4 ms·
Thorium, alternative reactors, reprocessing - all of this requires a lot of research and it's exceedingly expensive. Private entities won't touch it and it's di
by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Thorium, alternative reactors, reprocessing - all of this requires a lot of research and it's exceedingly expensive. Private entities won't touch it and it's difficult for governments to invest.
If the numbers added up China would be doing it already, but even for them - where they can still socialize the costs of failure (i.e. if it blows up, oh well, whereas in the West there's $100B in lawsuits) - it's expensive.
- nitrogen 7y agoPrivate entities won't touch it and it's difficult for governments to invest. Not Thorium, but Bill Gates is invested in alternative nuclear, along with the US govt: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower
- sonnyblarney 7y agoYes, thorium. And everything else. Gates put $35M into it, which is peanuts. In order to transform Nuclear the R&D will have to be in the order of billions. Drug companies can put more than that into a single failed drug, for comparison.
- keanzu 7y agoA nuclear meltdown in China would call into question the government’s competence. “If an event like Fukushima punctures that image of competence, that’s very, very consequential,” says William Overholt, a China expert at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “That would delegitimize the regime.”