Thorium MSRs don't make sense for the Americas, Europe or Australia. We have plenty of uranium.
Nuclear is receiving solid research backing in both America and China. (India is playing too. Austrlia is having an identity crisis.) Our different geologies mean there will probably be one solution for China, India and North Africa, on one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other hand.
I don't think Australia is having an identity crisis. There won't be research backing from Australia as the Nuclear agenda one party is pushing is essentially a cover story for replacing antique coal plants with gas plants. A genuine Nuclear plan for Australia would include realistic timelines and budgets, and use of other renewables to replace coal plants that are failing today while meeting climate targets. And meeting climate targets is important, because if we don't care about them then coal and gas will remain cheaper than Nuclear for Australia due to having large reserves.
The cost of the fuel is less than 0.1% of the cost of running a NPP. The cost of the fuel has almost nothing to do with the economics of nuclear power. And considering a liquid fueled reactor makes heat in the 900C range and a AP1400 makes heat in the 300C range, they aren't really substitutes for each other. The amount of incorrect information in this thread is truly shocking. For example, you can make synthetic fuel from a LFTR, you can't from a BWR or a PWR. That might be a valuable feature, don't you think.
> cost of the fuel has almost nothing to do with the economics of nuclear power
Who said this?
> considering a liquid fueled reactor makes heat in the 900C range and a AP1400 makes heat in the 300C range, they aren't really substitutes for each other
Nobody said this either.
There are more reactor designs in the world than LFTR, PWR and BWR, particularly if we're talking at the demonstration scale like this reactor.
Came online ~10 years ago. One could quibble about design and construction timelines; the reactor is still half-experimental, and the Russians are conducting that breeder program very slowly. But it's not a 1980s design frozen in time.
> Thorium MSRs don't make sense for the Americas, Europe or Australia. We have plenty of uranium.
That covers the input side of th equation. Thorium can help transform the outputs of our existing reactors into waste with orders of magnitude better in terms of dangerous lifespan
Thorium is and will always be a less desirable fuel source - except if you don't have access to uranium or are trying to make your MSRs work (which to date have signs of progress but no proof of commercial viability). MSR also inherently unstable due to salt.
I'm glad people are finding more research and hopefully this will unlock other tech but this has limited impact on the current trajectory of commercial nuclear and the designs currently in the labs.
Though the commentary in here does remind me how much hype has infused the nuclear space - good thing on the whole as long as an eventual AI shakeout doesn't knee cap all the good work being done.
Thorium MSRs don't make sense for the Americas, Europe or Australia. We have plenty of uranium.
Nuclear is receiving solid research backing in both America and China. (India is playing too. Austrlia is having an identity crisis.) Our different geologies mean there will probably be one solution for China, India and North Africa, on one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other hand.