N-Deal will help launch thorium reactors (India)

[jpak]

http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=63418

New Delhi, February 25: As US President George W Bush's visit approaches, the few voices within the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) have joined to become a chorus.

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The basic reason why thorium is ignored world over is that it has to be externally fed with some man-made fissile material like plutonium to get ignited and start producing power, he said.

According to the designer, if India on its own, wanted to accumulate sufficient plutonium for its fast breeder programme and the thorium reactor research, it has to wait for at least 30 years.

"On the other hand, the Indo-US deal provides India a window of opportunity to get the plutonium and build thorium reactors today", he said.

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[hunter]

1. Thorium is ignored because Uranium is cheap.

India has already run several very large scale thorium fuel experiments, and expects to use domestically produced thorium as its primary nuclear fuel source in the future.

The "30 years" figure is simply one possible timetable, not an actual physical limitation on India's transition to a thorium fuel cycle. Basically the engineer is saying there's no reason to wait thirty years if India can simply buy the required fissile material from the United States.

[jpak]

2. Thorium is a smokescreen

They really want the plutonium for their weapons program.

India currently has ~75 nuclear weapons but wants to acquire 300.

They need plutonium to accomplish this and ChimpCo is willing to give them the means to do it...