Can thorium clean up nuclear energy?

[sandi66]

Can thorium clean up nuclear energy?

by Tracey Panek, March 9th, 2011, Wednesday.

Category: Energy & Utilities, In the News


Anyone who remembers the “No New Nukes” slogan amid fears of a nuclear meltdown knows that when there’s talk about energy policy, nuclear energy doesn’t come up as an option. The US hasn’t commissioned a new nuclear reactor since 1977. Nuclear energy has been a divisive social, environmental, and energy concept over the past few decades, ever since the accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 (the same year that teenager made building a bomb look so easy in The Manhattan Project).

The entire world acknowledges our collective need to reduce dependence of fossil fuels. We’ve seen natural gas touted as a clean-burning and energy-efficient fossil fuel by its lobbyists, the Natural Gas Supply Association and the American Gas Association. Companies such as Iberdrola Renewables, Mesa Power, and Navitas are building new wind farms, which sadly contribute a negligible amount to overall electricity usage. There just is no perfect answer for the ongoing energy crisis.

But there is another alternative for alternative energy, and it involves going nuclear. Now hear me out; this is hardly a step back. A relatively unheard-of company called Lightbridge Corporation is developing a new kind of nuclear fuel that uses thorium, a less radioactive element than uranium, to power nuclear reactors. Thorium doesn’t produce enough plutonium during the nuclear reaction process to make weapons-grade material, so the bomb argument is moot. Thorium also produces less waste than pure uranium and doesn’t need to be stored as long to decay. And as a nuclear fuel, thorium is fully compatible with the existing nuclear reactors in the US, so we don’t need to spend billions to build any new reactors.

This is not a new concept. The company’s ideas for thorium were developed by the late nuclear engineer Dr. Alvin Radkowsky, who co-founded Lightbridge’s predecessor company, Thorium Power, in 1992 with Joel Grae, the father of current CEO and President Seth Grae. Dr. Radkowsky, a physicist, helped develop nuclear submarines in the 1950s. He passed away in 2002. Thorium Power changed its name in 2009 in order for the company to list its shares on the NASDAQ and begin attracting investors.

Lightbridge has been performing all its tests in Russia in conjunction with the Kurchatov Institute. The company hopes thorium-based nuclear fuel will be ready for commercialization by 2020, so it’s got a ways to go.

So far Lightbridge is the only US firm experimenting with thorium, and there’s no government-funded program to develop it. But other countries (and their governments) are interested in thorium’s promise. Norway’s Aker Solutions designed an Accelerator Driven Thorium Reactor (ADTR) with Nobel Prize winner Carlo Rubbia of CERN. According to the World Nuclear Association, India and China are also experimenting with thorium reactor prototypes. India’s Department of Atomic Energy OK’d a prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) that, while not initially to run on thorium, will “set the scene for eventual full utilization of the country’s abundant thorium to fuel reactors.” Meanwhile, China announced at a conference for the Chinese Academy of Sciences that it is developing a program to build a thorium-fueled molten nuclear reactor, and doesn’t have any intention to share its research.

www.bizmology.com/2011/03/09/can-thorium-clean-up-nuclear-energy/

[sandi66]

A report on Thorium: The newest of the technology metals

Jack Lifton
Published 3/18/2009

I do not wish to condemn, nor glorify, the world’s oldest profession, but I note here that said profession has created an enduring capitalist business model, which is succinctly stated as “Why give away something you can sell?

I was reminded of this adage when a colleague sent me the following link: www.bharatbook.com/Market-Research-Reports/Report-on-2009-World-Market-Forecasts-for-Imported-Thorium-Ores-and-Concentrates.html, for a report titled “Report on 2009 World Market Forecasts for Imported Thorium Ores and Concentrates.”

Let me offer you the same information, and additional data, which I do not think the authors of the above report have, or have taken into account, for free.

The USGS has just released its commodity minerals summary for thorium for 2009. This can be found on the Internet at minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/thorium/mcs-2009-thori.pdf. A more detailed USGS discussion of thorium market fundamentals and end-uses can be found in the USGS’s “2007 Minerals Yearbook Thorium [Advance Release]” on the Internet at minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/thorium/myb1-2007-thori.pdf. (Although this last article is dated 2007, it was released in late 2008 and is an analysis based on information gathered by the very conservative and through USGS throughout most of 2008.)

My take on thorium in 2009 is that it is most likely going to be the last natural element to become a technology metal. Therefore I want to take this opportunity to expose and dispose of some myths about the potential supply of thorium and to bring you up to date on the potential for an explosive (excuse the pun) growth in demand for thorium.

The potential for thorium to be a breakout investment is based on its potential, and today more and more likely, its use as a nuclear fuel component for civilian reactors used exclusively to produce electricity. There are three reasons why this will most likely come to pass:

Reactors using thorium in their fuel can be constructed so that they produce little or no products useful for explosive type (fission- or fusion-based) nuclear weapons.
Thorium reactors previously built and currently near operation, or in the design stage, produce far less radioactive waste material than the presently used uranium and/or plutonium based reactors.
Thorium is more abundant in the earth’s crust by a factor of between three and four than uranium, and coincidentally is also found in recoverable (as a byproduct) grades and quantities in the United States, Canada, Australia, the Republic of South Africa, and the People’s Republic of China (that is, the mainland). It has not yet been mined as a primary ore (more on this in a moment) but is rather always produced as a byproduct of either uranium or rare-earth metals primary production.
Note the following statement from “Canadian Energy Research Institute - World Energy: The Past and Possible Futures – 2007”:

“Nuclear became an important source of energy following the first oil price shock in 1973. The main reasons for the rise of nuclear power are the low cost of fuel compared to other primary energy sources, and abundant uranium resources located in politically stable regions. Total known recoverable uranium resources equal 4.7 million tonnes, half of which are found in Australia, Kazakhstan, and Canada. Canada is currently the largest manufacturer of uranium, producing about one-third of the world’s total.”

So, therefore, in summary, thorium reactors are non-proliferative, they produce less waste, and even though there is a lot more thorium than uranium in the earth’s crust, the USGS and Canadian Energy Research Institute reports, which are current, clearly indicate that the minable resources and reserves of thorium are less than those of uranium. Even so, it is now apparent, and cannot be overemphasized at this point that the largest minable resources and reserves of thorium are today, in order of size, in the United States, Australia, China and Canada.

Just as with uranium resources and reserves, it now turns out that the largest accessible supplies of thorium are in politically stable and reliable regions. In particular, it turns out that just as Canada has the world’s largest working deposits of minable uranium, it is possible to cast the United States in the same role for thorium if the political will can be found.

Why doesn’t everyone stop building uranium- and/or plutonium-based reactors and start building and only build, from now on, thorium fuel-type reactors? Let’s list some facts and then analyze them to find out.

Economics of uranium supply and demand:

Nations, such as France, Japan, The United Kingdom and the United States that produce a significant proportion of their electricity using nuclear reactors have a very large investment in those reactors and a large supporting infrastructure of existing uranium supplies. The World's nuclear industry operates a total of 443 commercial nuclear generating units with a total capacity of about 364.9 gigawatts. To put this in perspective, if all of this nuclear generating capacity were in the United States, it would provide just about one-third of our current yearly demand. As of Dec. 31, 2007, there were 104 commercial nuclear generating units that were fully licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to operate in the United States. Of these 104 reactors, 69 were categorized as pressurized water reactors (PWRs), totaling 65,100 net megawatts (electric), and 35 units were boiling water reactors (BWR), totaling 32,300 net megawatts (electric). Therefore the United States obtains about 10% of its electricity demand from commercial nuclear generating units. The corresponding figure for France is 80% and for Japan it's 34%.
Nations, other than G-7 members, that are financially capable of building reactors look upon the production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium as assets to insure the security of their political systems. Even if they sincerely do not plan to build nuclear weapons with the output of their reactors, that they could do so gives many of them clout in the political world far beyond what their GDP or population size can do.
The mining of uranium is a long-established industry for which incremental growth is possible and for which there is still active exploration. Most important, no one is concerned that political instability could interrupt Canada’s output of uranium!
Economics of thorium “demand”:

There are no commercial thorium reactors in operation anywhere in the world, however...
Thorium reactors were built at the beginning of the nuclear age, for testing the concept of purely civilian reactors that did not have a military weapons use, because of the non-weaponizability of their products, and so there is an archive of engineering design and operational data for those reactors. The best known thorium reactors were built in the United States and the Soviet Union, but may also have been constructed elsewhere, such as in the United Kingdom.
No significant quantities of thorium have been purposefully mined or refined for at least 30-40 years, and there is at present, except perhaps in the People’s Republic of China, and most likely in India, no government- or privately sponsored exploration program for thorium.
On the positive side, the major western and Japanese commercial reactor builders, as well as the government-controlled ones in China, all have openly announced that they have recently been looking at thorium fuel designs, and one, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., AECL, has said that it already has a program being designed and tested to retrofit its well-known and widely used CANDU reactors for the utilization of thorium fuel.
Additionally, India has announced that it is constructing or reconstructing a reactor to run principally on in-house designed thorium fuel, and that this reactor will be in operation within a couple of years and is intended to be a prototype for a future family and mass-produced series of such reactors to take advantage of what is claimed to be India’s large domestic resources of thorium.
Other nations have evinced interest in thorium-fueled reactors and seem to have made investments in their development, including Norway, Russia, Canada, China and the United States.
It is, unfortunately, conceivable that the People’s Republic of China, which has lately made no secret of its interest in thorium-fueled reactors, and has instructed its rare-earth mines -- today the sole producers of these metals -- to hold thorium removed during separation and purifying of the rare earths for the State Nuclear Authority, may have it in mind to conserve uranium for military purposes by switching planned civilian nuclear electric generating capacity to thorium-fueled reactors. This may well also be the plan of the government of India, the world’s most vociferous proponent of thorium-fueled reactors.
The supply of thorium:

