The world needs energy to support economic growth and to raise living standards, and the demand for energy could double over the next 50 years, says thorium energy producer Steenkampskraal Thorium chairperson Trevor Blench.

“However, we should not double energy production by doubling the burning of fossil fuels. The burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, causes atmospheric pollution and millions of deaths each year as well as global warming, climate change and environmental degradation,” he says.

He notes that it is an immense challenge to double energy production while reducing the burning of fossil fuels and believes that all renewable sources of energy should be developed and that nuclear power can help to increase energy production and replace fossil fuels.

Blench notes that Steenkampskraal Thorium is focused on making nuclear power clean, safe and sustainable. The company’s strategy to make nuclear power clean is to introduce thorium as a fuel, with vast resources in the Western Cape at the Steenkampskraal mine.

“Nuclear power is considered ‘dirty’ mainly because the waste from the uranium fuel cycle remains radioactive for many thousands of years. By contrast, the waste from the thorium fuel cycle will substantially reduce the problem of nuclear waste,” states Blench.

The company invested in Thor Energy AS, in Norway, a company that has manufactured thorium fuel and is now qualifying this fuel for use in safe commercial reactors.

This fuel was used in the Halden reactor in Norway from April 2013, and has been generating power for more than two years. It is performing well and could be licensed for commercial use by 2018 once regulatory approval is given.

The company is also designing a refinery to produce reactor-grade thorium for the future manufacture of thorium fuel.

“Our strategy to make nuclear power safe is to introduce fuel and reactor designs that are intrinsically safer and meltdownproof. In line with this, we have designed a factory to make pebble fuel that contains Triso-coated particles,” he says.

He notes that this fuel has been tested and has demonstrated its safety on many occasions. Triso-coated particles housed in graphite pebbles do not melt, release practically no fission products and are an extremely safe container for the active fuel while it is in the reactor and for the storage of the spent fuel after it has been removed from the reactor.

Steenkampskraal Thorium is also designing a high-temperature, gas-cooled, pebble-bed reactor, the HTMR100. This type of reactor has been designed, licensed, built and operated over many years in Germany and China.

High-temperature reactors (HTRs) have demonstrated their intrinsic safety on several occasions, under the observation of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

HTRs, he cites, have demonstrated that they do not melt down when the coolant stops circulating through the fuel, which was the case with the disastrous Fukushima meltdown.

Safety also relates to the risk of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

“The uranium fuel cycle produces plutonium in its waste which can be used to make a bomb. The thorium fuel cycle produces mainly fission products in its waste, which cannot be used to make a bomb,” Blench points out.

However, the use of thorium does not completely eliminate proliferation risk, as thorium transmutes into U233, a fissile isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle in the reactor; but this fissile isotope remains mainly in the reactor as fuel and not in the waste.

He adds that the company’s strategy to make nuclear power sustainable is to use a resource that is plentiful in nature and to use it efficiently so that there is little waste and it is safe.

“There are large thorium resources in the world. Effective and safe fuel, and reactor designs, can achieve high burn-ups that extract most of the energy from this resource. Thorium, used efficiently, could provide clean, safe energy for thousands of years,” he concludes.