The article is a few years old, so I don't know where the science has progressed in the meantime, but this sounds like an incredibly promising substitute for uranium reactors if the technology to get and keep the chain reaction running can be scaled up to a full sized reactor.
As I'm understanding it (coming from my zero knowledge of nuclear physics and engineering), there are several advantages over conventional nuclear plants:
- Thorium is much more abundant than uranium
- It doesn't require any sort of enriching to be used in a reactor.
- Because it needs something else to keep the reaction going, stopping that "something else" will shut down the reaction, elminating the risk of meltdowns.
- There is a lot less waste, which becomes safe after "only" about 500 years (vs. 10,000 years for waste from a uranium reactors.
- Neither the fuel nor the waste can be weaponized.
- A thorium reactor will consume plutonium and other nuclear waste products in its reaction, allowing it to be used as a means of getting rid of some waste from conventional reactors, decommissioned weapons, etc.
Is this one of the answers to our energy dilemma?
