Is Thorium in Nuclear Energy Future?

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Other Sources, RTGs, Sea Water, Thorium, Helium-3, & Fusion Research

Date posted: 01/25/17

When placed into nuclear applications, thorium can be used in conjunction with a fissile material like recycled plutonium. The use of thorium as a primary source of energy is still in the works. As World Nuclear Association notes, extracting the latent energy value of thorium in a cost-effective manner is still challenging. This means that before the the energy sector can turn to thorium as a viable option, there is still a lot of research and development that needs to go into refining the technology. The question of whether thorium works for energy production was answered in 2013, when privately owned Norwegian company Thor Energy began to produce power at its Halden test reactor in Norway using thorium. Nuclear giant Westinghouse, a unit of Toshiba, is part of an international consortium that Thor Energy established to fund and manage the experiments. An established player in nuclear energy, Westinghouse provides viewpoints on the research. Thor Energy is not the only company engaged in researching whether or not thorium is a viable alternative to uranium in nuclear energy. In fact, firms from the U.S., Australia and the Czech Republic have also been working on thorium reactor designs and other elements of fuel technology using the metal. However, Thor was the first to begin energy production using the radioactive metal. But the Norwegian company is not the only one making strides in the thorium industry. In fact, India has been interested in thorium-based nuclear energy for decades, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The country nuclear developers have designed an advanced heavy-water reactor that is specifically aimed at using thorium as a fuel. Also looking at the prospect of thorium as a fuel source is China, who signed a phase two agreement in 2009 to study the commercial and technical feasibility of its full-scale use in the Candu power system, a heavy water reactor that uses thorium-based fuels. China thorium production goal has been set.