Wyoming nuclear task force hears thorium reactor plan

Kirk Sorensen claims a person can literally hold a lifetime’s supply of power in his or her hand.
Presenting to the Wyoming Task Force for Nuclear Energy Production via phone late last week, Sorensen touted the benefits of thorium — a possible competitor for uranium — in energy production.

“Thorium energy is much easier,” he said. “It can present a great advantage if we can use it.”

Sorensen, president and chief technologist of Huntsville, Ala.-based Flibe Energy, told the task force Thursday that his company is looking to establish a liquid fluoride thorium reactor in the United States within the next decade, with Wyoming a possible location.

Among the advantages of using liquid fluoride thorium reactors rather than uranium reactors, he said, are the element’s abundance in the United States, including Wyoming, the reactor’s ability to produce in remote areas and high efficiency.

He said the naturally occurring element and common byproduct of rare earths mining is three times as abundant as the uranium used to fuel modern nuclear power plants and 200 times more efficient. He added that thorium reactors

consume nearly all the thorium used to create energy — uranium-powered reactors consume less than one percent — and thereby create less waste.

Sorensen co-founded Flibe Energy about a year ago with a mission to establish a reactor in the United States. Similar technology is being pursued in China and India, and he told the Wyoming task force that the U.S. can’t afford to lose the thorium race.

“This is too important a technology to yield to another nation,” he said. “They’re running and we’re sitting on the bench.”

The reactor, as proposed by Sorensen, carries another major advantage that could make it a realistic option for Wyoming — the ability to operate in remote areas.

Most nuclear plants require large supplies of water for cooling. But a thorium reactor, he said, could run using a gas-to-air heat exchanger instead, making arid Wyoming a possible fit.

“It relieves you of the burden of having to be next to water,” he said. “Areas that are rather remote are possible.”

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