Cap??tulo de livro
Advanced Heavy Water Reactor
Essays on nuclear energy and radioactive waste management
Autor
SMITH, RICARDO B.
VICENTE, ROBERTO
SACHDEVE, MAHIMA
BISURI, INDRANIL
Resumen
One of the great advances in the current evolution of nuclear
power reactors is occurring in India, with the Advanced Heavy Water
Reactor (AHWR). It is a reactor that uses thorium as part of its fuel,
which in its two fueling cycle options, in conjunction with plutonium
or low enriched uranium, produces energy at the commercial level,
generating less actinides of long half-life and inert thorium oxide,
which leads to an optimization in the proportion of energy produced
versus the production of burnt fuels of the order of up to 50%. The
objective of this work is to present the most recent research and
projects in progress in India, and how the expected results should be
in compliance with the current sustainability models and programs,
especially ???Green Chemistry???, a program developed since the 1990s
in the United States and England, which defines sustainable choices
in its twelve principles and that can also be mostly related to the
nuclear field. Nevertheless, in Brazil, for more than 40 years there has
been the discontinuation of research for a thorium-fueled reactor,
and so far there has been no prospect of future projects. The AHWR
is an important example as an alternative way of producing energy in
Brazil, as the country has the second largest reserve of thorium on
the planet.