China starts LFTR Development Project

China has become the first nation to begin a LFTR development project. Hua Bei announced Friday in a new Energy from Thorium Discussion thread that

Five days ago, China just started the TMSR project in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) annual report conference, which indicates that China has joined the international MSR club officially. Chinese TMSR project is one of the first four launched projects in 2011, as can be called the "Strategic and Leading Project of Science and Technology". Its ultimate target is to investigate and develop a whole new nuclear system ( thorium based molten salt nuclear system) in about 20 years. The website link of related reports are as follow.
http://www.cas.cn/xw/zyxw/ttxw/201101/t ... 7050.shtml
http://whb.news365.com.cn/yw/201101/t20 ... 944856.htm

The LFTR (TMSR) was first developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers between 1950 and 1975, and has been discussed in detail on Energy from Thorium and Nuclear Green. During the last decade by The Reactor Physics Group of the University of Grenoble has renewed TMSR research. This step is highly rational for the Chinese to take. China appears to have a large thorium reserve, much of it now in the form of rare earth mining tailings. LFTRs as so efficient that they could supply China with all the energy it needs for a period of time that could streach out for millions of years. LFTRs can be factory built and rapidly deployed in Very large numbers. A large scale LFTR program would enable China to replaced fossil fuel energy sources with nuclear power by 2050, if LFTR development had a 20 year gestation period.

Kirk Sorenson at Energy From Thorium has a deperate story on the Chinese TMSR plan.

Dr. Michael Dittmar on the Future of Nuclear Energy

CERN Dr. Michael Dittmar, a CERN Physicist, has posted Part IV of his essay on the Future of Nuclear Energy, on the Oil Drum. In many respects Dr/ Dittmar's conclusions track the conclusions of thorium advocates.

Dr. Ditmann has some interesting observations on LMFBRs. He claims that

the IAEA data base for fast reactors does not present any evidence that a positive breeding gain has been obtained with past and present FBR reactors. On the contrary, the presented data indicate at best that a more efficient nuclear fuel use than in standard PWR reactors can be achieved during normal running conditions. However, once the short and inefficient running times of FBR's, in comparison with large scale PWR's, are taken into account, even this better fuel use has not been demonstrated. In fact, the required initial fuel load in FBR's contains at least twice as much natural uranium equivalent and with a fissile material enrichment that is roughly 5 times larger than that in a comparable PWR. A fair comparison of the fuel efficiency should include the efficiency to recycle fissile material from used nuclear fuel in both reactor types.

In addition Dittmar notes that there are three areas of further concern about LMFBRs"

Fast reactors are known for their worrying safety record. For example, it might be true that serious incidents, like the one that happened with the Chernobyl graphite moderated reactor, cannot happen with modern PWR's. However, only very few nuclear experts would agree to such a statement for sodium cooled FBR's.
FBR’s are known for their huge construction costs relative to PWR's, and it might be tempting to compare some of the past FBR's to a monetary "black hole." An equivalent of 3.5 billion Euros has been invested in the construction of the SNR-300 in Germany. Because of safety concerns related to sodium leaks and other problems, this small FBR has never started operation. This amount of money corresponds to the price tag for a five times more powerful modern PWR reactor.
A third problem is related to the FBR requirements to have a large inventory of high purity fissile material. The amount of fissile material listed in Table 3 should be compared to the few tenths of kgs required for a Pu239 bomb. This problem makes even small experimental FBR reactors highly sensitive to the proliferation problem.

Indeed Dittmar's view seems to be that

* The breeding of Pu239 with fast neutrons has huge problems, and it would be great if another nuclear fuel could be found.

* Thorium breeding shows interesting potential if the remaining large number of problems can be mastered in the long term, . . .

Dittmar nots evidence for thorium breeding in the Shippingport LWBR experiment. Dittmar also noted some advantages for thorium breeding:

• The possibility of utilizing an abundantly available resource that has hitherto been of so little interest that it has never even been properly quantified.
• The production of power with few long-lived transuranic elements in the waste.
• A reduction of radioactive waste, in general.

