Valhalla or Ragnarök?
Thorium has been looked at many times over decades. As a nuclear fuel, it has certain attractive properties but also has its own problems:
https://thebulletin.org/2018/08/thor...inium-problem/
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/new...actor-6058445/
https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclea...pros-and-cons/
https://www.nature.com/articles/492031a
Although there have been useful developments, and this one is interesting, there's also an awful lot of hype (see any number of YT videos) around Thorium reactors that I've been tracking for years.
In the Chinese development, the scale vs timeframe isn't that impressive. The current reactor is 2 MW - roughly the output of a
diesel generator. The next iteration, in around 2030, will be 10 MW. That's tiny - a typical power station is 1000 - 2000 MW and a typical nuclear reactor for power is in the same range. In the same timeframe, the US plans to deploy Uranium-based micro-reactors (up to 10 MW) on multiple military bases:
https://www.ans.org/news/article-693...ilitary-sites/
Meanwhile, in comparison, every wind farm in Australia is
several times larger, and they're
relatively small on the world stage. Moreover, we already install
more solar capacity each year than any single nuclear reactor - just establishing scale here, not pushing one over the other.
Thorium reactors may have their place in the long-term - and the theoretical promise (such as for waste re-processing) is good if the problems can be solved - but the relevance for Australia is nearly zero, so it would be unusual for any Australian news outlet to cover the development in a prominent way. IMHO, it's not the 'moon landing' moment that some advocates want you to believe - everybody is trying to sell you something - but it is interesting.