As a scientist who studies natural climatic disruptions of the distant past and finds disturbing parallels with the vast changes that we’re setting in motion with today’s fossil fuel emissions, I’ve long favoured a switch to alternative energy sources.
But having been an anti-nuke protester back in my college days, I’ve also been reluctant to support nuclear power thanks to the unresolved problems of meltdowns, waste storage, bomb proliferation, and terrorism.
Nonetheless, my attitude changed several months ago after a chance conversation with a geologist friend whose son is training to become nuclear engineer. “He’s working on a new kind of reactor,” my friend explained, “It can’t melt down, it makes only minimal waste, and it can’t be used for making bombs. Instead of running on uranium, it uses thorium instead, which is a lot safer to work with.”
More recently, I’ve also been told by experts that thorium nukes would have safely weathered the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It sounded too good to be true, but if thorium power is actually anywhere near as amazing as its proponents claim, then it offers a welcome ray of hope for a sustainable energy future just when we’re beginning to need it most.
Unfortunately, it’s still difficult to find much helpful information about these so-called “green nukes” that isn’t written by jargon-happy engineers (like these). But I’m giving you a basic heads-up here to get you thinking and talking about them if you’re not onto them already.
How does a thorium plant work? In some ways, it’s much like a uranium-driven system, with nuclear chain reactions heating a liquid that drives turbines and generates electricity. But unlike the self-sustaining processes driven by uranium, thorium reactions don’t run so easily or continuously on their own.
To set a reluctant green nuke in motion, small amounts of uranium may be used as a sort of nuclear spark plug or, in other cases, a quick shot from a particle accelerator can jump-start the thing. One of the safest-sounding designs dissolves thorium fuel in molten fluorine salts and lets the hot reactions bubble away in open-ended tubes.
If conditions become too intense in that sort of “liquid fluorine thorium reactor” (LFTR, pronounced “lifter”), the fluid simply boils out of the tubes and the reaction dies out automatically.
Thorium reactors can be built small enough to fit onto a large truck bed, and they produce relatively benign and short-lived waste that fades away far more rapidly than uranium-derived wastes do. It’s lousy for making bombs with, unlike the plutonium that uranium reactors make. They can also burn and destroy such deadly radioactive materials.
In other words, thorium power might not only provide heaps of inexpensive, non-polluting electricity - it might solve our waste storage problems as well.
Compared to uranium, thorium is relatively abundant worldwide, but Australia owns some of the largest deposits. It doesn’t need as much refinement as uranium does; just dig it up and it’s essentially ready to go. Power plants that run on it would dam no rivers and produce no acid rain or greenhouse gases, and their immense electrical output could also create clean hydrogen fuels from the splitting of water.
So why are we using those troublesome uranium plants instead of nice green nukes? According to the experts I’ve questioned, thorium technology was sidelined during the 1970s because it can’t do what uranium reactors do so well in addition to generating electricity, which is creating the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons arsenals.
Where’s the catch here? Surely there must be a dark side to thorium, though I’ve not heard any such thing yet from its more knowledgeable and vocal proponents, some of whom display a nearly evangelical fervor and a reluctance to discuss anything that might slow the spread of this promising technology.
But as we face growing economic crises with the dwindling of cheap fossil fuel reserves, not to mention the thousands of years of climatic disruptions that the latest research shows can result from our fossil fuel emissions, I believe that this topic is too important to be left in the hands of a few tech-wizards who may overlook important aspects of introducing it into a real world where earthquakes, tsunamis, and crazy extremists lurk.
There’s no perfect solution to our energy needs and it’s important to acknowledge that even LFTR-nukes may have their own unique flaws. Choosing the best path forward will require a thoughtful and open discussion of all aspects of that choice, not just the nuts and bolts but the practical human costs as well.
Now’s the time to learn as much as you can about green nukes, and to join the global conversation. It’s your world, too, so let your voice be heard - we’re going to need it.
Curt Stager is a guest of the Sydney Writers Festival. He will also be appearing at the Byron Bay Community Centre on 25 May. For details, visit Scribe.
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