What did they expect They mine something as rare as plaintium, then extract that part of it that won't support a nuclear reaction, through expensive enrichment! Then spend even more fabricating it into ceramic pellets that are loaded into sealed tubes. That then must be taken out from the centre of the reactor and moved to the outside perimeter every 18 months.

Only able to be done three times meaning the entire expensive billions worth of fuel rods must be replaced every 4.5 years, with less than 1% of the energy component spent i.e., the nuclear industries business model.

Who make billions from fuel fabrication almost alone. Events like Three mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, have made this industry less popular than ever!

There's only one nuclear energy system that spends virtually all the fuel and that is sternly resisted molten salt technology. Which puts nuclear fuel fabricators out of business!

Whether the fuel is Thorium or uranium.

Thorium's cheaper, much more abundant!

The reason why uranium is no longer in favour. Has a weapons spinoff, mountainous waste, huge refueling costs!

Whereas the molten salt approach uses refined thorium and fluoride, laced with lithium and beryllium.

Fluoride is a very poor receptor of neutrons it is an inherently safe method.

This is where we ought be heading, to ensure we become a leading nation once again with a resuscitated manufacturing industry based on dispactable baseload power with median price of less than a professionally estimated, 2 cents per KwH.

This in turn makes broad scale desalination affordable for some truly massive irrigation projects, Ushers in fuel from seawater technology with prices for finished automotive fuel as low as 20 cents a litre?

Cheap enough for joe average to buy it by the barrel from the producer, cutting out the paper shuffling, middleman profit taker!

Then there's a huge new plastics and fertilizer industry! All of it endlessly sustainable!

Finally the thorium model can be tasked with burning other people's nuclear waste, or weapons grade plutonium/uranium.
Alan B.

Uranium industry slumps! And our resident Russian troll of his alter ego, Adian says, good news for Uranium, bad news for Thorium?
I guess there's some profound logic there from our resident anti Thorium campaigner.

Who is on the public record saying, okay over there, but not here.

If there's logic in either statement escapes me!

Perhaps it's somehow related to Russian oil and gas exports? and their total collapse if Thorium made a successful entry into the enormously expensive economy killing, energy market!

Or maybe Adian lives on his own personal planet and escapes a few times a week by sliding down a beam of pure light, just so he can abuse our best thinkers and rubbish their better ideas? And is just trying ever so hard to be helpful!? Whadda ya think?

How did St Petersburg look from the air the last time you flew over it Adian?
Alan B.

Again the claim that wind and solar are "cheaper", whatever that means. So why are electricity prices so high and rising?
This is a rhetorical question of course.
Renewables are total and utter BS and they are the reason our power is now unaffordable. The corporations will keep ramping up prices until we get a couple of new, very large coal power plants!

Hi Jim,

The cost of renewables: does one include the actual manufacture of wind towers, blades, internal rubber bands bits, maintenance AND the subsidies to power companies as well ? How long does a wind tower have to operate before it has compensated for the CO2 produced in its making ? Or do the elves make them at night out of fairy dust for free ? No CO2 produced whatever ?

Similarly solar panels. When wind towers are manufactured using only wind power, and solar panels using only solar power, AND energy generated by renewable means no longer requires subsidies, then we can start to take them seriously. Otherwise it's all a fraud.

Until then, use coal and nuclear.

Joe

//Until then, use coal and nuclear.//

Or just nuclear. It's much cleaner than coal. I don't why that bothers halfwits like Jim so much.

It's probably the mining. Mining is generally pretty bad for the environment. I presume Jim doesn't use any sort of metal, because mining.

Stop your trolling and switch your brain on, Alan B!
I'm actually pro thorium.
But I'm not so deluded as to think a price slump for thorium's main rival ISN'T bad news for thorium.
Nor am I so deluded as to think we can yet generate power from thorium for 2c/kWh.
I expect that price will be achievable some day, but by then we'll be able to generate it more cheaply from solar. However not everywhere's so sunny - that's why I predict it's elsewhere that it will become economically viable.

And the last time I flew over any part of Russia was in 2003, and IIRC it was nowhere near St Petersburg.

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JBowyer,
Electricity prices are high and rising because renewables are still being denied access to the cheap finance they need. Instead we're having to rely on expensive cross subsidies, and meanwhile insufficient dispatchable capacity is being provided to replace the old power stations that are closing.

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Loudmouth,
>How long does a wind tower have to operate before it has compensated for the CO2 produced in its making ?
ISTR the answer is several months, and with solar panels it can be up to 2 years, though that figure's rapidly falling.

Back in the 20th century the huge energy investment needed to construct solar panels and wind turbines meant they were suitable only for niche applications. But those days are long gone.