A breakthrough for India – Thorium reactor makes civilian nuke deal with America unnecessary
Shova pundit
Jul. 2, 2007

Strategically India needs the nuke deal with America. But technologically, India achieved a solid breakthrough that will make the nuclear deal with American unnecessary. A team of scientists at a premier Indian nuclear facility has designed an innovative reactor that can run on thorium - available in abundance in the country - and will eventually do away with the need for uranium.

That is a fitting reply to the Australians that sold Uranium to China in abundance and refused India any Uranium. It is also a fitting reply to America trying to control Indian nuclear independence.

According to media reports, the novel Fast Thorium Breeder Reactor (FTBR), being developed by V. Jagannathan and his team at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, has received global attention after a paper was submitted to the International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES) held June 9-14 in Istanbul.

Power reactors of today mostly use a fissile fuel called uranium-235 (U-235), whose "fission" releases energy and some "spare" neutrons that maintain the chain reaction. But only seven out of 1,000 atoms of naturally occurring uranium are of this type. The rest are "fertile", meaning they cannot fission but can be converted into fissionable plutonium by neutrons released by U-235.

Thorium, which occurs naturally, is another "fertile" element that can be turned by neutrons into U-233, another uranium isotope. U-233 is the only other known fissionable material. It is also called the "third fuel".

Thorium is three times more abundant in the earth's crust than uranium but was never inducted into reactors because - unlike uranium - it has no fissionable atoms to start the chain reaction.

But once the world's uranium runs out, thorium - and the depleted uranium discharged by today's power reactors - could form the "fertile base" for nuclear power generation, the BARC scientists claim in their paper.

They believe their FTBR is one such "candidate" reactor that can produce energy from these two fertile materials with some help from fissile plutonium as a "seed" to start the fire.

By using a judicious mix of "seed" plutonium and fertile zones inside the core, the scientists show theoretically that their design can breed not one but two nuclear fuels - U-233 from thorium and plutonium from depleted uranium - within the same reactor.

This totally novel concept of fertile-to-fissile conversion has prompted its designers to christen their baby the Fast ''Twin'' Breeder Reactor.

A breakthrough for India – Thorium reactor makes civilian nuke deal with America unnecessary
Shova pundit
A team of scientists at a premier Indian nuclear facility has designed an innovative reactor that can run on thorium - available in abundance in the country - and will eventually do away with the need for uranium.
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