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The original experimental reactor didn't go all the way and test the reactor design in a "closed loop". As in you shovel in thorium and get out power indefinite

The original experimental reactor didn't go all the way and test the reactor design in a "closed loop". As in you shovel in thorium and get out power indefinitely. Instead it relied on temporary uranium fuel as a test of the concept, with plans to step up to a full cycle test afterward (which never happened as the navy lost interest in the project). So not just regulations are at issue. We'd need a 2nd test reactor to really iron out the kinks and fully vet the whole process in real life, and then we can start getting approval for commercial plants. As I've said elsewhere, thorium reactors are very exciting and we should be funding experiments on them. But we are still at the 'funding experiments' phase of this endeavor, and so even at peak funding we're still a ways out from viable thorium grid power.

nickik 8y ago
The problem is that you can't say that 'the regulations are not the issue' because its regulation that prevent all research in that direction. The way the regulation works at the moment makes building a test reactor basically impossible for a company to do that's why pretty much every single nuclear company produces directly to a production model. Thorium breeding was proven, but not in the MSR. So that does not necessarily need validation. The 2-fluid reactor design would need a test reactor, but there are other reactor designs, like the IMSR that really would not need much further research. However, if you don't go to a fuel breeder with online refueling thorium does not buy you much. Uranium is fine and does everything you want and that's why most MSR companies use Uranium.