David Suzuki: Will thorium save us from climate change? | Georgia Straight, Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly
One idea is to use thorium instead of uranium for reactor fuel. Thorium
is more abundant than uranium. Unlike uranium, it’s not fissile; that
is, it can’t be split to create a nuclear chain reaction, so it must be
bred through nuclear reactors to produce fissile uranium.
Thorium-fuelled
reactors produce less waste, and while some trace elements in spent
uranium fuels remain radioactive for many thousands of years, levels in
spent thorium fuels drop off much faster. China and Canada are working
on a modified Canadian design that includes thorium along with recycled
uranium fuel. With the right type of reactor, such as this design or the
integral fast reactor, meltdown risks are reduced or eliminated.
Thorium
can be employed in a variety of reactor types, some of which currently
use uranium—including heavy water reactors like Canada’s CANDU. But some
experts say new technologies, such as molten salt reactors, including
liquid fluoride thorium reactors, are much safer and more efficient than today’s conventional reactors.
So why aren’t we using them?
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