Thorium has always been available as a byproduct of the mining of uranium and of the rare earths, but it has traditionally been considered either a liability or a low value material.
Thorium reports and commentaries without fail or exception state that thorium is more common than uranium, but usually fail to emphasize that this is a statement of the relative abundances of both in the earth’s crust. It is in no way a statement of the relative distribution of thorium vs. that of uranium in known minable deposits, as discussed above and below...
There is actually no way to verify the thorium reserves that are contained in the world’s existing rare-earth mines, because to the best of our knowledge, such measurements have simply not been made, and, if they have, have certainly not been made public by the world’s largest and most actively mined rare-earth deposits in the Bayanobo region of Inner Mongolia in the PRC. There are today no significant rare-earth mining operations anywhere outside of the Bayanobo region. The largest previous single source mine for rare earths in Mountain Pass, Calif., stated to a magazine writer last month that it had no thorium production associated with its hoped-for reopening of operations. The two large Australian rare-earth startups, Lynas and Arafura, also do not comment on any planned thorium production, and, in any case, are both in turmoil due to the current economic crisis. Lynas has suspended operations and Arafura is not only not operating but is also in the process of selling a large stake to a Chinese operator. It is not commonly known whether India, which always claims to have significantly more thorium than uranium, in fact produces any thorium from its deposits of monazite “sands,” which do contain low levels of “disseminated” thorium but are principally an ore of the rare earths of which India has very limited production. Finally, Russia produces some rare earths and thus could produce some limited amount of thorium, but it is not known if it does.
Uranium miners even in Canada have not announced any plans to produce thorium nor do any of them show thorium quantity produced in their accounts. The same is true for Australian producers, and Kazakh thorium statistics do not exist.
The best opportunity today to produce thorium in quantity from a high-grade deposit would be in the United States in the Lemhi Pass region of Idaho and Montana. The claims in that region are owned today by Thorium Energy Inc., a privately held company, which purchased and extended the claims staked beginning 50 years ago by a group of utilities and engineering companies, starting with Idaho Power. Those companies were looking for uranium (and thorium) for the purpose of becoming self-sufficient and vertically integrated as nuclear power producers. But they were premature. The age of thorium was not yet ready to be born. Idaho Power and its successors noted also that the claims were rich in rare earths, but just as with thorium, the birth of the age of those technology metals was still in the future.
Today, Thorium Energy Inc., is in a unique position. It may be able to open the first primary thorium mine in American history with a substantial rare-earths byproduct stream, if the demand is there, or it can develop a primary rare-earth mining operation in the Lemhi Pass with a substantial thorium output as a byproduct. Economics and politics will determine which of the two paths is followed, or if neither path is taken.
The conclusion at this point in time of this first Thorium Report for 2009 is that a thorium-fueled civilian-use-only nuclear electric generating industry is looming on the economic and political horizon. At this moment, no one knows how much thorium it is possible to produce as an adjunct to rare-earth or uranium mining, but we do know that one of the largest deposits of high-grade thorium and rare earths in the world is located in the Lemhi Pass region of Idaho and Montana. This deposit is accessible and minable.

America could become completely self-sufficient in non-proliferative nuclear electric power production and reduce its carbon footprint without sacrificing its standard of living or quality of life. Let’s see if our politicians have the will and leadership skills to make this happen. Our future depends on it.

www.resourceinvestor.com/News/2009/3/Pages/A-report-on-Thorium--The-newest-of-the-technology.aspx

[sandi66]

THORIUM AND THE RARE EARTH ELEMENTS ("REEs")

Thorium is a material which may help to safely fuel the World's power requirements. Other fossil fuel alternatives at present include solar power, wind power, and others. Many crucial technologies require the Rare Earth Elements, commonly found with Thorium deposits, but which are in increasingly short supply.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Rare Earth Elements: The United States Government is Increasingly Supportive of Aggressive Domestic Mining of REEs.


Rare Earth Elements: The United States Government is Increasingly Supportive of Aggressive Domestic Mining of REEs.
Dear Friends:

In the interests of shoring up national security, stimulating economic self-sufficiency and in a move to spur technological innovation and productivity, the U.S. government is becoming increasingly vociferous about the aggressive mining of domestic reserves of Rare Earth Elements ("REEs").

REEs are projected to become an increasingly significant component of the newest generation of technologies, and traditional supply sources of REEs from outside of the U.S., principally from China, are increasingly the subject of political posturing and deliberate trade restriction. The United States has vast untapped but geologically proven reserves of these REEs.

As supplies become threatened and as demand is projected to increase, the United States (through both the private and public sectors, acting in concert) is seeking to accelerate domestic mining and refining of these special metals.

The article below is merely an example of what is already "heating up."

For more information regarding the Rare Earth Elements, their unique properties and their uses, please refer directly to thoriumenergyinc.blogspot.com/, where the original posting of this article appeared.

While I do not offer financial or investment advice in any of my blogs, including, but not limited to The Global Futurist, Links 4 Life or Thorium And The Rare Earth Elements, the future appears to be looking increasingly positive regarding companies which own large tracts of land and the associated mining rights for REEs.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle [ www.douglascastleblogosphere.com/ ]

####

In Wyoming, push to mine rare earths in US forest
By MEAD GRUVER, Associated Press Mead Gruver, Associated Press Sun Feb 20, 12:13 pm ET
SUNDANCE, Wyo. – A Canadian company hoping to compete with China's near-monopoly of rare earth elements — metals critical for everything from U.S. military weaponry to wind turbines — wants to open a strip mine inside a national forest in northeast Wyoming.

Processing raw ore into rare earths is an intensive operation that has been associated with radioactive water spills. But with China slashing exports of rare earths and Washington concerned the U.S. military could face a shortage of materials for lasers, smart bombs, guided missiles, night-vision goggles and jet engines, Don Ranta is optimistic about his Black Hills National Forest mine proposal.

"Everything we've seen so far looks very, very bullish for it to be a commercial project," said Ranta, CEO of Vancouver, British Columbia-based Rare Element Resources. If approved and if it goes into production, the mine would be located about 15 miles from Devils Tower National Monument, the nation's first national monument.

For its particular combination of rare earths, Wyoming's Bear Lodge Mountains rank close behind a mine at Mountain Pass in southeastern California as North America's best verified source of the minerals, said John Kaiser, editor of the Kaiser Bottom Fish website, which tracks global metals markets and mining companies.

"In the long run, I think it will end up being even bigger than Mountain Pass," Kaiser said.

Rare earths are 17 minerals used to make many products that didn't exist all that long ago. Neodymium is used to make magnets in the electric motors of hybrid cars. Europium goes into compact fluorescent bulbs.

Rare earths with critical military applications include samarium, used for super-strong samarium-cobalt magnets that help steer guided missiles. The General Accounting Office, Congress' auditing arm, reported in April that the Navy's Aegis Spy-1 radar, expected to be used for 35 years, uses samarium-cobalt magnets that will need replacement during the system's service life. Defense contractors use China-supplied neodymium magnets in motors used to build fuel-saving hybrid electric drives for U.S. Navy destroyers, the GAO reported.

Rare earths aren't scarce. But few places exist with enough concentrations to mine profitably, and they are difficult to isolate in a purified form.

Cheap labor and low environmental standards enabled China to dominate the rare earths market starting in the 1990s, and the country currently supplies 97 percent of the world rare earths market.

But even as demand soars for rare earths, China is cracking down on rare earths smuggling and cutting legal exports. Together, that will reduce the global rare earths market by 25 percent.

The result will likely be dramatically less rare earths on the global market, Kaiser said, until new sources can be mined.

"That's going to cause a serious problem for users outside China," he said.

Global rare earths prices have soared in recent months, in some cases up to six-fold. In January, President Barack Obama signed a defense spending authorization ordering Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ensure U.S. access to rare earths.

Mountain Pass is the only U.S. mine producing rare earths. Mining there ceased because of heavy Chinese competition in 2002 and only resumed in December amid the much-improved market outlook.

In 1998, Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Molycorp Minerals Inc., operator of the Mountain Pass mine, paid a $410,000 fine after being accused of spilling 350,000 gallons of wastewater from the facility. The water contained lead and radioactive elements including uranium and thorium.

A $500 million reconstruction of the mine, begun in January, will produce rare earths more cheaply by recycling and reusing processing acids, according to company spokesman Jim Sims. He said the technique would allow lower production costs than the Chinese, "with a dramatically smaller environmental footprint."

Other potentially important untapped rare earths reserves exist in Quebec, Canada's Northwest Territories and Alaska, Kaiser said.

Rare Element Resources doesn't immediately plan to refine ore into rare earth oxides at the Bear Lodge Mountains, which could add $150 million to the project's $87 million estimated cost, Ranta said.

He suggested Molycorp could for a time process the Wyoming ore, enabling his company to focus on the first significant commercial mining operation in Black Hills National Forest since the World War II era.

For a Wyoming mountain range, the Bear Lodge Mountains are obscure — barely over a mile high. Both Devils Tower and the rare earths deposits are relics of volcanic activity 40 million to 60 million years ago.

Rare Element Resources' strip mine would be up to 500 feet deep, though Ranta, a geologist, said that would be small compared to the vast strip mines 60 miles to the west that produce much of the nation's coal.

His company has secured 16 square miles of mining claims inside the forest and plans to continue drilling sampling holes after seeing promising concentrations of rare earths in samples taken last year, Ranta said.

Talk about rare earths mining has drawn little attention in Wyoming. But environmentalist Nancy Hilding, president of the Prairie Hills Audubon Society of western South Dakota, said mining companies often fail to protect groundwater as promised.

Any national forest development is subject to intensive review, said forest spokesman Frank Carroll. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality also would need to approve a mine. It has taken no position on Rare Element's proposal.

The final feasibility study for the mine is not expected until the end of 2012.

