
Is safe, green thorium power finally ready for prime time? - evo_9
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143437-uranium-killed-the-thorium-star-but-now-its-time-for-round-two
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mpyne
I'm as big a nuclear proponent as they come, but I do wish the media would
stop referring to thorium power as "safe" and "green".

Thorium is certainly _safer_ than Uranium-based fuels. It's not 'fertile' so
runaway prompt criticality is much much less of an issue... might even be
impossible. Its fission fragments are on average shorter-lived which reduces
the amount of time it would be a radioactive waste hazard, etc.

But it does not eliminate the issues of radioactive waste, and does not make
it impossible to have mechanical accidents, at least as compared to existing
Uranium-based reactor designs. That is, many of the passive safety spoken of
with Thorium-based reactors are a matter of design and not necessarily of fuel
(though Thorium fuel is easier to use in the types of molten fuel salt
reactors that are passively safe).

Don't get me wrong, I'm on board with using whichever is found desirable as
long as we're maintaining the needed safety/design/construction/operation/etc.
margin, but I worry that we're starting to oversell Thorium power. As ever,
there's no such thing as a free lunch, there are simply advantages and
disadvantages, opportunities and risks.

