Thorium Nuclear Power For South Asians

[Riaz Haq]

In addition to green energy from water, wind and sun, is there a source of clean, renewable and plentiful energy that can satisfy the growing needs of the humankind without destroying the planet earth? The answer is a qualified yes. Many scientists believe that the answer lies in developing and exploiting the abundant but mildly-radioactive element thorium in a redesigned nuclear fuel cycle. Large deposits of thorium oxide are found in many countries of the world, including United States, China, India and Pakistan. There are significant concentrations of thorium oxide in Kerala, India and Mardan, Pakistan. Research conducted by Dr. Muhammad Haleem Khan at Punjab University's Institute of Chemistry found thorium oxide concentrations of 6.5% in Badar near Mardan in Pakistan, and 5.9% in Kerala, India. (Reference: Dr. M.H. Khan, 1992, Chapter 4, Page 114).


Rising concerns about climate change caused by carbon emissions are forcing a second look at nuclear energy. But the uranium-based nuclear power has had a bad name for various reasons, including potential for more disasters like Three-Mile-Island and Chernobyl, as well as genuine worries about nuclear weapons proliferation from uranium/plutonium byproducts, and highly radioactive waste disposal.

Just yesterday, a fire at an Indian nuclear research facility killed two people, according to the BBC News. And last month, more than 90 Indian workers suffered radiation injuries due to contamination of drinking water at the Kaiga Atomic Power Station in Karnataka, India.

In addition to the high-profile case of nuclear proliferation by Pakistani scientist AQ Khan, there have been other cases posing the nuclear proliferation threat from India, particularly as it dramatically expands its nuclear energy production after the US-India nuclear deal. In July 1998, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seized eight Kg. of nuclear material from three engineers in Chennai. It was reported that the uranium was stolen from an atomic research center. The case still remains pending. On November 7, 2000, IAEA disclosed that Indian police had seized 57 pounds of uranium and arrested two men for illicit trafficking of radioactive material. IAEA had said that Indian civil nuclear facilities were vulnerable to thefts.

Thorium-based reactor technology addresses many of the above concerns to a great extent. Dr Hashemi-Nezhad of Australia's Sydney University says thorium has all of the benefits of uranium as a nuclear fuel but none of the drawbacks. Dr Hashemi-Nezhad believes thorium waste would only remain radioactive for 500 years, not the tens of thousands that uranium by-products remain active. The thorium reactor byproducts are not suitable as fissile material for nuclear weapons, reducing concerns about dual-use of peaceful nuclear technology.

"In fact, the green movement must come behind this project because we are moving in a direction to destroy all these existing nuclear wastes, to prevent nuclear weapons production, to [prevent] Chernobyl accident happening again," the Australian ABCOnline quotes Dr Hashemi-Nezhad as saying.

The idea of thorium reactors for nuclear energy is not new, according to a story published by Wired Magazine. It was first detailed in 1958 in a book titled "Fluid Fuel Reactors" under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission as part of its Atoms for Peace program. But it was not pursued at the time because the US was in the midst of a major nuclear arms buildup requiring large amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium for its WMDs. The use of thorium would not help in the weapons production, because the waste from thorium is not suitable for weapons.

The Wired Magazine article features Kirk Sorensen who is championing the revival of research and development into thorium reactors in the United States. Sorenson runs a blog "Energy from Thorium" that is bringing together a community of engineers, researchers, amateurs and enthusiasts talking about thorium.

When Sorensen and his online community of scientists began delving into the history of thorium work done by Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Lab, they discovered not only an alternative fuel but also the design for the alternative reactor, according to the Wired story. Using that template, the Energy From Thorium team helped produce a design for a new liquid fluoride thorium reactor, or LFTR (pronounced “lifter”), which, according to estimates by Sorensen and others, would be some 50 percent more efficient than today’s light-water uranium reactors. If the US reactor fleet could be converted to LFTRs overnight, existing thorium reserves would power the US for a thousand years.

Currently, there are active research programs in the United States, China and India, the biggest coal users and polluters in the world, to develop thorium fuel cycles. The research teams are exploring various approaches, including Ur+Th oxide rods and Ur and Th fluoride solutions, the latter preferred in the United States for its higher efficiency and safety. While there is promise in the technology, it is far from ready for commercial exploitation. In the mean time, the best way to tackle the climate change menace is to reduce the use of coal and other fossil fuels, and focus on hydro, solar and wind energy development in the foreseeable future.

Related Links:

Renewable Energy to Tackle Pakistan's Energy Crisis

Pakistan Leads South Asia in Clean Energy

Uranium Is So Last Century--Enter Thorium

Scientist Urges Switch to Thorium

Energy from Thorium Blog

US-India Nuclear Deal

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a piece on uranium supply constraints for Pakistan:

As construction on a fourth reactor at Pakistan’s weapons-grade plutonium production complex at Khushab continues apace, an important question is where the government plans to get the uranium needed to fuel its growing fleet of reactors.

