Comments by "Bob thebomb" (@bobthebomb1596) on "Australia should be 'building nuclear power plants'" video.

@pwillis1589 No, they could not. An operator could not remove material from a breeder blanket without anyone knowing. For one thing the specialist equipment required to do it would have to be present . Not all thorium reactors have to breed their own fuel, they could be pre-loaded with the right fuel prior to delivery. Those that are designed as breeders and do have the capability to produce U233, will be highly regulated by the IAEA; just as re-processing and enrichment facilities are today.
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@pwillis1589 Because I am not agreeing with you. There is a huge difference between what can be done "in theory" and what can be done in practice. Countries lacking an established nuclear infrastructure are going to select the simplest, most cost effective systems to operate. These will be the highly modular systems with replaceable, sealed cores. The operators of such systems will have no requirement to access the fuel, and thus no infrastructure in place to do so. Zero proliferation risk and low regulatory costs. Countries with an established nuclear infrastructure, the ones who will be producing and reprocessing fuel and waste, already have the necessary regulatory systems in place. Is that more expensive? Yes, which is why most countries will choose the first option. So who is going to make the weapons you are so concerned about? By orders of magnitude the most likely candidate is a nation state, though you dismissed that option. An unscrupulous commercial operator? Don't you think the National and IAEA inspectors are going to notice the additional facility necessary to remove and handle material from a reactor core? If it is pretty much impossible for a nation state to hide a weapons program under the guise of a civil power program, how is a private company going to pull it off?
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@pwillis1589 You were doing so well until the last statement.
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@pwillis1589 I understand it very well. However, no country requires a civil reactor program to produce nuclear weapons if that's what they wish to do. Similarly, no country can hide a nuclear weapons program under the cover of a civil program. Any country can acquire nuclear weapons if they are willing to pay the political and financial cost.
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@pwillis1589 U233 (or more correctly its precursor Protactinium 233) can be removed from the outer breeding blanket around certain Thorium SMR designs (with the intention of increasing U233 yield). Salt can also be removed from the inner reactor core (with the intention of removing fission products), but neither are trivial acts. Both require the means to handle and process extremely radioactive material and any such capabilities will indeed be highly regulated. There are also designs for reactors that are delivered as sealed modules. They come pre-loaded with fuel, are run for a set period of operation, stored, then returned to the supplier for disposal. The fuel in such designs would not be accessible by the operator, who would lack the specialist equipment to handle such materials anyway. In this situation regulation would be lighter, though still present for safety reasons. Less confused now?
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@ianhomerpura8937 I have seen reports of 10-15% of world reserves of thorium (No idea how reliable that figure is or what other reserves worldwide remain unidentified).
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