ThorEA - Towards an Alternative Nuclear Future.pdf

Chapter 6: The way forward continued
There is a compelling case for the UK to invest now in the
R&D to secure the technology necessary to build the world’s
first fully operational thorium-fuelled ADSR power station
by 2025. Such an investment builds upon existing and
acknowledged UK strengths in accelerator development,
spallation physics and nuclear science.
The commercial advantages of such an investment to the
UK are:
Global leadership in an advanced nuclear technology;
A reinvigoration of Britain’s nuclear industry;
The capture of IP and knowhow from nuclear and
other innovations (e.g. in medicine);
The creation of an export market for nuclear
power stations, which would include those regions
historically closed to the export of conventional
fission reactors;
A shift from nuclear dependency on uranium (a
limited resource) to thorium (an unlimited resource).
The environmental advantages include
A new and sustainable route to low carbon energy;
A nuclear technology in which the reactor operates
well below criticality levels;
A nuclear fuel cycle which does not include plutonium
as either fuel or waste;
A fuel cycle with relatively low radiotoxic and low
volume waste;
A system which can potentially burn legacy plutonium
and minor actinide waste as fuel;
A system which is intrinsically proliferation resistant.
46 Towards an Alternative Nuclear Future
Not only is this vision for a future energy source entirely
commensurate with the goals of the Government’s “Road
to 2010” and preceding 2008 White Paper on nuclear power
“Meeting the energy challenge”, it also exploits science
and technology in which Britain has a clear competitive
advantage and provides significant opportunities for
growth over the next two decades.
Analysis suggests that this can be achieved by a public
investment of £300m over 5 years. The investment would
fund an extensive R&D programme in advanced accelerator
technology, spallation physics, reactor core design and
thorium fuel cycles in collaboration with higher education
institutes, national laboratories (e.g. the National Nuclear
Laboratory) and private industry.
The programme would progress as a public-private partnership,
managed by a limited company (ThorEACo) which would be
responsible for delivering the technology, capturing IP and
subcontracting and commissioning additional R&D where
appropriate. It is envisaged that in the initial phases the
research and development programme would be sourced
principally from public funding and as the appropriate ADSR
knowledge and technology become available for exploitation
and transfer, private funding would increase, and pay for the
design and ultimately the construction of a 600MWe thorium
fuelled ADSR power station ready which could be ready for
commissioned and ready for operation by 2025.
By this time the UK will lead the world in thorium-fuelled
ADSR technology and will be poised to benefit from a
multibillion pound market for that technology.