Uranium and Thorium World Reserves, Alternative

Nuclear Fuels and Fuel Cycle for Fusion Materials

Sajjad Rasool Chaudhry
Reg. No.: MS-PE-1233








Department of Chemical Engineering (DChE)
Pakistan Institute of Engineering & Applied Sciences (PIEAS)
Nilore, Pakistan
Date: 19
th
Feb, 2014
ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.1 Uranium Reserves .............................................................................................................. 1
1.2 Secondary Sources of Uranium ........................................................................................ 3
2.1 Thorium Reserves .............................................................................................................. 4
3.1 Alternative Nuclear Fuels ................................................................................................. 6
4.1 Fusion Fuel Cycle ............................................................................................................... 7
References ............................................................................................................................... 10

























1

1.1 Uranium Reserves [1][2][3]
Uranium is a relatively common element in the crust of the Earth very much more than in the
mantle. It is a metal approximately as common as tin or zinc, and it is a constituent of most
rocks and even of the sea. Some typical concentrations are given in table 1.1.
Table 1.1 Typical Worldwide Uranium Concentrations [1]
Location Concentration
Very high-grade ore (Canada) - 20% U 200,000 ppm
High-grade ore - 2% U, 20,000 ppm
Low-grade ore - 0.1% U, 1,000 ppm
Very low-grade ore (Namibia) - 0.01% U 100 ppm
Granite 3-5 ppm
Sedimentary rock 2-3 ppm
Earth's continental crust 2.8 ppm
Seawater 0.003 ppm
Measured resources of uranium, the amount known to be economically recoverable
from orebodies, are thus also relative to costs and prices. They are also dependent on the
intensity of past exploration effort, and are basically a statement about what is known rather
than what is there in the Earth's crust - epistemology rather than geology. Changes in costs or
prices, or further exploration, may alter measured resource figures markedly. At ten times the
current price, seawater might become a potential source of vast amounts of uranium. Thus,
any predictions of the future availability of any mineral, including uranium, which are based
on current cost and price data and current geological knowledge are likely to be extremely
conservative.
This is in fact suggested in the IAEA-NEA figures if those covering estimates of all
conventional resources (U as main product or major by-product) are considered - another 7.6
million tonnes (beyond the 5.3 Mt known economic resources), which takes us to 190 years'
supply at today's rate of consumption. This still ignores the technological factor mentioned
below. It also omits unconventional resources (U recoverable as minor by-product) such as
phosphate/ phosphorite deposits (up to 22 Mt U), black shales (schists) and lignite (0.7 Mt
U), and even seawater (up to 4000 Mt), which would be uneconomic to extract in the
2

foreseeable future, although Japanese trials using a polymer braid have suggested costs a bit
over $250/kgU
Table 1.2 Country Wise Recoverable Reserves of Uranium (As of 2011) [2]
Country tonnes of U % of world
Australia 1,661,000 31%
Kazakhstan 629,000 12%
Russia 487,200 9%
Canada 468,700 9%
Niger 421,000 8%
South Africa 279,100 5%
Brazil 276,700 5%
Namibia 261,000 5%
USA 207,400 4%
China 166,100 3%
Ukraine 119,600 2%
Uzbekistan 96,200 2%
Mongolia 55,700 1%
Jordan 33,800 1%
other 164,000 3%
World total 5,327,200

It can be seen that Australia has a substantial part (about 31 percent) of the world's uranium,
Kazakhstan 12 percent, and Canada and Russia 9 percent each.
Currently global uranium production meets only 58 per cent of demand, with the shortfall
made up largely from rapidly shrinking stockpiles. The shortfall is expected to run at 51
million pounds a year on average from next year to 2020. During the last 15 years, the
shortfall between production and requirements was made up by excess commercial
inventories, uranium released from military use and other secondary sources. These are now
in decline, and the shortfall will increasingly need to be made up by primary production.

