Speculation alert: It is a bad habit of mine to comment upon things I don't know beans about. Hence the speculation alert.
On with my comment...
This seems unnecessary since the Thorium will transmute into an isotope of fissionable uranium. So why do you need the fusion reaction? It introduces a level of complexity that isn't needed.
The problem with fusion is that it uses more energy than it produces. It will produce neutrons, and it can be used to transmute the Thorium, but the Thorium can do that by itself. What problem does this solve?
It is a gas-cooled reaction, which is different from the molten-salt designs that are being developed. ( I haven't kept up with these developments lately, so I don't know when a prototype will be available. The goal was to have one in this decade.)
If a gas-cooled reactor is somehow better than a molten-salt one, then maybe that is the advantage. But the article doesn't go into that. It did mention that it is sub-critical, but so what? Criticality is not what causes it to become dangerous in a molten-salt design. The problem is with solid-fueled reactors that use water for cooling. Molten-salt reactors solve that problem.
Thorium based molten-salt reactors have already had proof-of-concept testing way back in the seventies. These tests did not use Thorium per se, but since Thorium only needs a neutron source to get it started, this is absolutely feasible. Politics stopped this concept, it wasn't technical.
This elaborate design might be feasible, but the design has only been tested in computer simulations. If it is feasible and can escape the politicians, then it could maybe work.
The problem with fusion is that it uses more energy than it produces. It will produce neutrons, and it can be used to transmute the Thorium, but the Thorium can do that by itself. What problem does this solve?
It is a gas-cooled reaction, which is different from the molten-salt designs that are being developed. ( I haven't kept up with these developments lately, so I don't know when a prototype will be available. The goal was to have one in this decade.)
If a gas-cooled reactor is somehow better than a molten-salt one, then maybe that is the advantage. But the article doesn't go into that. It did mention that it is sub-critical, but so what? Criticality is not what causes it to become dangerous in a molten-salt design. The problem is with solid-fueled reactors that use water for cooling. Molten-salt reactors solve that problem.
Thorium based molten-salt reactors have already had proof-of-concept testing way back in the seventies. These tests did not use Thorium per se, but since Thorium only needs a neutron source to get it started, this is absolutely feasible. Politics stopped this concept, it wasn't technical.
This elaborate design might be feasible, but the design has only been tested in computer simulations. If it is feasible and can escape the politicians, then it could maybe work.
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