By J-P Revol, M Bourquin, Y Kadi, E Lillestol, J-C de Mestral and K Samec (eds)
Springer
This book contains the proceedings of the Thorium Energy Conference (ThEC13), held in October 2013 at CERN, which brought together some of the world’s leading experts on thorium technologies. According to them, nuclear energy based on a thorium fuel cycle is safer and cleaner than the one generated from uranium. In addition, long-lived waste from existing power plants could be retrieved and integrated into the thorium fuel cycle to be transformed into a stable material while generating electricity.
The technology required to implement this type of fuel cycle is already being developed, nevertheless much effort and time is still needed.
The ThEC13 conference saw the participation of high-level speakers from 30 countries, such as the Nobel prize laureates Carlo Rubbia and Jack Steinberger, the then CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer, and Hans Blix, former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to name a few.
Collecting the contributions of the speakers, this book offers a detailed technical review of thorium-energy technologies from basic R&D to industrial developments, and is thus a tool for informed debates on the future of energy production and, in particular, on the advantages and disadvantages of different nuclear technologies.
