3 ms·
Nuclear engineer here. I've spent lots of time fighting against persistent myths about thorium. All the things you mention are characteristics of breeder reacto
by acidburnNSA 6y ago
Nuclear engineer here. I've spent lots of time fighting against persistent myths about thorium. All the things you mention are characteristics of breeder reactors, not just thorium breeders. Uranium-based breeder reactors can do these things as well.
Thorium has only one actual physical advantage, and that is that it can do breeding with slow neutrons rather than fast ones. This is a technicality and has lots of complications.
[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
- nickik 6y agoYes, this. I am a huge fan of thorium breeders and there are few other minor advantages but people have gone of the deep end. If you are not doing a breeder, uranium is just fine.
- fmajid 6y agoA big advantage is that thorium is a non-proliferating nuclear technology, which may explain why so little effort has been put into it.
- tim333 6y agoYou can still make bombs https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth3 https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth3
- acidburnNSA 6y agoYup. This myth is particularly pervasive. Less effort was put into thorium because it was inherently more expensive to get going and didn't offer sufficient advantages to motivate the additional expense.