The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown which occurred on March 28, 1979. The dangers of uranium-fueled reactors went on to make international headlines. The End of Nuclear Power- Funding cuts to the Oak Ridge laboratory in 1957 eventually ended their promising research and experimentation with thorium-fueled reactors.The nuclear power industry would base their designs on the uranium-fueled reactors developed to power nuclear submarines and produce plutonium. Yet the design for a Molten Salt Reactor fueled by thorium has remained dormant since 1959. In less than a decade Rickover built and launched ten nuclear subs, carrying the nuclear showdown to the most remote waters of the world. The Birth of Nuclear power-The nuclear submarine Nautilus was launched in 1954.Martin laments: “Uranium’s victory was a triumph of military uses of science and technology over humanistic ones, of the Pentagon over the scientific community, bureaucracy over individual initiative, technological stasis over inspiration and innovation.” Admiral Hyman Rickover favored conventional solid-core uranium-based light water reactors, which as a by-product produced plutonium that can be refined for nuclear weapons. First as research director and then as overall director of the Oak Ridge labs, Alvin Weinberg advocated development of a molten salt reactor fueled by thorium. ![]() Rickover and Weinberg-describing the tension between atoms for war and atoms for peace that resulted in the development of nuclear submarines and nuclear weapons.The Only Safe Reactor-detailing the operation, dangers, use, and costs of various reactor design options,.The Thunder Element-describing thorium’s various characteristics,.The Lost Book of Thorium Power-describing recent attention to the original thorium reactor work of the Oak Ridge Lab,.Martin summarizes: “Thorium could provide a clean and effectively limitless source of power while allaying all public concerns-weapons proliferation, radioactive pollution, toxic waste, and fuel that is both costly and complicated to process.” Because a LFTR is inherently stable and the liquid fuels can be readily drained from the reactor core, a meltdown is physically impossible. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) can act as breeders, producing as much fuel as they consume. The thorium fuel cycle results in a smaller amount of nuclear waste and less hazardous waste than do today’s uranium-fueled reactors. Thorium decays so slowly it can almost be considered stable it’s not fissile (able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction on its own), but it is fertile, meaning that it can be converted into a fissile isotope of uranium, U-233. Used properly, thorium is much safer and far cleaner than uranium. Thorium is about four times as abundant as uranium the United States has about 440,000 tons of thorium reserves. Oak Ridge research on a thorium-based liquid core nuclear power plant, useful for generating electric power, is described in an obscure 945-page long engineering book published in 1958. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, originally established to produce plutonium for the first nuclear bomb, turned its attention to peaceful uses of atomic energy. Eisenhower delivered his “Atoms for Peace” speech to the UN General Assembly on December 8, 1953, the United States launched the “Atoms for Peace” program intended to educate the American Public to the risks and opportunities of a nuclear future. ![]() Richard Martin tells the intriguing story of how thorium has been discounted as a nuclear fuel in favor of uranium and how it can become a green energy source for the future.Īfter President Dwight D. Of all the known energy sources on Earth, thorium is the most abundant, most readily available, cleanest, and safest element. The silvery-white metal thorium is number 90 on the periodic table of elements, two positions from its more famous cousin uranium. What would we do if we could find a fuel that was abundant, clean, and safe? Unfortunately it seems we would shun its use for decades, largely so we could build nuclear submarines and increase our stockpile of nuclear weapons. ![]() SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future, Richard Martin, May, 2012,Palgrave Macmillan, 272 pages, ISBN 978-0230116474
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