What Are the Barriers to Building Thorium Plants?

I watched a TED talk on thorium reactors. There are many, many good reasons for using thorium reactors to generate power. The problem is that the nuclear power industry has been so weakened over the past 30+ years that the scientific and engineering resources needed to build and maintain them are hard to find. There is also the huge inertia to overcome in public support, which has heard so much bad press (some true, a lot just hysteria) that public resistance is tough to overcome.

The biggest barriers are politics, ignorant public view of nuclear power in general, unrealistic environmental protection demands/strongholds, and bloated construction costs and timelines related to the previous reasons.

The usual.

Yes, Th would work just fine in a fast neutron reactor. As would U-238 (depleted uranium) which the US has huge stockpiles of. Read the on-line book "Prescription for the Earth" by Tom Blees. He explains the fast reactor even tho some other parts of the book sound (to me) like science fiction. The IFR, PRISM, etc, reactors can use up existing thermal reactor waste in addition to the Th & U-238. Also much less waste volume and radioactivity. Yes, politics and public opinion are the biggest barriers.

There's also a book named (I think) "Plentiful Energy" by Charles Till that I don't have yet. He was in charge of developing the IFR concept at Argonne National Laboratory.

Friends,

Early articles I read on this were citing work done in Canada. I'm not surprised to see China in references now. Regarding popular and unpopular opinion--there should always be a place for consideration of these as well as thoughtful evaluation of safety, etc. I distrust those on each side who are vocal in their claims of great safety or great risk. Yes, the Thorium cycle is much better in terms of avoiding production of isotopes that can be made into explosives. However, no one in this thread has pointed out that any type of reactor produces a significant amount of radioactive byproducts, regardless of the design involved. It is the safe handling of these byproducts as well as the radiated reactor components that are the major concerns I have. In addition to these are the well-known and often-ignored problems of hydrogen embrittlement that results in shorter-than-planned life cycles.

We continue to pour our attention into short-term (30-50) year power production to satisfy current need greed and ignore the long-term (1000+) year mortgage we place on the handling of the byproducts. Very few societies have had a track record with a long-enough duration, and our current focus is much much shorter than this!

On the whole topic of energy, Amory Lovins has been ignored, to our detriment.

--John M.