True.
I still want to see how India will deal with the needed reprocessing of the thorium fuel, as that the major drawback in the use of thorium in the solid fuel reactor. Reprocessing highly radioactive thorium 228TH will require some innovation no doubt.And they say India can't innovate.
Right now India is using U-233 as fuel produced by Thorium-232 by neutran irrediation. Current PFBRs will use this method to be fuelled.
where is the source?? Which year?? As per latest IAEA and USGC estimations, India has one of the largest share of thorium reserve.
The quote above tell you why only a few country are trying to use thorium in a solid fuel reactor, the reprocessing off spent fuel is a very expensive and dangerous process. Its simply cheaper safer to just dig up uranium or buy uranium than to reprocess at the moment.Since these reactors have to be inducted in large numbers in shortest possible time, the spent fuel is to be reprocessed as quickly as possible.
In Fast Breeder Reactors, there is an increase in plutonium content while uranium is consumed. The irradiated fuel is reprocessed for recovering Uranium and Plutonium for reuse in the reactor. In the Fuel Reprocessing Plant, the fuel pins are dismantled from the subassembly. These pins are then chopped and dissolved in nitric acid. Solvent extraction process with tributyl phosphate as solvent, is used to separate Uranium, Plutonium and fission products. A very large fraction of the radioactive fission products and long-lived radioactive elements are fixed in suitable solid matrices such as glass and disposed and monitored in deep geological repositories. A tiny fraction gets released along with the gaseous and liquid effluents from the reprocessing plants, which is controlled and maintained as per the stringent regulatory requirements.
The Plutonium and the Uranium recovered from the reprocessing plant along with fresh uranium are fabricated as fuel elements in fabrication plant. The refabricated fuel is used in the reactor. The fuel cycle is thus closed.
Not really what China doing with thorium is very different than what India is doing.. India is trying to use thorium in a solid fuel reactor while China is trying to use thorium in a molten salt reactor ie MSTR(TMSR). Two different method altogether, its almost night and day different.
Actually we are going both ways. We are investigating MSR technology too and we have molten salt loops operational at BARC. While we have small test reactor(30 MW) which is first in the world, using Thorium as solid fuel since 1996 and first commercial reactor(500 MW) is almost ready. Though Its challenging but our scientists are confident enough to make it possible asap.
