Thorium

Posted: 31st December 2021

There has recently been an upsurge of uninformed babble about thorium as if it were a brand new discovery with astounding potentiality. Some describe it as a nearly miraculous material that can provide unlimited amounts of problem-free energy. Such hype is grossly exaggerated. While there are some interesting advantages to thorium if one is a nuclear enthusiast, there is no excuse for making over-the-top claims that fly in the face of the basic facts of science. One of the most irresponsible statements is that thorium has no connection with nuclear weapons. On the contrary, the initial motivation for using thorium in nuclear reactors was precisely for the purposes of nuclear weaponry. It appears that thorium-fuelled reactors pose the same kinds of problems, qualitatively speaking, that afflict existing nuclear reactors. Problems associated with the long-term management of nuclear waste, and the potential for proliferating nuclear weapons, are not fundamentally different even though the detailed considerations are by no means identical. Since a nuclear reactor accident will have off-site consequences only due to the unintended release of high-level nuclear waste materials into the environment, there is no qualitative difference there either. Thorium reactors pose the same risk of reactor accident risks as in the case of a comparable non-thorium reactor.