There are functioning Thorium based Molten Salt Breeder reactors, which for ~50MW can be built in a shipping container size - they are small, so can be deployed at local sites, thus reducing transmission losses, much harder to use for weapons (thats why the world tilted towards the use of uranium reactors in the first place), dont need prior enrichment, and can use much higher percentage of the fuel - so much less waste product. Also since the whole stuff is a molten salt, you just drain it from the reactor core and the reaction simply comes to halt.

The technology works, as it was tested when they were deciding if the industry goes with uranium or thorium, but the war lobby win out unfortunately, as they wanted a source for their nuclear weapons, at which the Thorium reactors are not great.

And yes, nuclear is super clean even if we compare it with solar+wind batteries not even counted in to the equation. BTW you can use "spent" fuel rods from conventional nuclear plants in a breeder reactor, to further diminish waste and use them up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

yep, they're awesome, and may sidestep some of the HUGE investments in gigantic infrastructure - one day. What you conveniently leave out is no one is doing this yet at scale; china's got one test reactor going last time I looked.

I personally love the idea, but the nuclear industry here in the US is obsessed with large steam turbine setups in the multiple megawatt scale; even small modular reactors are getting side eyes.

So yeah, it exists, but it's not going to displace the current tech (which is really 60's tech with better electronics).