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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 25 2017, @01:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the more-then-just-a-fission-expedition dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The road to cleaner, meltdown-proof nuclear power has taken a big step forward. Researchers at NRG, a Dutch nuclear materials firm, have begun the first tests of nuclear fission using thorium salts since experiments ended at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the early 1970s.

Thorium has several advantages over uranium, the fuel that powers most nuclear reactors in service today. First, it's much harder to weaponize. Second, as we pointed out last year in a long read on thorium-salt reactors, designs that call for using it in a liquid form are, essentially, self-regulating and fail-safe.

The team at NRG is testing several reactor designs [javascript required] on a small scale at first. The first experiment is on a setup called a molten-salt fast reactor, which burns thorium salt and in theory should also be able to consume spent nuclear fuel from typical uranium fission reactions.

The tests come amid renewed global interest in thorium. While updated models of uranium-fueled power plants are struggling mightily to get off the ground in the U.S., several startup companies are exploring molten-salt reactors. China, meanwhile, is charging ahead with big plans for its nuclear industry, including a heavy bet on thorium-based reactors. The country plans to have the first such power plants hooked up to the grid inside 15 years. If they pull it off, it might just help usher in a safer future for nuclear power.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Saturday August 26 2017, @05:43PM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Saturday August 26 2017, @05:43PM (#559510) Journal

    The Fukushima I 1-4 (1&2 in particular) was severly neglected in terms if upgrades and inspections - to the point where they wouldn't have passed inspection in some countries.

    But yeah, I agree that a fast cooldown (or ramp-up) probably would be a potential issue, but newer instrumentation and control (outside of japan that tends to be upgraded every 20-30 years, with the new policies japan will be in line with the rest of the world) would assert better control on the cooldown and thereby increase margins. (They are less safe than what a newly built Mark 1 with modern control would; be but yet safer than what a 1960s/early 70s reactor with that era's control was).
    (Fun thing here btw - older reactor pressure vessels[RPV] actually had a lot bigger margin of error than modern RPVs has, mainly due to cruder understanding made the designers err further into the side of caution)

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