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The thorium fuel cycle is a nuclear fuel cycle that uses an isotope of thorium, 232 Th, as the fertile material. In the reactor, 232 Th is transmuted into the fissile artificial uranium isotope 233 U which is the nuclear fuel. Unlike natural uranium, natural thorium contains only trace amounts of fissile material (such as 231 Th
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 ...
Thorium resources are the estimated mineral reserves of thorium on Earth. Thorium is a future potential source of low-carbon energy. [1] Thorium has been demonstrated to perform as a nuclear fuel in several reactor designs. [2] [3] It is present with a higher abundance than uranium in the crust of the earth. Thorium resources have not been ...
Kirk Sorensen, former NASA scientist and chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering, is a long-time promoter of the thorium fuel cycle, coining the term liquid fluoride thorium reactor. In 2011, Sorensen founded Flibe Energy, [ 38 ] a company aimed at developing 20–50 MW LFTR reactor designs to power military bases.
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.
Thorium-232 is a fertile material; it can capture a neutron to form thorium-233, which subsequently undergoes two successive beta decays to uranium-233, which is fissile. As such, it has been used in the thorium fuel cycle in nuclear reactors; various prototype thorium-fueled reactors have been designed. However, as of 2024, thorium fuel has ...
A pebble-bed power plant combines a gas-cooled core [5] and a novel fuel packaging. [6]The uranium, thorium or plutonium nuclear fuels are in the form of a ceramic (usually oxides or carbides) contained within spherical pebbles a little smaller than the size of a tennis ball and made of pyrolytic graphite, which acts as the primary neutron moderator.
The first commercial APR-1400 reactors at Shin Kori were approved in September 2007, [12] with construction starting in October 2008 (Unit 3) and August 2009 (Unit 4). [3] [13] [14] Shin Kori-3 was initially scheduled to commence operation by the end of 2013, but the schedules for both Units 3 & 4 were delayed by approximately one year to replace safety-related control cabling, which had ...