The new face of safe nuclear

By Mark Halper | July 21, 2011, 3:56 AM PDT

Kirk Sorensen believes firmly that safe nuclear power can contribute significantly to the world’s energy future – provided that reactors run on liquid thorium fuel rather than on solid uranium as they do today.

Showing the courage of his convictions, Sorensen has quietly launched his own thorium reactor company, called Flibe Energy, in Huntsville, Ala. He aims to have liquid thorium reactors operating within 5 to 8 years.

Sorensen says he wants to “redefine” nuclear, so that it deservedly takes on a clean and safe association, contrary to its long running negative place in popular opinion, as swaths of the public fear the hazards of nuclear waste and nuclear power accidents. The industry is fighting harder than ever to improve nuclear’s image after the meltdown earlier this year at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Safe nuclear: India’s thorium reactor

By Mark Halper | May 8, 2012, 4:10 AM PDT

Sunset over Kerala, India, where there is a lot of thorium in the beach sands. Some people think the sun should set on conventional uranium reactors in favor of safer thorium, a substance that is plentiful around the world.

One of my recurring themes on the energy blog here at SmartPlanet is that the world can have a safer nuclear future, provided the industry shifts to altogether different types of reactors and fuel.

I’m not talking about the passive cooling technologies that are bolt-ons to conventional uranium-fueled, water-cooled reactors, although those do augur safety improvements.

Rather, I’m referring to reactors that run on thorium instead of uranium fuel, and/or that depart from the water-cooled designs used in almost all of the 430+ commercial reactors operating around the globe today. They have generic names like “molten salt reactors” and “pebble bed reactors.”

Safe nuclear: UK eyes thorium

By Mark Halper | May 18, 2012, 3:08 AM PDT

Prime Minister David Cameron wants clean energy, including nuclear. Will thorium be part of the mix in Britain?

Welcome back to the thorium trail, the long and winding road to an altogether different and safer way of generating nuclear power by using thorium instead of uranium as fuel.

Last week we stopped in the U.S., where the thorium debate took to the national airwaves.We also ventured to India, to have a look at a thorium reactor that’s rising there.

Today, we pull into the UK, where we note that the government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC, the UK equivalent of the U.S. DOE) has spotted thorium on its radar, and is looking into it.

First, my standard review for newcomers, because the parade of interested travelers on this road is growing all the time:

Thorium should replace uranium because, its supporters say, it does not yield nasty, weapons-grade waste the way uranium does. And its waste lasts for only a few hundred years, not the tens of thousands associated with uranium. It can work in conventional, water-cooled reactors. But when combined with alternative reactor designs, like a “molten salt” or “liquid fluoride” reactor, it offers even more advantages including greater efficiency, Flibe Energy and others claim. The U.S built a thorium molten salt reactor in the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but the Nixon administration halted thorium development in favor of more weapons-prone uranium.