"Let's start producing rare earths in the United States so that we start having a self-sufficient supply," Ranta said. #### [End AP Article]

Tags, Labels and Terms: Rare Earth Elements, domestic mining, economic recovery, rare earth metals, economic self-sufficiency, Lemhi Pass, emerging technology, emerging China, US government policy, commodities markets, geology, TNNWC Membership, Blogs by Douglas E. Castle, The Global Futurist Blog, Links 4 Life Blog, TNNWC Blog, rare earth oxides, changing global balance of power, US National Security, energy independence.


Originally published in THORIUM AND THE RARE EARTH ELEMENTS by author Douglas Castle. Mr. Castle is the Chairman and Director Of Business Strategy of TNNWC Group, LLC, with does not have any investments or interests in Thorium or Rare Earth Elements, either as commodities, or in the form of ownership in operating companies. Become a Member of TNNWC Group (at no cost or obligation) to receive these reports - Just click on www.tnnwc.com/ and join us.

thoriumenergyinc.blogspot.com/

[sandi66]

Thorium
(Updated March 2011)

Thorium is much more abundant in nature than uranium.
Thorium can also be used as a nuclear fuel through breeding to fissile uranium-233.
Thorium continues to be a tanatalising possibility for use in nuclear power reactors, though for many years India has been the only sponsor of major research efforts to use it. Other endeavours include the development of the Radkowsky Thorium Reactor concept being carried out by US company Thorium Power (now Lightbridge Corporation) with Russian collaboration.

In mid-2009, AECL signed agreements with three Chinese entities to develop and demonstrate the use of thorium fuel in the Candu reactors at Qinshan in China. Another mid-2009 agreement, between Areva and Lightbridge Corporation, was for assessing the use of thorium fuel in Areva's EPR, drawing upon earlier research. Thorium can also be used in Generation IV and other advanced nuclear fuel cycle systems.

Nature and sources of thorium
Thorium is a naturally-occurring, slightly radioactive metal discovered in 1828 by the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. It is found in small amounts in most rocks and soils, where it is about three times more abundant than uranium. Soil commonly contains an average of around 6 parts per million (ppm) of thorium.

Thorium-232 (Th-232) decays very slowly (its half-life is about three times the age of the Earth) but other thorium isotopes occur in its and in uranium's decay chains. Most of these are short-lived and hence much more radioactive than Th-232, though on a mass basis they are negligible.

When pure, thorium is a silvery white metal that retains its lustre for several months. However, when it is contaminated with the oxide, thorium slowly tarnishes in air, becoming grey and eventually black. Thorium oxide (ThO2), also called thoria, has one of the highest melting points of all oxides (3300°C). When heated in air, thorium metal turnings ignite and burn brilliantly with a white light. Because of these properties, thorium has found applications in light bulb elements, lantern mantles, arc-light lamps, welding electrodes and heat-resistant ceramics. Glass containing thorium oxide has a high refractive index and dispersion and is used in high quality lenses for cameras and scientific instruments.

The most common source of thorium is the rare earth phosphate mineral, monazite, which contains up to about 12% thorium phosphate, but 6-7% on average. Monazite is found in igneous and other rocks but the richest concentrations are in placer deposits, concentrated by wave and current action with other heavy minerals. World monazite resources are estimated to be about 12 million tonnes, two-thirds of which are in heavy mineral sands deposits on the south and east coasts of India. There are substantial deposits in several other countries (see Table below). Thorium recovery from monazite usually involves leaching with sodium hydroxide at 140°C followed by a complex process to precipitate pure ThO2.

Thorite (ThSiO4) is another common mineral. A large vein deposit of thorium and rare earth metals is in Idaho.

The 2007 IAEA-NEA publication Uranium 2007: Resources, Production and Demand (often referred to as the 'Red Book') gives a figure of 4.4 million tonnes of total known and estimated resources, but this excludes data from much of the world. Data for reasonably assured and inferred resources recoverable at a cost of $80/kg Th or less are given in the table below. Some of the figures are based on assumptions and surrogate data for mineral sands, not direct geological data in the same way as most mineral resources.

Estimated world thorium resources1

(Reasonably assured and inferred resources recoverable at
up to $80/kg Th) Country Tonnes % of total
Australia 489,000 19
USA 400,000 15
Turkey 344,000 13
India 319,000 12
Venezuela 300,000 12
Brazil 302,000 12
Norway 132,000 5
Egypt 100,000 4
Russia 75,000 3
Greenland 54,000 2
Canada 44,000 2
South Africa 18,000 1
Other countries 33,000 1
World total 2,610,000



Thorium as a nuclear fuel
Thorium, as well as uranium, can be used as a nuclear fuel. Although not fissile itself, Th-232 will absorb slow neutrons to produce uranium-233 (U-233)a, which is fissile (and long-lived). The irradiated fuel can then be unloaded from the reactor, the U-233 separated from the thorium, and fed back into another reactor as part of a closed fuel cycle. Alternatively, U-233 can be bred from thorium in a blanket, the U-233 separated, and then fed into the core.

In one significant respect U-233 is better than uranium-235 and plutonium-239, because of its higher neutron yield per neutron absorbed. Given a start with some other fissile material (U-233, U-235 or Pu-239) as a driver, a breeding cycle similar to but more efficient than that with U-238 and plutonium (in normal, slow neutron reactors) can be set up. (The driver fuels provide all the neutrons initially, but are progressively supplemented by U-233 as it forms from the thorium.) However, there are also features of the neutron economy which counter this advantage. In particular the intermediate product protactinium-233 (Pa-233) is a neutron absorber which diminishes U-233 yield.

Over the last 40 years there has been interest in utilising thorium as a nuclear fuel since it is more abundant in the Earth's crust than uranium. Also, all of the mined thorium is potentially useable in a reactor, compared with the 0.7% of natural uranium in today's reactorsb, so some 40 times the amount of energy per unit mass might theoretically be available (without recourse to fast neutron reactors). But this relative advantage vanishes if fast neutron reactors are used for uranium.

Thorium R&D history
The use of thorium-based fuel cycles has been studied for about 40 years, but on a much smaller scale than uranium or uranium/plutonium cycles. Basic research and development has been conducted in Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA. Test reactor irradiation of thorium fuel to high burn-ups has also been conducted and several test reactors have either been partially or completely loaded with thorium-based fuel.

Noteworthy experiments involving thorium fuel include the following, the first three being high-temperature gas-cooled reactors:

Between 1967 and 1988, the AVR (Atom Versuchs Reaktor, Nuclear Test Reactor) experimental pebble bed reactor at Jülich, Germany, operated for over 750 weeks at 15 MWe, about 95% of the time with thorium-based fuel. The fuel used consisted of about 100,000 billiard ball-sized fuel elements. Overall a total of 1360 kg of thorium was used, mixed with high-enriched uranium (HEU). Burn-ups of 150,000 MWd/t were achieved.
Thorium fuel elements with a 10:1 Th/U (HEU) ratio were irradiated in the 20 MWth Dragon reactor at Winfrith, UK, for 741 full power days. Dragon was run as an OECD/Euratom cooperation project, involving Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland in addition to the UK, from 1964 to 1973. The Th/U fuel was used to 'breed and feed', so that the U-233 formed replaced the U-235 at about the same rate, and fuel could be left in the reactor for about six years.
General Atomics' Peach Bottom high-temperature, graphite-moderated, helium-cooled reactor in the USA operated between 1967 and 1974 at 110 MWth, using high-enriched uranium with thorium.
In Canada, AECL has more than 50 years experience with thorium-based fuels, including burn-up to 47 GWd/t. Some 25 tests were performed to 1987 in three research reactors and one pre-commercial reactor (NPD), with fuels ranging from ThO2 to that with 30% UO2, though most were with 1-3% UO2, the U being high-enriched.
In India, the Kamini 30 kWth experimental neutron-source research reactor using U-233, recovered from ThO2 fuel irradiated in another reactor, started up in 1996 near Kalpakkam. The reactor was built adjacent to the 40 MWt Fast Breeder Test Reactor, in which the ThO2 is irradiated.
In the Netherlands, an aqueous homogenous suspension reactor operated at 1MWth for three years in the mid-1970s. The HEU/Th fuel was circulated in solution and reprocessing occurred continuously to remove fission products, resulting in a high conversion rate to U-233.
There have also been several experiments with fast neutron reactors.

Power reactors

Much experience has been gained in thorium-based fuel in power reactors around the world, some using high-enriched uranium (HEU) as the main fuel:

The 300 MWe THTR (Thorium High Temperature Reactor) reactor in Germany was developed from the AVR and operated between 1983 and 1989 with 674,000 pebbles, over half containing Th/HEU fuel (the rest graphite moderator and some neutron absorbers). These were continuously recycled on load and on average the fuel passed six times through the core.
The Fort St Vrain reactor was the only commercial thorium-fuelled nuclear plant in the USA, also developed from the AVR in Germany, and operated 1976-1989. It was a high-temperature (700°C), graphite-moderated, helium-cooled reactor with a Th/HEU fuel designed to operate at 842 MWth (330 MWe). The fuel was in microspheres of thorium carbide and Th/U-235 carbide coated with silicon oxide and pyrolytic carbon to retain fission products. It was arranged in hexagonal columns ('prisms') rather than as pebbles. Almost 25 tonnes of thorium was used in fuel for the reactor, and this achieved 170,000 MWd/t burn-up.
Thorium-based fuel for PWRs was investigated at the Shippingport reactor in the USA (discussed in the section below on the Light Water Breeder Reactor).
In India, thorium has been used for power flattening in the initial cores of the two Kakrapar pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs).
The 60 MWe Lingen Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) in Germany utilised Th/Pu-based fuel test elements.
Light Water Breeder Reactor

The Light Water Breeder Reactor (LWBR) concept is a major potential application for conventional pressurised water reactors (PWRs) and was successfully demonstrated at the Shippingport reactor in the USA2. Shippingport commenced commercial operation in December 1957 as the first large-scale nuclear power reactor to be operated solely for electricity production. In 1965 the Atomic Energy Commission began designing a uranium-233/thorium core for the reactor and in 1976, the Energy Research and Development Administration (now the Department of Energy) established the Advanced Water Breeder Applications programme to evaluate the LWBR concept for commercial-scale applications. Shippingport operated as an LWBR between August 1977 and October 1982, when the station was finally shut down. During this period, the demonstration LWBR operated for over 29,000 effective full power hours with an availability factor of 76% and had a gross electrical output of over 2.1 billion kilowatt hours. Following operation, inspection of the core found that 1.39% more fissile fuel was present at the end of core life than at the beginning, proving that breeding had occurred.