Dittmar pointed to what he believed that the problems of thorium breeding include,

• The high cost of fuel fabrication due partly to the high radioactivity of U233 chemically sepa rated from the irradiated thorium fuel.
• Separated U233 is always contaminated with traces of U232 (69 year half-life but whose daugh ter products such as thallium-208 are strong gamma emitters with very short half-lives). Although this confers proliferation resistance to the fuel cycle, it results in increased costs.
• The similar problems in recycling thorium itself due to highly radioactive Th-228 (an alpha emitter with two-year half life) present.
• Some concern over weapons proliferation risk of U233 (if it could be separated on its own), although many designs such as the Radkowsky Thorium Reactor address this concern. The tech nical problems in reprocessing solid fuels are not yet satisfactorily solved. However with some designs, in particular the molten salt reactor (MSR), these problems are likely to largely disap pear.
• Much development work is still required, before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialized, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available. In this respect, recent international moves to bring India into the ambit of international trade might result in the country ceasing to persist with the thorium cycle, as it now has ready access to traded uranium and conventional reactor designs.

Dittmar also finds that:

The well known use of nuclear fission energy in PWR's is unsustainable. The problems related to long-lived transuranic elements, e.g. plutonium and heavier elements, as well as nuclear waste in general, are unsolved. The concern with nuclear weapon proliferation cannot be dismissed either.

Of course expressing proliferation concerns is a form of shibbolith. It is a minimal requirement that demonstrates that one is a good person, even though he or she supports nuclear technology. In fact, nuclear proliferation using nuclear waste is something that is extremely difficult, would not produce a weapon that could be left sitting on a shelf in a weapons depot, and would produce a devise that would explode with the equivalent force of $150,000 worth of fertilizer. One would have to be crazy to prefer building a nuclear device from nuclear waste rather than using the fertilizer, and if you are that craze, your capacity to design and build a successful nuclear device would be very doubtful. Like most shibboliths, the word proliferation makes little rational sense as an objection to the development of nuclear technology.

I posted a comment on Dr, Dittmar's essay:

Dr. Dittmar supports what Liquid fluoride Thorium Reactor advocates like Kirk Sorensen and myself have been saying. Breeding thorium is our best long term nuclear option. Dr. Dittmar points to some, but not all of the advantages of a Molten Salt Breeder Reactor approach. In fact Thorium Molten Salt Reactor/LFTR would solve the thorium fuel fabrication problem, the U-232 problem, And problems associated with recycling thorium. Thus we are left with a single problem:

"Much development work is still required, before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialized, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available. In this respect, recent international moves to bring India into the ambit of international trade might result in the country ceasing to persist with the thorium cycle, as it now has ready access to traded uranium and conventional reactor designs."

This statement requires multiple answers:
1. The expression "much development" work is extremely ambiguous. ORNL researchers in the 1974 analyzed the developmental tasks required to for the development of a Molten Salt Thorium Breeder (ORNL-5018, Program Plan for the Development of Molten-Salt Breeder Reactors). The cost would have been somewhere around 2.5 billion 2009 dollars, to prototype stage. To date the United States has spent about $25 billion on the development of the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor without a product. Even if the development cost were several times higher that $2.5 billion, it would still be cheap, even in terms of what the United States spends researching renewables. A mini-Manhatten Project approach would vastly shorten the development time frame. With an investment of $15 billion, less than the United States spends on its space program every year, the United States could have a viable commercial LFRTR prototype in 5 years.

2. There is a strong motive for LFTR/TMSR development. Namely low cost rapid substitution of nuclear energy for fossil fuels. The LFTR is significantly simpler than the LWR, and it can be built with less materials, fewer parts and less labor. LFTRs that produce between 100 MWe and 400 MWe will be small and light enough to transport by truck, rail or barge. Factory ass production of LFTRs would greatly increase labor productivity. Because of its small size, and high level of safety, LFTR site construction would be less expensive. Thus dramatic savings in nuclear construction costs could be realized by switching from LWR to LFTR technology. Finally factory production would dramatically increase the scaleability of nuclear power, making the replacement of 80% of fossil fuel energy sources by 2050

3 Indian efforts to develop the thorium cycle are likely to presist for some time for several reasons:
A.The international imbargo on uranium sals to India, will not be forgotten quickly, and a determination to make India independent of international uranium sources will remain fixed for some time to come.

B. India has at least a low cost thousand year fuel supply in surface thorium deposits, that beg to be used.

C. Building locally designed thorium breeding reactors will be cheaper for India than buying uranium fueled reactors from Russia, France, Japan, and the United States.

Dr. Dittmar thus has suggested views that are supportive of the case for thorium generally, and offers indirectly for the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. The major problems for thorium breeding molten salt reactors, which Dittmar notes have more to do with the current scale of development, than development difficulties. A much larger development effort, could vastly shorten development time.

