Wouldn’t they need an existing system to reverse engineer before they could develop one?
The biggest favor China can do for us is to be a good competitor.
Thorium produces a radioactive gas, radon-220, as one of its decay products. Secondary decay products of thorium include radium and actinium.
In nature, virtually all thorium is found as thorium-232, which undergoes alpha decay with a half-life of about 14.05 billion years.
Other isotopes of thorium are short-lived intermediates in the decay chains of higher elements, and only found in trace amounts.
Thorium is estimated to be about three to four times more abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust, and is chiefly refined from monazite sands as a by-product of extracting rare earth metals.
Thorium was once commonly used as the light source in gas mantles and as an alloying material, but these applications have declined due to concerns about its radioactivity.
Thorium is also used as an alloying element in nonconsumable TIG welding electrodes. It remains popular as a material in high-end optics and scientific instrumentation; thorium and uranium are the only radioactive elements with major commercial applications that do not rely on their radioactivity.
1 gram of thorium is more energy dense than 7,396 gallons of gasoline. This means that 8 grams of the substance could power a thorium turbine motor vehicle for a century.
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Half life of 14.05 BILLION years??
If this were such a miracle element we would have all been using it for eons. Must have ONE hell heck of a down side.
Why don't they fix their coal-fired plants? Our coal-fired plants in the US burn cleanly.