Alternative Nuclear Energy

In my last article I expressed doubts over the viability of nuclear energy to provide a stop gap measure in securing us a future with safe energy. Maybe I was too hasty. Nuclear technology exists which does provide a viable and 'safe' alternative. I use the word safe cautiously here because make no mistake this shit will still melt your skin off and cause you to puke and shit yourself to death if you come in contact with it. But this is the case with nuclear energy anyway. The main difference with the alternative source of nuclear energy - Molten Salt Reactors is that they're unlikely to explode and ejaculate copious amounts of toxic shit into the atmosphere. And this would seem to be kind of an important advantage.

Molten Salt Reactors rely on a different principle to modern nuclear reactors in that the fuel's already molten so that in itself precludes the possibility of a meltdown. But they have another advantage - they don't have to use transuranic elements such as Uranium or Plutonium for fuel. MSRs can use Thorium as part of their fuel cycle and the advantage of using this is it doesn't spontaneously fission - it needs a catalyst. So when you switch the damn thing off you don't need to wait several months for it to actually be off, it's off. The fail-safe mechanism in these reactors is one that doesn't need to be controlled by humans. If the reactor gets too hot, a plug in the base of the core melts and the molten fuel leaves the containment vessel and drops into a holding area. Once the molten fuel is separated from the catalyst - fission ceases. Essentially the reactors save themselves. These reactors also operate at normal atmospheric pressure which eliminates the possibility of a pressure explosion such as at Chernobyl or very nearly at Fukushima.

Add to this other advantages such as the fact these reactors can be used to burn up long lived radioactive waste and in themselves produce dramatically less radioactive waste (between 10 - 10,000 times less). The fact that Thorium is cheaper and far more abundant than Uranium then it would really seem to be a no brainer to use these instead. Unfortunately the technology isn't quite ready for practical application. The reason this technology wasn't developed in the first place is because it didn't provide us with an easy way to kill several hundred million people in the space of a few hours which is obviously a capability which we as a species simply couldn't live without. Traditional reactor design led the way because as a by-product it enabled the development of nuclear weapons. Using a Thorium fuel cycle makes it difficult to develop nuclear weapons because as well as them not being produced in sufficient quantities, it's difficult to chemically separate the generated isotopes of Uranium. It's still possible of course but wouldn't be an economically sound way of building an atom bomb. There are also good technical reasons why U-233 has never been used in atom bombs. And Plutonium production – forget it.

So maybe if the nuclear industry really wants a renaissance, they should follow China’s lead in developing this technology. Perhaps people would be more amenable to having an energy source that doesn’t cause total pandemonium when it goes wrong. It won’t be astronomically expensive to develop either. Just a thought.