Thorium Reactors
Back in May 2012, I happened to be on a drive while National Public Radio here in the United States was broadcasting a Science Friday story, "Is Thorium A Magic Bullet For Our Energy Problems?"<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152026805/is-thorium-a-magic-bullet-for-our-energy-problems" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152026805/is-thorium-a-magic-b...</a><p>Many of the issues considered in that story are glossed over by advocates of thorium reactors. The author of the blog post kindly submitted here explicitly admits, "My last article about thorium as an alternative nuclear reactor fuel drew way more readers than I expected. I intentionally glossed over the complexities of specific reactor designs for the sake of simplicity, but in this article I want to go deeper." He mentions a number of interesting technical trade-offs involved in using thorium reactor fuel and the latest reactor designs as compared to earlier nuclear reactor designs, but the tone is still largely a tone of credulity, without a lot of examination of non-nuclear means of generating electrical power.<p>The Physics Stack Exchange discussion of thorium reactors is interesting,<p><a href="http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/20034/what-practical-issues-remain-for-the-adoption-of-thorium-reactors" rel="nofollow">http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/20034/what-practi...</a><p>as is the article from The Guardian in June 2011, "Don't believe the spin on thorium being a greener nuclear option."<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium" rel="nofollow">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nu...</a><p>Advocacy groups are already mobilizing to cast doubt on thorium reactors, with webpages like "Thorium Fuel – No Panacea for Nuclear Power"<p><a href="http://ieer.org/resource/factsheets/thorium-fuel-panacea-nuclear-power/" rel="nofollow">http://ieer.org/resource/factsheets/thorium-fuel-panacea-nuc...</a><p>(with a link to an interesting fact sheet,<p><a href="http://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/thorium2009factsheet.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/thorium2009fac...</a><p>that gets into the practicalities and economics of using thorium as a reactor fuel).<p>It's not clear yet that thorium offers any economic or political advantages over the uranium that fuels the nuclear reactor that provides much of my home electricity. The two nuclear reactors here in Minnesota result in lower-than-average cost for electricity here, compared to the rest of the United States, and have had a perfect safety record. Ongoing concern about where to store high-level radioactive waste on a long-term basis has made many politicians here reluctant ever to approve another nuclear plant in this state, despite the perfect safety record and inexpensive electricity we enjoy with the current plants. Minnesota, as a matter of state policy, is strongly promoting wind energy, fitting the wind-swept prairie geography of much of the state. I'm not aware of any part of the world where local politics would make a thorium plant more likely than another wind power plant or natural-gas-fired power plant. So maybe thorium power generation is a technical solution looking for a problem.