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There's no significant advantage of Thorium from a fuel standpoint. Breeder reactors also essentially give you the possibility of producing nuclear weapons so q
by Gwypaas 4y ago
There's no significant advantage of Thorium from a fuel standpoint. Breeder reactors also essentially give you the possibility of producing nuclear weapons so quite the political and ethical threshold to pass before they would exist in every neighborhood.
- panick21_ 4y agoThorium can make a thermal breed work, that is its main advantage. If you are doing a fast burner or a fast breeder uranium is generally better. I think proliferation concerns are overhyped as a practical issue. The idea is not for everybody to have a breeder reactor in your house. Reactors scale well, its is far better to simple put a reactor next to every current coal plant and reuse the same grid.
- Gwypaas 4y agoIf breeder reactors are going to stave of climate change then they need to exist globally. Take "every neighborhood" to mean Venezuela, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and your favorite African dictatorship. That is the proliferation concern.
- panick21_ 4y agoThere are proliferation resistant design that can have quite good economics. You don't need breeders everywhere. Additionally, a Thorium breeder will produce U-233 but it will be contaminated with U-232 making it a really unpractical material for nuclear bombs. And no nation has used it for that reason. In addition other elements produced make it absolutely trivial to measure and track. These nations could sign agreements of IEAE supervision and should anything happen the operator country can basically destroy the reactor with the push of a button. Reactors can also be off-shore, considering that 100s of millions of people in places like Indoneasia live on the coast. All in all, nations that really want nuclear reactors will mostly likely obtain it threw traditional means.