Thorium-based fuel cycles: Reassessment of fuel economics and proliferation risk

At current consumption and current prices, the proven reserves for natural uranium will last only about 100 years. However, the more abundant thorium, burned in breeder reactors, such as large High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors, and followed by chemical reprocessing of the spent fuel, could stretch the 100 years for uranium supply to 15,000 years. Thorium-based fuel cycles are also viewed as more proliferation resistant compared to uranium. However, several barriers to entry caused all countries, except India and Russia, to abandon their short term plans for thorium reactor projects, in favour of uranium/plutonium fuel cycles.In this article, based on the theory of resonance integrals and original analysis of fast fission cross sections, the breeding potential of 232Th is compared to that of 238U. From a review of the literature, the fuel economy of thorium-based fuel cycles is compared to that of natural uranium-based cycles. This is combined with a technical assessment of the proliferation resistance of thorium-based fuel cycles, based on a review of the literature.Natural uranium is currently so cheap that it contributes only about 10% of the cost of nuclear electricity. Chemical reprocessing is also very expensive. Therefore conservation of natural uranium by means of the introduction of thorium into the fuel is not yet cost effective and will only break even once the price of natural uranium were to increase from the current level of about $70/pound yellow cake to above about $200/pound. However, since fuel costs constitutes only a small fraction of the total cost of nuclear electricity, employing reprocessing in a thorium cycle, for the sake of its strategic benefits, may still be a financially viable option.The most important source of the proliferation resistance of 232Th/233U fuel cycles is denaturisation of the 233U in the spent fuel by 232U, for which the highly radioactive decay chain potentially poses a large radiation as well as a detection risk to would-be proliferators. However, countries with proliferation ambitions could give the U-mixture to terrorist groups directly after chemical separation, before significant build-up of the radioactive decay chain, which would significantly reduce the proliferation resistance of the mixture.A roadmap for overcoming some of these barriers to market entry is suggested.