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>Thorium [...] can't be used to produce weapons-grade Plutonium Sure it can. Thorium breeder reactors do not burn Thorium as Thorium is not fissile. Thorium is
by MertsA 7y ago
>Thorium [...] can't be used to produce weapons-grade Plutonium
Sure it can. Thorium breeder reactors do not burn Thorium as Thorium is not fissile. Thorium is fertile and a blanket of Thorium is used to generate fissile Uranium. It's pretty straightforward to introduce U-238 into the U-233 from the Thorium. Then at that point it's no different than breeding Plutonium in a traditional reactor.
The difference is that Plutonium is an unavoidable waste product for traditional reactors but you don't need to produce it operating a Thorium molten salt reactor.
- petre 7y agoA detail worth mentioning is that the U233 produced in the Thorium cycle is mixed with U232 which is higly gamma radioactive, it's still Uranium, not another element, which means beast of luck separating it U233 from in the mix. You'd have to wait quite a bit for it to decay to Pa232 before you an chemically separated it. That's why the Thorium cycle is touted as being proliferation resistant. It's not, but it's makes it harder and more expensive to build nuclear weapons.