/sci/ - Science & Math

>>14865222
>>14865194
https://www.planetary.org/space-images/thorium-map-of-the-moon.. Well, seems like it might be possible to mine sufficient quantities of Thorium from the Moon, given the high concentrations of material present on the surface and maybe even subsurface. However, uranium concentrations on the Moon are poor: https://www.space.com/8644-moon-map-shows-uranium-short-supply.html..

So yeah, if there's a nuclear reactor in space that's gonna be used as a rocket engine, it'll have to be thorium based. Anything else is literally too dangerous to allow it. Interestingly enough, Thorium-232 decays into Uranium-233 which can be decomposed back into Thorium-232 which again decays into Uranium-233 according to this article: https://www.machinedesign.com/learning-resources/whats-the-difference-between/article/21832119/whats-the-difference-between-thorium-and-uranium-nuclear-reactors.. So, in theory the nuclear rockets can be thorium/uranium hybrids. You could also feed the reactors with uranium-235 as a starting fuel, but again as mentioned in my first post, it decays into weapons grade plutonium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239).). So the failure and contamination risk is egregiously massive relative to just doing Thorium-232 -> Uranium-233 -> Thorium-232 cycling.

I read a while back that Thorium burning does create other hazardous byproducts that make it difficult to manage them on Earth, relative to human population centers--but in space, that's irrelevant because any ship that IS powered by it, is unlikely to descend into atmosphere or ascend from atmosphere, and if it blows up, space is so god damn big--that it's mostly irrelevant.