[T]he report’s executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.
“The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs,” says the report. “But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb.”
Why can’t we switch to thorium and molten salt instead? Much cleaner, much safer, same idea.
Because it is actually not that simple, especially on the “cleaner” and “safer” parts.
Theoretically the main advantage of the thorium is precisely because its safer and cleaner. When removed from its neutron source thorium quickly ceases fission and decay.
The technology doesn’t exist in a commercially viable form. That’s why.
I didn’t think that was ready for commercialize yet. You have all the disadvantages of nuclear, but need additional development costs, need to implement a supply chain, then build out a new technology that is less efficient than existing nuclear, has unclear service life, may be supplanted by fusion or renewables, and you can still use it to make bomb material. Seems like a poor idea and a waste of money.
From India’s perspective, they’d get to lead in a new technology, where they have huge reserves of fuel, and cheap labor to scale up to a billion energy-starved citizens …. And if it helped increase their nuclear weapons stock in the face of tight controls on plutonium, so much the better