There is a vast difference between the use of thorium in conventional technology and its use in DBI technology. Thorium has been widely used as an added “blanket” in conventional reactors to help increase the availability of fissile fuel by breeding artificial uranium-233. Used in conventional reactors this way, thorium’s overall burn rate still doesn’t exceed 6% and thus about 94% the radiotoxic artificial uranium still ends up in the vast waste stream.
One of the many ways in which DBI technology differs is that DBI Thorium Reactors are designed to breed the artificial uranium-233 from thorium,burn most of that fuel as soon as it is bred, and store the minor amount of unburned fuel—all in situ. Taking advantage of the benefits of thorium, a DBI Thorium Reactor can produce electricity for a cost of only $0.04-$0.07 per kilowatt-hour while its breed-and-burn fuel cycle could over time reduce long-term radiotoxic waste more than 90% without the need for fuel reprocessing (due to more efficient fuel utilization, the elimination of packaging waste, and significant reduction of long-lived radioactive isotopes).
Additionally, no waste would be produced for 30-60 years, until plant decommissioning, wherein waste will remain in the reactor encapsulated in glass. No external storage (like Yucca Mountain) will be necessary.
Furthermore, DBI is not a paper company—an analytical source of information—but a hardware company that has built every piece of equipment ever to cross Mr. D’Auvergne’s desk. Toward the same end regarding the reactor technology, the company is currently creating the reactor core via DBI Ceramics, a division of DBI/Century Fuels Inc. DBI Ceramics is specifically aimed to manufacture the fuel containers as well as the fuel moving process using certain algorithms, while simultaneously monitoring the production and use of the artificial uranium using DBI’s own equipment.
The DBI Thorium Reactor is a one-of-a-kind technology whose modular design can achieve any output desired at significantly reduced capital and carrying costs.
DBI’s effort started back in 1970 by designing and manufacturing a linear accelerator component, such as the one shown below, to be used in subcritical assemblies. Over the years, the accelerator was replaced by a start-up fuel. The mock-up below shows a potential plant using a start-up fuel.
