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Asked by freddie to Adam, Geoff, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 23 Mar 2011 in Categories: General.
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Adam Tuff answered on 22 Mar 2011:
Big debates about this at the moment – India is investing a lot of money in it! The answer is yes and no. Uranium you can get straight out of the ground, refine, and stick in a reactor – hey presto, nuclear fuel (well, a little more complex, but you know what I mean!). The problem with Uranium is a) we’re running out of sources of it, and b) if it falls into the wrong hands, it could be used for nuclear weapons.
Now Thorium exists all over the place (I think the isotope of interest is Th-232), which is great, loads of fuel…but it isn’t fissile, i.e. it won’t decay on its own. What you have to do is bombard it with neutrons to produce Th-233, which is fissile, and then can be used as fuel. This obviously takes time, effort and money. The advantage is, you could actually build reactors where you have your 233 isotope as the reactor fuel, and 232 outside – neutrons coming from the fissioning 233 would bombard 232 with neutrons – making new fuel! I think 30 years down the road we’ll be using thorium a lot more, so for the time being uranium – the future is definitely looking like a thorium one!
Loved all your questions so far freddie – keep them coming!
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Suzie Sheehy answered on 23 Mar 2011:
In my opinion, yes! There is more thorium available than Uranium in the world, and using it for nuclear power doesn’t result in nasty isotopes like plutonium which people can use to make bombs. In the long term depending on how many countries use nuclear power with Uranium, we could be facing a serious Uranium shortage! So looking at other options is definitely important!
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