> This is actually the reason why thorium reactors have been avoided, because it has been considered that it is too easy to separate the uranium 233 from the fu

> This is actually the reason why thorium reactors have been avoided, because it has been considered that it is too easy to separate the uranium 233 from the fuel, which can be used for making nuclear weapons. This is absolutely not the reason thorium reactors have been avoided at all. The reality is that uranium enrichment infrastructure existed and fuel isn't a huge part of the cost. Most of the funding happened in the early days and they were of course using uranium, people back then figured that uranium would run out and were interested in breedres. But pretty quickly, uranium was found to be pretty common. Uranium is also just better unless you are doing a thorium thermal breeder. And that design only really works well with a pretty complex reactor setup that most people were simply not interested in.