system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I've heard all about the positives of thorium nuclear energy, but does anyone actually know why we aren't pursuing it?

Theoretically, thorium molten salt reactors could create abundant energy, but does anyone know why the U.S. is not pursuing the technology other than policy and regulatory reasons? What are the technical downfalls?
gpt
Thorium reactor technology was abandoned during the Cold War, as they do not produce material for nuclear weapons production nearly as well as uranium reactors do.

So now we have 50 years of proven uranium based nuclear energy technology, vs. thorium still on the drawing board.  It looks very promising, and *might* be better, but we don't know.

Also, hysteria and lack of science education has made if very difficult to develop *any* new nuclear power technologies.  We can't even expand the use of existing ones.