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U-233 is produced from thorium-232 by neutron capture. [19] The U-233 produced thus does not require enrichment and can be relatively easily chemically separated from residual Th-232. It is therefore regulated as a special nuclear material only by the total amount present. U-233 may be intentionally down-blended with U-238 to remove ...
A sample of thorium. Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium.A thorium fuel cycle can offer several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle [Note 1] —including the much greater abundance of thorium found on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced ...
The thorium fuel cycle has several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle, including thorium's greater abundance, superior physical and nuclear properties, reduced plutonium and actinide production, [1] and better resistance to nuclear weapons proliferation when used in a traditional light water reactor [1] [2] though not in a molten ...
The concept is credited to Italian scientist Carlo Rubbia, [1] a Nobel Prize particle physicist and former director of Europe's CERN international nuclear physics lab. He published a proposal for a power reactor (nicknamed "Rubbiatron") based on a proton cyclotron accelerator with a beam energy of 800 MeV to 1 GeV, and a target with thorium as fuel and lead as a coolant.
In some thorium breeding scenarios, the intermediate product protactinium 233 Pa would be removed from the reactor and allowed to decay into highly pure 233 U, an attractive bomb-making material. More modern designs propose to use a lower specific power or a separate thorium breeding blanket.
Uranium-232 (232 U) is an isotope of uranium.It has a half-life of around 69 years and is a side product in the thorium cycle.It has been cited as an obstacle to nuclear proliferation using 233 U as the fissile material, because the intense gamma radiation emitted by 208 Tl (a daughter of 232 U, produced relatively quickly) makes the 233 U contaminated with it more difficult to handle.
The Ames Project was a research and development project that was part of the larger Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs during World War II.It was founded by Frank Spedding from Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa as an offshoot of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago devoted to chemistry and metallurgy, but became a separate project in its own right.
Monazite powder, a rare earth and thorium phosphate mineral, is the primary source of the world's thorium. India's three-stage nuclear power programme was formulated by Homi Bhabha, the well-known physicist, in the 1950s to secure the country's long term energy independence, through the use of uranium and thorium reserves found in the monazite sands of coastal regions of South India.