www.smh.com.au
23 March 2011
A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima's
uranium reactors and shattered public faith in
nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on
thorium. This passed unnoticed – except by a small of band of
thorium enthusiasts – but it may mark the passage of strategic leadership in energy policy from an inert and status-quo West to a rising technological power willing to break the mould. If China's dash for
thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a calamitous conflict over resources as Asia's industrial revolutions clash head-on with the West's entrenched consumption.
China's Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a "
thorium-based molten salt reactor system". The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of
Barack Obama's "Sputnik moment", you could say. Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with
uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.
"The reactor has an amazing safety feature," said Kirk Sorensen, a former
NASA engineer at
Teledyne Brown and a
thorium expert. "If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself," he said. "They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don't have the sort of
hydrogen explosions we've seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release."
Thorium is a silvery metal named after the Norse god of thunder. The metal has its own "issues" but no
thorium reactor could easily spin out of control in the manner of
Three Mile Island,
Chernobyl, or now Fukushima. Professor Robert Cywinksi from
Huddersfield University said
thorium must be bombarded with neutrons to drive the fission process. "There is no chain reaction. Fission dies the moment you switch off the photon beam. There are not enough neutrons for it continue of its own accord," he said. Dr Cywinski, who anchors a UK-wide
thorium team, said the residual heat left behind in a crisis would be "orders of magnitude less" than in a
uranium reactor.
The earth's crust holds 80 years of
uranium at expected usage rates, he said.
Thorium is as common as lead. America has buried tons as a by-product of
rare earth metals mining. 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 the mineral is usable as fuel, compared to 0.7% of
uranium. There is enough to power civilization for thousands of years.
I write before knowing the outcome of the Fukushima drama, but as yet none of 15,000 deaths are linked to
nuclear failure. Indeed, there has never been a verified death from
nuclear power in the West in half a century. Perspective is in order. We cannot avoid the fact that two to three billion extra people now expect – and will obtain – a western lifestyle. China alone plans to produce 100m cars and buses every year by 2020.
The
International Atomic Energy Agency said the world currently has 442
nuclear reactors. They generate 372 GWs of power, providing 14% of global electricity. Nuclear output must double over twenty years just to keep pace with the rise of the China and India. If a string of countries cancel or cut back future reactors, let alone follow Germany's
Angela Merkel in shutting some down, they shift the strain onto gas,
oil, and
coal. Since the West is also cutting
solar subsidies, they can hardly expect the
solar industry to plug the gap.
BP's disaster at Macondo should teach us not to expect too much from
oil reserves deep below the oceans, beneath layers of blinding salt. Meanwhile, we rely uneasily on Wahabi repression to crush dissent in the Gulf and keep Arabian crude flowing our way. So where can we turn, unless we revert to
coal and give up on the ice caps altogether? That would be courting fate.
US physicists in the late 1940s explored
thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than
uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation. The plans were shelved because
thorium does not produce
plutonium for bombs. As a happy bonus, it can burn up
plutonium and toxic waste from old reactors, reducing radio-toxicity and acting as an eco-cleaner. Dr Cywinski is developing an accelerator driven sub-critical reactor for
thorium, a cutting-edge project worldwide. It needs to £300m of public money for the next phase, and £1.5bn of commercial investment to produce the first working plant. Thereafter, economies of scale kick in fast. The idea is to make pint-size 600
MW reactors.
Yet any hope of state support seems to have died with the Coalition budget cuts, and with it hopes that Britain could take a lead in the energy revolution. It is understandable, of course. Funds are scarce. The UK has already put its efforts into the next generation of
uranium reactors. Yet critics say vested interests with sunk costs in
uranium technology succeeded in chilling enthusiasm. The same happened a decade ago to a parallel project by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at
CERN (
European Organization for Nuclear Research). France's
nuclear industry killed proposals for funding from Brussels, though a French group is now working on
thorium in Grenoble.
Norway's Aker Solution has bought Professor Rubbia's patent. It had hoped to build the first sub-critical reactor in the UK, but seems to be giving up on Britain and locking up a deal to build it in China instead, where minds and wallets are more open. So the Chinese will soon lead on this
thorium technology as well as molten-salts. Good luck to them. They are doing Mankind a favour. We may get through the century without tearing each other apart over scarce energy and wrecking the planet.
IT'S the energiser town that keeps going and going. In an Australian first, the rural town of Scone will have batteries fitted to up to 20 homes, creating its own "micro grid". Fridge size 5 kW zinc bromine batteries will be installed outside houses to store energy as part of a three year trial that would not only power neighbourhoods during blackouts but also allow relief from soaring power prices.
