Department of Energy Report to US Congress on Thorium Cites Nextbigfuture

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An 83 page 2023, report to the US Congress by the Department of Energy has three citations to articles by Nextbigfuture.com

Alternate Fuels: Thorium and Uranium-233, Report to Congress March 2023

This report describes the potential use of thorium fuel and uranium-233 (U-233) in future Generation IV reactor designs and in current light water reactors. Various thorium fuel cycle options using fertile thorium along with fissile uranium fuel could serve to increase fuel burnup, extend fuel resources, reduce the need for uranium enrichment facilities and uranium mining, and significantly lower spent fuel volume and waste radiotoxicity over time. This report describes the potential benefits, disadvantages, and economics of using thorium and U-233 to fuel nuclear reactors as well as the use of thorium for non-nuclear applications.

Thorium fuel may be useful for future Generation IV reactor designs, including advanced MSRs that would use natural and/or depleted uranium with its fissile U-235 content to “denature” fertile thorium fuel that would produce fissile U-233 as Th-232 is irradiated over the core lifetime. Mixed thorium and uranium fuel assemblies could be used in current LWRs or advanced LWRs in heterogeneous (i.e., seed-and-blanket LWR designs) core loading strategies that would be able to breed or burn fissile U-233. Thorium could be used in sodium fast reactor.

Wang, Brian, “Thorium Power Canada is in advanced talks with Chile and Indonesia for 10 MW and 25 MW solid thorium fueled reactors,” Next Big Future, July 2013. Available at:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2013/07/thorium-power-canada-is-in-advanced.html

P3Tek, Indonesia Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resource, “ P3Tek Recommends Thorcon Molten Salt Nuclear
Reactor for Indonesia.” Available at: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/09/p3tek-recommends-thorconmolten-salt-nuclear-reactor-for-indonesia.html

Wang, Brian, “China spending $3.3 billion on molten salt nuclear reactors for faster aircraft carriers and in flying drones,” Next Big Future, December 2017. Available at: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/12/chinaspending-us3-3-billion-on-molten-salt-nuclear-reactors-for-faster-aircraft-carriers-and-in-flying-drones.html

Other Notable Citations

There was a US marines study of future urban warfare scenarios that cited Nextbigfuture.com.

In 2023, Elon Musk tweeted out a reference to Nextbigfuture.com

5 thoughts on “Department of Energy Report to US Congress on Thorium Cites Nextbigfuture”

  1. I think they should make subways like interstate highways. There would be grid of east west lines. Each line on the grid would have two tunnels for safety. The cars would be rectangles in a circular tunnel. So a small walkway could be provided on the sides of the tunnel to evacuate in case of car malfunction. If one line stops, then connecting tunnels to the one next to it could be used to relocate passengers. The stations would be on an off-ramp, like highways, not in the middle of the line. So the cars to stop at any station would off ramp “up” to the station over the lines. This would slow the car down before the station and allow it to speed up to merge onto the line after it left the station. Cars should NOT be connected. They should be independent little cars, like a large van. Power for them should come from the tunnel roof, so people wouldn’t be electrocuted, and space below them means people could lay down and not be run over and crushed. People in the stations could hit a button to show where they wanted to go, and the cars would act like packets of travel to be programmed to go in the best configuration to move the most people. During rush hour they could have more cars but off-peak they could service or repair them. You could also have multiple levels where the lower levels went farther, like all the way across the city. These could be accessed at spaced out main stations.

    • The tunnel size limit is an important deliberate choice about cost reduction. 12’ diameter is also not coincidentally the size of Falcon 9 boosters. It’s big enough for most use cases including subways like the deep lines of the London Underground, but it minimizes tunneling cost and means the Tunnel Boring Machine can be easily road transportable. Being road transportable is why F9 is that size too. The Boring Company has already demonstrated “porpoising” by it’s TBMs which is a completely new capability. They can be trailered to a location and after a brief setup, start tunneling into the ground. They bore a tunnel and emerge back on the surface – so they can be loaded back on trailer and moved to another job. Like reusability was a new thing for the orbital booster biz – so too for the TBM biz. They were typically abandoned in place after a single job much like rocket boosters.

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