Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’

• eleitl@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Thorium fuel cycle is useful for weapon production. Germany also abandoned thorium despite no interest in weapon production.

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• Rakonat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  This excuse doesn’t make any sense. This myth also needs to die. You can’t get weapons grade materials from fission reactors, and you certainly aren’t converting spent fuel into weapons. The process of refining weapons grade uranium or synthesizing plutonium have nothing to do with energy producing reactors

  Uranium was endorsed because it was easier to create a reactor with and didn’t have to deal with the corrosive issue that metallurgy of the early nuclear age into the 50s couldn’t really handle economically.

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  • Atomic@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It gives you a reason to access the materials you need for nuclear weapons.

    Who is saying they’re using the fuel for reactors to make the weapons? Just you.

    And not that I count it. But they do infact make weapons from spent uranium. They make artillery shells from it. Buy like I said. I don’t even count that.

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    • Rakonat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      There is no correlation between nuclear weapons production and nuclear power generation. If anything they compete for the same raw materials. They were developed in the same era because that’s when we discovered how to harness fission.

      Also depleted uranium is not spent fuel. Depleted uranium is the byproduct of enriching uranium to weapons grade. Given the natural ratios of u238 to u235, there’s an abundance of it from refining nuclear weapons hence why some weapons and armor utilize it.

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      • Atomic@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Yes. They compete for the same raw material. That’s the whole point. Gives you a perfectly good reason to excavate it.

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