The core of the Shippingport demonstration LWBR consisted of an array of seed and blanket modules surrounded by an outer reflector region. In the seed and blanket regions, the fuel pellets contained a mixture of thorium-232 oxide (ThO2) and uranium oxide (UO2) that was over 98% enriched in U-233. The proportion by weight of UO2 was around 5-6% in the seed region, and about 1.5-3% in the blanket region. The reflector region contained only thorium oxide at the beginning of the core life. U-233 was used because at the time it was believed that U-235 would not release enough neutrons per fission and Pu-239 would parasitically capture too many neutrons to allow breeding in a PWR.

Current thorium fuel cycle research
Several advanced reactors concepts are currently being developed, including:

High-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) of two kinds: pebble bed and with prismatic fuel elements. The Gas Turbine-Modular Helium Reactor (GT-MHR) being developed by General Atomics uses a prismatic fuel and builds on US experience, particularly from the Fort St Vrain reactor. The GT-MHR core can accommodate a wide range of fuel options, including HEU/Th, U-233/Th and Pu/Th. Pebble bed reactor development builds on German work with the AVR and THTR and is under development in China and South Africac. A pebble bed reactor can potentially use thorium in its fuel pebbles.
The Radkowsky Thorium Reactor builds on the seed-blanket arrangement of the LWBR concept.
The molten salt reactor (MSR) is an advanced breeder concept, in which the coolant is a molten salt, usually a fluoride salt mixture. This is hot, but not under pressure, and does not boil below about 1400°C. Much research has focused on lithium and beryllium additions to the salt mixture. The fuel can be dissolved enriched uranium, thorium or U-233 fluorides, and recent discussion has been on the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, utilizing U-233 which has been bred in a liquid thorium salt blanket and continuously removed to be added to the core. The MSR was studied in depth in the 1960s, but is now being revived because of the availability of advanced technology for the materials and components. There is now renewed interest in the MSR concept in Japan, Russia, France and the USA, and one of the six Generation IV designs selected for further development is the MSR (see also information page on Generation IV Nuclear Reactors).
CANDU-type reactors – AECL is researching the thorium fuel cycle application to Enhanced Candu 6 and ACR-1000 reactors with 5% plutonium (reactor grade) plus thorium. In the closed fuel cycle, the driver fuel required for starting off is progressively replaced with recycled U-233, so that on reaching equilibrium 80% of the energy comes from thorium. Fissile drive fuel could be LEU, plutonium, or recycled uranium from LWR. AECL envisages fleets of CANDU reactors with near-self-sufficient equilibrium thorium (SSET) fuel cycles and a few fast breeder reactors to provide plutonium. AECL is also working closely with Third Qinshan Nuclear Power Company (TQNPC), China North Nuclear Fuel Corporation and Nuclear Power Institute of China (NPIC) at Chengdu to develop and demonstrate the use of thorium fuel and to study the commercial and technical feasibility of its full-scale use in Candu units such as at Qinshan.
Advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR) – India is working on this and, like the Canadian ACR design, the 300 MWe AHWR design is light water cooled. The main part of the core is subcritical with Th/U-233 oxide and Th/Pu-239 oxide, mixed so that the system is self-sustaining in U-233. The initial core will be entirely Th-Pu-239 oxide fuel assemblies, but as U-233 is available, 30 of the fuel pins in each assembly will be Th-U-233 oxide, arranged in concentric rings. It is designed for 100-year plant life and is expected to utilise 65% of the energy of the fuel. About 75% of the power will come from the thorium.
Fast breeder reactor (FBRs), along with the AHWRs, play an essential role in India's three-stage nuclear power programme (see section on India's plans for thorium cycle below). A 500 MWe prototype FBR under construction in Kalpakkam is designed to breed U-233 from thorium.
Radkowsky Thorium Reactor

The work at Shippingport (see section above on the Light Water Breeder Reactor) was developed by Alvin Radkowsky, who was the chief scientist of the United States Navy's nuclear propulsion programme from 1950 to 1972 and headed the team that built the Shippingport plant. The Radkowsky Thorium Reactor (RTR) addresses the aspects of the thorium fuel cycle that are considered sensitive from the point of view of weapons proliferation. In particular the RTR avoids the need to separate U-233.

Radkowsky proposed the use of a heterogenous seed-blanket fuel assembly geometry, which separates the uranium (or plutonium) part of the fuel (the seed) from the thorium part of the fuel (the blanket). In the blanket part, U-233 is generated and fissioned, while the seed part supplies neutrons to the blanket. Either uranium enriched to 20% U-235 or plutonium can be used in the seed region3. One method of increasing the proliferation resistance of the design is to include some U-238 in the thorium blanket. Any uranium chemically separated from it (for the U-233 ) would not be useable for weapons. Used blanket fuel would also contain U-232, which decays rapidly and has very gamma-active daughters creating significant problems in handling the bred U-233 and hence conferring proliferation resistance. Plutonium produced in the seed will have a high proportion of Pu-238, generating a lot of heat and making it even more unsuitable for weapons than normal reactor-grade plutonium. Radkowsky's designs are currently being developed by Thorium Power (now Lightbridge Corporation)d, based in McLean, Virginia.

Since 1994, Thorium Power Ltd has been involved in a Russian programme to develop a thorium-uranium fuel, which more recently has moved to have a particular emphasis on utilization of weapons-grade plutonium in a thorium-plutonium fuel. The program is based at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute and receives US government funding to design fuel for Russian VVER-1000 reactors. The design has a demountable centre portion and blanket arrangement, with the plutonium in the centre and the thorium (with uranium) around ite. The blanket material remains in the reactor for nine years but the centre portion is burned for only three years (as in a normal VVER). Design of the seed fuel rods in the centre portion draws on extensive experience of Russian navy reactors.

The thorium-plutonium fuel claims four advantages over the use of mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel: increased proliferation resistance; compatibility with existing reactors – which will need minimal modification to be able to burn it; the fuel can be made in existing plants in Russia; and a lot more plutonium can be put into a single fuel assembly than with MOX fuel, so that three times as much can be disposed of as when using MOX. The used fuel amounts to about half the volume of MOX and is even less likely to allow recovery of weapons-useable material than used MOX fuel, since less fissile plutonium remains in it. With an estimated 150 tonnes of surplus weapons plutonium in Russia, the thorium-plutonium project would not necessarily cut across existing plans to make MOX fuel.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor

A quite different concept is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), utilizing U-233 which has been bred in a liquid thorium salt blanket.

The core consists of fissile U-233 tetrafluoride in molten fluoride salts of lithium and beryllium at some 700°C and at low pressure within a graphite structure that serves as a moderator and neutron reflector. Fission products dissolve in the salt and are removed progressively – xenon bubbles out, others are captured chemically. Actinides are less-readily formed than in fuel with atomic mass >235, and those that do form stay in the fuel until they are transmuted and eventually fissioned.

The blanket contains a mixture of thorium tetrafluoride in a fluoride salt containing lithium and beryllium, made molten by the heat of the core. Newly-formed U-233 forms soluble uranium tetrafluoride (UF4), which is converted to gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF6) by bubbling fluorine gas through the blanket solution (which does not chemically affect the less-reactive thorium tetrafluoride). Uranium hexafluoride comes out of solution, is captured, then is reduced back to soluble UF4 by hydrogen gas in a reduction column, and finally is directed to the core to serve as fissile fuel.

The LFTR is not a fast reactor, but with some moderation by the graphite is epithermal (intermediate neutron speed). Safety is achieved with a freeze plug which if power is cut allows the fuel to drain into subcritical geometry in a catch basin. There is also a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity due to expansion of the fuel.

The China Academy of Sciences in January 2011 launched an R&D program on LFTR, known there as the thorium-breeding molten-salt reactor (Th-MSR or TMSR), and claimed to have the world's largest national effort on it, hoping to obtain full intellectual property rights on the technology.


India's plans for thorium cycleWith about six times more thorium than uranium, India has made utilization of thorium for large-scale energy production a major goal in its nuclear power programme, utilising a three-stage concept:

Pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) fuelled by natural uranium, plus light water reactors, producing plutonium.
Fast breeder reactors (FBRs) using plutonium-based fuel to breed U-233 from thorium. The blanket around the core will have uranium as well as thorium, so that further plutonium (particularly Pu-239) is produced as well as the U-233.
Advanced heavy water reactors burn the U-233 and this plutonium with thorium, getting about 75% of their power from the thorium. The used fuel will then be reprocessed to recover fissile materials for recycling.
This Indian programme has moved from aiming to be sustained simply with thorium to one 'driven' with the addition of further fissile uranium and plutonium, to give greater efficiency. In 2009, despite the relaxation of trade restrictions on uranium, India reaffirmed its intention to proceed with developing the thorium cycle.

Another option for the third stage, while continuing with the PHWR and FBR stages, is the use of subcritical accelerator driven systems.

Thorium and accelerator driven systems
In an accelerator driven system (ADS), high-energy neutrons are produced through the spallationf reaction of high-energy protons from an accelerator striking heavy target nuclei (lead, lead-bismuth or other material). These neutrons can be directed to a subcritical reactor containing thorium, where the neutrons breed U-233 and promote the fission of it. There is therefore the possibility of sustaining a fission reaction which can readily be turned off, and used either for power generation or destruction of actinides resulting from the U/Pu fuel cycle. The use of thorium instead of uranium reduces the quantity of actinides that are produced. (See also information page on Accelerator-Driven Nuclear Energy.)

Developing a thorium-based fuel cycle
Despite the thorium fuel cycle having a number of attractive features, development has always run into difficulties.

