China takes another step towards global supremacy: Thorium

[Banquo's Ghost]

I've long wondered why the West is so blind when to comes to energy policy and part of that bemusement has been engendered by our refusal to implement thorium reactors. Unlike oil and gas, most thorium lies not in the backyard of brutal dictators but in our own yards (mainly the US, Australia and India). Unlike uranium, it's remarkably benign as a nuclear fuel.

This article notes that the Chinese are not so blind - they appear to be developing a thorium reactor and may well then go down the route of near energy sufficiency from this plentiful fuel. So, not only will they own us, but they will light the hovels we are allowed to sleep in.

I was fascinated by the sentence bolded in this paragraph:

US physicists in the late 1940s explored thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation.
The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs. As a happy bonus, it can burn up plutonium and toxic waste from old reactors, reducing radio-toxicity and acting as an eco-cleaner.

At the risk of sounding naive, can we really have been that short-sighted? Has anyone here got a good insight/reference into the pros and cons of thorium power generation and the policy decisions that have affected its (non) development?