Talk:Thorium-based nuclear power

A problem with dates
It seems to me that this "In August 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment informed the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) that its commissioning plan for the LF1 had been approved.[9] " entry is about something that happened 2018, even if the article is dated 2022. For surely the commissioning must have happened before it was built last year. Star Lord -   星爵 (talk) 02:06, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It's new development (from the perspective of trying to scale-up a 2MW reactor), the regulators are trying to settle on a canonical sequence of approvals; the Chinese began their development effort in 2011 at Oak Ridge National Lab (based on MSRE). The Chinese gathered as much IP as they could, with parallel streams of development using staffs of hundreds in a horse-race of possible technologies. One path was at Wuwei (near the Gobi desert), only one of one hundred reactors in China. The Thorium-based path was finally given China's legal approval to scale up as an electrical utility in 2022. The TMSR-LF1 is now cleared for scaling up. Indonesia's TMSR-500 is a similar Thorium-based project, with legal approval by Indonesia's regulatory agency in 2022 as well. Both projects (China and Indonesia) have long histories. --Ancheta Wis    (talk  &#124; contribs) 11:33, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Huge and direct self-contradiction in the page
"Not suitable for bombs. It is difficult to make a practical nuclear bomb from a thorium reactor's by-products"

Later:

'Harvesting weapons-grade plutonium. The thorium fuel cycle is a potential way to produce long term nuclear energy with low radio-toxicity waste. In addition, the transition to thorium could be done through the incineration of weapons grade plutonium (WPu) or civilian plutonium."

even later:

"The decay of the protactinium-233 would then create uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232 for use in nuclear weapons"

This says it is possible and suitable in a great and several ways to produce products for a nuclear bomb. 2003:C1:B720:C800:D565:433:BA0C:399B (talk) 06:40, 25 June 2024 (UTC)


 * No. A suitable process is needed to turn u-233 into weapons material. For far-more relevant materiel, see Plutonium-239. The refinement processes were the purpose of the Manhattan Project. -- Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 12:34, 26 June 2024 (UTC)