Sorry, but there are quite a few things you are missing. Nuclear engineering is well, nuclear engineering. The first big difference is that you can use the Thorium in a liquid fueled reactor instead of a solid fueled one. This allows you to burn far more of the fuel. For example, 2-4% of a solid fuel rod would fission, while in a liquid fueled reactor you can get to 90+%. This is good economically for 2 reasons: 1) more energy per unit of fuel and 2) the waste lasts far less time.
There are also other advantages of a liquid fueled reactor. The big one is that it is far easier to run because it self regulates. When a liquid heats up it expands (slowing the reaction) and when it cools it contracts (speeding up the reaction). So its safer to run, makes less waste and gets 20+X more power per unit of fuel.
There is one final thing to know about this stuff. A nuclear reactor is several billion in infrastructure supporting reactors that cost 10s of millions using a fuel load that costs less than your car. The way we scale and handle nuclear reactors just makes no sense economically. Each NPP is custom and they are built so rarely that everything has to be custom made. When you start building stock reactor designs with consistent supply chains, the cost goes way down. And most of the cost is lawsuits, lobbyists and PR. For developed countries, using or not using nuclear power is a political choice. One that we have been making badly. When you realize that the only real choices for baseload are FF and nuclear, the real political situation makes sense. Once again, the cause is just the excuse, not the real issue.
> When you realize that the only real choices for baseload are FF and nuclear, the real political situation makes sense.
That’s not really accurate. Many countries already meet a substantial portion of their baseload power requirements with renewables and are building out more and more renewable generation because it is cheap and fast to build.
This requires dispatchable backup generation to cover low wind periods, but that may only need to run a few weeks a year. This is by far the cheapest and fastest way to get to 90% carbon free power since most of the cost in gas generation is the fuel itself rather than the capital for the plant.
Nuclear is the opposite so cannot economically fill that role so it seems little is likely to be built.
> Nuclear engineering is well, nuclear engineering.
Not sure I get what you are trying to say. Are you saying that you are a nuclear engineer and I am not? Because, frankly, the rest of your comment does not read as one written by a nuclear engineer.
There's also the choice to match our energy consumption dynamically to intermittent power sources (e.g. solar), reducing the baseload demand. This is entirely orthogonal to decisions about where the baseload generation should come from.
doesnt make a difference to the economics of a nuke plant. Fuel consumption is a tiny fraction of the cost of nuke power, its almost all fixed cost - amortized construction costs, operations, etc. You need to run it at as close to 100% always to have any chance at payback & economical $/kw. Thats why they arent getting built.
There are also other advantages of a liquid fueled reactor. The big one is that it is far easier to run because it self regulates. When a liquid heats up it expands (slowing the reaction) and when it cools it contracts (speeding up the reaction). So its safer to run, makes less waste and gets 20+X more power per unit of fuel.
There is one final thing to know about this stuff. A nuclear reactor is several billion in infrastructure supporting reactors that cost 10s of millions using a fuel load that costs less than your car. The way we scale and handle nuclear reactors just makes no sense economically. Each NPP is custom and they are built so rarely that everything has to be custom made. When you start building stock reactor designs with consistent supply chains, the cost goes way down. And most of the cost is lawsuits, lobbyists and PR. For developed countries, using or not using nuclear power is a political choice. One that we have been making badly. When you realize that the only real choices for baseload are FF and nuclear, the real political situation makes sense. Once again, the cause is just the excuse, not the real issue.