3

Table 1.3 Uranium demand, mining production and deficit (in tonns) [4]
Country
Uranium
Required
2005
% of world
demand
Indigenous Mining
Production 2004
Deficit
USA 22,397 33 835 21,562
France 10,431 15 0 10,431
Japan 8,184 12 0 8,184
Germany 3,708 5 77 3,631
Russia 3,409 5 2890 519
South
Korea
3,011 4 0 3,011
UK 2,409 3 0 2,409
Rest of
the world
14,808 22 35,498 20,690
Total 68,357 100 39,300 29,057
1.2 Secondary Sources of Uranium[1]
The most obvious secondary source is civil stockpiles held by utilities and governments.
The amount held here is difficult to quantify, due to commercial confidentiality. As at
January 2009 some 129,000 tU total inventory was estimated for utilities, 10,000 tU for
producers and 15,000 tU for fuel cycle participants, making a total of 154,000 tU. These
reserves are expected not to be drawn down, but to increase steadily to provide energy
security for utilities and governments.
Recycled uranium and plutonium is another source, and currently saves 1500-2000 tU
per year of primary supply, depending on whether just the plutonium or also the uranium is
considered. In fact, plutonium is quickly recycled as MOX fuel, whereas the reprocessed
uranium (RepU) is mostly stockpiled.
Re-enrichment of depleted uranium (DU, enrichment tails) is another secondary
source. There is about 1.5 million tonnes of depleted uranium available, from both military
and civil enrichment activity since the 1940s, most at tails assay of 0.25 - 0.35% U-
235. Non-nuclear uses of DU are very minor relative to annual arising of over 35,000 tU per
year. This leaves most DU available for mixing with recycled plutonium on MOX fuel or as
4

a future fuel resource for fast neutron reactors. However, some that has relatively high assay
can be fed through under-utilised enrichment plants to produce natural uranium equivalent, or
even enriched uranium ready for fuel fabrication. Russian enrichment plants have treated 10-
15,000 tonnes per year of DU assaying over 0.3% U-235, stripping it down to 0.1% and
producing a few thousand tonnes per year of natural uranium equivalent. This Russian
program treating Western tails has now finished, but a new US one is expected to start when
surplus capacity is available, treating about 140,000 tonnes of old DU assaying 0.4% U-235.
2.1 Thorium Reserves
Canada, China, Germany, India, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United
States have experimented with using thorium as a substitute nuclear fuel in nuclear reactors.
When compared to uranium, there is a growing interest in thorium-based nuclear power due
to its greater safety benefits, absence of non-fertile isotopes and its higher occurrence and
availability. India's three stage nuclear power program is possibly the most well-known and
well funded of such efforts.
Present knowledge of the distribution of thorium resources is poor because of the
relatively low-key exploration efforts arising out of insignificant demand. There are two sets
of estimates that define world thorium reserves, one set by the US Geological Survey (USGS)
and the other supported by reports from the OECD and the International Atomic Energy
Agency (the IAEA). Under the USGS estimate, USA, Australia, and India have particularly
large reserves of thorium.
India and Australia are believed to possess about 300,000 tonnes each; i.e., each has
25% of the world's thorium reserves. In the OECD reports, however, estimates of Australia's
Reasonably Assured Reserves (RAR) of thorium indicate only 19,000 tonnes and not 300,000
tonnes as indicated by USGS. The two sources vary wildly for countries such as Brazil,
Turkey, and Australia, however, both reports appear to show some consistency with respect
to India's thorium reserve figures, with 290,000 tonnes (USGS) and 319,000 tonnes
(OECD/IAEA). Both the IAEA and OECD appear to conclude that India may possess the
lion's share of world's thorium deposits.
The IAEA's 2005 report estimates India's reasonably assured reserves of thorium at
319,000 tonnes, but mentions recent reports of India's reserves at 650,000 tonnes. A
government of India estimate, shared in the country's Parliament in August 2011, puts the
5

