Illustration of a uranium or thorium rod. The United States should focus on deploying uranium-based reactors now, but build its nuclear industrial base in a way that preserves thorium as a credible future option. (Shutterstock/Parilov)

Can US Nuclear Expansion Accommodate Thorium Reactors?

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The United States should focus on deploying uranium-based reactors now, but build its nuclear industrial base in a way that preserves thorium as a credible future option.

The nuclear energy renaissance extends beyond the United States and the West, with distinct characteristics in other regions.

The US maintains the world’s largest fleet of nuclear reactors with a total of about 94 gigawatts (GW) of capacity, built over 50 years and based on low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel systems. Advanced and small modular reactors (SMRs), physically and philosophically embedded in uranium fuel systems, are spurring this nuclear renaissance in the United States, creating demand for new investment in the uranium fuel cycle, particularly for energy-dense high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) and in its safer variant, TRIstructural-ISOtropic particle fuel (TRISO). 

China, which added 34 gigawatts of nuclear power in the last decade, is aiming to surpass US nuclear capacity by 2030. Both China and India are pivoting to a different fuel infrastructure—thorium reactors. 

Thorium Offers Technical and Strategic Advantages 

Thorium reactors utilize Thorium-232 as their primary fuel input, which is converted through a breeding process into fissile Uranium-233. The Uranium-233 then undergoes fission reactions, producing energy for power generation.  

Thorium reactors utilize a more complex breeding process and do not require enrichment, making them relatively proliferation resistant. Additionally, a thorium reactor with molten salt as a coolant can operate at higher thermal capacity and has the potential for high fuel burn-up or utilization, resulting in reduced radioactive waste production, which........

© The National Interest