| LIBertea | Date: Saturday, 2013/04/06, 6:59 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
|
 The Mirror
Group: Administrators
Messages: 2142
|
Thorium mixed with plutonium and other actinide “waste” could continuously power modified conventional reactors almost forever in a reusable fuel cycle, according to a discovery at the University of Cambridge in England.
The discovery, by PhD candidate Ben Lindley working under senior lecturer Geoff Parks, suggests that mixed thorium fuel would outperform mixed uranium fuel, which lasts only for one or two fuel cycles rather than for the “indefinite” duration of the thorium mix.
Ideally, the reactors would be “reduced-moderation water” reactors that work on the same solid-fuel, water-cooled principles of conventional reactors but that do not slow down neutrons as much and thus also offer some of the advantages of fast reactors.
Lindley’s finding, made while he was a master’s candidate in 2011, bodes well for the use of thorium not only as a safe, efficient and clean power source, but also as one that addresses the vexing problem of what to do with nuclear waste from the 430-some conventional light water reactors that make up almost all of the commercial power reactors operating in the world today and that run on uranium.
By mixing thorium with “waste” in a solid fuel, the nuclear industry could eliminate the need to bury long-lived plutonium and other actinides.
Lindley’s work surfaced recently in an article about it in the hard copy edition of Cambridge’s quarterly Engineering Department magazine. An earlier version also appears online.
READ MORE
|
|
|
| |
Main 
