5. Conclusion

This overview shows that thorium offers interesting prospects, particularly in terms of uranium savings (if U-233 is recycled) but also in terms of reducing the total radiotoxic inventory of final waste. Thorium fuels also offer attractive characteristics in terms of irradiation resistance and neutron behavior in the reactor. However, despite the existence of concrete examples of thorium use in reactors in the past, industrial experience in this cycle remains very limited and practically non-existent in the downstream cycle (treatment and recycling).

The basic knowledge thus seems to have been largely acquired, but it is clear that large-scale deployment of this cycle would still require a great deal of research and development, particularly in the field of processing and manufacturing U-233-based fuel, as well as heavy industrial investment. It is unlikely that...