Kloosterman on TMSR/LFTR Technology

Jan Leen Kloosterman is an Associate Professor at Delft Technical University in the Faculty of Applied Science. Professor Kloosterman specializes in the Physics of Nuclear Reactors, and Thorium Fuel Cycle MSRs are among his professional interests. He has prepared a list of the technological advantages of the LFTR/TMSR. Here is his list:

The MSR in combination with the thorium fuel cycle has many advantages:

1. Fluoride inorganic salts are used as a carrier for the fuel and as a coolant. They are among the most stable of chemical compounds and have proven stable under reactor operating conditions. They have a high solubility for actinides, very low vapor pressure, and good heat transfer properties. Furthermore, they do not react with air or water, and are inert to some commonly used structural materials.

2. Soluble fission products can be removed on-line in a chemical processing plant, while non-soluble fission products and the noble metals can be extracted from the salt by helium bubbling. This enhances the neutron economy. Together with the large number of neutrons liberated in U-233 fission events, new fissile material can be bred from abundantly available thorium.

3. There are no mechanical valves in the salt circuit. Flow is blocked by plugs of frozen salt cooled by electrical fans. If the salt heats up to levels above design values or if the power supply fails, the plugs will melt and the salt will be drained into storage drums cooled by natural convection (see the Figure).

4. A fast excursion of the fuel temperature will lead to salt expansion providing instantaneous negative reactivity feedback, which will slow down or completely stop the fission process. Although heating of the graphite moderator will generally introduce positive reactivity, this process is much slower and can easily be controlled. Furthermore, a fuel salt temperature too high will always lead to drainage of the fuel into passively cooled storage tanks.

5. The primary and secondary circuits are operated under ambient pressure, which is considered a very important safety feature.

6. The thorium fuel cycle produces much less long-lived nuclear waste. Compared with the standard once-through fuel cycle in a Light Water Reactor (LWR), a thorium fueled MSR produces 4,000 times less neptunium, plutonium, americium and curium. Plutonium production is reduced even with a factor of 10,000.

7. Among all nuclear reactors, the MSR is most suited to utilize the thorium cycle. Neutron capture by Th-232 produces Pa-233, which decays with a half life of 27 days to U-233. To avoid Pa-233 capturing an extra neutron, which would produce the non-fissile U-234, part of it can easily be stored in a hold-up tank to let it decay to U-233. This enhances the breeding process, which makes the MSR, in combination with its excellent neutron economy, the most attractive reactor for using thorium.

End Game: Answering the World's Energy Needs from Nuclear Waste

Lars Jorgensen is an Electrical Engineer who is Chief Technologist for Radio Products for Texas Instruments. In his spar time Lars has an unusual hobby. He is doing unpaid work on the development of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, in a project that Rod Adams describes as the Nuclear equivalent of the Open Source movement in computing. The goal of the project, is to develop viable LFTR designs including the design tools that would be useful for Nuclear Engineers. In addition Lars is doing research on the use of LFTRs to solve the problem of the nuclear waste from other reactors. At the same time, Jorgensen's concept will cause produce vast amounts of electricity from the waste destroying process through the use of the LFTRs involved in the electrical generation process.

The idea of "burning" transuranium elements, the principle toxic wastes in nuclear waste, in molten salt type reactors is not new. During the 1950's my father verified that plutonium was compatible with a molten salt fuel carrier, and thus was suitable for use as a nuclear fuel in molten salt reactors. The idea of Using LFTRs to destroy nuclear weapons was pioneered by a group of nuclear scientists and Engineers at ORNL. In 1991, Uri Gat, and J. R. Engel of ORNL, and C. H. Dodds, of the University of Tennessee, proposed burning fissile fuel from dismantled nuclear weapons in LFTRs, as a means of nuclear deproliferation. That is the process of destroying the raw materials of nuclear weapons.

V. V. Ignatiev, S. A. Konakov, S. A. Subbotine, and R. Y. Zakirov of the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, and K. Grebenkine proposed the use of Molten Salt Reactors as a means of disposing of nuclear waste. They noted that LFTRs had advantages over Liquid Metal reactors for nuclear waste disposal. The Russian research has lead to the development of the MOSART reactor design. The MOSART is a liquid salt fuel reactor concept intended to burn nuclear waste.
A similar proposal has come from Charles W. Forsberg of ORNL.

