The most important fact about the fusion breakthrough story. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS!!!!!

[NNadir]

45. It's an OK nuclear fuel cycle.

I do think it's a bit over hyped, and my personal view is that the uranium/plutonium cycle has more to recommend it, particularly in the next century when we will need to scale up nuclear energy much faster than the thorium/U-233 cycle will allow.

Although thorium can be used in a thermal neutron cycle as a breeder, the doubling time is much longer than it is for the uranium/plutonium cycle.

This said, we have lots of "waste" thorium from the tailings of lanthanide mining, so I believe this material should be incorporated into the nuclear fuel cycle, in particular in CANDU type heavy water reactors. The recent refurbishment of the Darlington CANDUs and the decision to do the same with the Pickering reactors in Canada should be available for a switch to a thorium cycle. CANDUs however are designed for low burn ups, and it may be necessary to consider changes to the fuel cladding, although I'm not sure this is the case.

But we have more highly purified uranium, enough, if converted to plutonium, to provide for all of humanity's energy needs for centuries, no coal mines, no oil or gas fields fracked or otherwise, no wilderness converted into industrial parks for wind turbines and solar arrays.

The comparatively high solubility of uranium in seawater with respect to thorium means that uranium is essentially infinitely sustainable, whereas there is a limit to how long thorium reserves will last, probably limited to a few millennia.

I'm not against thorium; it's a niche fuel of some value; but overall I'm a uranium/plutonium fuel cycle kind of guy.