Thorium: the wonder fuel that wasn't

[GliderGuider]

Thorium: the wonder fuel that wasn't

Actually, though, the United States has tried to develop thorium as an energy source for some 50 years and is still struggling to deal with the legacy of those attempts. In addition to the billions of dollars it spent, mostly fruitlessly, to develop thorium fuels, the US government will have to spend billions more, at numerous federal nuclear sites, to deal with the wastes produced by those efforts. And America’s energy-from-thorium quest now faces an ignominious conclusion: The US Energy Department appears to have lost track of 96 kilograms of uranium 233, a fissile material made from thorium that can be fashioned into a bomb, and is battling the state of Nevada over the proposed dumping of nearly a ton of left-over fissile materials in a government landfill, in apparent violation of international standards.

The first track was development of plutonium-fueled “breeder” reactors, which held the promise of producing electricity and 30 percent more fuel than they consumed. This effort collapsed in the United States in the early 1980’s because of cost and proliferation concerns and technological problems. (The plutonium “fast” reactor program has been able to stay alive and still receives hefty sums as part of the Energy Department's nuclear research and development portfolio.)

The second track—now largely forgotten—was based on thorium-fueled reactors. This option was attractive because thorium is far more abundant than uranium and holds the potential for producing an even larger amount of uranium 233 in reactors designed specifically for that purpose. In pursuing this track, the government produced a large amount of uranium 233, mainly at weapons production reactors. Approximately two tons of uranium 233 was produced, at an estimated total cost of $5.5 to $11 billion (2012 dollars), including associated cleanup costs.

After its 1996 safety investigation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Energy Department spent millions to repackage about 450 kilograms of uranium 233 that is mixed with uranium 235 and sitting in the lab's Building 3019, and to dispose of diluted uranium 233 fuel stored at the Idaho National Lab. The Energy Department's nuclear weapons program managed to shift responsibility for the stockpile in Building 3019 from Oak Ridge to the Office of Nuclear Energy, which envisioned using the uranium 233 to make medical isotopes. This plan fell apart, and in 2005 Congress ordered the Energy Department to dispose of the uranium 233 stockpile as waste.

Since then, the Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management has considered uranium 233 disposal to be an unfunded mandate, disconnected from other, higher-priority environmental cleanup compliance agreements. After several fits and starts, including a turnover of four project managers in less than two years, the Energy Department's disposition project “had encountered a number of design delays, may exceed original cost estimates, and will likely not meet completion milestones,” the department's inspector general reported in 2010. The cost of the project increased from $384 million to $473 million—or more than $1 million per kilogram for the disposal of uranium 233.

Hey, it sounds like a win to me...