Solvay & AREVA to jointly develop thorium for nuclear power plants
12/20/2013
Solvay and AREVA will jointly develop new applications for the use of thorium.
The agreement will define conditions that ensure the responsible management of thorium, including the deployment of a research and development program to study the use of thorium as a potential fuel in nuclear power plants. Both companies have thorium inventories in France.
http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2013/12/solvay-areva-to-jointly-develop-thorium-for-nuclear-power-plants.html
Areva strikes thorium development deal with chemical giant Solvay
October 29th, 2013
If he were to look over his shoulder, Areva’s Luc Van Den Durpel would see the word “thorium.” With the metal gaining attention as an alternative to uranium fuel, Areva is now stepping up thorium research.
GENEVA – French nuclear giant Areva, a stalwart of the conventional uranium-driven large reactor industry, today announced it is collaborating with €12.8 billion Belgian chemical company Solvay to research the possibilities of deploying thorium as a reactor fuel.
“Solvay and Areva have made an agreement to have a joint R&D program working on the whole set of thorium valorization (validation),” Areva vice president Luc Van Den Durpel said in a presentation at the Thorium Energy Conference 2013 at the CERN physics laboratory here.
Van Den Durpel said the effort would cover “the overall worldwide development related to thorium, both in the nuclear energy field and in the rare earth market.”
Thorium, a mildly radioactive element that supporters believe trumps uranium as a plentiful, safe, effective, weapons-resistant fuel – Noble laureate physicist Carlo Rubbia yesterday referred to its “absolute pre-eminence” over uranium – comes from minerals that also contain rare earth metals vital the to the global economy. Solvay’s business includes rare earth processing, which can leave thorium as a “waste” product that’s subject to strict and costly storage regulations. Companies that have to hold on to thorium would like to find a market for it.
Ven Den Durpel said Areva and Solvay will investigate “resolving the thorium residue issues arising from certain rare earth processing in the past and now.”
As a possible nuclear fuel, he acknowledged that thorium offers advantages such as reducing waste and proliferation risks. “It’s not the devil – you could call it sexy because it’s not plutonium and that why it’s attractive,” he said in reference to uranium’s notorious waste product. He also noted that thorium’s high melting point provides operational advantages.
But the Areva executive, who heads strategic analysis and technology prospects in corporate R&D, said that any chance of Areva using thorium in a reactor is a long way off.
“We would like to demystify thorium,” he said, noting that its benefits are often overstated and hyped, and that it has issues including the management of radioactive isotopes of protactinium and uranium involved in the thorium fuel cycle.
He said there is “not really” a market for thorium in the short term, but that a “medium term” market is a “possibility” that would entail mixing thorium with other fuels like uranium and plutonium in light water reactors. By complementing the other two fuels, thorium could potentially lengthen fuel cycles, reduce waste, and produce uranium 233 for use in other reactors.
But he said any transition to 100 percent thorium fuels would “take decades at least.”
Ven Den Durpel based his thorium assessments on use in light water reactors, and not in alternative reactor designs such as molten salt reactors or pebble beds.
Photo by Mark Halper http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/2013/10/29/areva-strikes-thorium-development-deal-with-chemical-giant-solvay/
Conventional nuclear giant Areva strikes thorium deal
Rock on. This lump of monazite on display in Geneva from South Africa's Steenkampskraal mine contains thorium and rare earth minerals. It could represent energy's future.
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GENEVA - One reason the nuclear industry is not moving rapidly to superior and safer technologies including thorium fuel is that its entrenched value chain moans out for more of the same old uranium and for large, traditional reactors.
That could be starting to change, as one of the world's biggest reactor companies, Areva, publicly declared an interest in thorium.
Speaking at the Thorium Energy Conference 2013 here last week, Areva vice president Luc Van Den Durpel said the French company has struck a research and development deal with €12.8 ($17.3) billion Belgian chemical stalwart Solvay to investigate the possible uses of thorium as a nuclear fuel.
Areva's Luc Van Den Durpel, speaking in Geneva last week, says maybe just maybe there's something to this thorium after all.
"Solvay and Areva have made an agreement to have a joint R&D program working on the whole set of thorium valorization (validation)," Van Den Durpel said in a presentation on the campus of international physics lab CERN, as I first reported on my Weinberg blog.
Many people believe that thorium augurs safer nuclear power that leaves much less long-lived waste than uranium, reduces the risk of weapons proliferation, effectively breeds new fuel, and that can support higher temperature operations. The increased temperature supports more efficient electricity generation and makes nuclear a candidate to replace fossil fuels as a source of industrial process heat. There is also about four times more thorium than uranium in the earth's crust.
Thorium is part of a growing movement to develop alternative nuclear technologies including altogether different reactors including "molten salt,""pebble bed" and "integral fast reactors," among others, all of which promise varying advantages in safety, waste, proliferation, cost and efficiency. In some cases, proponents of the different reactor types advocate thorium, in others they do not.
In its agreement with Solvay, Areva is not exactly racing toward a thorium future. Van Den Durpel ruled out any short term deployment and called the "medium term" a "possibility" in which Areva would mixthorium with other fuels like uranium and plutonium in conventional reactors. He said any transition to 100 percent thorium fuels would "take decades at least." He based his assessments on using thorium in conventional reactors. (For more click on the Weinberg link above.)
Solvay is interested because it processes rare earth minerals which contain thorium, a mildly radioactive element that is considered waste. For rare earth companies, thorium separate from rocks like monazite requires special costly storage, but it could be put to use as an asset if thorium reactors were to emerge. Manufacturers put rare earth metals into everything from missiles to cars to cellphones, so there is a potential ready-made source of extracted thorium.
Well known figures who promoted thorium at the conference included former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, and Nobel Prize winning physicist Carlo Rubbia. Blix lauded thorium's proliferation resistance, and Rubbia said thorium has "absolute pre-eminence" over all other fuel types.
Photos by Mark Halper
More from CERN's thorium conference:
- Hans Blix: Nuclear must use thorium to reduce weapons risk
- Nobel physicist: Thorium trumps all fuels as energy source
The thorium-rare earth connection, from SmartPlanet and elsewhere:
- Senatorial candidate turns up thorium nuclear heat for U.S. economy
- How to manage the dirty side of thorium and assure its global supply, with rare earths
- Solve the energy AND rare earth crisis: Join the Thorium Bank
Thorium test bed:
Click here for a rich archive of nuclear stories, including many accounts of nuclear alternatives such as thorium, molten salt, pebble beds, fast reactors, modular reactors, fusion and more.
— By Mark Halper on November 5, 2013, 4:00 PM
Mark Halper
Contributing Editor
Mark Halper has written for TIME, Fortune, Financial Times, the UK's Independent on Sunday, Forbes, New York Times, Wired, Variety and The Guardian. He is based in Bristol, U.K. Follow him on Twitter.