| > If the spent fuel was re-used correctly, we could run all the humanity's toys with it for several hundred thousand years without breaking any sweat. And here we go, the fabled magical Thorium reactors. There are many reasons why we don't do this, one of them are engineering constraints because molten salt is very corrosive as such maintaining a reactor like that is a real pita. You should also be aware that, contrary to popular belief, even Thorium reactors can be used to produce fuel for nuclear weapons, it's not impossible to weaponize U-233, after all this process was used to produce the fuel for Operation Teapot in 1955. And lastly: The only reason why thorium reactors have such a great "safety track record" is that we barely build any of them, our sample size is way too small to make any useful statements about this. We have roughly 435 commercial nuclear plants in operation, with another 63 being built [0]. There have been around 20 major nuclear accidents over the years [1]. In contrast to that, there are only around 15 Thorium reactors [2], imho that's not a big enough sample size to make any statements about the actual failure rates, especially when you consider that none of these 15 reactors are run on a commercial basis. For all purpose and effect, Thorium reactors are just an attempt to "rebrand nuclear" to get rid of the horrible nuclear track record and public reputation. Even if we'd go full Thorium we'd still need some reactors to cycle uranium for the Thorium reactors to actually work. In that regard, it's not really a solution but just another excuse for keeping the problem going. [0] http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_tho... |
I think that's what he is talking about. I studied this 30 years ago in primary school, so I might be off, but that's what I remember.
It's actually quite cool what other reactors are capable of and the amount of fuel we waste with existing commercialized types of which were designed to produce weapons grade plutonium as a by product, so efficiency wasn't valued over the byproduct of plutonium.
Anyway I think nuclear is interesting.