Background and brief history
After World War II, uranium-based nuclear reactors were built to produce electricity. These were similar to the reactor designs that produced material for nuclear weapons. During that period, the U.S. government also built an experimental
molten salt reactor using U-233 fuel, the fertile material created by bombarding thorium with neutrons. The reactor, built at
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, operated
critical for roughly 15000 hours from 1965 to 1969. In 1968, Nobel laureate and discoverer of
Plutonium,
Glenn Seaborg, publicly announced to the
Atomic Energy Commission, of which he was chairman, that the thorium-based reactor had been successfully developed and tested:
So far the
molten-salt reactor experiment has operated successfully and has earned a reputation for reliability. I think that some day the world will have commercial power reactors of both the uranium-plutonium and the thorium-uranium fuel cycle type.
[7]
In 1973, however, the U.S. government shut down all thorium-related nuclear research—which had by then been ongoing for approximately twenty years at
Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The reasons were that uranium breeder reactors were more efficient, the research was proven, and byproducts could be used to make nuclear weapons. In Moir and Teller’s opinion, the decision to stop development of thorium reactors, at least as a backup option, “was an excusable mistake.”
[4]
Science writer Richard Martin states that nuclear physicist
Alvin Weinberg, who was director at Oak Ridge and primarily responsible for the new reactor, lost his job as director because he championed development of the safer thorium reactors.
[8][9] Weinberg himself recalls this period:
[Congressman]
Chet Holifield was clearly exasperated with me, and he finally blurted out, "Alvin, if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it may be time for you to leave nuclear energy." I was speechless. But it was apparent to me that my style, my attitude, and my perception of the future were no longer in tune with the powers within the AEC.
[10]
Martin explains that Weinberg's unwillingness to sacrifice potentially safe nuclear power for the benefit of military uses forced him to retire:
Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. . . . his team built a working reactor . . . . and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and
Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.
[11]
Despite the documented history of thorium nuclear power, many of today’s nuclear experts were nonetheless unaware of it. According to
Chemical & Engineering News, "most people—including scientists—have hardly heard of the heavy-metal element and know little about it . . . ," noting a comment by a conference attendee that "it's possible to have a Ph.D. in nuclear reactor technology and not know about thorium energy."
[12] Nuclear physicist
Victor J. Stenger, for one, first learned of it in 2012:
It came as a surprise to me to learn recently that such an alternative has been available to us since World War II, but not pursued because it lacked weapons applications.
[13]
Others, including former
NASA scientist and thorium expert
Kirk Sorensen, agree that “thorium was the alternative path that was not taken . . . "
[14][15]:2
According to Sorensen, during a documentary interview, he states that if the U.S. had not discontinued its research in 1974 it could have "probably achieved energy independence by around 2000."
[7]
yep.
@ Automakers still using fukking