2 ms·
Uranium supply is limited, but there is far more Thorium. Thorium technology is quite immature at the moment but India and China are developing it, although it
by zeristor 9y ago
Uranium supply is limited, but there is far more Thorium.
Thorium technology is quite immature at the moment but India and China are developing it, although it'll take quite a while to get to third, or fourth generation level maturity.
- acidburnNSA 9y agoThere's more Thorium in the crust, there's more Uranium in seawater. With either fuel (plus breeder reactors), the nuclear fuel supply of earth is unlimited on a several billion year timeframe at world-scale.
- zeristor 9y agoWell ther’s even more Hydrogen in sea water, the problem is getting it out.
- acidburnNSA 9y agoHere's an entire special issue (from 2016) of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research describing progress in extracting uranium from seawater: http://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15 http://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15
- zeristor 9y agoThorium though doesn't need isotopic enrichment though.
- acidburnNSA 9y agoNeither does Uranium if you're using breeder reactors. And you have to be using breeder reactors if you're using Thorium because Th-232 is a strong neutron absorber and you can't start a reactor on it at all. You have to breed it up through Pa-233 to U-233 which is fissile. By definition all thorium reactors are breeder reactors. Fertile U-238 can do the exact same thing; instead of U-233 it breeds fissile Pu-239. If you want all the raw details on Thorium check this out [1]. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html