Is simply not true. There are medical papers from the 70’s referring to atrial septal defects.
The risks from radionuclide release during normal operation is vanishing small. The radionuclide release from coal burning plants is vastly higher. People willingly get on planes, smoke, use tanning beds, get x-rays, etc, all giving vastly higher doses. The fear mongering is not proportionate.
As for waste, the high level stuff all fits in a couple of swimming pools and it is going to vitrified and buried deep underground. To not use one of the few solutions to solve climate change at the risk of what might happen, 10,000 years from now, is myopic at best.
Why thorium gets such a strong following online is strange to me. It’s the equivalent of saying, “Yeah I know we have piles and piles of dry logs for burning, but what about all these wet leaves just lying around?”
My apologies, I don’t mean to scare-monger and maybe I used the wrong term there. Not unheard of but rare.
Nuclear testing in the 50s may have resulted in holes in hearts but Chernobyl Heart became common after the incident.
I am not talking about exposure to ionising radiation but ingestion of radionuclides as well as their acute toxicity. This is quite a different thing to X-rays, sun beds and air travel, although you have a fair point about the radionuclides released from coal burning, but maybe this is small compared with the other carcinogens released?
I think people rave about thorium because of the 3 big nuclear disasters that we have had and how they effect people and planet. There are multiple benefits to them, including their ability to be refuelled online, and the reprocessing of spent fuel from conventional nuclear power stations.
I understood that they off-gas nuclear reactors as a matter of course. I am sure that filtration has improved but I don’t know that it is 100%
My perspective is that while the public only understands the word “radiation” as a risk of NPPs, there is a world of difference between radiation and radionuclide release, they can not make an even slightly informed decision as to NPPs safety. Your tree analogy is useful here as a small amount of radiation exposure is like standing under a tree while it’s leaves fall on you, compared with ingestion of certain radionuclides being like the whole tree falling on you!
Can you explain the wet leaves analogy please? I understood Thorium reactors to be more efficient (if yet unproven at commercial scale).