deskelleher

Well, I think the first thing to recognise is that there are governments and countries around the world who are actively trying to develop reactors based on Thorium. For example, China has announced funding for an experimental Molten Salt Reactor they expect to be built by 2017.

Anti-nuclear sentiment is high, but there is a real possibility that reactors based on Thorium can change that by becoming an acceptable type of nuclear power. For example, we interviewed Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth UK who said that his organisation had been against nuclear power from the beginning but that is no reason to be against newer, safer forms of nuclear power like a Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor.

According to our interviewees, the benefits are numerous. First, Thorium is found all over the planet. It’s much more common than Uranium which is important because many people believe that Uranium production will peak in the near future.

Second, Thorium is what’s termed fertile rather than fissile. This means that by itself it is not very radioactive and in fact there are entire beaches made from Mozanite sands which contain Thorium. Thorium decays into Uranium as part of the fuel cycle so it only ever “produces” as much Uranium as is needed to keep the reactor going.

Finally, whereas you throw away about 99% of the Uranium ore mined during the enrichment process, Thorium is ready to use almost out of the ground. In fact, it’s already being mined when people are looking for other materials termed Rare Earths and it’s thrown away as a waste product!

As far as downsides go, our interviewees listed a few. To get the best use of Thorium it must be put in new types of reactors, none of which has been used on a commercial scale. This means that experimental research reactors must be built and many people say this is unnecessary given the next generation of Uranium-based reactors is almost ready to go.

Happy to hear it :)

Most of the anti-nuclear arguments we heard were categorical. Nuclear was bad because it was nuclear. Many people mentioned Chernobyl and insisted that people were still dying from the disaster. The official number of 64 deaths is widely believed to be a lie or the result of a conspiracy.

The most interesting people we spoke to were the people who were previously anti-nuclear but have changed their minds. This is largely due to the dire need for carbon-free energy and the realisation that nuclear plants in the West have a zero fatality rate and that of all the deaths at Fukushima due to the tsunami and earthquake, none was due to radiation poisoning. We spoke to several people who specifically mention Thorium reactors as the cause for their change of stance on nuclear power.

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Concern over the desperate need to replace fossil fuels was the motivation for us to make the movie in the first place. Most of the people we interviewed considered themselves environmentalists - the only difference was whether they supported nuclear power.

We hope this movie will challenge people's assumptions and allow them to see nuclear power from a different perspective.

Yes, we've heard this raised as a concern about the cooling loop rather than the containment tank. The consensus seems to be that materials science has advanced considerably since the experiments in the 60s and that some version of Hastelloy can be used without requiring excessive maintenance.

It will be interesting to see how much of an issue this is in the experimental Molten Salt Reactor being built in China.