Thorium is a waste byproduct of mining (especially coal) and we produce a metric butt-ton of this stuff. It's like the 41th most abundant material on earth so there's a lot of it around. From a "radioactive materials handling perspective" it's already regularly dealt with in abundance so safe transport and movement of this material is already established.

I'm not suggesting that we switch to thorium exclusively as I love my gasoline and hot-rods, but the powergrid infrastructure of the USA is one of the most vulnerable targets here. The 2003 power outage on the east coast shows what could happen if there were problems with the transfer stations....those transfer stations are "protected" with what? a chain link fence and no one talking about their locations. you can google maps them and and see their locations.

In my opinion, the infrastructure should be switched to community based LFTR microreactors maybe on the county level or something... small reactors, really efficient and essentially removing the risk of large scale destruction from a single point like in 2003. this would produce real cheap energy and provide a lot of jobs as well.

There are ways to handle this material safely and this type of reactor is much safer than the RBMK, PWR, BWR, AGR, LWGR, FNR, etc. reactors. What's really neat about these is that the water would not be in direct contact with the radioactive material which greatly reduces the risk of ionizing or contaminating water.

As with anything, if these are built properly they'll be a wonderful alternative to what we are currently utilizing.

If you're bored and want to read more, this website is a pretty good start: https://www.thmsr.com/en/