In the age of thorium, it is incompetent to invest in old-fashioned nuclear energy.
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Thorium is fine, but running a nuclear reactor on it is still in the future. Thorium, by itself, is not a fuel. It needs to be turned into a fissile form of uranium inside a reactor. The current idea for how to do that is to dissolve the fuel in a molten salt. This way, the fuel and coolant are essentially the same thing.
A small test reactor using this concept is being built at Abilene Christian University in Texas. However, the fuel that will be used in this first test reactor is uranium. As far as I can tell, the conversion of thorium into U-233 will not be done.
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The Department of Energy recently announced a program to develop 11 different next-generation reactors.
From the link:
The goal of the Reactor Pilot Program is to expedite the testing of advanced reactor designs that will be authorized by the Department at sites that are located outside of the national laboratories. Seeking DOE authorization provided under the Atomic Energy Act will help today’s selected companies— Aalo Atomics Inc., Antares Nuclear Inc., Atomic Alchemy Inc., Deep Fission Inc., Last Energy Inc., Oklo Inc., Natura Resources LLC, Radiant Industries Inc., Terrestrial Energy Inc., and Valar Atomics Inc.— unlock private funding and provide a fast-tracked approach to future commercial licensing activities.
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None of these are specifically thorium based. Most of them use solid uranium fuel in either the metallic or ceramic form, or solid TRISO fuel that is embedded in a carbon and silicon carbide matrix. Two of the concepts are liquid-fuel based, but don’t specifically use thorium.
Thorium is a nice idea, and is a good back up if uranium ever becomes too scarce or expensive. However, today uranium is cheap and plentiful, so there isn’t a big push to develop different fuel cycles. Right now, the entire industry is built around solid uranium dioxide fuel. The carbon pebbles used in TRISO fuel may also become popular in a few years. A few concepts using solid fuel and molten sodium for coolant is another possibility.
News from this week…
_Pete
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Thorium? More like borium! Am I right? Nope, not if you’re the Chinese.
China has taken past US research, rolled it up right tight, and is currently shoving it right up our wazoo.
While the US still has the most nuclear reactors in the world, China is catching up fast. As mentioned on another thread, China has so much energy, that building massive data centers has become a convenient way to suck up surplus. Massive investment and a willingness to rekindle past nuclear technologies is just one more example of how China is eating our lunch.
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These are only infrastructure things to do.
China’s economy is in tatters. Ours will follow.
But if the courts stop most of the tariffs, less damage will happen to our economy.
The problem in the US right now is incompetence.
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At all levels. We have an incompetent electorate, voting for an incompetent government, that’s being challenged by an incompetent opposition party.
Then there’s the moral depravity of it all…
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If all is incompetent, you won’t know competency when it bites you.
The first two years of Biden were extremely competent. He was stymied by stupid.