'Active Voice with Llewellyn King,' Episode 11, 'Birth of a New Reactor' Part 1

In 1940, when the nuclear era was embryonic, Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg discovered that if bombarded with neutrons, thorium, a plentiful element in nature, could sustain a nuclear reaction. 

Initially, it was thought that technology based on thorium would dominate the civilian nuclear world. But it fell by the way, and light water became the technology of choice, driven in part by the needs of the Nuclear Navy.

Now a dynamic nuclear engineer, Yash Patel, founder and CEO of AMReactor(https://www.amreactor.com), aims to bring back thorium. He believes that it will play a major role in future electricity generation.

Patel is featured in the latest episode of "Active Voice," a YouTube channel created by writer and broadcaster Llewellyn King to showcase “dreamers, thinkers, doers, creative people, mold-breakers, and forward-facers who speak without reservation” on a wide range of industries.

The episode is the first in a series about Austin-based AMReactor, which King has titled “Birth of a New Reactor.” 

“Patel believes the time to develop a thorium reactor is at hand,” says King, who interviewed Patel for the channel.  “Over the years it has gotten short shrift from various administrations not because of any deficiency, but primarily because the government was convinced that only one technology could effectively bring the benefits of civilian nuclear power to the public.”

King notes that thorium, which isn’t in use except for a single reactor in China, has its roots in America. It was a test fuel in the first civilian power-producing reactor, Shippingport, in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. Also, yeoman work was done at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and a thorium reactor operated there from 1965 to 1969, when it was abandoned because the administration at the time favored light water technology as the most likely to succeed commercially.

Thorium is a fertile nuclear material, but unlike uranium, it isn’t fissile. So a small amount of uranium is needed to ignite thorium fuel, after which a sustained nuclear reaction takes over, and the reactor starts “breeding” or making more fuel than it consumes. It also transmutes nuclear waste, which Patel says in the episode is a thorium advantage. And there are many more advantages. 

During his conversation with King, Patel says his molten salt thorium reactor never has to shut down for refueling and can stay online, producing power for many decades. He also says his reactor can’t melt down.

Patel is a native of India and a graduate of Texas A&M University. 

King says, “Yash Patel is the ideal ‘Active Voice’ interviewee. He is the dreamer and the doer that the channel is all about."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1vGs3bPe8s