[ColdWater]

It is cheaper than uranium, does not make U239 and plutonium (i.e. no weapons), no runaway meltdowns, and the waste lasts hundreds of years and not thousands. The reactors will be cheaper and smarter. The world would have gone with thorium if it weren't for weapons development from uranium.

Now, where did you get your Nuclear Engineering degree?

[Vineyard]

Article is very very suspect.

Article states that Rickover (Father of Nuclear Power for Navy) was against thorium
FACT - Bettis Labs (which is the Navy lab that helped develop nuclear power for the Navy) - helped commercialize nuclear power (Shippingport PA reactor). Later - Bettis developed a Light water breeder reactor core for Shippingport - using seed material of Uranium and a blanket material of Thorium. So much of the initial work on the Thorium cycle was accomplished under the auspices of H.G.Rickover!

What the article fails to clarify is that Thorium can’t be used in a reactor by itself. It must be converted to U233 by breeding. After breeding - if the Thorium were to be in rods containing only Thorium (not mixed oxide with U235 and U238) - the converted U233 could be separated out from the unconverted Thorium and made into bomb material.

The article is correct in that fission products from U233, which came from Thorium has more preferential decay products than fission products from U235. But if we reprocessed our spent fuel - neither would be much of a problem.

(My Nuclear Engineering expertise comes from Navy Nuclear Power Training, and working in civilian nuclear power industry.)