Thor Energy - the Norwegian thorium initiative

Thor Energy is a daughter company in the Scatec group of renewable energy enterprises based in Oslo, Norway. Among its portfolio of business activities, Scatec has major solar and wind energy interests - including mono-crystalline wafer production, solar PV plant system integration, and offshore wind power planning.

Thorium fuels in the broadest sense can provide avenues to improve the credentials for nuclear energy by:

• Achieving more sustainable energy generation in which mined nuclear material is used more effectively.  This draws on the possibility for high-conversion or even breeding of fissile 233U from thorium fuels in thermal reactors.
  
• Employing fuels that generate smaller problematic waste streams, and that can also transmute (destroy) actinide components in current-generation thermal reactor systems.  

Thor Energy's technology development activities are undertaken with the vision that thorium-plutonium MOX analog fuels will be an attractive option for both light water reactor (LWR) operators and nuclear energy policy makers alike.

A major goal for the company is to initiate the trial irradiation of a candidate thorium-MOX fuel in an experiment to be conducted in the Halden test reactor.  The intention is to build an international cost-sharing consortium by which to realize this major undertaking.

Thor Energy ’s main thorium fuel development activities are summarized here: Thor Energy Activities

There is also technology value to be captured in the design and development of specific thorium-plutonium fuels: Fuel and core design experience will lead to commercially licensable assemblies. The deployment of thorium-MOX fuel will entail development of appropriate, validated fuel performance code/s and these can bring in revenue. The deployment of thorium-MOX fuel for LWRs will provide a good platform on which to develop more advanced thorium fuels for specific high-conversion &/or actinide transmutation goals. Regulator experience and confidence in thorium-MOX type should encourage the onward development and use of the fuel.

The reasoning for thorium-MOX fuel draws on a number of key nuclear fuel cycle imperatives: Uranium resources are secure for a long time, but prices are likely to be substantially higher at some point – probably after 2020.  An alternative nuclear fuel will be more attractive at this time. The light water reactor is here to stay as the nuclear power generating workhorse for the rest of the century. Fast reactors are meritorious, but have proven slow to license and deploy.  It will be at least three decades before there is a sizable fast reactor fleet.  Thorium-MOX LWR fuels can be designed to meet actinide management or fissile conversion goals expected of fast reactors, but without the difficulty of licensing a new reactor type. The absence of workable waste management strategies and solutions will be a bottleneck in the development of nuclear energy in numerous countries. Thorium-MOX fuel offers a credible plutonium management option that leads to more sustainable nuclear fuel use than current modes of using UOX and uranium-MOX fuel. Proliferation concerns will remain, and these center on inventories of accumulated plutonium in SNF and with the ubiquity of centrifuge uranium enrichment technology. Thorium-MOX fuels utilize/destroy plutonium in SNF and they do not require enrichment services.