Oh, they could work, but so can many other economically, militarily and politically unsound ventures. You rapidly get into the guns and butter argument; thorium reactor development would be so titanically expensive, with so little ROI compared to other ventures, that you really should look at what you’re not going to be able to do if you start driving tax dollars into developing thorium. The USA has better options than thorium - that we’re already not exploiting because hydraulic fracking is so cheap.
Now, if I was in India, I’d probably be a full bore thorium fanatic. They have so much of the stuff laying around, and such a high population density, it’s a superb research and development opportunity for Indian scientists.
