Quote from: billyjoeallen on June 26, 2011, 04:45:18 AM

Quote from: AntiVigilante on June 26, 2011, 03:49:52 AM

Quote from: billyjoeallen on June 26, 2011, 01:49:25 AM

I have a degree in Nuclear Technology and I could explain the process in great detail, but really, this is stupid. Google the answer. You're just being lazy.

No, actually I'm missing some details but thanks for the effort.

Most thorium reactor designs aren't much different from conventional designs where the reactor is essentially a giant boiler that runs a steam turbine. The primary fuel is still Uranium (or in rare cases plutonium) and the Thorium merely increases the efficiency of the fuel burn.

Those are all retrofit designs. There are designs intended to use the thorium fuel cycle as the primary fuel, after the initial breeding cycle of course. India has been studying teh feasibility of transitioning to the thorium fuel cycle for a number of years. I don't know if they concluded that their existing reactors could be retrofitted to a complete thorium cycle or not, but even if only new reactors were completely thorium fuel, the mixed fuel setup would still allow India to detach itself from the international atomic fuel industries to a large extent for decades.