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Safe nuclear fuel based on thorium

03.10.2020

The Idaho National Laboratory at the US Department of Energy, together with Texas A&M University and Clean Core Thorium Energy, began work on introducing a new type of fuel to nuclear power plants. It was called ANEEL (Advanced Nuclear Energy for Enriched Life) and differs in that it consists almost entirely of safe thorium, not uranium.

The technology is patented, all details are classified, but the Americans promise to establish cooperation with all interested parties.

Since thorium is a weakly radioactive metal, it will not decay on its own, so you need to add some uranium to it to start a chain reaction. But it requires relatively little relative to the total volume of fuel loaded into the reactor - de facto it is thorium that will burn out in it. It has a higher melting point but lower operating temperature than uranium. This means that the fuel can burn longer without the risk of a core meltdown.

According to the developers of ANEEL, the amount of radioactive waste during the transition to it will be reduced by 80%. Yes, it will be necessary to redo the reactor itself and related components, which is what Clean Core Thorium Energy engineers are doing. But such a reactor is easier to manage, safer and more reliable than uranium. The company promises to create the first reactor for ANEEL by 2024.

However, the main feature of the new fuel is not in the technical, but in the economic plane. American power engineers are betting on India, which does not have its own uranium, but almost 300 thousand tons of thorium is concentrated in monazite sands - 32% of the world's reserves.

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