As brought up by others far more qualified than myself, there are lots of scientific errors in this article. And there is quite a bit of scaremongering in there which is not necessary.

However, anything that brings the conversation on the use of nuclear energy to people is welcome by me.

There are a lot of prominent people in the nuclear industry pushing for the use of Thorium. Particularly Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs).

The benefits of Thorium include:

- Thorium is much more abundant that Uranium

- Thorium can be used in slow-neutron breed reactors extending the fuels life, meaning less mining

- Thorium doesn't produce transuranic waste (less toxic than uranium waste)

- Thorium doesn't produce Plutonium removing the proliferation concerns of using nuclear energy to produce nuclear bombs

The negatives of Thorium include:

- Thorium is harder to prepare to make into fuel

- Irradiated Thorium is actually more radioactive in the short term than Uranium

- Thorium doesn't work well in fast reactors (which most of the existing reactors are)

- We do not have much operational experience of working with Thorium

Thorium isn't perfect, but its rare that anything is. To state that "the widespread need for nuclear weapons" is holding the technology back is ridiculous.

Uranium helps generate clean energy as part of a sustainable environemnt. There are clear benefits of Thorium and I suspect we will see smaller scale MSRs in the future. Potentially in an effort to decarbonise the shipping industry.