The answer cannot be ‘Pakistan’ for much longer, at least not without severe difficulties. Pakistan is not a signatory to the Nonproliferation Treaty, which complicates the import of uranium. Pakistan has been able to secure Chinese LEU fuel assemblies for the Chasma Nuclear Power plants and a limited stock of safeguarded natural uranium fuel assemblies for the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP). However, as Canada stopped supplying Pakistan with fuel assemblies for KANUPP in 1976, this stock is most likely gone by now, causing KANUPP to rely on domestic stocks of uranium in recent decades. The weapons program, including military HEU production and fabrication of fuel for the reactors at Khushab, must also rely on domestic production. Pakistan’s Bagalchore mine was reportedly exhausted and closed by 2000, so uranium resources now only come from the Qabul Khel mine (opened in 1992), the Nanganai deposit (1996), and Taunsa deposits (2002), all using in situ leaching. Current domestic production estimates from these sources stand at 40 tons of uranium per year.

A 2009 study by Mian, Nayyar, and Rajaraman estimates that when applied to the fueling of the Khushab fleet of reactors, the 40 tons per year amount alone can only support approximately 150 MWt of total reactor capacity operating at 70 percent efficiency and a low burnup of 1000 MWd/ton. Forty tons would just barely support the first three reactors. Today, there is a fourth.

In my recent paper, Combining Satellite Imagery and 3D Drawing Tools for Nonproliferation Analysis: A Case Study of Pakistan’s Khushab Plutonium Production Reactors, I sought to refine maximum thermal capacity estimates of the reactors based on 3D analysis of each reactor’s cooling towers (snapshot below). Using these estimates, the table here shows how the completed four reactors at Khushab would operate at around a total of 200 MWt at 70 percent efficiency, which translates to a requirement of as much as ~70 tons of uranium per year. The reactor capacity estimates in my paper are upper limits based on cooling capacity. Seventy tons of uranium is therefore also an upper limit. The reactors could be slightly smaller, with overdesigned cooling systems, or Pakistan may plan to operate the reactors at a lower capacity. Still, Pakistan appears likely to run a uranium deficit, perhaps as much as 30 tons, that could exhaust uranium stocks and eventually the deposits themselves.
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Along with the fact that phosphoric acid is widely traded for the production of fertilizer, it is also not subject to heavy scrutiny through export controls. Morocco in particular is a major exporter of phosphoric acid as it holds nearly 77% of worldwide phosphate rock reserves. In recent years, Pakistan and Morocco have established a joint venture to ensure “uninterrupted supply” of phosphoric acid to Pakistan on a large scale. Export of phosphoric acid, a legitimate commodity, is not prohibited and there is no evidence that the joint venture is supporting Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program or engaged in any nefarious activities. An important question is how much uranium may be inadvertently transported through the trade of phosphoric acid for DAP production...

http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/5928/patton-on-pakistans-u...

[Riaz Haq]

Tech Billionaires Bet on Fusion as Holy Grail for Business
Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among titans chasing almost Iimitless energy source

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-billionaires-bet-on-fusion-as-hol...

Sam Altman became a tech sensation this year as the CEO of OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence startup that seems pulled from science fiction.

But Mr. Altman, who has been among Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors for more than a decade, has placed one of the biggest bets of his career on a company that might be even more futuristic: a nuclear-fusion startup called Helion Energy Inc.

He is one of a number of tech founders and billionaires who hope to harness the process that powers the sun and stars to deliver almost limitless energy. Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates and Marc Benioff are among those betting that the decadeslong goal of building fusion reactors is now within years of being reality.

Mr. Benioff calls fusion a “tremendous dream.”

“It’s the holy grail. It’s the mythical unicorn,” said Mr. Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce Inc., who invested in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinout called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which aims to create compact power plants. Mr. Gates is also an investor.

Fusion has long been seen as a clean-energy alternative to sources that burn fossil fuels and release greenhouse gases. Other technologies and applications being developed in the race for fusion power include powerful magnets, better lasers or radiation therapy for cancer research.

Fusion, Mr. Benioff added, “has no limits if you can get it to work.”

Developers mostly in the U.S., Canada and Europe have been riding a wave of momentum since August 2021, when scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory came close to achieving more energy in a fusion reaction than was put in with lasers, a goal known as net gain.

Many grew to believe that a breakthrough was imminent. It came in December when the national lab achieved net gain for the first time.

Nuclear fusion occurs when two light atomic nuclei merge to form a single heavier one. That process releases huge amounts of energy, no carbon emissions and limited radioactivity, but companies would have to sustain fusion reactions and engineer a way to turn that energy into net power.

The old saw about fusion is that it is a mirage years away and always will be. It is a long-shot bet even with the high-risk world of venture funding.

Mr. Benioff said he was persuaded by Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems co-founder who was an early investor in private fusion, historically the province of academia and national labs.

Mr. Khosla’s interest hinged on the ability to build a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet. He spent 15 months on due diligence and hired three teams to evaluate the design before investing.

He thinks that several fusion designs should be tested and is investing in another firm, Realta Fusion, a spinout from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Even if one of them can work, the planet is much better off is how I look at it,” he said.

As an investor, Mr. Khosla sees fusion this way: “Financially either you lose one times your money or you can make a thousand times your money,” Mr. Khosla said. “That’s the math of fusion.”

Industrial firms, major oil companies and sovereign-wealth funds are backing efforts along with the Department of Defense, which is in search of a toaster-sized power system for satellite propulsion.

“There’s a reasonable probability at least one, maybe two companies will demonstrate fusion conditions in this decade,” said Ernest Moniz, who is the chief executive of the nonprofit research group Energy Futures Initiative and a former U.S. Energy Secretary.

Mr. Moniz, a physicist, said that improvements in large-scale machine learning have sped experiments and helped several companies achieve or approach the extreme temperatures and pressures needed for fusion reactions.