Can other elements, except uranium, be used for power generation?
I thought uranium is used in reactors because it also produces A-bomb material as a by-product.
I thought uranium is used in reactors because it also produces A-bomb material as a by-product.
The thing holding us back from having thorium reactors seems to be how expensive nuclear reactor research is and how unpopular nuclear reactors are.
Not holding my breath....
Plutonium, Thorium and a few others yes
> I thought uranium is used in reactors because it also produces A-bomb material as a by-product.
It doesn't and it's used mostly because it was easiest to work with and best researched when the majority oft reactors Werke build
Thorium was actually more of military-only solution than Uranium->Plutonium chain, as unlike Uranium it doesn't have obvious "easy" energy use path, but early on it was researched as mix of uranium and thorium fuels due to uranium availability concerns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
The only real advantage of Thorium is that you can use it in a thermal breeder. If you are not building a thermal breeder using thorim is mostly pointless.