Several weeks ago I posted a diary which simply raised some issues about why nuclear power is not always welcome in progressive circles. I noted that the nuclear power plants of today are based on 1950s designs which were influenced by nuclear weapons programs, and that the Atoms for Peace program was to some extent a cover for weapons activity.
Boy did I get flamed. A few people thought I was practically engaging in conspiracy theory to connect power plants to weapons.
The discussion did raise some interesting issues, including a lot of references to thorium reactors. And a new Wired article talks very favorably about thorium reactors. Cheap and plentiful fuel, no chance of meltdowns, nothing to be used for weapons, and less (and less-dangerous) waste than uranium reactors. Sounds promising.
But I also feel a little bit vindicated by the Wired article. It talks about how the thorium reactor was invented in the 1950s at Oak Ridge. The NASA guy who has been agitating (in his own time) for it for the past decade read about it in a 1958 book. One was built in 1965. So what happened? Wired has a few choice tidbits:
Weinberg and his men proved the efficacy of thorium reactors in hundreds of tests at Oak Ridge from the ’50s through the early ’70s. But thorium hit a dead end. Locked in a struggle with a nuclear- armed Soviet Union, the US government in the ’60s chose to build uranium-fueled reactors — in part because they produce plutonium that can be refined into weapons-grade material. The course of the nuclear industry was set for the next four decades, and thorium power became one of the great what-if technologies of the 20th century.
The desire to link power to weapons finally killed the program:
In 1965, Weinberg and his team built a working reactor, one that suspended the byproducts of thorium in a molten salt bath, and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.
That proved to be "the most pivotal year in energy history," according to the US Energy Information Administration. It was the year the Arab states cut off oil supplies to the West, setting in motion the petroleum-fueled conflicts that roil the world to this day. The same year, the US nuclear industry signed contracts to build a record 41 nuke plants, all of which used uranium. And 1973 was the year that thorium R&D faded away — and with it the realistic prospect for a golden nuclear age when electricity would be too cheap to meter and clean, safe nuclear plants would dot the green countryside.
So while it may well be true that no nuclear weapons were produced from the plutonium generated in commercial power plants, the mere potential to do so had a strong influence on plant design. A batch of uranium plants were built in the 1960s and 1970s, but then development stopped.
There are real engineering problems to be solved before the liquid thorium fluoride reactor (LFTR) is ready for commercial use. India and China are researching thorium reactors now. But we've lost 37 years of development time because the military folks had too much say over commercial power. Let's not repeat that mistake.