minichrist has tickled the Achilles Heel of the renewable rubbish.

There is not enough suitable treeless land available to build the the millions of solar and wind farms required to come even close to the continuous reliable stable output of a good coal power station.

And this renewable rubbish is clapped out after about 20 years!!!

Like all dopey Greeny "solutions" renewable rubbish is just a waste of money that doesn't work.

We have been for ages already and everyone was quite happy to be able to afford to switch a heater or air conditioner on.

It is only the ratbag Greenies fabricating lies to try to get the UN One World Govt in a Sustainable world up and going.

These despicable desperate Greeny brutes are now exploiting brainwashed little kiddies who would not know what day it is.

And now there is a plan to cut the Welfare of the Greenies' Rent a Crowd's WELFARE. The Empire fights back.

Or the people's Messiah ScoMo.

How close are we to a commercially viable thorium reactor; i.e. one that could pass several countries' regulatory approval processes, and where the cost of construction and fuel would be competitive with other forms of electricity generation?
Robert Steinhaus
Answered Oct 13, 2015   Originally Answered: What is the economic viability of building a Thorium reactor?

Trying to determine the economic viability of Thorium reactors with our present level of knowledge is very difficult.  There really is no basis for estimating the initial cost of any power plant until there is a pretty solid design concept that is near complete and is engineering detailed. Without a finished commercial Thorium reactor design, any cost estimate is fraught with uncertainty.



In the 1960s and 1970s Oak Ridge National Laboratory produced several Thorium Molten Salt Reactor designs. Those preliminary reactor designs included fair and responsible  project cost estimates specific for their era. Modern Thorium MSR advocates frequently try to use old ORNL MSBR cost estimates while adjusting those preliminary cost estimates by applying a standard inflation adjustment factor.  While this is about the best that is currently possible without a completed and fully engineered TMSR design, it is far from satisfactory.

When trying to explore the cost of power plants to access economic viability, it is worthwhile to apply a consistent method in cost evaluation to make fair comparisons. DOE EIA is expert in evaluating power plant costs and provides information from which more reliable and fair comparisons can be made.

How much does it cost to build different types of power plants in the United States?
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/cap...

https://www.quora.com/How-close-are-we-to-a-commercially-viable-thorium-reactor-...

What are the best generation 4 nuclear reactor designs?
Robert Steinhaus, former Engineering Staff - Field Test Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1974-2008)
Updated Oct 2


The worst Gen-4 reactor design is the Gen-4 Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR).



Sodium Cooled Fast Reactors operate in the fast neutron spectrum and use an inferior coolant (molten sodium metal) from the standpoint of safety. Sodium Cooled Fast Reactors (SFRs) are capable of producing LARGE accidents (intense sodium metal fire combined with a very energetic hydrogen explosion). The radioactivity contained inside a Gen-4 SFR is greater than any other Gen-4 design. This results from the neutron activation of literally thousands of tons of molten sodium metal coolant to the highly radioactive Na-24 isotope with a half-life of 15 hours.



Although sodium has some safety advantages (low pressure operation), it also has serious drawbacks (metal fires and potential large powerful hydrogen explosions if sodium coolant comes into contact with water or cement).

Perhaps the most serious safety problem with sodium coolant is that it reacts violently with water and burns spontaineously at reactor temperature if exposed to air.

The steam generators used in fast reactor systems, in which molten sodium and high-pressure water are separated by thin metal pipes, have proven to be one of its most troublesome features. Any leak results in a reaction that can rupture the tubes and lead to a major sodium-water fire.

Historically, a large fraction of the liquid sodium-cooled reactors that have been built required being shut down for long periods because of sodium fires.

When sodium coolant absorbs a neutron, it turns into sodium 24, a hard to shield intensely radioactive gamma-emitting isotope.

As an SFR reactor operates, the sodium that cools the fuel rods in the reactor core becomes intensely radioactive.



To ensure that a steam generator fire does not disperse radioactive sodium, reactor designers insert an intermediate sodium loop in which heat generated from the reactor is transferred to non-radioactive sodium through a sodium-sodium heat exchanger. The nonradioactive sodium delivers heat to the steam generators that then generate electricity. The extra sodium loops and associated pumps and intrinsic safety and reliability problems contribute to the higher capital costs of sodium cooled fast spectrum SFR reactors.

Finally, unlike water cooled reactors that cease functioning if they lose their coolant (a valuable safety feature), less dynamically stable fast neutron Sodium Fast Reactors tend to become more reactive in cases where sodium coolant is lost. Furthermore, if the core heats up to the point of collapse and suffers a meltdown, the fuel can assume a more critical configuration and blow itself apart in a small nuclear explosion. Whether such an explosion could release enough energy to rupture reactor containment and cause a Chernobyl-scale release of radioactivity into the environment is the subject of major concern and debate.

Historically, sodium cooled fast reactors have had severe reliability problems. The necessity of keeping air from coming into contact with the sodium coolant makes refueling and repairing fast reactors much more difficult and time-consuming than for water cooled reactors. The fuel has to be removed in an atmosphere free of oxygen, the sodium drained, and the entire system flushed carefully to remove residual neutron activated sodium without causing an explosion. Such headaches have contributed to many fast reactors sitting idle a large fraction of the time. France’s now decommisioned Superphénix SFR, the world’s only commercial-sized breeder reactor, generated on average less than 7 percent of its capacity over its nominal operating lifetime. Japan’s Monju and Britain’s Dounreay prototype fast reactors and the U.S. Enrico Fermi 1 demonstration breeder reactor had similar records. Russia’s BN-600 has managed to maintain a respectable capacity factor (the percent of time it runs at full power), but only because of the willingness of its operators to keep it running despite multiple sodium fires. To date, Sodium Fast Reactors have been poor investments for communities and nations that have invested in them.

Fast reactors and their fuel cycles pose serious proliferation risks. All reactors make plutonium in their fuel, but breeder reactors require that this plutonium be separated from the intensely radioactive fission products in spent fuel and reused. The separation process, so-called reprocessing, also makes the plutonium more accessible to aspiring nuclear weapon makers.

This concern is not just theoretical. India justified its reprocessing program by citing an interest in breeder reactors, but in 1974, India used its first batch of separated plutonium to carry out a “peaceful nuclear explosion”weapons test.

Read on here

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-generation-4-nuclear-reactor-designs