Evening Lecture – Thorium fuel

Thorium has recently been presented in the press as “the green future of nuclear” and it might seem as if thorium based fuel cycles are a recent breakthrough that remained overlooked for decades. Actually, this is not the case: research on thorium as a possible alternative resource for nuclear energy applications has a long history and it is hardly possible to account for all of the accomplishments achieved over more than five decades of research on thorium fuel cycles.
In this presentation, a brief summary will be given of the historic Light Water Reactor thorium fuel research. Since fifteen years, quite some research has also been conducted by SCK•CEN and this will also be reviewed. An outlook of the research in this domain as well as some thoughts on the possible implementation of a thorium-based fuel cycle will be discussed.