Thorium-232

So he drove his Pontiac behind a camping equipment store to buy some boxes of mantles from an employee that were conveniently missing from the store inventory.

His hope was to breed the Thorium-232 into Uranium-233, an excellent fissile fuel material.

The problem was, in that process it also produces byproducts that emit gamma radiation.

the most penetrating, and one of the most dangerous types of radiation.

But that fascinating crisis, not covered in the movie Oppenheimer, is a story for a future video.

Finally, the last common fissile isotope, U-233, can be bred from extremely abundant Thorium-232.

Thorium-232 absorbs a neutron to become Thorium-233, which undergoes two beta decays to become Protactinium-233 and then U-233, which can then be used as a fuel for reactors or potentially nuclear weapons.

Indeed, such breeder reactors were once an active area of study, but the technology fell out of favor as uranium proved far more abundant than was previously assumed.

However, thorium cycle breeder reactors may be poised to make a comeback since thorium is even more abundant and the technology's byproducts are much harder to turn into nuclear weapons, helping to limit proliferation, but that again is a fascinating story for another time.