Earlier quoted context omitted.
thanks A#: thorium? maybe. but all of the reactors currently dotting the globe, and any of those which may be built in the near future, all use uranium. I'd hate for us to make the mistake of basing decisions about whether or not to retire existing aging uranium reactors on the promises of theoretical thorium models. We certainly shouldn't keep building dangerous uranium reactors simply because, one day, hopefully, t…
The candu reactors are thorium. As was AVR... Last I heard there were reactors in india/china using thorium. All the gen IV reactors I remember are thorium based, however keep in mind that most of the gen IV reactors can be made with uranium, it's just that thorium is a rather nice fuel. Well, if you don't need to build any more nukes, that is. To be perfectly honest, once you've mined out all of the nuclear material…
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#261candu say they can do thorium, but no-one's actually doing it. Yeah maybe india and china have each experimented, but I don't think anyone's using thorium for power.
there's a huge, rich thorium deposit down the road from me, but they're planning to bury it all again after extracting the associated REEs.
Like I said, maybe one day we'll be making decisions about thorium reactors, but here and now it's uranium reactors (most of them GenII) that deserve our focus, because these are the ones which are operating or scheduled for construction.