Pocket Particle Accelerators Like This One Could Bring Safer Nuclear Power to Neighborhoods | Popular Science

Pocket Particle Accelerators Like This One Could Bring Safer Nuclear Power to Neighborhoods | Popular Science:  Nicknamed EMMA — the Electron Model of Many Applications — the accelerator would be used to jump-start fissile nuclear reactions inside a small-scale thorium power plant.

Thorium reactors would not melt down, in part because they require an external input to produce fission. Thorium atoms would release energy when bombarded by high-energy neutrons, such as the type supplied in a particle accelerator.
Providing that stimulus is one obstacle to building small thorium reactors — but a new generation of accelerators like EMMA, and someday potentially even smaller, luggage-sized ones — could do the job.