Thorium and China

In 2011 China started operating a thorium power plant on an experimental basis and this year they will have the first operating thorium plant. They plan on not only using thorium power in China but to build these plants for sale to other countries. A quick review of thorium begins with the original nuke plants built in the 60's. Scientist knew at that time that thorium would be a better choice than uranium but plutonium was needed for bombs and while uranium plants could produce plutonium, thorium plants would not so uranium won out and that remained until today. Most of the safety problems associated with nuclear power center around the use of water. Water is used to cool the reactor if things get too hot that means water at very high temperature and pressure and this opens the door to an accident releasing radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Thorium does not use water for cooling and operates at normal atmospheric pressure. It uses molten salt which when power goes off just cools to a solid salt. If it gets too hot the molten salt is just released into underground storage tanks. Thorium by itself is not fissionable meaning no matter how concentrated it gets it cannot start a chain reaction. It needs extra neutrons to getting going and will stop of those are withheld. Thorium is three times more available than uranium and can be mined without producing unwanted byproducts. Thorium nuclear waste only stays radioactive for 500 years, instead of 10,000, and there is 1,000 to 10,000 times less of it to start with. The US cannot compete with China because the proponents of wind and solar are too entrenched and thorium presents a threat. To produce wind and solar requires mining rare earth metals and lithium which creates a serious problem with pollution. This is not the case with thorium. Once again politics will interfere with science and thorium plants will have to come from China. Once these plants are operating in various countries, wind, solar and fossil fuels will be eased out but the US will probable be the last to change.