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That would be a rational, well-informed counterargument against traditional nuclear power plants. It is not a counterargument against seed-level funding for R&D towards a completely new reactor technology, which has different economic and safety characteristics. Accelerator-based reactors, which are what have been proposed for publically-sponsored research in Norway, are a completely different beast. Yet they are treated as if it was a proposal to build 1050s Soviet-style reactors.

I am not trying to be hostile here, but you are making the exact same assumptions and fallacies as most of the Norwegian detractors to thorium reactor research. Although the criticism I was referring to in my post was rather the type you most commonly see: Uninformed dismissals of the type "We're still feeling the effects of Chernobyl", "Nuclear reactors are inherently unsafe" and "Nuclear waste cannot be handled in a safe way".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcritical_reactor

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf35.html

Traditional counterarguments to nuclear energy should not be enough to dismiss using a couple of million a year to look into promising, alternate solutions.

>It is not a counterargument against seed-level funding for [thorium]..

Nor did i ever suggest it was! (NB: 'OTOH').

>a couple of million

..would be rather 'pissing in the ocean' though on this issue, don't you think? (and thus could be considered a waste of money)

> ..would be rather 'pissing in the ocean' though on this issue, don't you think? (and thus could be considered a waste of money)

Again, as he stated. You are basing your hypothesis off of old nuclear technology. The same arguments were made against solar and wind. Many still believe it is a waste of money, yet we keep funding it. Why not also look into Thorium?

The cost of power from nuclear is quite competitive. Capital costs are high but, like renewables, amortized over a long lifetime with low operational costs. Your wiki link puts nuclear cheaper than solar or offshore wind, and barely more expensive than onshore wind.

Moving to small modular reactors, as many outfits are trying to do, will lower the required investment and time to production. Liquid thorium or fast uranium would largely eliminate long-term storage problem...in fact, we'd eliminate the long-lived wastes we have right now. (In the meantime we should keep wastes in a form we can use for fuel later.)

Renewables are great as far as they go, but there are only so many places you can build a good dam, and wind needs either a large oversupply, an economical energy storage system (which, other than the limited hydro, doesn't exist), a drastically souped-up and expensive power grid, or possibly all three. You don't have to worry about that if you're just adding power on the margins, but you do if you want to run civilization carbon-free. Taking all that into account, it's questionable whether wind would really be cheaper, especially as we're forced to expand into less suitable locations.

> Off the top of my head i think a wind farm is also more energy dense than a nuclear power plant, given all the space required around it.

I checked some facts; 2W / m^2 for wind[0], 1000W / m^2 for nuclear[1]. Even if they didn't account for some infrastructure, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't decrease that number 500 times.

Nuclear fission is one of the most powerful energy sources (in energy per unit of mass of fuel) known to mankind, to be replaced only by fusion and annihilation. Renewables on Earth don't even begin to compare.

[0] - http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c4/page_33....

[1] - http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_16...

I always wonder why people disregard nuclear like its low efficiency. It is taking elements that are inherently (in the case of uranium / plutonium, any passive nuclear power source) or situationally (thorium) emitting radiation (photon emissions, a kind of light, which is a form of energy) and using that heat energy to boil water.

And these unstable atoms were made by exploding stars. It is hard to get more energy dense than that. Fusion requires you to put in so much power in the first place to just get to hydrogen burning that it seems ridiculous to not take advantage of the dense energy gifts of destroyed stars.

> It is hard to get more energy dense than that. Fusion requires you to put in so much power in the first place to just get to hydrogen burning

Yeah, that's why a hydrogen bomb uses an atomic bomb as a trigger. But getting a stable, self-sustaining fusion reaction would quickly recoup for initial energy investment.

Unfortunately, as for the third reaction, I don't see much future for us using annihilation large-scale, at least in the coming centuries. It's simple: we don't have any antimatter around in significant quantities [0] and making it is a terribly inefficient process.

[0] - maybe it's fortunate; pure antimatter is probably the most dangerous source of energy out there; one mistake and we'd kill ourselves with it.

My mistake! Clearly nuclear is far more energy dense.. memory failure. TBH i thought there would be a far greater exclusion zone around it than shown on your links (good source, btw)-- obviously fission is going to be off the scale on energy/kg of fuel.

Don't forget to consider the cost of externalities (environmental damage, health costs), which probably roughly double the true cost of nonrenewable fuels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_cost_of_electricity_g...

Also, as for the comments that oil is still king in terms of absolute price, keep in mind that we probably peaked around 2004:

https://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2008_fot...

In my mind, we crossed the peak when diesel became more expensive than gasoline, because that meant that availability/exploration became the primary cost instead of refinement (because diesel has more energy and is easier to refine).

In fairness, we won't reach peak coal for at least several more decades, but my guess is that the externalities associated with coal will become unpalatable once a category 5 hurricane takes out New York City or Florida is under water. Or, when disaster relief crosses say 50% of the government's budget.

I forgot to mention that I'm against all new nuclear unless it can burn waste and plutonium. Partially because I saw the reactors underwater outside Omaha and realized that we are only a human error away from a Fukushima event here in the US.

Again, I am not an expert on Thorium but it's my understanding that the health and safety risks involved are much lower than traditional nuclear plants.

From the article:

"The four-year test at Norway’s government owned Halden reactor could help thorium inch closer to replacing uranium as a possible safer and more effective nuclear power source. Many people believe that thorium is superior because it leaves less long- lived dangerous waste, makes it far more difficult to fashion bombs, runs more efficiently, and can be made meltdown proof."

Wind and hydro does not begin to address the need for exponentially more energy and neither of them are the future in any important factor.

Furthermore. It is estimated that 100.000 people die from the use of coal to generate energy every year. More than nuclear power have ever done ( 4,000 people ever).

The only thing that is problematic with nuclear is storing it, a problem which can be solved.

This is a factual disagreement, hopefully a resolvable one.

Take a look at this book by David MacKay, Cambridge physicist. He presents detailed calculations on each energy source and, despite being anti-nuclear in initial orientation, agrees by the end of the book that nuclear energy is far cheaper and more scalable than any other renewable.

http://www.withouthotair.com/

"Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to be pro-nuclear. I’m just pro-arithmetic. — David MacKay"