The financial & Insurance risk does seem excessive.
Perhaps a halt on uranium reactors while thorium reactors are developed
perhaps is the way to go.
The main problem with uranium reactors is when things go wrong the area
of land that cannot be used for a very long time can be quite large.

That seems to be the real cause of insurance risk.

The financial aspects of thorium nuclear reactors make that enterprise even more commercially unviable than the big reactors.
To have any hope of getting the business of thorium reactors off the ground they would need to be mass manufactured. That couldn't happen until they were mass marketed - orders made to buy them in mass numbers.
The thorium pipe dream is to somehow persuade governments to buy them in mass numbers.

Apart from that unlikely prospect, the big nuclear salesmen - Westinghouse Toshiba etc are not going to let this happen - they have $billions invested in their big designs.

Even if the thorium dreamers achieved their expensive sales - the cost doesn't end there. Apart from the costly business of getting legislation changed, overcoming regulatory hurdles etc, - there will be the costs of perpetual guarding of these reactors, with their essential need for plutonium, enriched uranium (to start the fission process). There will also be the costs of guarding and disposing of the very toxic wastes produced by thorium reactors.

Meanwhile in the 70 year process of organising all this, the ever cheaper and cleaner wind and solar energy will be well established

Noel, how do you know all about the economics of thorium reactors when
they are still under development ?

I think you are confusing two different schemes;

Thorium reactors as base load generators
and
Small uranium reactors, built in modules in a factory, installed where
power is needed, and returned as a whole module for fuel replacement to the factory.

The idea for this came from submarine reactors, small & reliable.
Re solar, wind, tidal etc, please come back when the storage problem is solved.

Hi Bazz

Noting Noel's comment "with their essential need for plutonium, enriched uranium (to start the fission process)."

A problem with Thorium's use in reactors is who wants it and why. Thorium just happens to be advocated by some nuclear weapon countries (such as India) as a dual-use excuse for maintaining large stocks of nuclear explosives in the form of Plutonium and (highly) enriched Uranium (HEU).

The following 2012 article reflects India's interest and just some of the problems of using Thorium reactors http://wmdjunction.com/121031_thorium_reactors.htm :

"This thorium fuel cycle can be carried out in a conventional solid fuel reactor, and indeed India is proposing to do precisely this in its forthcoming advanced heavy water reactors (construction of which will reportedly commence in 2014), intending to employ a fuel that includes thorium in addition to uranium and plutonium.

But the fuel in any solid fuel reactor needs to be removed and reprocessed long before it is truly burnt up and no longer of use, otherwise some of these fissionable byproducts act as "neutron sinks," degrading the "neutron economy"—the efficiency of the reactor—until the nuclear chain reaction grinds to a halt, or becomes difficult or impossible to restart once stopped."

Pete

In reply to Bazz
I am not confusing thorium reactors with small reactors. I'm sure that theoretically large thorium reactors could be built. (But that's unlikely, with the grip that the current uranium nuclear producers have on the market)
However, small thorium nuclear reactors are being touted for Australia - as part of the "small, cleaner, cheaper, safer" propaganda line for thorium. This can also be found in the World Nuclear Association's propaganda - http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Power-Reactors/Small-Nuclear-Power-Reactors/
As for the economics of thorium reactors. Of course I don't know "all about" this - and neither does anyone else. That's part of their problem. The extremely long lead time, many decades, from blueprint to operational is one of the factors which add to the financial uncertainty of thorium reactors. http://www.nuclearpledge.com/reports/thorium_briefing_2012.pd

Thanks Plantagenet, I am not familiar with the whole nuclear possibilities.
There does seem to be a whole range of options.

Noel, you do seem to be very ready to condemn any proposal as "propaganda" a la Herr Goebbels.

Still all that aside, the energy storage problem seems to be bigger
than any nuclear reactor problem and may well take longer to solve.
Until it is solved then we have no option but to continue the use of
oil and coal or arrange the starvation of a lot of people.