The main attractive features are:

The possibility of utilising a very abundant resource which has hitherto been of so little interest that it has never been quantified properly.
The production of power with few long-lived transuranic elements in the waste.
Reduced radioactive wastes generally.
The problems include:

The high cost of fuel fabrication, due partly to the high radioactivity of U-233 chemically separated from the irradiated thorium fuel. Separated U-233 is always contaminated with traces of U-232 (69 year half-life but whose daughter products such as thallium-208 are strong gamma emitters with very short half-lives). Although this confers proliferation resistance to the fuel cycle by making U-233 hard to handle and easy to detect, it results in increased costs.
The similar problems in recycling thorium itself due to highly radioactive Th-228 (an alpha emitter with two-year half life) present.
Some concern over weapons proliferation risk of U-233 (if it could be separated on its own), although many designs such as the Radkowsky Thorium Reactor address this concern.
The technical problems (not yet satisfactorily solved) in reprocessing solid fuels. However, with some designs, in particular the molten salt reactor (MSR), these problems are likely to largely disappear.
Much development work is still required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available. In this respect, recent international moves to bring India into the ambit of international trade might result in the country ceasing to persist with the thorium cycle, as it now has ready access to traded uranium and conventional reactor designs.

Nevertheless, the thorium fuel cycle, with its potential for breeding fuel without the need for fast neutron reactors, holds considerable potential in the long-term. It is a significant factor in the long-term sustainability of nuclear energy.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Further Information

Notes

a. Neutron absorption by Th-232 produces Th-233, which has a half-life of about 22 minutes. This undergoes beta decay to form Pa-233 (half-life 27 days), most of which forms U-233 by further beta decay. Around 11% of the U-233 is converted by further neutron absorption to U-235, which is the fissile isotope of uranium used in conventional nuclear reactors. [Back]

b. For utilization of uranium in a typical light water reactor, see section on Material balance in the nuclear fuel cycle in the information page on The Nuclear Fuel Cycle. [Back]

c. Development of the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) by the South Africa's Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (Pty) Limited was curtailed in 2010 due to a lack of funding. [Back]

d. Thorium Power (now Lightbridge Corporation, http://www.ltbridge.com) was formed in 1992 to develop Radkowsky's nuclear fuel designs, which would not produce weapons suitable plutonium in nuclear waste. In April 2007, the company formed an alliance with Red Star nuclear design bureau in Russia to take forward the programme to demonstrate the technology in lead-test fuel assemblies in full-sized commercial reactors. In December 2008, Thorium Power became the first US company to sign an agreement with an Indian company (engineering firm Punj Lloyd) following the finalization of the US-India nuclear trade agreement. The company changed its name to Lightbridge Corporation in September 2009. [Back]

e. A normal VVER-1000 fuel assembly has 331 rods each 9 mm diameter forming a hexagonal assembly 235 mm wide. Here, the centre portion of each assembly is 155 mm across and holds the seed material consisting of metallic Pu-Zr alloy (Pu is about 10% of alloy, and isotopically over 90% Pu-239) as 108 twisted tricorn-section rods 12.75 mm across with Zr-1%Nb cladding. The sub-critical blanket consists of U-Th oxide fuel pellets (1:9 U:Th, the U enriched up to almost 20%) in 228 Zr-1%Nb cladding tubes 8.4 mm diameter – four layers around the centre portion. The blanket material achieves 100 GWd/t burn-up. Together as one fuel assembly the seed and blanket have the same geometry as a normal VVER-100 fuel assembly. [Back]

f. Spallation is the process where nucleons are ejected from a heavy nucleus being hit by a high energy particle. In this case, a high-enery proton beam directed at a heavy target expels a number of spallation particles, including neutrons. [Back]

References

1. Data taken from Uranium 2007: Resources, Production and Demand, Nuclear Energy Agency (June 2008), NEA#6345 (ISBN 9789264047662). The 2009 figures are largely unchanged. Australian data from Thorium, in Australian Atlas of Minerals Resources, Mines & Processing Centres, Geoscience Australia (see below under General sources) [Back]

2. Water Cooled Breeder Program Summary Report (LWBR Development Program) prepared by members of the LWBR staff, Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory (October 1987); G. L. Olson, R. K. McCardell and D. B. Illum, Fuel Summary Report: Shippingport Light Water Breeder Reactor - Rev. 2, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (September 2002). [Back]

3. A. Galperin, A. Radkowsky and M. Todosow, A Competitive Thorium Fuel Cycle for Pressurized Water Reactors of Current Technology, Proceedings of three International Atomic Energy Agency meetings held in Vienna in 1997, 1998 and 1999, IAEA TECDOC 1319: Thorium fuel utilization: Options and trends, IAEA-TECDOC-1319. [Back]

General sources
Thorium based fuel options for the generation of electricity: Developments in the 1990s, IAEA-TECDOC-1155, International Atomic Energy Agency, May 2000

Thorium, in Australian Atlas of Minerals Resources, Mines & Processing Centres (www.australianminesatlas.gov.au), Geoscience Australia (2009)

Taesin Chung, The role of thorium in nuclear energy, Uranium Industry Annual 1996, Energy Information Administration, DOE/EIA-0478(96) p.ix-xvii (April 1997)

M. Benedict, T H Pigford and H W Levi, Nuclear Chemical Engineering (2nd Ed.), Chapter 6: Thorium, , p.283-317, 1981, McGraw-Hill(ISBN: 0070045313)

Kazimi M.S. 2003, Thorium Fuel for Nuclear Energy, American Scientist (Sept-Oct 2003)

S. B. Degweker, P. Satyamurthy, P. K. Nema and P. Singh, Program for Development of Accelerator Driven Systems in India, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India

12th Indian Nuclear Society Annual Conference 2001 conference proceedings, vol 2 (lead paper)

Several papers and articles related to the Radkowsky thorium fuel concept are available on the Lightbridge (formerly Thorium Power) website (www.ltbridge.com)

Robert Hargraves and Ralph Moir, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, American Scientist, Vol. 98, No. 4, P. 304 (July-August 2010)

world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

[sandi66]

Written by Brian Westenhaus
Tuesday, 14 September 2010 16:44
Message :
Investors: Receive a Free copy of our latest research report: Investing in “Fracking” Stocks: The Top Growth Sector for Investors in 2011. Click here With some concept tests thorium used as a nuclear fuel could end energy as a problem issue and shift the economy into a new growth phase. All the conversation in the media, politics and the economy could be moved to building the next centuries energy production with thorium and the various ways to use the metal as a fission power source.

Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at the European Organization for Nuclear Research points out the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for. It’s an idea well worth much more attention. The math on thorium is impressive. Dr Rubbia says a metric ton of the silvery metal produces as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3,500,000 ton of coal. A handful would power a major city for a week.

Another thorium reactor opportunity is thorium consumes its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer, now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering, and closely watched Internet commentator and educator says, “It’s the Big One, once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilization on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels.” He’s right; thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product when they dig up rare earth metals. The U.S. and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall in the UK. Some beaches in India are loaded with thorium. Not so much mining is needed: all thorium is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7% from uranium as much of the uranium has already decayed.

U.S. scientists knew in the late 1940s that thorium was a high potential fuel, but weapons priorities pushed uranium and plutonium to the front. Yet by the early 1970s thorium research had produced a highly workable, safe and low cost reactor design that the U.S. put on the shelf. Uranium industry competition with thorium won the struggle for research and development funding.

Europe’s Organization for Nuclear Research took a run at funding in 1999-2000 when CERN went to the European Commission and they were rebuffed. The EU used European experts from France, as the French industry is the largest in Europe. Professor Egil Lillestol, a world authority on the thorium fuel-cycle at CERN says, “They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology.” It was the classic victory of vested interests over scientific progress.

Thorium offers some other important aspects, it does not require isotope separation, the process of separating the desired reactable forms of uranium and plutonium from the decayed ore, a big cost saving. Weapons made from thorium are impractical.

Meanwhile a great deal of thought and concept development has taken place. Dr. Rubia, who has a patent on a thorium fuel cycle has licensed to the Norwegian firm Aker Solutions, a part of the huge Aker Group. Aker is working on the patented design using a proton accelerator at its UK location.


Rubbia Fuel Cycle.

Victoria Ashley, the Aker UK project manager, said it could lead to a network of pint-sized 600MW reactors that are lodged underground, can supply small grids, and do not require a huge concrete safety dome. It will take £2bn to build the first one, and Aker needs £100mn for the next test phase. Add Aker to the list of mini reactors at a giant 600MW rating.


Aker Solutions ADTR Concept

So Aker is looking for joint venture deals with U.S., Russian, or Chinese firms. The Indians have their own projects – none yet built – dating from days when they switched to thorium because their weapons program prompted a uranium ban.

In the U.S. research pioneers are exploring a truly radical shift to a liquid fuel based on molten-fluoride salts, an idea once pursued by US physicist Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee in the 1960s. The original documents were recovered by Mr. Sorensen.

The matter today wallows in the U.S. administrations passive silence on research – a hint that loyalties are to the environmental pressure groups – even as thorium would solve those group’s primary objections and the entrenched interests. It’s eerily like the 1930s when researchers knew the Nazis were busily working on an atomic bomb, news that met simple disbelief. U.S. president Roosevelt needed more than a letter from Einstein, but a meeting shifted the minds such that Roosevelt started the Manhattan project.

No other on Earth energy source exists at the volumes that thorium offers. Not uranium, oil, gas, coal or other fuel can compare. The assorted reactor designs all offer a weapon free design, some could use the spent uranium fuel on hand now and extract its energy as well as destroy the uranium’s potential as a weapon or a pollutant, safety concerns are reduced to decades instead of centuries, and the construction costs and operating expenses with a cheap fuel are intensely motivating to power producers and ratepayers.

