

China working on uranium-free nuclear plants in attempt to combat smog - sasvari
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/china-uranium-nuclear-plants-smog-thorium

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didgeoridoo
"A team of researchers in Shanghai has now been told it has 10 instead of 25
years to develop the world's first such plant."

Or else what?

Oh. Ohhhhhhhh.

~~~
ojii
or else funding stops?

~~~
nyrina
But it's so much fun to think of them getting killed because they couldn't
deliver.

/s

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joars
Can a pure thorium reactor even work in theory? I thought it needed a neutron
source to sustain fission like uran or something similar

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DennisP
You are correct.

You start with thorium plus a fissionable isotope of uranium or plutonium. The
fission neutrons convert the thorium to U-233, which is fissionable. After
that you rely on U-233 fission for neutrons and keep feeding thorium to it.

It can be done with solid fuel but with liquid fuel it works out really
nicely. You can fission pretty much everything and have just fission products
left over, which means a lot less nuclear waste that only has to be contained
for a few hundred years. And you're not shipping anything fissionable to or
from the reactor.

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jrmenon
Was wondering if the headline was misleading in mentioning 'uranium free'...

Incidentally India's 3-stage plan is meant to use its vast Thorium deposits in
the 3rd stage:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-
stage_nuclear_p...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-
stage_nuclear_power_programme)

which eventually uses Pu-239 from the fast-breeder reactors (2nd stage) as the
neutron source to take it to the 3rd stage.

IIRC, the original plan predicted to reach the 3rd stage in the 90s', but due
to various sanctions, it is still stuck in the first stage; probably it will
speed up now due to the Indo-US nuclear deal during the 2nd term of the Bush
administration.

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Zigurd
That's a terrible title. A Uranium fuel cycle would combat smog just as much.
Thorium plants can in principle be less risky, though is you factor out
proliferation and reprocessing risk it is possible to make Uranium fuel plants
that are inherently safe from meltdown, too.

The news is that China is about to outrun everyone in bringing nuclear plants
online. They have a lot of construction under way.

