Shhh the nuclear lobby doesn’t want us to know – Thorium nuclear energy is a dud!

There’s One Big Obstacle To US Development Of Thorium BUSINESS INSIDER LUCAS KAWA DEC 20 2012, SOME OF THORIUM’S DISADVANTAGES, WHICH INCLUDE:

High capital costs ($4000-$10,000/kW)
Little existing infrastructure, no commercially operating plants
Long lead times (estimated at over 10 years) and licensing issues
The bad reputation of nuclear energy, due to meltdowns at Chernobyl and Fukushima……

His conclusion:

Thorium power technology cannot economically compete with electricity generated by gas

November 27, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general

13 Comments »

Valid points but, are these not the problems with any new technology? I agree Thorium energy is no sure thing but with the theoretical promise it has shown the world should damn well give it a shot.

Comment by John | November 27, 2013 | Reply
- Thorium reactors have been tried and failed over many decades. The economics of “Small Modular Reactors” are such that they would have to be marketed and sold in their thousands – nationa are expected to order them in those numbers? A pipe dream – and one that only the folly of tax-payer money would fund.
  
  Whether you like it or not, both private industry and government are “giving a shot” to renewable energy and energy efficiency – and that is working, and becoming ever more affordable, while the Thorium Devotees waffle on, and waste money in expensive and pointless promotion.
  
  Comment by Christina MacPherson | November 27, 2013 | Reply
Pretty lame reasons not to support Thorium. I am about as far from on the mysterious Nuclear Lobby, which you imply is an evil group. Your four reasons to disregard Thorium – the first three are only because we don’t have it yet. Of course it will take investment. Of course an early technology like this takes a while to develop. That’s like saying, don’t build a bridge because there’s no bridge there now. The fourth reason has nothing to do with Thorium, in fact the advantages of Thorium include that it can’t melt down. Pull the plug on a Thorium reactor, and it turns off just like a washing machine. It doesn’t get hotter and hotter until it destroys everything around it and leak. Duh. I know there are issues with Thorium that haven’t been worked out, but come on, you can’t just have a website that tries to criticize everything nuclear unless you know what you are talking about.

Comment by Flo | November 27, 2013 | Reply
- Even the nuclear industry itself knows that Thorium reactors are just a distraction from reality. The reality is that the nuclear industry is failing, and on the way to disappearing. That will take a while – seeing that the original and still main purpose of the industry is nuclear weaponry.
  The nuclear industry has sunk $billions into promoting their new LARGE technologies.
  As if big corporations like Hitachi, EDF Westinghouse, Toshiba, Areva, Rosatom would be willing, or indeed able, to withdraw from the giant international operations that they already have underway? Would they, could they, tolerate a mass uptake of the new thorium nuclear reactors, (which is what would be needed, to make the thorium market economical)?
  Of course not. Big Nuclear tolerates the new Thorium myth because it keeps nuclear alive in the public mind, and keeps attention away from what really works – renewable energy and energy efficiency
  
  Comment by Christina MacPherson | November 27, 2013 | Reply
A recent article showed that when external costs of coal are accounted for that the cost of power generated using coal is greater than solar/wind. The external costs of gas and oil are never figured into your electric or transportation costs. Those costs we end of paying in higher taxes and insurance cost needed to pay for the environmental and health costs. LFTR reactors are still on the drawing boards, but offer promise of cheap plentiful power for the future without the environmental and public health costs. We owe it to ourselves to follow this approach to the maximum. Instead we just keep subsidizing fossil fuels.

Comment by hebintn | November 27, 2013 | Reply
- The LFTR reactors are an expensive dream – even if they were a greenhouse gas free alternative to coal and gas – they would not come into operation for many decades – by which time they would be there too late to be effective against the current urgent threat of climate change.
  “Cheap plentiful power” – a joke when you consider the costs of guarding the reprocessing needed to keep them going, the costs of guarding them and their toxic wastes for 300 years and more.
  But the major problem – the waste of money, energy, attention to this white elephant dream, takes away from clean renewable energy technologies with energy storage, and energy efficiency – measures that are quickly implemented.
  
  Comment by Christina MacPherson | November 27, 2013 | Reply
Sounds like this was written by an apologist for the uranium, coal or petrofuel industry. One major thorium ‘problem’ appears to be that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is firmly in the way. And that agency is firmly controlled by the purveyors of uranium feedstock. Yes, it will take research and development dollars to get a thorium energy economy going. The Chinese are now making the investment. More power to them. With staunch opposition from other US fuel sources, the Best Congress that Monet Can Buy will resist making any necessary investment in thorium R&D. With the Congress in the way, it will be difficult for thorium to get a toe hold in the US. So the initial thorium power plants will likely be located at dedicated industrial facilities like steel factories in remote locations far of the grid and well outside of the US.

Looking at the tremendous social and environmental costs which are NOT captured as part of the total cost of using fossil fuels, coal and petrofuels appear to be heavily subsidized by the government. Fossil fuel interests don’t have to pay all of the real costs of their extraction and use. There is little or no accounting for the CO2 related global climate change that we are currently witnessing which are due, in part, to burning fossil fuels.

Comment by Moses Lonn | November 28, 2013 | Reply
- Yes, I find it most encouraging to see the various purveyors on nuclear energy fighting amongst themselves – further accelerating the death of nuclear.
  They’re all super expensive – so it hardly matters about all the other objections (safety, weapons proliferation, cancer from radiation, environmental degradation, vulnerability to climate change). Those other factors fade into insignificance as the world picks up on the speed, cheapness, and practicality of renewable energy and energy efficiency.
  
  I think that you mean “Moniz”, not “Monet”. The latter was keen on gardening and painting – much more civilised and positive pursuits than the greedy scramble to promote nuclear energy of whatever kind.
  
  Comment by Christina MacPherson | November 28, 2013 | Reply
  - Typo. That word was supposed to be ‘Money’. The disastrous fallout from the Supreme Court’s ‘Citizens United’ decision. Congress is bought and paid for by folks who like things just as they are.
    
    Comment by Moses Lonn | November 28, 2013
You sound more like a global warming alarmist than scientific in your claims against thorium reactors.

Comment by marko | November 28, 2013 | Reply
Nuclear fission, or fusion, cannot be safely harnessed to generate electrical or other energy. Period. There is, however, big money in trying to do so, to the eternal detriment of the planet and its inhabitants. And of course, there are always a gaggle of arm-chair nuclear “experts” ready to trounce upon any perceived negativity towards their cherished techno-fetish (see above).

Comment by Hermies Purrbuckets | November 28, 2013 | Reply
Total disinfo. The two are apples and oranges. No use giving this any time, since it’s obviously from some shill. Why is this on Rense?

Comment by Heather | November 29, 2013 | Reply
- Doesn’t look as if you even read this short item properly. “Apples and Oranges” ? – I suppose that you refer to SMRs and Thorium reactors versus the big “conventional” or uranium-powered reactors. Sure they’e different – technically.
  
  But where they are the same is in that they are all exorbitantly expensive – so they’re just not going to happen, (unless the nuke lobby can brainwash the world – and they’re not succeeding at that!)
  
  Comment by Christina MacPherson | November 30, 2013 | Reply