Flexibility of Nuclear Power Generation

Many people are well known that nuclear power use uranium as the fuel and the questions always come that what will happen to nuclear power generation if uranium finish? is it nuclear power generation story will end up similar to power generation through petroleum? for answer this uncertainties, the following posts should make clear to all..... 

We are aware that the Uranium  in Earth is a finite property. One day or soon it will finish. Is that all? The world will not end after that. There are a lot of discovery that find the alternatives for Uranium. Even at the usage rate Uranium could sustain up to 60,000 years. After the extinction of Uranium we have such material that can be used and already being use in some part of the world. The magic material is Thorium.

It’s likely that someone will have submitted a credible design to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a thorium reactor. That’s because the United States, India, Japan, and Russia are among the countries now working on Thorium reactors. . Like all nuclear power, a thorium reactor would produce few emissions . Thorium is three to four times more abundant on Earth than uranium. Any cubic meter of Earth, Moon or Mars has enough Th-232 to run a profligate Earth's energy life for several years. Not only is thorium actually cheaper than uranium, it’s indirectly cheaper. 1) A fully functioning thorium reactor would be smaller and produce less waste. 2) In countries like China and India, where the natural abundance of thorium exceeds that of uranium.  there are millennia of thorium atoms within easy reach, requiring no energy-intensive, proliferation-endangering enrichment, and no wasteful removal of delicate fuel pellets and rods before even 10 percent of their fuel is consumed. But perhaps the most promising advantage is that a thorium reactor cleans up after itself. It eats its own waste. Proponents say the thorium reactor could function as a kind of waste disposal mechanism for plutonium and other weapons grade material, as part of its regular energy generation process. This is the miracle that proponents point to. And in fact, several countries are investigating the possibility of thorium-based energy generation: India's working on an Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, Japan has the MiniFuji, Russia is working on the VVER-1000 and even the United States has long term plans to experiment with commercial energy generation by thorium. Most of these plans are nebulous, but for some it’s a serious option. The country with the most specific plan is India, which has drawn up a three-stage process to rely almost entirely on thorium by 2030.

           

            Thorium has always looked attractive theoretically, but it just has not taken off in countries that have adequate supplies of regular uranium.  Despite the many features that recommend it, it's only really attractive for nations–like India and China. India has already a Thorium plant which will be complete by 2012. The China Academy of Sciences in January 2011 launched a program of R&D on thorium-breeding molten-salt reactors (Th-MSR or TMSR), otherwise known as Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), claiming to have the world's largest national effort on these and hoping to obtain full intellectual property rights on the technology.

from the post, we can surely claim that Nuclear fuels has finite ending. But these finite can be seen as infinite with the existing technologies. Even if petroleum is finishing, Malaysia as a developing country should take an immediate step to transform to Nuclear source as it is the cheapest and reliable for coming days. Worrying about security, the technology has NPP Gen 3 and upcoming Gen 4 and many more new design reactors. Wondering about the age of Uranium, now it has the Thorium as a successor. For this entire gift, we have to thank Mother Earth for giving us more and more in order to survive. Let us thank and appreciate our dearest Earth by going green and supporting the green energies. So Malaysia should bravely  take up this opportunity and go for Nuclear Power Plant.....   Care for Earth, Go Green.

sources :   http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/nuclear/is-thorium-the-nuclear-fuel-of-the-future

MK & T3