Nuclear Power: Thorium
(asked on 18th April 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of using thorium fuels for energy production.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) maintains an interest in the global potential of thorium nuclear fuels.
In 2012, the National Nuclear laboratory (NNL) published an initial comparative assessment of thorium and uranium technologies in nuclear powered electricity generation. This is available online from:
BEIS has considered these views and drawn on the expertise of its national laboratories to model nuclear scenarios that include the use of thorium. These are used to inform R&D needs on thorium nuclear fuel cycles. An overview of these are included in the document “Nuclear Energy Research and Development Roadmap: Future Pathways”, which is available from:
The UK has been supporting research and development into the use of thorium nuclear fuels since such fuels were used in the Dragon reactor at Winfrith in the 1960s and 1970s. Examples of current activity on thorium and related technologies include academic research into thorium fuelled reactor systems and fuel cycle processes through Research Council grants to UK universities; collaboration on thorium fuels, via the UK Research Councils’ Energy Programme, with national nuclear energy programmes of other countries on safety, performance and non-proliferation; experimental development of thorium fuels through the NNL and private sector organisations, as part of international consortia, and thorium fuel modelling and fuel cycle scenario analysis by the NNL. These activities cover UK, EU and worldwide initiatives and receive either financial or strategic support from the Government.