thorium reactor

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a nuclear fission reactor that uses thorium-232 as a fertile material, which upon absorbing a neutron converts to uranium-233, a fissile isotope that can sustain a chain reaction and serve as the reactor fuel; thorium is roughly three times more abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust and produces less long-lived radioactive waste than conventional uranium reactors; thorium reactors have been proposed in liquid fluoride thorium reactor designs, which operate at low pressure and high temperature and are theoretically inherently safe due to passive drain-down mechanisms; India, which possesses large thorium reserves, has pursued thorium reactor development as a long-term energy strategy, and interest has revived globally as part of the search for advanced nuclear technologies with improved sustainability and proliferation resistance