I am very fond of the Liquid Fluoride / Thorium reactor design but there are others of this type that are just as good. There are some significant advantages to these designs but they do not use Uranium and so, they require a different refining process than what we use for fissile bomb-grade uranium products. Thorium does not go Ka-Boom.
There is a lot of development of these reactors, unfortunately, development stopped in the US around the 1960's. China, Russia, India are the primary nations building these wonderful machines.
From Rod Adams at Atomic Insights:
Russia continues sustained fast breeder reactor effort
On June 26, 2014, the 60th anniversary of the start of the 5 MWe Obninsk reactor that was the first reactor in the world to routinely supply electricity to a commercial power grid, Russia started up the latest in a series of sodium-cooled fast reactors, the BN-800.
This new nuclear plant is an evolutionary refinement of the successful BN-600 that has been operating in Russia since 1980 and “is said to have the best operating and production record of all Russia’s nuclear power units.”
Here is a quote from a promotional brochure about the project published in 2011 by Atomenergoproekt, the joint stock company that built the power plant.
BN-800 power unit (under design) for Beloyarskaya NPP accommodates all principal concepts and solutions used in its predecessor BN-600, substantiated by over 20 years of its successful operation at high performance (capacity factor 80% at efficiency 42%).
BN-800 Power Unit is designed primarily for the production of heat and energy. The Power Unit as part of the grid operates with constant rated load (basic mode).
However, BN-800 characteristics and physical features dictate its multi-purpose usage. Viz, the reactor is used for:
- electric and heat power generation
- plutonium consumption and, if necessary, production
- processing of long-lived supertransuranics accumulated in the radwastes of reactor of any type
- production of isotopes.
No other reactor type combines so wide a range of functions.
Equipment of the reactor and its system involved in the handling of fuel assemblies containing isotopes and supertransuranics is designed to perform the above-mentioned functions.
The system builds off some of the successes of fast reactors designed and operated in Russia and the rest of the world and also incorporates features that avoid some of the characteristics that have led to failures in fast reactor programs. In other words, the BN-800 is the result of learning and the progress that can be made with sustained effort in any challenging, but potentially rewarding field of endeavor.
There are a couple of things to pay attention to:
"processing of long-lived supertransuranics accumulated in the radwastes of reactor of any type" - all of the nuclear waste currently in storage can be processed and used as fuel. Waste that would need to be sequestered for 10,000 years can be burned and the resultant waste only needs to be sequestered for 300 years at most.
"production of isotopes" - this is major for medical needs. Today, most isotopes come from small educational reactors and some Canadian CANDU research reactors run for this purpose.
"efficiency 42%" - the efficiency of a conventional uranium reactor is in the 5% to 7% range. The waste products from operation "poison" the remaining fuel so we can only extract a fraction of the energy available. With Thorium, this is close to 70%. With the Russian design, it's 42%.
Here is an excellent video, edited to five minutes, outlining the advantages of the Liquid Flouride / Thorium process - pretty compelling stuff...
