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There are some other advantages to Thorium fuel besides the inherent safety of the plant design. It's harder to turn Thorium into nuclear weapons, so a nuclear

There are some other advantages to Thorium fuel besides the inherent safety of the plant design. It's harder to turn Thorium into nuclear weapons, so a nuclear state could provide fuel to a non-nuclear state. Thorium is more abundant and easier to mine. There's much less nuclear waste from a Thorium plant and it decays to safe levels of radiation in a few hundred years making safe storage easier.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
Partially true on all accounts. See [1]. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
- Johnny555 8y ago
  I think that article is mostly agreeing with my points: "Not only can they technically (but with much difficulty!) be used to make bombs.... It may be difficult to do this several times without going subcritical, but it certainly could be done" So yeah, it's technically possible to make a bomb with byproducts from a Thorium reactor, but it's not trivial. "Considering that the oceans contain 1.4x1021 kg of water, that amounts to 56,000 tonnes of Th and 4.62 billion tonnes of Uranium. Moreover, mining the entire crust is difficult, whereas the ocean delivers to you. While seawater extraction of uranium is not yet competitive with traditional mining (it’s hovering around 4x more expensive), it is possible and may become economical in the near future" Pointing to a source that's not feasible and use some handwavy "Well it might be done in the future" doesn't really disprove the point that Thorium is more abundant in the places we can actually extract it from. "In fact, the long-term decay heat from Thorium-MSRs can be orders of magnitude lower than that from traditional reactors" On this point the article agrees.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    > So yeah, it's technically possible to make a bomb with byproducts from a Thorium reactor, but it's not trivial. It's not trivial to make a nuclear bomb period.

acidburnNSA 8y ago

Partially true on all accounts. See [1]. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

Johnny555 8y ago
I think that article is mostly agreeing with my points: "Not only can they technically (but with much difficulty!) be used to make bombs.... It may be difficult to do this several times without going subcritical, but it certainly could be done" So yeah, it's technically possible to make a bomb with byproducts from a Thorium reactor, but it's not trivial. "Considering that the oceans contain 1.4x1021 kg of water, that amounts to 56,000 tonnes of Th and 4.62 billion tonnes of Uranium. Moreover, mining the entire crust is difficult, whereas the ocean delivers to you. While seawater extraction of uranium is not yet competitive with traditional mining (it’s hovering around 4x more expensive), it is possible and may become economical in the near future" Pointing to a source that's not feasible and use some handwavy "Well it might be done in the future" doesn't really disprove the point that Thorium is more abundant in the places we can actually extract it from. "In fact, the long-term decay heat from Thorium-MSRs can be orders of magnitude lower than that from traditional reactors" On this point the article agrees.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  > So yeah, it's technically possible to make a bomb with byproducts from a Thorium reactor, but it's not trivial. It's not trivial to make a nuclear bomb period.