The issue isn’t about the science, thorium reactors have already ran successfully, its people who have to become informed and apply the pressure needed to overcome the special interests in the political arena where the regulatory barrier has the potential of thorium corralled and stopped. It’s your planet, economy and family – can we all stay uninformed, silent and bleeding our financial resources for the benefit of the special interests only because we don’t know? Nope – now you know.

By Brian Westenhaus

oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Thorium-A-Cheap-Clean-and-Safe-Alternative-to-Uranium.html

[sandi66]

NS Editorial: The Nuclear Case For Thorium

Thu, Mar 19 2009 8:45 AM

A Report on Thorium, the Newest of the Technology Metals, for 2009

- By Jack Lifton -

I do not wish to condemn nor glorify the world’s oldest profession, but I note here that said profession has created an enduring capitalist business model, which is succinctly stated as “Why give away something you can sell?” I was reminded of this adage when a colleague sent me the following link, www.bharatbook.com/Market-Research-Reports/Report-on-2009-World-Market-Forecasts-for-Imported-Thorium-Ores-and-Concentrates.html , for a report entitled” Report on 2009 World Market Forecasts for Imported Thorium Ores and Concentrates.”
Let me offer you the same information, and additional data, which I do not think the authors of the above report have, or have taken into account, for free.

The USGS has just released its commodity minerals summary for thorium for 2009. This can be found on the Internet at minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/thorium/mcs-2009-thori.pdf. A more detailed USGS discussion of thorium market fundamentals and end-uses can be found in the USGS’s “2007 Minerals Yearbook Thorium [Advance Release]” on the Internet at minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/thorium/myb1-2007-thori.pdf. Although this last article is dated 2007 it was released in late 2008 and is an analysis based on information gathered by the very conservative and through USGS throughout most of 2008.

My “take” on thorium in 2009 is that it is most likely going to be the last natural element to become a technology metal. Therefore I want to take this opportunity to expose and dispose of some myths about the potential supply of thorium and to bring you up to date on the potential for an explosive (excuse the pun) growth in demand for thorium.

The potential for thorium to be a breakout investment is based on its potential, and today more and more likely, use as a nuclear fuel component for civilian reactors used exclusively to produce electricity. There are three reasons why this will most likely come to pass.

1. Reactors using thorium in their fuel can be constructed so that they produce little or no products useful for explosive type-i.e., fission or fusion based, nuclear weapons,

2. Thorium reactors previously built and currently near operation, or in the design stage, produce far less radioactive waste material than the presently used uranium and/or plutonium based reactors, and

3. Thorium is more abundant in the earth’s crust by a factor of between 3 and 4 than uranium, and coincidentally is also found in recoverable-as a byproduct- grades and quantities in the United States, Canada, Australia, The Republic of South Africa, and The People’s Republic of China (i.e., the mainland). It has not yet been mined as a primary ore, more on this in a moment, but is rather always produced as a byproduct of either uranium or rare earth metals primary production.

Note the following statement from “Canadian Energy Research Institute - World Energy: The Past and Possible Futures — 2007”
“Nuclear became an important source of energy following the first oil price shock in 1973. The
main reasons for the rise of nuclear power are the low cost of fuel compared to
other primary energy sources, and abundant uranium resources located in politically stable
regions …. Total known recoverable uranium resources equal 4.7 million tonnes, half of which are
found in Australia, Kazakhstan, and Canada. Canada is currently the largest manufacturer of
uranium, producing about one-third of the world’s total.”

So, therefore, in summary, thorium reactors are non-proliferative, they produce less waste, and even though there is a lot more thorium than uranium in the earth’s crust the USGS and Canadian Energy Research Institute reports, which are current, clearly indicate that the minable resources and reserves of thorium are less than those of uranium.

Even so, it is now apparent, and cannot be overemphasized at this point that the largest minable resources and reserves of thorium are today, in order of size, in the United States, Australia, China and Canada. Just as with uranium resources and reserves it now turns out that the largest accessible supplies of thorium are in politically stable and reliable regions. In particular it turns out that just as Canada has the world’s largest working deposits of minable uranium it is possible to cast the United States in the same role for thorium if the political will can be found.

Why doesn’t everyone stop building uranium and/or plutonium based reactors and start building and only build, from now on, thorium fuel type reactors? Let’s list some facts and then analyze them to find out :


1. Economics of Uranium, Supply and Demand

a. Nations, such as France, Japan, The United Kingdom, and the United States that produce a significant proportion of their electricity using nuclear reactors have a very large investment in those reactors and a large supporting infrastructure of existing uranium supplies. The World's nuclear industry operates a total of 443 commercial nuclear generating units[1] with a total capacity of about 364.9 gigawatts. To put this in perspective if all of this nuclear generating capacity were in the USA it would provide just about 1/3 of our current yearly demand. As of December 31, 2007, there are 104 commercial nuclear generating units that are fully licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to operate in the United States. Of these 104 reactors, 69 are categorized a pressurized water reactors (PWRs) totaling 65,100 net megawatts (electric) and 35 units are boiling water reactors (BWR) totaling 32,300 net megawatts (electric). Therefore the USA obtains about 10% of its electricity demand from commercial nuclear generating units. The corresponding figure for France is 80% and for Japan 34%,

b. Nations, other than G-7 members, which are financially capable of building reactors, look upon the production of weapons grade uranium and plutonium as assets to insure the security of their political systems. Even if they sincerely do not plan to build nuclear weapons with the output of their reactors the fact that they could do so gives many of them “clout” in the political world far beyond what their GDP or population size can do, and

c. The mining of uranium is a long established industry for which incremental growth is possible and for which there is still active exploration. Most importantly no one is concerned that political instability could interrupt Canada’s output of uranium!

2. Economics of Thorium “demand”

a. There are no commercial thorium reactors in operation anywhere in the world, but

b. Thorium reactors were built at the very beginning of the “nuclear age,” for testing the concept of purely civilian reactors that did not have a military weapons use, because of the non-weaponizability of their products, and so there is an archive of engineering design and operational data for those reactors. The best known thorium reactors were built in the USA and the Soviet Union, but may also have been constructed elsewhere, such as in the UK,

c. No significant quantities of thorium have been purposefully mined or refined for at least 30-40 years, and there is at present, except perhaps in the People’s Republic of China, and most likely in India no government or privately sponsored exploration program for thorium,

d. On the positive side, the major western and Japanese commercial reactor builders, as well as the government controlled ones in China, all have openly announced that they have recently been looking at thorium fuel designs, and one, Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd, AECL, has said that it already has a program being designed and tested to retrofit its well known and widely used CANDU reactors for the utilization of thorium fuel,

e. Additionally, India has announced that it is constructing or reconstructing a reactor to run principally on in-house designed thorium fuel, and that this reactor will be in operation within a couple of years and is intended to be a prototype for a future family and mass produced series of such reactors to take advantage of what is claimed to be India’s large domestic resources of thorium,

f. Other nations have evinced interest in thorium fueled reactors and seem to have made investments in their development including Norway, Russia, Canada, China, and the United States, and

g. It is, unfortunately conceivable that the People’s Republic of China, which has lately made no secret of its interest in thorium fueled reactors, and has instructed its rare earth mines-today the sole producers of these metals-to hold thorium removed during separation and purifying of the rare earths for the State Nuclear Authority, may have it in mind to conserve uranium for military purposes by switching planned civilian nuclear electric generating capacity to thorium fueled reactors. This may well also be the plan of the government of India, the world’s most vociferous proponent of thorium fueled reactors.

3. The supply of thorium

a. Thorium has always been available as a byproduct of the mining of uranium and of the rare earths, but it has traditionally been considered either a liability or a low value material,

b. Thorium reports and commentaries without fail or exception state that thorium is more common than uranium, but usually fail to emphasize that this is a statement of the relative abundances of both in the earth’s crust. It is in no way a statement of the relative distribution of thorium versus that of uranium in known minable deposits as discussed above and below,

c. There is actually no way to verify the thorium reserves that are contained in the world’s existing rare earth mines, because to the best of our knowledge such measurements have simply not been made, and, if they have, have certainly not been made public by the world’s largest and most actively mined rare earth deposits in the Bayanobo region of Inner Mongolia in the PRC. There are today no significant rare earth mining operations anywhere outside of the Bayanobo region. The largest previous single source mine for rare earths in Mountain Pass, California, stated to a magazine writer last month that it had no thorium production associated with its hoped for reopening of operations. The two large Australian rare earth startups, Lynas and Arafura, also do not comment on any planned thorium production, and, in any case, are both in turmoil due to the current economic crisis. Lynas has suspended operations and Arafura is not only not operating but is also in the process of selling a large stake to a Chinese operator. It is not commonly known whether India, which always claims to have significantly more thorium than uranium, in fact produces any thorium from its deposits of monazite “sands” which do contain low levels of “disseminated” thorium but are principally an ore of the rare earths of which India has very limited production. Finally Russia produces some rare earths and thus could produce some limited amount of thorium but it is not known if it does.

d. Uranium miners even in Canada have not announced any plans to produce thorium nor do any of them show thorium quantity produced in their accounts. The same is true for Australian producers and Kazakh thorium statistics do not exist.

e. The very best opportunity today to produce thorium in quantity from a high grade deposit would be in the United States in the Lemhi Pass region of Idaho and Montana. The claims in that region are owned today by Thorium Energy, inc., a privately held company, which purchased and extended the claims staked beginning fifty years ago by a group of utilities and engineering companies starting with Idaho Power. Those companies were looking for uranium ( and thorium ) for the purpose of becoming self sufficient and vertically integrated as nuclear power producers. But they were premature. The age of thorium was not yet ready to be born. Idaho Power and its successors noted also that the claims were rich in rare earths, but just as with thorium the birth of the age of those technology metals was still in the future.

f. Today, Thorium Energy, Inc., is in a unique position. It may be able to open the first primary thorium mine in American history with a substantial rare earths byproduct stream, if the demand is there, or it can develop a primary rare earth mining operation in the Lemhi Pass with a substantial thorium output as a byproduct. Economics and politics will determine which of the two paths is followed or if neither path is taken.

