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I can't really follow how this reactor reduces the risk of (further) proliferation of the materials and technologies for weapons? I notice the article doesn't

I can't really follow how this reactor reduces the risk of (further) proliferation of the materials and technologies for weapons? I notice the article doesn't reference waste. That's because its a non issue ever since we here in australia came up with a state of the art solution that finally puts the matter to rest: we're building a dirt road out to a small, remote, economically disempowered and politicially disenfranchised community of traditional land owners. At the end of the road, we're building a barbed wire fence, that surrounds a shed. Problem solved.

emp_zealoth 13y ago
I believe it is because MSR designs don't produce nuclear waste like traditional designs.
- peterpathname 13y ago
  some theoretical msr designs promise to produce less waste, but msr does not necessarily lead to a different waste profile
VLM 13y ago
5 hours and no one provided the answer yet? Its cat and mouse or white hat vs black hat. The existing worldwide system uses U to make Pu to go boom, more or less. Th doesn't make Pu so existing experience and practice means no boom, at this time. The problem is it does make an alternative U isotope that can eventually go boom although not much research has been done on that because it sucks as a fuel compared to U so no one has bothered to use it yet on a wide scale. I figure if you deploy Th reactors "widely" you've got about a decade or two of semi-guaranteed non-proliferation before the reprocessing / industrial base builds to make boom. Not sure if thats really worth anything as we still have the existing U infrastructure so we're not going to save any money. In the long run the situation is probably worse because now there's two channels to watch. Its also a WWII German "big lie". As the USA shows, you can do U as a fuel without reprocessing, where stuff that goes "boom" can be diverted / stolen / skimmed. In other words implementing fuel reprocessing (presumably of U) means opportunity / costs WRT "boom". On the other hand Th more or less requires reprocessing. So overall world safety will decrease if you do Th because you have to implement a reprocessing plant. Its a false dilemma. You can cut off your leg or your arm, with different lifestyle changes, which is worse? Hmm, why not cut off neither? Well we're not going to talk about that option because, um... just because.
DennisP 13y ago
The majority of nuclear waste, and pretty much all the long-lived waste, is essentially unburned fuel, with a lot of plutonium and other transuranics. For various reasons, a liquid thorium reactor burns almost all its fuel. It's easy to remove fission products that poison the reaction by absorbing neutrons. Some of those products are gasses, which damage solid fuel and prevent you from fully using it; with liquid fuel they simply bubble out. Also it produces less transuranics in the first place since it's fissioning U233 instead of U235. So you're able to fission most of your fuel, and your waste is just the fission products. There's a lot less of that, and in a couple centuries they're back the radioactivity of the original ore. Regarding proliferation, the main advantage is that you're shipping non-fissile thorium to the reactor, and non-fissile fission products away from it. The reactor itself can't do much more than replace its own fissile inventory, so if a country without uranium enrichment were to start siphoning off fissiles, their reactor would shut down and they'd need to beg for help to get it restarted.

emp_zealoth 13y ago

I believe it is because MSR designs don't produce nuclear waste like traditional designs.

peterpathname 13y ago
some theoretical msr designs promise to produce less waste, but msr does not necessarily lead to a different waste profile

VLM 13y ago

5 hours and no one provided the answer yet? Its cat and mouse or white hat vs black hat. The existing worldwide system uses U to make Pu to go boom, more or less. Th doesn't make Pu so existing experience and practice means no boom, at this time. The problem is it does make an alternative U isotope that can eventually go boom although not much research has been done on that because it sucks as a fuel compared to U so no one has bothered to use it yet on a wide scale. I figure if you deploy Th reactors "widely" you've got about a decade or two of semi-guaranteed non-proliferation before the reprocessing / industrial base builds to make boom. Not sure if thats really worth anything as we still have the existing U infrastructure so we're not going to save any money. In the long run the situation is probably worse because now there's two channels to watch. Its also a WWII German "big lie". As the USA shows, you can do U as a fuel without reprocessing, where stuff that goes "boom" can be diverted / stolen / skimmed. In other words implementing fuel reprocessing (presumably of U) means opportunity / costs WRT "boom". On the other hand Th more or less requires reprocessing. So overall world safety will decrease if you do Th because you have to implement a reprocessing plant. Its a false dilemma. You can cut off your leg or your arm, with different lifestyle changes, which is worse? Hmm, why not cut off neither? Well we're not going to talk about that option because, um... just because.

DennisP 13y ago

The majority of nuclear waste, and pretty much all the long-lived waste, is essentially unburned fuel, with a lot of plutonium and other transuranics. For various reasons, a liquid thorium reactor burns almost all its fuel. It's easy to remove fission products that poison the reaction by absorbing neutrons. Some of those products are gasses, which damage solid fuel and prevent you from fully using it; with liquid fuel they simply bubble out. Also it produces less transuranics in the first place since it's fissioning U233 instead of U235. So you're able to fission most of your fuel, and your waste is just the fission products. There's a lot less of that, and in a couple centuries they're back the radioactivity of the original ore. Regarding proliferation, the main advantage is that you're shipping non-fissile thorium to the reactor, and non-fissile fission products away from it. The reactor itself can't do much more than replace its own fissile inventory, so if a country without uranium enrichment were to start siphoning off fissiles, their reactor would shut down and they'd need to beg for help to get it restarted.