I'm not a genuine nuke geek, but hopefully there are a few around who can shed some light into what sort of impact the commercial use of thorium as a fuel is on the viability of the fuel in the long-run.
Kirk Sorenson has calculated that in a new molten salt thorium reactor, the thorium burned would be worth 5x its weight in gold, based on 10 cents per kWh.
I am a huge advocate of thorium as a fuel. Unfortunately, using thorium in any reactor today only gives marginal benefits. The CANDU reactors in Canada can and do already take thorium in their fuel cycle.
In the long run, you only have to store the waste for 100 years before it is safe. This is because you can re-use the waste, creating further efficiency and less storage time.
China has stockpiled thorium since 1999, and started a MSR program in the past few years. That shows how far behind we are in this tech, even when we pioneered it (I am referring to molten salt technology). The head of the program got a phd in electrical engineering from Drexel. Oh, and is the son of some finance? minister as well, so it definitely has the political clout to be accomplished. China desperately needs clean energy - they are making water plants, for coal plants, for manufacturing plants. And each of these stresses out the environment in so many ways, it's very risky to the long term health of the region. Visit circleofblue.org to learn more about the water-energy nexus.
And sorry, but not really a step closer. Everyone in the nuke world has known thorium can be used. Like I said before, it will only provide marginal benefits. Did you know, thorium is 3-4x more present in the earth's crust than uranium?
If instead of those loans to all those solar companies, and put $50 billion to a Thorium program, and made a space race effort, I can confidently say we would be energy independent in 10 years. Five years to develop, Five years to build. With all these new advances in materials and alloys (which was the main issue), there would be very little problem. Instead, we are making private companies do this, by specifically targeting military applications.
How sad would it be if Thorium molten salt technology was developed in the US, and we sold it overseas first?
In response to this, here is a summary copied directly from a reputable source. [1]
Thorium is a radioactive element similar to uranium. Formerly used to make gas mantles, it is about three times as abundant in the earth’s crust as uranium. Soil commonly contains around 6 parts per million of thorium, and some minerals contain 12% thorium oxide. Seawater contains little thorium, because thorium oxide is insoluble. Thorium can be completely burned up in simple reactors (in contrast to standard uranium reactors which use only about 1% of natural uranium). Thorium is used in nuclear reactors in India. If uranium ore runs low, thorium will probably become the dominant nuclear fuel.
Thorium reactors deliver 3.6 billion kWh of heat per ton of thorium, which implies that a 1 GW reactor requires about 6 tons of thorium per year, assuming its generators are 40% efficient. Worldwide thorium re- sources are estimated to total about 6 million tons, four times more than the known reserves shown in table 24.7. As with the uranium resources, it seems plausible that these thorium resources are an underestimate, since thorium prospecting is not highly valued today. If we assume, as with ura- nium, that these resources are used up over 1000 years and shared equally among 6 billion people, we find that the “sustainable” power thus gener- ated is 4 kWh/d per person.
An alternative nuclear reactor for thorium, the “energy amplifier” or “accelerator-driven system” proposed by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia and his colleagues would, they estimated, convert 6 million tons of thorium to 15 000 TWy of energy, or 60 kWh/d per person over 1000 years. Assuming conversion to electricity at 40% efficiency, this would deliver 24kWh/d per person for 1000 years. And the waste from the energy amplifier would be much less radioactive too. They argue that, in due course, many times more thorium would be economically extractable than the current 6 million tons. If their suggestion – 300 times more – is correct, then thorium and the energy amplifier could offer 120 kWh/d per person for 60 000 years.
Gates's foundation has made a handful of bad investments (generally small) but I'm generally really impressed with the thought they put into where to invest and why.
While it's a little bit scary that Japan and Germany are both trending (more than trending) away from nuclear, maybe that's not the worst thing in the world. Neither country will go for coal. Both countries will need to invest in other technologies (some basic, some consumer-oriented) in order to meet their emissions reductions goals.
But I get scared about the possibility of additional countries backing away from nuclear.
Uh? Not only does Germany rely on coal energy (more so since they plan to get rid of nuclear) they also export it (which is great for politicians in Sweden, cut back on nuclear and call yourself green is great PR (then import coal energy from Germany)).
I'm curious why that is? I remember a table that showed the deaths per terawatt-hour of each energy source [1]. Coal was the highest, and nuclear was the lowest (below all the renewables even). I don't know if this data is accurate, but assuming it is, I can't understand why nuclear doesn't have more support.
It is not so much a meltdown. Those meltdowns are rare. And most people don't die at the point of the meltdown but from the long term consequences of the meltdown. But many Nuclear supporters doesn't accept those death as consequences of the nuclear meltdown. BTW, not knowing data is accurate but assuming it is, is like finding a gun and assuming it is not loaded.
What I'm really concerned about nuclear power is the problem of waste. The dream of fuel recycling has been dreamt for 40 years now and those existing plants are everything but clean. Currently the idea of a closed fuel circle for nuclear power is just a dream.
Also citing new reactor designs is pointless. Old designs are still running. Old Russian designs are still running, and I don't speak about Chernobyl like reactors. And it would take decades to replace those reactors and you still have to deal with the old ones. E.g. Germany shut down all Russian WWER reactors in the East after the reunification, those reactors are still there, the deconstruction of those reactors has just started a few years ago.
In that time frame you might just as good replace nuclear power with a decentralized system of renewable energy. I really wonder, why people who love the internet, love freedom, love markets don't root for that. Decentralized renewable energy are much less likely to create a monopoly for electricity. It is much more likely that you could have an autonomous energy supply.
Most of them are going to be using the latest iteration of some tried-and-true series of reactors from another country. Russia is exporting the VVER-1200, Korea is exporting their APR-1400, and China is looking to export their ACPR-1000 and large components of American, Japanese, and European reactors.
The common thread here is that all of these are very conventional, directly descended from designs that have seen extensive service and have an excellent record of reliability. You're not going to see newbie countries screwing up the designs. (You might see them mess up the operations.)
I'm not a genuine nuke geek, but hopefully there are a few around who can shed some light into what sort of impact the commercial use of thorium as a fuel is on the viability of the fuel in the long-run.