Welcome to brain Stuff. Production of I Heart Radio Hey brain Stuff Lauren Volga bam here. As human driven climate change makes our planet less pleasant to live on, nuclear power is getting more attention. A solar and wind energy can help cut greenhouse gas emissions too, But if a solution can be found to climate change, nuclear power is
probably going to be part of it. Although nuclear power doesn't produce the climate altering gases that create a problem with other sources of electricity, it does carry with it certain risks for starters. Disposing of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants presents a difficult problem, and what to do with such dangerous byproducts. Also, what happens if the core melts down and creates an environmental catastrophe as happened in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
In there are other concerns as well, but given our current energy predicament, there are enty of reasons to keep plugging away and making nuclear power safer. The nuclear reactors are run by fission, a nuclear chain reaction in which adams split to produce energy, or, in the case of nuclear bombs, a massive explosion. For the article this episode is based on, has to Fork spoken by email with Steve Kron, a professor in the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He said approximately four hundred and fifty nuclear reactors are an operation worldwide, and they all need fuel. He noted that for the most part, these reactors operate on uranium two thirty five, and the nations that partially recycle the fuel France, Russia, and a few other countries combine it with recycled plutonium two thirty nine to make what's called mixed oxide fuel. Plutonium is a byproduct of used fuel from a nuclear reactor, and
it's cool that it can help recycle uranium. However, it's highly toxic and is the most frequently used material for nuclear weapons, which is one reason why scientists have continued to explore other options, which brings us to thorium. Thorium is an element that was discovered in eight and named after Thorpe, the Norse god of thunder, and some scientists think that it's the answer to our nuclear power problems. Thorium is a slightly radioactive, relatively abundant metal, about as
abundant as tin and more abundant than uranium. It's also widespread, with particular concentrations in India, Turkey, Brazil, the United States, and Egypt. But it is important to note that thorium isn't a fuel like uranium. The difference is that uranium is fissile, meaning that it produces a sustainable chain reaction if you can get enough uranium in one spot at one time. Thorium, on the other hand, is not fissile.
It's what scientists call fertile, meaning that if you bombard the thorium with neutrons essentially jump started in a reactor fueled with material like uranium, it can transmute into a uranium isotope uranium two thirty three, which is fissile and suitable for creating power. Thorium was used in some of the earliest nuclear physics experiments. Marie Curry and Ernest Rutherford
both worked with it. Uranium and plutonium became more heavily associated with nuclear processes during World War Two because they provided the clearest path to making bombs for power generation, though thorium has some real benefits. Uranium two thirty three formed from thorium is a more efficient fuel than uranium two thirty five or plutonium, and its reactors may be less likely to melt down because they can operate up
to higher temperatures. In addition, less plutonium is produced during reactor operation, and some scientists argue that thorium reactors could destroy the tons of dangerous plutonium that have been created
and stockpiled since the ninth teen fifties. And not only that, A fleet of reactors operating on thorium and uranium two thirty three is thought by some scientists to be more proliferation resistant, since more sophisticated technology is needed to separate uranium two thirty three out of the waste products and use it to make bombs. There are downsides to thorium, however. One is that thorium and uranium two thirty three are
more dangerously radioactive to chemically process. For that reason, they are harder to work with. It's also more difficult to manufacture uranium two thirty three fuel rods. Also, as noted earlier, thorium is not a fuel. Kron said, if we're going to power our planet using a fuel cycle that employs thorium and uranium two thirty three, sufficient uranium two thirty three must be produced in other types of reactors to fuel the initial uranium two thirty three reactors, if that
can be accomplished. Methods to chemically process thorium two thirty two and uranium two thirty three and manufacture fuel from them are fairly well established. However, facilities to accomplish these processes wouldn't need to be constructed. There are several ways thorium could be applied to energy production. Oh One way under investigation now is to use solid thorium and uranium two thirty two fuel in a conventional water cooled reactor,
similar to modern uranium based power plants. In fact, more than twenty reactors worldwide have been operated with fuel made of thorium and uranium two thirty three. Another prospect that has been exciting to scientists and nuclear power advocates is the molten salt reactor. In these plants, fuel is dissolved in liquid salt that also acts as the coolant for
the reactor. The salt has a high boiling point, so they can be more efficient in electricity generation, and even huge temperature spikes will not lead to massive reactor accidents, such as the disaster that occurred at Fukushima. It might sound like this kind of reactor is almost the stuff of science fiction, but just such a reactor was operated in the United States in the nineteen sixties and is
currently being built of the Gobi Desert in China. Today's episode is based on the article Coldgorian Power the next generation of nuclear reactors on how stuff works dot Com, written by Jesslin Shields. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler klang Ur. More podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.