ThorEA - Towards an Alternative Nuclear Future.pdf

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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.
A report prepared by: the thorium energy amplifier association 47
Page 1 and 2: TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE NUCLEAR FUTU
Page 3 and 4: A report prepared by: the thorium e
Page 5 and 6: Appendices: Appendix I: ADSR Accele
Page 7 and 8: Executive Summary Recent developmen
Page 9 and 10: This report is structured as follow
Page 11 and 12: Thorium presents numerous advantage
Page 13 and 14: Operating reactors 500 40 450 400 3
Page 15 and 16: 1.5 The potential global market for
Page 19 and 20: 2.3 Minimizing the economic cost of
Page 21 and 22: Chapter 3: An R&D Programme to secu
Page 25 and 26: Phase III: THOR Successful completi
Page 27 and 28: 3.6 Private Investment and construc
Page 31 and 32: Case Study 2: Letter of support fro
Page 33 and 34: 4.3 The patent landscape Categoriza
Page 35 and 36: 4.6 Future opportunities facilitate
Page 37 and 38: 4.7.1 Medical applications Both ADS
Page 39 and 40: 4.7.5 From megatons to megawatts: W
Page 41 and 42: For an operational lifetime of 40 y
Page 43 and 44: 5.2 Inward investment The delivery
Page 45: Chapter 6: The way forward In this
Page 49 and 50: A1.3 Accelerator reliability Accele
Page 51 and 52: Estimated thorium resources by coun
Page 53 and 54: FBTR, India: India’s first fast p
Page 55 and 56: Japan: Mitsui Engineering & Ship Bu
Page 57 and 58: EUROTRANS has proposed a route to a
Page 59 and 60: thorium oxide mixed fuels is access
Page 61 and 62: Appendix VIII: An historical UK per
Page 63 and 64: Bibliography Bryan, A. C. (2009). J
Page 65 and 66: LBE - Lead-Bismuth Eutectic LEU - L
Page 67 and 68: Q4. Early investment in accelerator
Page 69 and 70: Q11. ThorEA focus upon FFAG technol
Page 71: William J. Nuttall is a University

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