Reply #8: Only problem with that is...

[Bob Wallace]

There are no Gen 4 or SMR plants. We don't know how much they would cost to build. Nor how long they would take to build. There's no reason to think that a thorium reactor using molten salt transfer would be significantly faster or cheaper to build. And during the 20 years or so for us to find out the price of wind and solar will continue to fall.

Small modular reactors are likely built on false hope. One does not achieve economies of scale with 100 units. It takes tens of thousands sort of activity to drastically reduce costs. (Hyperion recently doubled their cost estimate.)

The nuclear industry has repeatedly promised low and delivered high.

Plus SMRs have an enormous NIMBY problem. Just try to find 100 US communitites willing to permit a reactor of any size in their neighborhood.

Gen 4 thorium might be safer, but it still fails two of the three important tests.

Seems to me that the pro-nukers would like us to forget the history of the nuclear industry. We didn't stop building reactors in the US because of TMI. The US nuclear industry was already grinding to a halt prior to that meltdown. Cost of reactors killed nuclear builds. Construction costs are significantly higher now. And we've developed multiple cheaper/faster/safer methods of generating electricity.

Just call me a nuclear-realist. Nuclear is a problem-bedridden solution for a problem for which we have better solutions.