Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation's atomic power effort. Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. . Martin explains that Weinberg's unwillingness to sacrifice potentially safe nuclear power for the benefit of military uses forced him to retire: But it was apparent to me that my style, my attitude, and my perception of the future were no longer in tune with the powers within the AEC. Chet Holifield was clearly exasperated with me, and he finally blurted out, "Alvin, if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it may be time for you to leave nuclear energy." I was speechless. Science writer Richard Martin states that nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg, who was director at Oak Ridge and primarily responsible for the new reactor, lost his job as director because he championed development of the safer thorium reactors. and won the competition." In their opinion, the decision to stop development of thorium reactors, at least as a backup option, "was an excusable mistake". As Moir and Teller later wrote, "The competition came down to a liquid metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR) on the uranium-plutonium cycle and a thermal reactor on the thorium- 233U cycle, the molten salt breeder reactor. The reasons were that uranium-fueled reactors were more efficient, the research was proven, and thorium's breeding ratio was thought insufficient to produce enough fuel to support development of a commercial nuclear industry. In 1973, however, the US government settled on uranium technology and largely discontinued thorium-related nuclear research. In 1968, Nobel laureate and discoverer of plutonium, Glenn Seaborg, publicly announced to the Atomic Energy Commission, of which he was chairman, that the thorium-based reactor had been successfully developed and tested. The MSRE reactor, built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, operated critical for roughly 15,000 hours from 1965 to 1969.
During that period, the government of the United States also built an experimental prototype molten salt reactor using U-233 fuel, the fissile material created by bombarding thorium with neutrons. These were similar to the reactor designs that produced material for nuclear weapons. Development of breeder reactors in general (including thorium reactors, which are breeders by nature) will increase proliferation concerns.Įarly thorium-based ( MSR) nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960sĪfter World War II, uranium-based nuclear reactors were built to produce electricity. In 2011, a group of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology assessed thorium-based power as "a 1000+ year solution or a quality low-carbon bridge to truly sustainable energy sources solving a huge portion of mankind's negative environmental impact." However, development of thorium power has significant start-up costs.
Īdvocates believe thorium is key to developing a new generation of cleaner, safer nuclear power. īetween 19, the number of operational thorium reactors in the world has risen from zero to a handful of research reactors, to commercial plans for producing full-scale thorium-based reactors for use as power plants on a national scale. Moir and Edward Teller suggested that thorium nuclear research should be restarted after a three-decade shutdown and that a small prototype plant should be built.
One advantage of thorium fuel is its low weaponization potential it is difficult to weaponize the uranium-233/ 232 and plutonium-238 isotopes that are largely consumed in thorium reactors.Īfter studying the feasibility of using thorium, nuclear scientists Ralph W. A thorium fuel cycle can offer several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle -including the much greater abundance of thorium found on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced nuclear waste production. Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium.
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