Thread by @I_am_the_Story

China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment has approved the commissioning of an experimental molten salt thorium nuclear reactor in Wuwei City.

#China #Thorium

1. Thorium is more abundant in nature than uranium. It is fertile rather than fissile and can only be used as a fuel in conjunction with a fissile material such as recycled plutonium.
Thorium fuels can breed fissile uranium-233 to be used in various kinds of nuclear reactors.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

2. It is possible but quite difficult to design thorium fuels that produce more U-233 in thermal reactors than the fissile material they consume (this is referred to as having a fissile conversion ratio of more than 1.0 and is also called breeding). Thermal breeding with thorium… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

3. The thorium fuel cycle is promoted as having excellent non-proliferation credentials. The USA produced about 2 tonnes of U-233 from thorium during the ‘Cold War’, at various levels of chemical and isotopic purity, in plutonium production reactors.

4. It is possible to use U-233 in a nuclear weapon, and in 1955 the USA detonated a device with a plutonium-U-233 composite pit, in Operation Teapot. The explosive yield was less than anticipated, at 22 kilotons.

5. In 1998, India detonated a very small device based on U-233 called Shakti V. However, the production of U-233 inevitably also yields U-232 which is a strong gamma-emitter, as are some decay products such as thallium-208 ('thorium C'), making the material extremely difficult to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…