Question from Ron George
Your name has been given to me by Stephen Farndon, UKIP Trafford Chair, as a possible contact to discuss Thorium Nuclear reactors, in particular the two fluid Fluoride Liquid salt cooled Thorium Reactor, a prototype of which, in the 1960’s, ran for four years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I firmly believe that if Britain enthusiastically pursues development of these reactors and then their cheap production in factories, it may just give the country the edge to become, if not Great, at least prosperous again. I would love to hear your comments and have access to your knowledge and commercial expertise.
Prof says . . .
Thank you for the question you sent through about the above topic. In answering I would like to refer you first to an extensive archive of data on energy, and nuclear matters in particular, which are published on www.britain-watch.com.
Key papers are to be found on the “Energy and Environment” and “Key Data” pages on the right-hand navigation panel of the Home page.
Under “Energy and Environment” you can click directly to two major publications:
(1) “Averting Energy Catastrophe” given at the Climate Change Conference of 19th March 2011, held at Cromwell Barn, St Ives, Cambs, PE27 3LY, organised by Philip Foster and Strategic Conferences Ltd of Grantham. Roger Helmer, UKIP MEP, attended the conference along with over 200 others.
(2) “Secure Energy Strategy” which will take you to the paper submitted by Prosyma Research Ltd to the National Grid Consultation 2009 on future policy for electricity supply in the UK.
Between them these two papers set out a number of UK energy scenarios stretching out to 2050, based on unchallengeable scientific and engineering facts and reasonable assumptions about the capital costs of the 10 different energy-source-to-electricity-generation processes, nuclear power being prominent among them.
In (2) CO2 emissions are calculated year by year to 2050 for various mixes of gas, nuclear, wind, hydro, oil, etc. CO2 is important, because while I do not subscribe to the view that at present levels it has the central role in our climate claimed by some, it is a marker of the extent to which we are using up irreversibly our store of hydrocarbons.
Under “Key Data” you can see three sets of tables: “Basic Energy and CO2 emissions data”, “Energy and Emissions” and “Electricity Generation” which summarise the key data used in (1) and (2) to generate the scenarios. Taken together, (1) and (2) make it clear that for the United Kingdom, there are only three significant players in the 30 years to 2050 – gas, wind, and nuclear.
We need gas because we have to be able to trim electricity generation as demand fluctuates. Nuclear is the best for base load as last winter showed so graphically, wind because we already have about 2,500 installed turbines and the government has awarded the owners 25 years operating licences.
Thorium and Uranium
The point of the above in the context of your question about Thorium is that as a country we have limited room to manoeuvre, but we have some as the scenarios in (1) and (2) show. For the nuclear part of the mix, the choice of technology comes down to cost and availability. The cost has to include (a) raw materials, (b) conversion to fuels, (c) conversion (reaction) of fuels in the reactors, (d) recycling (reprocessing) of partly used fuels, (e) safe disposal of the final waste products. Stages (b) to (e) are exceedingly complex steps. At (d) Britain has a huge inventory of partly used fuel in the shape of Plutonium and depleted Uranium, and still (just) a massive inheritance of technical knowhow in the form of people, operational experience and equipment gained over a period of 50 years. If we were to move to Thorium we would, as a country, have to start at the beginning again so that it would be unlikely that we would have an operating reactor at a commercially interesting output (say 1,000 MW) before 2050 – at the very edge of our planning time-frame (i.e. 100 years from the start of uranium processing). It is worth noting that Thorium 232 – its natural mined state – is not fissile material. It has to be converted by neutron bombardment to the fissile variant Thorium 233. The source of neutrons would have to be Uranium 235 either made in situ or bought in from a Uranium operator. It is true that in theory a Thorium reactor can be run so that it generates (breeds) enough of its own source of neutrons to be self-sustaining once it gets started, without the use of Uranium 235. This self-breeding is an absolute must-have for an industrial scale process: there is no evidence that the plant at Oak Ridge in 1965-69 which you refer to ever achieved this. Moreover the byproduct waste which emits dangerous gamma radiation would have to be treated by a new series of processes, all of which would have to be approved by the nuclear regulators in every jurisdiction.
An independent British nuclear future
At the present time, all nuclear plants in the world, including Britain’s, operate fuel cycles which condemn us to huge wastage of naturally occurring Uranium 238 and an increasing stockpile of the Plutonium 239 which is inevitably generated by neutron bombardment of Uranium 238 in the reactors. There are however three technologies in which we have been pioneers which can change all that within an 8-15 year time frame if we set about them with enthusiasm as you rightly suggest we should. These three are (1) fast-breeder reactors, (2) mixed Plutonium and Uranium fuels, (3) small civil reactors on the 50 MW scale, as opposed to the 500-1,00 MW scale we customarily design.
There are advantages in all three, but the outstanding advantage of the fast-breeder technology is that it offers the virtual certainty of using up all our 120 tonne Plutonium stockpile at Sellafield, plus several 100 tonnes of mixed Uranium and Plutonium in used fuel lying in ponds at our 8 remaining nuclear stations. The fast-breeder reactor currently being dismantled at Dounreay operated continuously at 250 MW up to 1994 when the Major government decided, under pressure from the gas lobby, to close it down. Using the Plutonium fuel which we already have in fast-breeders, and mixed Uranium/Plutonium fuels in existing conventional reactors, plus a new class of fuelled-for-life “small” reactors (about the size used in the latest Astute class of submarines) to reduce the need for more power lines in sparsely populated countryside, we have basically all the nuclear fuel we and our children shall ever need, right here in the UK – indeed not far from you in the North West. At the moment used fuel at power stations and the Plutonium stock pile are treated as liabilities by the Treasury. (1)-(3) would convert them into assets using the budget of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
This is such a tremendous prize, I urge you to persuade your UKIP friends to support a campaign to reinstate the fast-breeder and the mixed oxide programmes without delay. These are attainable goals within a timescale which would have a huge beneficial impact on UK energy independence, jobs, and engineering morale, to the lasting benefit of all. I and others are organising a conference in Manchester in April next year on “Sustainable Nuclear Energy”, which all are welcome to attend, when these issues will be discussed (see www.icheme.org.uk and look under events and conferences). Also I shall be in the Manchester area again at the end of July and would be happy to talk with a group of local UKIP people and anyone else about these vitally important matters.