Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[belbear42]

Thorium fission is done with neutrons, not protons.
All you need is exposing thorium to a thermal neutron source (by simply placing it into a fission reactor)

No energetic device like a DPF is needed for that.

And I don’t think it’s even possible to use a DPF to fuse protons with thorium, which has a whopping 90 positive charges to overcome, boron has only 5.
One needs a full-blown particle accelerator for that, while using neutrons is so much easier.

Thorium itself is not even fissionable, but it can be used to start a fuel cycle, leading to uranium 233 which is fissionable.
The “breeding” of Thorium 232 into uranium 233 however is as dangerous as breeding uranium 238 into plutonium 239. (also for making nuclear weapons)
And it’s a very expensive process to extract the uranium 233 because of the high radioactivity of some byproducts such as uranium 232

Norway considered using Thorium in 2007, because they have abundant thorium ores and no uranium, but they backed out before large investments were done.

But p-B11 focus fusion is of course a FAR better alternative to any fission scheme, so once we have focus fusion, nobody will ever want to mess with heavy nuclei for power production again. (although some evil-minded may still want to mess with them to make nuclear weapons)