4. The conclusion at this point in time of this first Thorium Report for 2009 is that a thorium fueled civilian use only nuclear electric generating industry is looming on the economic and political horizon. At this moment no one knows how much thorium it is possible to produce as an adjunct to rare earth or uranium mining, but we do know that one of the largest deposits of high grade thorium and rare earths in the world is located in the Lemhi Pass region of Idaho and Montana. This deposit is accessible and minable. America could become completely self sufficient in non-proliferative nuclear electric power production and reduce its carbon footprint without sacrificing its standard of living or quality of life. Let’s see of our politicians have the will and leadership skills to make this happen. Our future depends on it.


Jack Lifton

Jack has spoken all over the world on the market fundamentals and end-uses of those minor metals that he classifies as technology metals and that he believes are truly precious to the global economy. He has been, and is, a prolific writer. His web site, now under construction, www.jacklifton.com, will shortly provide a wealth of data and analyses on minor metals and list the services that Jack offers to institutional investors.

nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2009/03/19/ns-editorial-the-nuclear-case-for-thorium.aspx

[sandi66]

9 February 2010

Thorium is the next geneneration nuclear fuel

Source: Hard Assets Investor
In his most recent budget, President Obama called for increased support for nuclear energy, and why not? Nuclear power offers a golden combination: the ability to come online in large enough chunks to keep up with demand, with minimal environmental impact. It's no wonder, then, that new players are coming into the market every day, bringing with them new ideas for reactor designs, manufacturing processes – even nuclear fuel.

That's because uranium, plagued by continual supply shortages and storage concerns, is quickly becoming too much of a headache for power and technology companies to navigate. Instead, next-gen nuclear has its eye on a new fuel source: thorium.

Thorium: the other radioactive metal
Thorium is a silvery-white, radioactive metal whose stability and brilliance at high temperatures make it ideal for use in heat-resistant ceramics, welding electrodes and even light bulb filaments. The metal is found in trace amounts almost everywhere; with an abundance in the Earth's crust of about 12 parts per million, thorium is several times more prevalent in the soil than its more popular cousin, uranium.

According to the United States Geological Survey, thorium deposits exist in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Greenland (Denmark), India, South Africa and the United States. In the U.S., two private companies hold major thorium claims: privately held Thorium Energy, which holds the claim to the Lemhi Pass in Idaho and Montana; and Wings Iron Ore, which holds Pea Ridge in Missouri, a mine whose ores and tailings are rich in thorium and other rare earth metals.

As recently as 2007, total thorium usage for the U.S. was a mere 3.5 metric tons, according to the USGS; consumption in 2008 and 2009 was so low, the numbers are actually negative. If thorium-based nuclear power takes off, though, it'll be a different story: a single gigawatt (GW) reactor is estimated to use a ton of thorium per year.

Thorium is mostly found in monazite, a byproduct of titanium and zirconium processing which is itself mined for its rare earth elements (REE). But since thorium isn't in great demand right now, the metal is often tossed out with the mine tailings. Indeed, it appears a major source of the thorium the U.S. has imported over the years was the older stocks left over from the processing of rare earth elements by Rhodia Electronics and Catalysis, Inc. in France.

This belies the fact that the fate of thorium supply is deeply tied to the greater rare earth element supply chain – one that has become increasingly dominated by the Chinese.

China now produces 97 percent of the world's REE, and according to some analysts, the country may soon require all of it for domestic use. Some Western sources are available, such as Canadian E&P junior Avalon Rare Metals (TSX: AVL) and explorer Quest Uranium (TSX: QUC), but as we've covered before, the supply of REE could likely become a major point of contention in years to come.

Playing thorium
Using thorium in a nuclear reactor offers several advantages. For starters, a thorium-based reactor cannot start by itself, as the metal must first be bombarded with neutrons to transform into uranium-233, which is a fissionable material. This means existing nuclear waste can be used in the start-up function and burned up in the process. Plus, the thorium-uranium 233 cycle does not create higher-order actinides, like plutonium, that can be reappropriated into nuclear weapons; hence, thorium-based reactors would not contribute to nuclear proliferation. And best of all, the waste from thorium reactors is proportionately much less than that from uranium reactors and decays to background radiation levels within a few hundred years, as opposed to thousands of years for uranium reactor byproducts.

But thorium doesn't always behave like uranium, so using it in a nuclear reactor requires different strategies. One public company taking the incremental approach is Lightbridge Corp. (Nasdaq CM: LTBR), formerly Thorium Power Inc. Lightbridge has developed a thorium-uranium fuel rod that is a near-direct replacement for the fuel in existing uranium-based reactors. Its advantages include reductions in volume, weight, and, most significantly, radio toxicity of used fuel – not to mention it contains the risk of weapons proliferation.

But should thorium replace uranium as the nuclear fuel of choice, eventually reactors must be designed specifically with thorium in mind. Privately owned DBI/Century Fuels Inc. has designed a gas-cooled reactor to be produced in modules of 25 to 50 MW electrical. While the field seems small now, look out for other companies to announce plans for different designs soon.

Game changers?
Although thorium technology offers substantial advantages, the legacy uranium technology has become deeply entrenched over the course of six decades with corporations and bureaucracies devoted to its advancement. There are, however, a potent set of potential game changers, as leaders in the U.S. Congress and the Department of Defense now recognize it is not in its national interests to have strategic materials like nuclear fuels and REE under the control of foreign governments.

For example, one Congressional bill, H.R. 1534, would direct the Department of Defense to investigate the possible use of thorium in naval reactors. Another, Senate Bill S.3680, would amend the 1954 Atomic Energy Act to provide for thorium nuclear fuel development. In fact, when Senator Orrin Hatch introduced the bill, he said, "Our nation has focused mostly on mixed oxide nuclear fuel cycles, and our regulatory structure reflects that. With the growing interest in thorium nuclear power ... it's time we made sure our government has a regulatory infrastructure in place to accommodate this new generation of nuclear power."

Should one of these bills become law, the prospects for thorium will suddenly become much brighter. Until then, however, nuclear-minded investors would be wise to keep an eye on thorium as uranium's potential replacement.

metalsplace.com/news/articles/32884/thorium-is-the-next-geneneration-nuclear-fuel/

[sandi66]

Congressman Sestak's Amendments in National Defense Authorization Act Pass House

Published: May 30, 2010

Seven measures address key issues including healthcare and military's readiness to confront future challenges
Washington, D.C. - To provide our service members and their families the benefits they deserve, and to ensure our military is equipped and in a proper state of readiness to deal with 21st century challenges, Congressman Joe Sestak (PA - 07) supported the Fiscal Year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the House by a 229-186 margin.

In total, HR 5136 authorizes $726 billion in budget authority for the Department of Defense (DoD) and the national security programs of the Department of Energy. The Congressman, a member of the House Armed Serves Committee, successfully submitted seven amendments to deal with specific areas in which the military must improve to keep our nation safe and offer the men and women who wear the cloth of this Nation the care they deserve.

Specifically, Congressman Sestak's amendments focus on transforming the military to one that is more "knowledge-intensive" in an era when dominance of cyberspace is critical; enhancing the efficiency of military equipment; providing servicemembers with superior health and education benefits; and ensuring fair restitution for American prisoners of war and their families.

Congressman Sestak also voted for the Murphy Amendment, which sets in place a framework to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The language would repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell" after: (1) receipt of the recommendations of the Pentagon's Comprehensive Review Working Group on how to implement a repeal (due December 1, 2010) and (2) a certification by the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and President that repeal is first, consistent with military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion & recruiting, and second, that the DoD has prepared the necessary policies and regulations to implement its repeal.

"The annual consideration of this act provides an important opportunity, as a member of this committee, to make sure our military will have the resources it needs to keep our country safe and that our troops and their families are taken care of," said Congressman Sestak. "Inaction is not an option when it comes to ensuring our service members with PTSD get the best possible treatment, nor when considering ways in which our military can become more efficient and transform to best meet future threats to our security. Each of my amendments won support of the committee because they address specific areas in which we know we can do better and in which our troops deserve better."

"'Don't ask, Don't tell' is discriminatory and detrimental to national security," said the Congressman, who has been a co-sponsor of legislation to repeal the policy in the current and previous Congresses. "It was a flawed compromise that should never have been enacted, and I continue to regret every instance of its enforcement that I witnessed as a military officer. I can remember several instances from my 31-year tenure in the Navy when outstanding servicemen, with all the qualities I could ever ask for as a commanding officer, approached me about these issues. I did not want to lose any of these sailors. My only thought was that the nation needed their skills, talent, and patriotism."

The Congressman's amendments in the bill include the following:

Combat Casualty Research

To address another area in which care of our service members requires improvement, this provision stipulates that the Secretary of Defense may establish a National Casualty Care Research Center at the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (MRMC). The Center will build upon the MRMC's Combat Casualty Care Research Program which does not sufficiently integrate civilian research and is not a national body that centralizes combat casualty and trauma care research programs nationwide. The National Casualty Care Research Center will act as both a national center for all combat casualty care research and a center for civilian/military collaboration into combat casualty care.

Visiting NIH Senior Neuroscience Fellowship

The amendment requires the Secretary of Defense to establish the Visiting NIH Senior Neuroscience Fellowship Program at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. The Program is intended to provide critical neuroscience expertise and support to both of these organizations through implementation of visiting fellowships for NIH scientists with appropriate research expertise as well as extramural scientific review experience. It will serve as an important part of an effort to promote sponsorship of state-of-the-art neuroscience research.

DARPA's current neuroscience program is innovative, but small, and does not integrate the full range of civilian neuroscience research that is relevant to DARPA's mission. The Center is a newly formed organization with a collaborative mission which is well suited to the Program.

Joint Force Funding for Cyberspace

To understand the scope and challenges inherent in acquiring transformational military capabilities in cyberspace, this amendment would commission two Department of Defense studies to analyze alternative models and recommend changes from the present Service-based approach for acquisition and funding of inter-connected cyberspace systems. The Congressman has maintained that the greatest improvement in warfare capability would be to effect a transformational change that ensures our military always has the "knowledge" to act before his adversary as a result of cyberspace dominance.

