Thorium Instead Of Uranium: Solution To Our Energy Woes?

Re:Thorium Instead Of Uranium: Solution To Our Energy Woes? by Retric on Wednesday October 06, 2010 @11:51AM (#1764433)

Over the next 40 years there is little economic reason to move to breeder reactors. However, they are a much better long term solution to waste than simply storing the stuff in the ground. Also, because the LWR to Breeder cycle spends so much time on the Breeder side of the equation a fixed number of LWR can feed a growing number of Breeder reactors over time. Thus you need to map out what happens over long time periods to get the balance correct.

Edit: If a LWR extracts 2% of total energy in 0.2% of the time, a breeder would need 10x the fuel to produce that much power and it would take 500 times as long to use up that fuel. Thus the stable ratio of LWR to breeders would be 1:50 relative to power output, but it would take ~750 LWR fuel cycles to reach that balance assuming you did not start wait for a huge stockpile to begin. (Breeders are not 100% efficient but the math is not all that far from reality.)

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Re:Thorium Instead Of Uranium: Solution To Our Energy Woes? by terra_t on Wednesday October 06, 2010 @12:27PM (#1764598)

And that gets us to the central problem of our energy policy.

Utilities are moving towards a short-term thinking model where they install natural gas turbine with a low capital cost and use electricity deregulation to offload the risk of volatile natural gas prices to the consumer. "Renewables" are also driven by short-term motives: making a quick buck by exploiting government subsidies.

Nuclear energy can give us a sustainable energy source the thousand-year timescale (energy-wise, breeders can certainly consume seawater U238 profitably,) but we need to be thinking on the timescale of decades, not the next quarter, to get there.

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