recoverable reserve at 846,477 tonnes. The Indian Minister of State V. Narayanasamy stated
that as of May 2013, the country's thorium reserves were 11.93 million tonnes (monazite,
having 9-10% ThO
2
).
Table 2.1 World Wide Thorium Reserves by USGS (As of 2013) [4]
Sr. No. Country Reserves
1 United States 440,000
2 Australia 300,000
3 Brazil 100,000
4 Canada 35,000
5 India 16,000
6 Malaysia 4,500
7 South Africa 90,000
8 Other countries 1,913,000
9 World total 440,000
Table 2.2 World Wide Thorium Reserves by IAEA (As of 2005) [5]
Sr. No Country RAR Th EAR Th
1
India 519,000 21%
2
Australia 489,000 19%
3
USA 400,000 13%
4
Turkey 344,000 11%
5
Venezuela 302,000 10%
6
Brazil 302,000 10%
7
Norway 132,000 4%
8
Egypt 100,000 3%
9
Russia 75,000 2%
10 Greenland 54,000 2%
11 Canada 44,000 2%
12 South Africa 18,000 1%
13 Other countries 33,000 2%
14 World total 2,810,000


6

3.1 Alternative Nuclear Fuels [6]
Thorium is under consideration as alternative to uranium for nuclear power
generation. The naturally occurring isotope Thorium-232 is a fertile material, and with a
suitable neutron source can be used as nuclear fuel in nuclear reactors, including breeder
reactors. In 1997, the U.S. Energy Department underwrote research into thorium fuel, and
research also was begun in 1996 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to
study the use of thorium reactors. Nuclear scientist Alvin Radkowsky of Tel Aviv
University in Israel founded a consortium to develop thorium reactors, which included other
companies: Raytheon Nuclear Inc., Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Kurchatov
Institute in Moscow.
Radkowsky was chief scientist in the U.S. nuclear submarine program directed
by Admiral Hyman Rickover and later headed the design team that built the USA's first
civilian nuclear power plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, which was a scaled-up version of
the first naval reactor. The third Shippingport core, initiated in 1977, bred thorium. Even
earlier examples of reactors using fuel with thorium exist, including the first core at
the Indian Point Energy Center in 1962.
Some countries, including India, are now investing in research to build thorium-based
nuclear reactors. A 2005 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency discusses
potential benefits along with the challenges of thorium reactors. India has also made thorium-
based nuclear reactors a priority with its focus on developing fast breeder technology.
Some benefits of thorium fuel when compared with uranium were summarized as
follows.
Weapons-grade fissionable material (233U) is harder to retrieve safely and
clandestinely from a thorium reactor;
Thorium mining produces a single pure isotope, whereas the mixture of
natural uranium isotopes must be enriched to function in most common reactor
designs. The same cycle could also use the fissionable U-238 component of
the natural uranium, and also contained in the depleted reactor fuel;
Thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming, so fission
stops by default in an accelerator driven reactor.
7

When used in a breeder-like reactor, however, unlike uranium-based light water
reactors, thorium requires irradiation and reprocessing before the above-noted advantages of
Thorium-232 can be realized, which initially makes solid thorium fuels more expensive than
uranium fuels. But experts note that "the second thorium reactor may activate a third thorium
reactor. This could continue in a chain of reactors for a millennium if we so choose." They
add that because of thorium's abundance, it will not be exhausted in 1,000 years.
The Thorium Energy Alliance (TEA), an educational advocacy organization,
emphasizes that "there is enough thorium in the United States alone to power the country at
its current energy level for over 10,000 years.
4.1 Fusion Fuel Cycle [7]
Many fusion reactions have been tested. However, the fuels considered for power have all
been light elements like the isotopes of hydrogen, for example deuterium-tritium. Other
reactions like the deuterium and Helium
3
reaction or the Helium
3
and Helium
3
reactions,
would require a supply of Helium
3
. This can either come from other nuclear reactions or from
extraterrestrial sources. Finally, researchers hope to do the p-11B reaction, because it does
not directly produce neutrons, though side reactions can
Deuterium- Tritium reaction is the easiest nuclear reaction, at the lowest energy. Its given
by:
2 3 4 1
1 1 2 0
D T He n
This reaction is common in research. Deuterium is a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen
and is commonly available. The large mass ratio of the hydrogen isotopes makes their
separation easy compared to the difficult uranium enrichment process. Tritium is a natural
isotope of hydrogen, but due to its tiny half-life of 12.32 years, it hard to find, store, produce
and is expensive. Consequently, the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle requires the breeding of
tritium from lithium
The second easiest fusion reaction is the fusing of deuterium with itself. This reaction has two
branches that occur with nearly equal probability. Reactions occur as:
2 2 3 1
1 1 1 1
D D T H
2 2 3 1
1 1 2 0
D D He n
8

