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Why aren't people charging ahead with Thorium power? Seems like Thorium should be a no-brainer - low radioactivity, safe operations. But there must be some pr

by andyl 13y ago

Why aren't people charging ahead with Thorium power? Seems like Thorium should be a no-brainer - low radioactivity, safe operations. But there must be some problem with Thorium, because it isn't getting built-out. Does anyone know why?

hga 13y ago
Many: it's a new, untried at scale approach, there's a big "And then a miracle occurs" stage as I recall, and it doesn't burn thorium, it burns U-233 ... which can be used to make nuclear weapons. And is easily isolated from the rest of the stuff compared to enriching uranium or even breeding plutonium, which has to be removed quickly or else you'll get too much of the 2 undesirable isotopes of it. It doesn't address any of the real problems to my knowledge (you think the Greens are going to be happy with it???), and going back to that "untried" bit, right now it would I think need that "10X" advantage to displace the tried and true stuff that we know can work pretty well.
akiselev 13y ago
Convincing an already scared-of-nuclear population to allow the building of an experimental (big, scary word) reactor after a disaster like Fukushima is a maddening prospect for an entrepreneur or even an established company. It more than 25 years between the Three Mile Island "disaster" and the start of construction of new nuclear reactors. It's a miracle they were approved so shortly after Fukushima, but by the time you're ready to issue construction permits hundreds of millions if not billions have already been invested. A full blown reactor (with immediate infrastructure) costs at least $2-3 billion in markets with cheap labor and upwards of $5-10 billion in the developed world. The other issue is that most of the cost of mining, processing, and storing fuel and waste is externalized, which much of the government is no longer as willing to do after Yucca Mountain was canceled. If it costs that much to build a reactor, how much does it cost to test a new design?

by andyl 13y ago

hga 13y ago

Many: it's a new, untried at scale approach, there's a big "And then a miracle occurs" stage as I recall, and it doesn't burn thorium, it burns U-233 ... which can be used to make nuclear weapons. And is easily isolated from the rest of the stuff compared to enriching uranium or even breeding plutonium, which has to be removed quickly or else you'll get too much of the 2 undesirable isotopes of it. It doesn't address any of the real problems to my knowledge (you think the Greens are going to be happy with it???), and going back to that "untried" bit, right now it would I think need that "10X" advantage to displace the tried and true stuff that we know can work pretty well.

akiselev 13y ago

Convincing an already scared-of-nuclear population to allow the building of an experimental (big, scary word) reactor after a disaster like Fukushima is a maddening prospect for an entrepreneur or even an established company. It more than 25 years between the Three Mile Island "disaster" and the start of construction of new nuclear reactors. It's a miracle they were approved so shortly after Fukushima, but by the time you're ready to issue construction permits hundreds of millions if not billions have already been invested. A full blown reactor (with immediate infrastructure) costs at least $2-3 billion in markets with cheap labor and upwards of $5-10 billion in the developed world. The other issue is that most of the cost of mining, processing, and storing fuel and waste is externalized, which much of the government is no longer as willing to do after Yucca Mountain was canceled. If it costs that much to build a reactor, how much does it cost to test a new design?