Forsberg noted that the development of

Brayton power cycles (rather than steam
cycles) that eliminate many of the historical challenges in building MSRs and (2) the conceptual development of several fast-spectrum MSRs that have large negative temperature and void coefficients, a unique safety characteristic not found in solid-fuel fast reactors.

Forsberg pointed to the potential of LFTRs to both produce electricity and destroy the dangerous components of nuclear waste.

In a draft paper titled. "An Improved End Game for the Non-Moderated Thorium Molten Salt Reactor", Lars Jorgensen has determined that by combining the disposal of nuclear waste and the generation of electricity in LFTRs vast amounts of electricity can be generated. Jogensen foresees a world wide demand for 7,500 GWe, nearly 20 times the current electrical consumption in the United States. With the use of electricity for water desalinization, Jorgensen further foresees electrical demand increasing to as much as 20,000 GWe.

Jorgensen, drawing on work by French nuclear scientists, H. Nifenecker, D. Heuer, J.M. Loiseaux, O. Meplan, A. Nuttin, S. David, and J.M. Martin, offers plans

to simultaneously reduce the current TRU wastes 15-fold (with onsite recycling) to 15,000 fold reduction (with the best offsite recycling), while also supplying 9000 GWe electricity for an energy-hungry world.

This is surely an ambitious undertaking.

Despite his ambition, Jorgenson's plan is simple. He reference the French Non Moderated Thorium Molten Salt Reactor, a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, as the his waste burning power generation reactor. By 2046 enough fissionable transuranium elements will be present in American Light Water Reactor Waste to start enough TMSRs to produce 125 billion watts of electricity. The TMSR is a breeder, that is it will produce more fuel than it burns. Other reactors will be started with U-233 from original TMSR fleet.

Jorgensen believes that his concept would work world wide to get rid of nuclear waste. As many as 1000 large TMSR could be built to use the word wide supply of 8842 tons LWR TRU waste as nuclear fuel. Each reactor would produce 1 billion watts of electricity. From that initial fleet enough U-233 would be produced to start another 8000 reactors. Enough to supply the entire wolds electrical demands 100 years from now.

Jorgensen plans for the TRUs from light water reactors to remain in TMSR cores until they are used up, a process that would take several hundred years. After 200 years more that 56% of the original LWR TRU inventory will have been used up. If there is a desire to shut down the TMSR fleet, as the amount of TRU drops inside the TMSRs, the TRUs can be withdrawn from the core by batch chemical processing of the fuel, Fission products and U-233 would of course be processed out of the fuel salts at the same time. The withdrawn TRUs would be transfered to the cores of other reactors, and the reactor whose TRUs are processed out can be shut down.

According to Jorgensen:

We can virtually eliminate the inventory TRUs in the reactor cores by gradually shutting down the reactors and fissioning the residual inventory off. The optimization goals of the shutdown procedure are:
1) minimize the final inventory of TRUs disposed as waste;
2) shut down the vast majority of reactors, as quickly as possible, consistent with the first goal.

Eventually the TRU's and U-233 involved in the process can be "burned down" to a tiny amount of waste. as much as an 11,000 fold reduction in the amount of waste. The final waste will come from two sources: a very small leak of TRU and U-233 into the fission product stream, and the TRU and U-233 inventory left over when the final, very small TMSR no longer contains enough fissionable material to maintain a chain reactor.

Jorgensen concludes:

The deployment not only provides 1,800,000 GW-yr (1.8 PW-yr) of electricity, but eliminates 90 to 99.99% of the world’s predicted transuranic waste inventory. The NM-TMSR’s fuel flexibility allows virtual elimination of the waste inventory arising from shutting down the reactor fleet. This sort of flexibility is much more difficult to achieve with any proposed solid fuel reactor. The Th-U233 cycle operates with TRU inventories only 5% of those for U238-Pu239 based breeder reactors. While much R&D needs to be funded and completed to bring this reactor to fruition, it is far less than the projected costs for Yucca Mountain, and solves both the TRU waste and energy generation challenges facing our society today.

For those concerned about nuclear proliferation, the TMSR and similar LFTRs are wonderful deproliferation tools. Uranium and plutonium from nuclear weapons and weapons available stockpiles can be used as starter charges for LFTRs and burned up by the nuclear process. LFTR can be designed to produce no more U-233 than is burned up in its chain reaction. Thus far from being a nuclear proliferation menace, the LFTR can becomes a prime tool for lowering the possibility of nuclear war.