This reaction is also common in research. This fuel is commonly used by amateurs who fuse.
The optimum energy to initiate this reaction is 15 keV, only slightly higher than the optimum
for the D-T reaction. The first branch does not produce neutrons, but it does produce tritium,
so that a D-D reactor will not be completely tritium-free, even though it does not require an
input of tritium or lithium. Unless the tritons can be quickly removed, most of the tritium
produced would be burned before leaving the reactor, which would reduce the handling of
tritium, but would produce more neutrons, some of which are very energetic. The neutron
from the second branch has an energy of only 2.45 MeV (0.393 pJ), whereas the neutron
from the D-T reaction has an energy of 14.1 MeV (2.26 pJ), resulting in a wider range of
isotope production and material damage. When the tritons are removed quickly while
allowing the 3He to reactor, the fuel cycle is called "tritium suppressed fusion. The removed
tritium decays to 3He with a 12.5 year half-life. By recycling the 3He produced from the
decay of tritium back into the fusion reactor, the fusion reactor does not require materials
resistant to fast 14.1 MeV (2.26 pJ) neutrons.
A second-generation approach to controlled fusion power involves combining Helium-
3 (
3
He) and Deuterium (
2
H):
2 3 4 1
1 2 2 1
D He He H
This reaction produces a helium-4 nucleus (
4
He) and a high-energy proton. As with the p-
11
B aneutronic fusion fuel cycle, most of the reaction energy is released as charged particles,
reducing activation of the reactor housing and potentially allowing more efficient energy
harvesting via any of several speculative technologies. In practice, D-D side reactions
produce a significant number of neutrons, resulting in p-
11
B being the preferred cycle for
aneutronic fusion.
If aneutronic fusion is the goal, then the most promising candidate may be the Hydrogen-1-
Boron reaction:
1 11 4
1 5 2
3 H B He
Under reasonable assumptions, side reactions will result in about 0.1% of the fusion power
being carried by neutrons. At 123 keV, the optimum temperature for this reaction is nearly
ten times higher than that for the pure hydrogen reactions, the energy confinement must be
500 times better than that required for the D-T reaction, and the power density will be 2500
times lower than for D-T.
9


Figure 4.1 Deuterium-Tritium Fuel Cycle [8]



Figure 4.2 Deuterium-Tritium Fuel Cycle [9]

10

References
1. Supply of Uranium, World Nuclear Association, August 2012.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Uranium-Resources/Supply-of-Uranium/
Retrieved 19-02-2012
2. J. Busby, "Why Nuclear Power is not a Sustainable Source of Low Carbon Energy", Hubbert
Peak
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/nuclear/WhyNuclearNotSustainable.htm Retrieved 19-02-2012
3. S. Hall & M. Coleman, Critical Analysis of World Uranium Resources, U.S. Scientific
Investigations Report 2012
4. U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries Thorium, 2013,
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/thorium/index.html, Online, Retrieved 19-02-
2012
5. IAEA: Thorium fuel cycle, Potential benefits and challenges. pp. 45(table 8), 97(ref 78).
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TE_1450_web.pdf Retrieved 19-02-2012
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power, Online, Retrieved 19-02-2012
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Mechanism Online, Retrieved 19-02-2012
8. For Establishment Fusion Fuel Cycle, Naka Fusion Institute, Japan Atomic Energy Agency.
http://www.naka.jaea.go.jp/english/kougaku-e/TPL/page3.html, Online, Retrieved 19-02-2012
9. Fusion Fuel Cycle, ITER,
http://www.iter.org/mach/fuelcycle, Online, Retrieved 19-02-2012