Re: Thorium Nuclear Reactors

foulbr3@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi, I was wondering if a thorium nuclear reactor could be built by
confining thorium 232 magnetically as an ionized plasma, mixed with
helium 4.

My theory is, fission can be induced not only by neutrons splitting a
nucleus, but I figure an alpha particle (helium nucleus) can split
atoms too. How? By alpha capture instead of neutron capture.

Uranium 235 fissions by capturing a neutron, thus becoming Uranium 236.
The latter spontaneously decays into fission products plus 3 new
neutrons.

Does anyone know how to get thorium 232 to fission by alpha capture?
Can I just have a bunch of ionized helium and ionized thorium plasma in
a tokamak and will they spontaneously be captured? What temperature is
needed to overcome the Coulomb repulsion barrier? It would be nice if
the temperature worked out to around 10,000 K or so, or substantially
less than the 100,000,000 K or so D-T needs for ignition.

After 232 thorium captures an alpha particle, it will produce uranium
236 and fission again just like neutron capture. The result is lots of
neutrons.

Lithium 6 or Beryllium 7 can then be used to convert the neutrons into
alpha particles again.

The reactions are:

Th-232 + He-4 --> U-236 --> FP + 3n
3n + 3 Li-6 --> 3 He-4 + 3 T
+ -----------------------------------------------------
Th -232 + 3 Li-6 --> FP + 2 He-4 + 3 T

Thus it seems a "hybrid" nuclear reactor can be built that uses a
tokamak but is fission-based in principle (alpha capture induced
fission is fission, not fusion). It's hybrid because technically alpha
particles "fuse" with the heavy thorium.

Any comments?

Build a molten salt reactor or a gas core fission reactor if you want
to do something realistic. If you're venturing off into fantasyland,
just build a giant fusion engine, which is still more realistic. Alpha
capture is harder than D-T fusion by a lot, partly because an alpha
partcile is so happy with itself with all of its states being met.

.

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