In FY 2008, Congress commissioned a study to further define and enhance the roles and missions of each branch of the military. However, in the area of network-centric warfare (cyberspace), it is the Joint forces which collectively possess the potential to significantly transform and improve the nation's future war-fighting capability. When possible, procurement by the Joint forces should be favored because it is in the best position to address cyber security needs with a smoother acquisitions process. The ultimate end state of such a transformation in cyberspace would be something not yet in place: assured common knowledge across the services, enabling U.S. deployed forces to act more swiftly and decisively than any adversary.

Thorium Study for Energy Efficiency

Congressman Sestak submitted language directing a study on the use of thorium-liquid fueled nuclear reactors for naval power, an important assessment of an energy source that has shown great potential to be more efficient for our military. As a result, the House Armed Services Committee included funding in the bill for research and development of a nuclear-powered destroyer reactor utilizing thorium energy.

While our nuclear Navy has thrived with a continuing record of zero reactor accidents, thorium may be more efficient than uranium as a fuel source. Massive fuel rods would not have to be utilized, and it produces only 1/2000th the waste of uranium. In domestic applications, waste can even be stored on-site, eliminating the necessity of facilities such as Yucca Mountain. Large deposits of thorium can be mined domestically in States such as Idaho, and we already have 160,000 tons in reserve.

Under a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, any new major combatant vessels for the U.S. strike force is required to be constructed with an integrated nuclear power system unless the Secretary of Defense submits a notification to Congress that the inclusion of an integrated nuclear power system in a given class of ship is not in the national interest. While the Congressman is not yet convinced that nuclear power for Naval ships is always cost-beneficial in the long term, if there are nuclear-powered vessels that continue to be built under Congressional mandate, then all options for the fuel source are worthy of consideration.

Claims of American Prisoners of War (POWs)

Congressman Sestak continued his ongoing fight to ensure that American soldiers and citizens held and tortured in Iraq during the first Gulf War are adequately compensated. He successfully submitted an amendment that expresses the sense of Congress that their claims should be resolved.

In a 2003 suit brought by 17 American POWs and 37 of their family members, Iraq, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Intelligence Service were found liable for $653 million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages. President Bush, however, vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act in 2007 to prevent the court-approved payment of compensation from Iraq for the American POWs and a group of American citizens who were held as human shields during that conflict.

In 2008, the House passed The Justice for Victims of Torture and Terrorism Act, introduced by Congressman Sestak and Congressman Bruce Braley of Iowa, which would have given the Iraqi government 90 days to provide fair restitution to the victims or the waiver of immunity for the Iraqi government, would be repealed. The bill served the interests of the reconstruction of Iraq by forgiving as much as two-thirds of the cost of compensatory judgments against Iraq as well as punitive damages. However, the Senate did not consider the bill. This amendment cites the damages called for in the bill and urges resolution of these claims in the ongoing negotiations between the State Department and Government of Iraq.

Expanding Eligibility for Admission to the Community College of the Air Force

Congressman Sestak also successfully submitted an amendment which would require the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of the Air Force, to conduct a study on the cost and feasibility of expanding access to the Community College of the Air Force to enlisted members of all the services. Currently, only Air Force servicemen and servicemen of other branches who are teaching within the institution are eligible for admission.

The Air Force Community College is the only institution of its kind. It permits students to transition military training into academic credit and receive associates degrees. It is a federally-chartered degree-granting institution that serves the United States Air Force's enlisted total force, partnering with over 90 affiliated Air Force schools, 82 Education Service Offices located worldwide, and more than 1,500 civilian academic institutions to serve more than 320,000 active, guard, and reserve enlisted personnel, making CCAF the world's largest community college system.

Unlike most other trade schools, the Community College of the Air Force is regionally accredited, meaning its credits are generally honored by four-year institutions. Expanding eligibility to all the services would allow more of our American heroes to transition their military training into academic credit and successfully adjust to civilian life upon departure for the armed services.

Flight Simulator Study

Congressman Sestak also successfully submitted an amendment which instructs the Secretary of Defense to conduct a study on the effectiveness of simulated tactical flight training in a sustained g environment. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the potential military applications of "flyable" centrifuge motion platform simulators, which produce the sustained g-forces that pilots would experience while flying an actual aircraft.

Specifically, the study would evaluate the:


•Training effectiveness;

•Cost reductions;

•Safety;

•Research benefits;

•Carbon emissions reduction; and

•Lifecycle savings of training aircraft
that would be provided by the use of these simulators.
Other Details of HR 5136
Strengthening Military Forces

•Provides $5.1 billion to fund two Virginia-class submarines.

•Authorizes $3.3 billion for 30 F-18 strike fighters and 12 EA-18 expeditionary electronic warfare aircraft.

•Authorizes $1.5 billion to fully fund two Littoral Combat Ships and related efforts in R&D and mission module procurement.

•Authorizes $485 million for the F-35 alternate engine, a critical insurance policy for our national security.

•Authorizes $3.4 billion to fully fund Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles.

•Authorizes $1 billion for 83 new Stryker vehicles, vehicle upgrades, and R&D.

•Authorizes $3.5 billion for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO).

Strengthening Counterterrorism Efforts and Force Protection


•Establishes a $500 million DOD Rapid Innovation Program to help DOD quickly transition innovative, life-saving equipment from small businesses and other innovative firms into the hands of our men and women in combat.

•Authorizes $87.8 million for the Combating Terrorism Technical Support office, including an additional $2.5 million to study how to effectively disseminate extremist messages and maligned rhetoric used by terrorists on the Internet for recruitment and fundraising.

•Authorizes $159.3 billion for FY11 overseas contingency operations.

•Authorizes $2.6 billion for Homeland Defense and counter proliferation activities, including $1 billion for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and $1.6 billion for the Chemical Biological Defense Program.

•Fully funds the $9.8 billion budget request for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), with an additional $301.5 million for unfunded SOCOM requirements, including tactical vehicles, and special operations technology, to expand and extend authorities to support counterterrorism.

•Fully funds the $20 million budget request for two cyber security new start programs.

•Authorizes $26.5 million to fund counter-ideology initiatives, including social science research.

•Expands "1208 funding" for forces who support or facilitate the military operations of U.S. Special Operations Forces, and authorizes up to $50 million for assistance to these critical partners.

•Expands "1206 funding" authority to build the capacity of foreign military forces to participate in military and stability operations to support efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $75 million to build the capacity of counterterrorism forces of the Yemeni Ministry of the Interior.

•Provides $1.6 billion for Coalition Support Fund (CSF) reimbursements to nations providing support in Iraq and Afghanistan, and expands CSF to the broader counterterrorism and counterinsurgency mission in Pakistan to assist in the fight against al Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban.

•Extends DOD's Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund through FY11.

•Provides $100 million to implement the initial recommendations of the Fort Hood Follow-On Review and requires DOD to perform an additional, more comprehensive review of force protection policies.

•Provides $200 million to address urgent force protection needs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

•Prohibits the release of Guantanamo detainees into the U.S. and places limitations on transfers to foreign countries.
Strengthening Missile Defense and Nonproliferation

•Authorizes $10.3 billion, $361.6 million above the budget request, for ballistic missile defense (BMD), including $190.8 for modifications to the PAC-3 Patriot missile program.

•Authorizes $7 billion for the NNSA Weapons Activities account, a $624 million increase from last year, to support stockpile stewardship and management and reverse the dangerous decline of the last decade.

•Authorizes $9.7 billion for unclassified National Security Space programs, including $40 million for additional ORS satellites to meet commanders' urgent needs.

•Authorizes $5.6 billion for the Department of Energy's Environmental Cleanup programs.

•Authorizes $2.7 billion for DOE nonproliferation programs such as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which includes funding for the President's four-year plan to secure vulnerable nuclear materials.

•Fully funds the budget request of $522.5 million for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.
Strengthening Support for Service Members and Their Families

•Provides a 1.9% pay raise to troops.

•Expands TRICARE health coverage to include adult dependent children up to age 26.

•Increases family separation allowance for troops who are deployed away from their families.

•Increases hostile fire and imminent danger pay for the first time since 2004.

•Expands college loan repayment benefits.

•Includes the most comprehensive legislative package to ever address sexual assault in the military, including 28 provisions to implement into law many of the recommendations of the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault.

•Establishes a pilot program to offer an alternative career path to military officers, providing a broader range of experiences over a longer career.

•Establishes a pilot program to help military spouses take advantage of their personal skill sets to identify and obtain desirable and portable careers.

•Authorizes an additional special one-time payment to seriously wounded service members to pay for the relocation costs of their caregivers.
Strengthening Readiness

•Provides $1.2 billion with broad authorities for projects in Afghanistan to allow our commanders on the ground to immediately respond to military construction needs in theater.

•Authorizes $13.6 billion for the training of all active duty and reserve forces to increase readiness as troops experience greater dwell time following the Iraq drawdown.

•Authorizes $345 million to fully fund the first increment of construction funds to modernize DOD schools.

•Authorizes $9.7 billion to fully fund day-to-day maintenance requirements of DOD facilities.

•Provides a total of $7.2 billion for the National Guard and Reserve, including $700 million above the budget request.

Born and raised in Delaware County, former 3-star Admiral Joe Sestak served in the Navy for 31 years and now serves as the Representative from the 7th District of Pennsylvania. He led a series of operational commands at sea, including Commander of an aircraft carrier battle group of 30 U.S. and allied ships with over 15,000 sailors and 100 aircraft that conducted operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. After 9/11, Joe was the first Director of "Deep Blue," the Navy's anti-terrorism unit that established strategic and operations policies for the "Global War on Terrorism." He served as President Clinton's Director for Defense Policy at the National Security Council in the White House, and holds a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. According to the office of the House Historian, Joe is the highest-ranking former military officer ever elected to the Congress.

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