Skip to main content
Peter Zeihan Geopolitical Strategist
Share
Commentary

Can thorium solve the nuclear problem?

Peter Zeihan Geopolitical Strategist
Share

Many countries consider thorium a viable and attractive option for generating power and meeting their growing energy needs. Thorium is more abundant in nature than uranium and China has already completed its first experimental thorium-based nuclear reactor. But a substantial number of global nuclear reactors rely on uranium, and transitioning to thorium would require considerable research and development investment.

Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan explains how uranium-based nuclear power works and sheds light on why thorium, despite being championed by many nations, may not be the ideal substitute.

Excerpted from Peter’s Nov. 27 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:

Thorium is a potential substitute for uranium-based nuclear power, but will it solve our nuclear problems? If thorium could help with the proliferation of plutonium and make it harder to create weapons on the backend, adoption of more nuclear power might be easier….but thorium isn’t our knight in shining armor.

Here’s the grossly over-simplified uranium nuclear process: you take the usable uranium and separate it from the other isotopes, then convert it into something like a fuel rod, then it’s placed in a reactor which generates heat which spins a turbine. (Like I said, grossly over-simplified) Once that’s done, one of the waste materials is called plutonium.

The process with thorium is a bit more involved and requires different infrastructure, but you still end up with plutonium. Sure, it’s marginally less of the bomb-making stuff and in a bit more complex compound mix, but there’s STILL plutonium.

While this is an interesting tech that should be explored by countries with a bunch of thorium (like India), this doesn’t solve our proliferation issue. Plus, there’s still an entire set of other problems that need to be considered, such as disposal and storage.

Barring the development of fundamentally new tech, nuclear power might be losing its place in the U.S. energy mix. As a result, growth in electricity production will be seriously hampered even if all this new Greentech works perfectly.

Everybody, Peter zeihan here coming to you with the most recent in our asked heater series. Today the question is about thorium power. Now, there’s uranium-based nuclear power, thorium is a potential substitute. It’s a different element, a different chemical process. And according to its promoters, thorium is better because it is more difficult to turn into nuclear weapons on the back end. So if you can remove a lot of the proliferation concerns of a uranium power cycle, then maybe we can get rid of some of the obstacles to adopting nuclear power on a broader scale. The short version is probably not. But to understand that you have to understand how uranium works. So
when you mine uranium, you get something that is basically or we’re a very small percentage of it is usable Uranium decays over time over decades, over centuries over millennia, and you only get a few tenths of a percent of it, that is actually the stuff that you need. So what you have to do is you have to mill it to get rid of all the stuff you don’t need at all.
And you’re left with raw uranium in a form that we call yellowcake, which is a powder. And then you complex that in a compound called uranium hexafluoride, which is solid at room temperature. So you then heat it up a lot, and throw it into a gas centrifuge, where you spin out the different isotopes. When nuclear material degrades, half life, all that good stuff, it comes up with different atomic weights. And by putting it into a gas chamber and centrifuging that down, you can increase the cut of the part that is actually fissile, that you can use to achieve an atomic reaction. And in the case of a civilian power system, you’re after something between three and a half and 5%. Roughly, everyone has their own preferred mix, but that’s usually the range. Now once you have that kind of enriched fuel, you then compound it into a structure like a fuel rod and then that goes into nuclear power reactor where it goes through fission, the fission generates heat, the heat dries turbans, the turbines generate the electricity, that’s so grossly oversimplify. That’s basically how it works. Okay. On the back side, when you have a spent fuel rod, what has happened is that the uranium that is the physical component has changed. And now its waste material is plutonium. And people can take the plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods, and make plutonium based nuclear weapons. Now, if you’re going to do something with thorium, the problem is, is that it doesn’t make it too much better, plutonium is still the byproduct. And while you don’t generate as much plutonium from the use of thorium in your nuclear reactor, as you do from uranium, you still get some. In addition, you need a different kind of reactor, the fuel rod fabrication system is different. The purification system is different. The nuclear power reactor different systems different. So in exchange for doing a completely new fuel cycle in a completely new power cycle, you’re only getting like a quarter less plutonium. Now yes, it’s in a slightly more complicated chemical mix does require a little bit different equipment a little bit more skill in order to extract a thorium base plutonium byproduct. But the people who are making nuclear weapons aren’t doing it for economic reasons. And if you have a standard one gigawatt uranium based nuclear power system, you’re going to generate enough waste plutonium every year to make about six to 12. Crude plutonium devices.
Do this with thorium, you might only have enough for four to 10. It’s a marginal difference, honestly. So it’s an interesting technology. And for countries like India who have a lot more thorium than they do uranium, it’s probably worth exploring just for power sake, but it’s not going to solve anything on a nonproliferation issue. Neither
is it a silver bullet that will solve the nuclear industry’s problems, the big issues you have with medical industry in addition to proliferation, or you’ve got the sprint waste, you have to do something with now, in a uranium based fuel cycle, you can recycle those rods, but doing so extracts the plutonium and so now you’ve got plutonium sitting around in probably civilians hands, which is one of the reasons why in the United States. We for the most part, don’t reprocess it,
during the Cold War kind of work, because the military could take that plutonium away. But now, the military has been slimming down its nuclear arsenal for decades. Demand just isn’t there. There is no other use for plutonium really, it simply is not in the volume that it produces the stuff
and so you’re left with a waste disposition issue. Now other countries have addressed this if that’s the right word, by having some sort of government facility where most of the stuff is goes and is interred or is mixed with glass or is buried or whatever. None of these things really

More from Peter Zeihan

Latest Commentary

We know it is important to hear from a diverse range of observers on the complex topics we face and believe our commentary partners will help you reach your own conclusions.

The commentaries published in this section are solely those of the contributors and do not reflect the views of Straight Arrow News.


Latest Opinions

In addition to the facts, we believe it’s vital to hear perspectives from all sides of the political spectrum. We hope these different voices will help you reach your own conclusions.

The opinions published in this section are solely those of the contributors and do not reflect the views of Straight Arrow News.

Weekly Voices

Left Opinion Right Opinion
Wednesday
Left Opinion Right Opinion
Thursday
Left Opinion Right Opinion
Friday
Left Opinion Right Opinion