Thorium and lithium in Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: OLIVEIRA, GLAUCIA A.C. de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: LAINETTI, PAULO E.O., BUSTILLOS, JOSE O.W.V., PIRANI, DEBORA A., BERGAMASCHI, VANDERLEI S., FERREIRA, JOAO C., SENEDA, JOSE A., INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR ATLANTIC CONFERENCE
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do IPEN
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.ipen.br/handle/123456789/30738
• topic: lithium; molten salt reactors; nuclear fuels; public policy; purification; thorium; uranium; brazil

Brazil has one of the largest reserves of thorium in the world, including rare earth minerals. It has developed a great program in the field of nuclear technology for decades, including facilities to produced oxides to microspheres and thorium nitrates. Nowadays, with the current climate change, it is necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one of this way is exploring the advent of IV Generation reactors, molten salt reactors, that using Thorium and Lithium. Thorium's technology is promising and has been awaiting the return of one nuclear policy that incorporates its relevance to the necessary levels, since countries like the BRICS (without Brazil) have been doing so for years. Brazil has also been developing studies on the purification of lithium, and this one associated to thorium, are the raw material of the molten salt reactors. This paper presents a summary of the thorium and lithium technology that the country already has, and its perspectives to the future.