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Thorium-232 has an extremely long half life (longer than the age of the universe) and it’s reasonably abundant. That’s the isotope useful for the thorium fuel cycle.
So it’s not quite that bad for threading this needle. The fuel cycle is a little more complicated than uranium–it’s not fertile as it is–and that could slow down R&D of a new nuclear program by getting stuck at some step.
Thorium is the Fusion of Fission.
Since the 60’s we’ve been told that thorium tech is just around the corner and it will replace uranium.
China has a working prototype today. There weren’t any theoretical issues, someone just needed to put the money down.
Same thing with fusion, really.
yep its all ✨infrastructural inertia✨
because on paper thorium and fusion are both way ahead of uranium but the world has invested billions of dollars over 80 years into creating infrastructure for uranium.
From what I understand, thorium reactors have been more or less proven to be a viable power source, while fusion reactors still have major unsolved problems and likely won’t be viable for decades.
This doesnt remove a single step from the image
It removes the “hope intelligent life evolves fast enough”.
If it was only Uraniam, then you need U-235. That has a half life of about 700M years. Cut in half 2 more times, and there’s almost none left. So if intelligent life took another 1.5B years to develop on Earth (which it easily could have), then that path is cut off.
With Thorium, the sun would probably expand to a red giant first.
We’ll be fine as long as this screwdriver says put.
🤯
As a geoscience, I like spicy rocks
