What's at the forefront of reactor research? A must-read digest/discussion. [View all]

An exchange of emails between three highly-respected nuclear engineers, augmented by 133 (largely informed) comments at BraveNewClimate.org has become a terrific one-stop resource.

Per Peterson, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Department of Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/People/Per_Peterson

George Stanford, Ph.D.
Nuclear reactor physicist, Argonne National Laboratory (retired)
Part of the team that developed the Integral Fast Reactor.
http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/george-stanford.html

Dan Meneley, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Acting Dean, Faculty of Energy Systems & Nuclear Science
http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/dan-meneley.html

"We’ll see what others on this list have to say, but in my opinion, Carlsen’s enthusiasm for thorium is premature, to say the least. The ONLY significant advantage a thorium cycle would have over fast reactors with metallic fuel (IFR/PRISM) is its lower requirement for start up fissile. That advantage is offset by the fact that the thorium reactor is at a stage of development roughly equivalent to where the IFR was in 1975 — a promising idea with a lot of R&D needed to before it’s ready for a commercial demonstration — which puts its deployment about 20 years behind what could be the IFR’s schedule. The thorium community has not yet even agreed on what will be the optimum thorium technology to pursue..."

"If you’ve tried to do control, fuel cycle, and safety system design on a thorium reactor you’ll not be so enthusiastic. The flux shape is a strong function of the past flux shape — because of the protactinium. After you shut the thing down you must account for the later reactivity increase. And then there’s the detail of not having any fissile isotope to start up in the first place..."

"Thorium reactors operate in with a thermal spectrum, which allows them to use graphite as the primary structural material in the reactor core. Graphite can be heated to very high temperatures without losing structural integrity. Combined with the very high boiling temperature of the fluoride-salt coolant (> 1400°C), thorium reactors can deliver heat at substantially higher temperature (between 600 and 700°C with current primary pressure boundary structural materials) than IFR (between 370 and 510°C with current fuel cladding materials). This is a sufficiently higher temperature that several options exist for gas-Brayton power conversion, while at the IFR temperatures steam Rankine is likely to remain the most practical option..."

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/11/17/ifr-lftr-exchange/