India unveils 'world's safest nuclear reactor'


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August 25, 2005 14:24 IST

India unveiled before the international commuity Thursday its revolutionary design of 'A Thorium Breeder Reactor' that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.'

Designed by scientists of the Mumbai-based Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the ATBR is claimed to be far more economical and safer than any power reactor in the world.

Most significantly for India, ATBR does not require natural or enriched uranium which the country is finding difficult to import. It uses thorium -- which India has in plenty -- and only requires plutonium as 'seed' to ignite the reactor core initially.

Eventually, the ATBR can run entirely with thorium and fissile uranium-233 bred inside the reactor (or obtained externally by converting fertile thorium into fissile Uranium-233 by neutron bombardment).

BARC scientists V Jagannathan and Usha Pal revealed the ATBR design in their paper presented at the week-long 'international conference on emerging nuclear energy systems' in Brussels. The design has been in the making for over seven years.

According to the scientists, the ATBR while annually consuming 880 kg of plutonium for energy production from 'seed' rods, converts 1,100 kg of thorium into fissionable uranium-233. This diffrential gain in fissile formation makes ATBR a kind of thorium breeder.

The uniqueness of the ATBR design is that there is almost a perfect 'balance' between fissile depletion and production that allows in-bred U-233 to take part in energy generation thereby extending the core life to two years.

This does not happen in the present day power reactors because fissile depletion takes place much faster than production of new fissile ones.

BARC scientists say that "the ATBR with plutonium feed can be regarded as plutonium incinerator and it produces the intrinsically proliferation resistant U-233 for sustenance of the future reactor programme."

They say that long fuel cycle length of two years with no external absorber management or control manoeuvres "does not exist in any operating reactor."

The ATBR annually requires 2.2 tonnes of plutonium as 'seed'. Althouth India has facilities to recover plutonium by reprocessing spent fuel, it requires plutonium for its Fast Breeder Reactor programme as well. Nuclear analysts say that it may be possible for India to obtain plutonium from friendly countries wanting to dismantle their weapons or dispose of their stockpiled plutonium.

Source

India to build prototype thorium reactor

http://www.bellona.no/en/international/rus...tion/31261.html

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After "two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres." you end up with a whole bunch of mega-toxic radioactive crap, just like all the other

nuclear reactors all around the world.

Not that I'm against nuclear energy. I like my aircon on full blast, and oil costs a fortune these days.

I just wish there were better ways to deal with the waste than to bury them with a warning sticker on the canister so that future civilizations don't crack them open.

Are they already building this? Both US and Japan have new designs for reactors that is theoretically supposed to do wonders, but in reality have turned out harder to build than expected.

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After "two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres." you end up with a whole bunch of mega-toxic radioactive crap, just like all the other 

nuclear reactors all around the world.

Not that I'm against nuclear energy.  I like my aircon on full blast, and oil costs a fortune these days.

I just wish there were better ways to deal with the waste than to bury them with a warning sticker on the canister so that future civilizations don't crack them open.

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Nothing's perfect mate.

I personally think nuclear power will be the only way in the future as the ressources are abundant unlike Petrol which is really really ridiculious. For crying out loud Diesel costs over $1/L here...

Regarding nuclear wastes, I say send them to Venus or some hot planet. Let it burn!

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Nothing's perfect mate.

I personally think nuclear power will be the only way in the future as the ressources are abundant unlike Petrol which is really really ridiculious. For crying out loud Diesel costs over $1/L here...

Regarding nuclear wastes, I say send them to Venus or some hot planet. Let it burn!

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You know? that is actually not a bad idea, the cost for sending it to venus will be a lot, because lots of craft will have to be flown daily, which will prollay raise the cost.

But here is the deal;

a) cost will be high, due to craft sent to venus all the time

b) what wil be the ramifications of dumping nuclear waste in the Venusian atmoshpere? :o ooooh, scarry?

c) or we can go with that idea, and jsut say ****it and be glad that it is no longer on earth, however the bad side to that is it just might comeback to bite us on the behind becasue we don't know the effects of nuclear waste on that atmosphere, karma is a SOB :pinch:

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Ok then let's drill a hole and send all the nuclear waste towards the Earth's core where its pretty damn hot.

The nuclear wastes will get pwnt through the hot magma.

The melting point of Uranium is 1132.2 ?C. Lava or Hot Magma have temps that can go up to 1200 ?C.

Isn't it more dangerous to pile em up instead of burning it in a source so hot that not much can survive? Seriously we can't just stick them beneath us forever.

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