designs than civilian power station designs in today's US nuclear regulatory environment).^[108][109]

Thorium Energy Generation Pty. Limited (TEG)

Thorium Energy Generation Pty. Limited (TEG) is an Australian Research and Development company dedicated to the worldwide commercial development of LFTR reactors, as well as thorium accelerator-driven systems. In November 2011, TEG announced the formation of a joint venture with Czech Republic scientists intended to develop a 60MW pilot plant in Prague, with preparatory work on the prototype to be finalized in 2012.^{[110][111][112]}

The Weinberg Foundation

The Weinberg Foundation^[113] is a British non-profit organisation founded in 2011, dedicated to act as a communications, debate and lobbying hub to raise awareness about the potential of thorium energy and LFTR. It was formally launched at the House of Lords on 8 September 2011.^{[114][115][116]} It is named after American nuclear physicist Alvin M. Weinberg, who pioneered the thorium molten salt reactor research.

See also

• Generation IV reactor
• List of small nuclear reactor designs
• Small modular reactor
• Thorium Energy Alliance
• Accelerator-driven sub-critical reactor