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Thorium Power turns Megatons into Megawatts
“CRDF plays an important role in our collaborative research and development work with Russian nuclear institutes. The Grant Assistance Program administered by CRDF, in which Thorium Power has been participating for a number of years, provides a cost-effective solution that facilitates timely transfer of payments that are exempt from Russian taxes directly to hundreds of individual scientists working on our project in Russia.”
-Andrey Mushakov, Treasurer of Thorium Power
The success of the “Megatons to Megawatts” program – a joint U.S.-Russian effort to disassemble excess nuclear warheads and use the resulting enriched uranium for the generation of civilian power - has not been matched by similar strides in attempts to convert excess weapons-grade plutonium into usable fuel. Now, an innovative technology promises to be the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to dispose of plutonium in civilian reactors and generate electricity for Russian homes.
Thorium Power, an American company with comprehensive patents on several new fuel designs, has worked with Russian scientists at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute and other Russian research centers for over a decade. This collaborative effort, funded partly privately and partly by the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention and other Department of Energy (DOE) program grants through CRDF's Grant Assistance Program (GAP), has yielded significant breakthroughs in the development of highly proliferation-resistant nuclear fuel designs.
Presently, Thorium Power is in the advanced stages of addressing three different national security and economic viability concerns. First, Thorium Power and its Russian counterparts have developed a nuclear fuel design to dispose of Russian plutonium in an efficient manner. Second, a variation of this design permits the disposal of reactor-grade plutonium generated as a byproduct in commercial reactors. And third, Thorium Power has been leading cutting edge research on thorium/uranium designs that could be directly applicable for most of the light water commercial reactors worldwide. All three of these designs result in highly proliferation-resistant operations – a vital concern given the ever present threat of terrorists and rogue states.
Thorium Power President and CEO Seth Grae notes, “No issue is of greater importance than the removal of excess stocks of plutonium from harm's way. We now not only have the ability to do this, but we can do it in ways that generate power and light for millions of Russian families.” Thorium Power is working with DOE, the Administration and Congress to accelerate the next steps of this process. |
