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Belgium's Aging Nuclear Plants Worry Neighbors (phys.org)
mdsolar writes with news that Belgium's decision to restart a reactor at its Tihange nuclear power plant and its aging Doel plant have some of its European neighbors uneasy. Phys.org reports: "As the two cooling towers at Belgium's Doel nuclear power belch thick white steam into a wintry sky, people over the border in the Dutch town of Nieuw-Namen are on edge. They are part of a groundswell of concern in the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg over the safety of Belgium's seven aging reactors at Doel and at Tihange, further to the south and east. 'I'm happy Holland, Germany and Luxembourg are reacting because they (officials) don't listen to you and me,' butcher Filip van Vlierberge told AFP at his shop in Nieuw-Namen, where people can see the Doel plant. Benedicte, one of his customers, nodded in agreement. Van Vlierberge said he was particularly uneasy with the Belgian government's decision in December to extend the lives of 40-year-old reactors Doel 1 and Doel 2 until 2025 under a deal to preserve jobs and invest in the transition to cleaner energy."
..until the Magrav reactors come online. No need for nuclear then.
At night, you won't have to turn on the lights.
Your,
Homer J. Simpson
...the Swedish reactors are some of the oldest and the least serviceable in the world.
http://www.thelocal.se/2015062...
Swedish reactors where considered the 2nd least upgradeable and amongst the worst in the world. Kinda interesting since their Finnish neighbour has one of the most efficient and upgradeable reactor designs in the world. Go figure.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Steam is a gas. Invisible. Water vapor is what it is.
The post time has not been seen for more than a week, possibly much longer since I my weekends are always lost. It's another sign of the downturn. Ask any Netcrafter you happen to see.
Short. Sharp. Shock.
The move away from nuclear power in Europe is a knee-jerk reaction to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. That the plants are old might be cause for concern, if the reactors don't meet modern safety standards. However, nuclear plants are very safe now and every disaster or near-disaster is thoroughly analyzed and changes are implemented at other plants so such incidents never occur again. For example, the United States' Nuclear Regulatory Commission carefully reviewed the Daiichi plant disaster and implemented changes in the US to make such an event even more unlikely at American nuclear plants. The phase out of nuclear power is based on largely unfounded fears, not science and logic. It's easy to ridicule Americans for attitudes about climate change and evolution. But there are equally foolish things in Europe, like the views on nuclear power and GMOs. I just wish people on both sides of the pond were more rational about some pretty important issues. I'm not opposed to phasing out nuclear power if superior technology becomes available, but I don't think there's really a superior alternative in many situations. Fossil fuels are awful and solar and wind aren't without their own problems.
And that is why we don't do Nuclear.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
Nuclear is pretty clean, and low co2. Yes, it's more expensive than its boosters pretend, but then ago so are most of the other highly-subsidised alternatives. Disposal of the waste is not as difficult as people pretend, and in fact would be simple and cheap if successive generations of politicians not bowed to NIMBY pressure...
Running older reactors can be perfectly safe too; costs a bit more, since you have to model how the materials age and replacement can be tricky, but there are specialists who provide those services. The concern is that some organisations are moving away from the "safety first, money no object" mentality to squeeze more cash out of their already highly-profitable installations.
It's fascinating how the old reactors are still in service because the public is afraid of them. The collective fear of the old reactors and their flaws leads to new reactors not being a favorable political decision. Thus, we are stuck with the 40 year old old versions of the most efficient clean energy production we're aware of.
I can see the time, this article has: "Posted by samzenpus on 2016-01-18 8:05 from the nothing-to-see-here dept."
So what's the problem?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Unfortunately Belgium is the most dysfunctional state in Europe's west. Sometimes their political cast is unable to form a government for years. Actually, it is like that after each election. So they are not properly governed for 1/4 to 1/2 of the time. Their police has no clue where their potential terrorists live, and their control and oversight of nuclear plants is not governed by safety concerns, but by the fact that their grid is not that well connected with neighboring countries. They also do not have any program to replace the old and broken reactors with anything not even new plants. It is necessary that they understand that it us not working and that they should dissolve their country.
The thing may really be a problem, that I don't know. But I _can_ tell you that this whole affair has the stink of public manipulation heavily upon it. For months, we have been hearing about every little problem in that reactor ("the copying machine in the reactor ran out of paper. There was no risk of radioactive contamination."). Which would invariably be followed by "The paper in the copying machine in the reactor has been refilled. Experts say the risk of radioactive contamination is minimal." There have been 3-4 articles a week about things happening in that reactor, and most of them, at least to my non-expert eye, looked really rather like business as usual, while at the same time containing all the keywords that would set of alarm bells in everyone reading it.
As I said, I have no idea if there's anything wrong in that reactor, but public opinion is clearly being massaged. We are supposed to be afraid. It is not normal for every tiny problem to be made into a series of news articles, and I'm wondering what is really behind this story.
The alternative would be to (a) increase the capacity of the link between the Belgium grid and the grids of their neighbors, and (b) plan fully invest in windpower and storage solutions. However, Belgium is unable to do anything. In Belgium the people are not even against nuclear plants, they ate however unable to govern their country. Mainly because they are 2 and a half country. It would be better to break is up I'm pieces and connect the parts to France, the Netherlands and Luxemburg.
Speaking as a Belgian, I'm worried about a French multinational in control of the plants not giving a damn about anything but their own profit margins. We hear about incidents (so far in the non-nuclear parts of the plants) at least once per month. The problem is that unlike Chernobyl, Belgium's nuclear plants are in highly populated areas. In case of a real incident, we might have to evacuate and relocate several million people. Not to mention that the parts of our neighbors that could be affected are also pretty densely populated. The deal referred to exists purely to transfer a lot more money to said multinational. This money might be better spent either on a new generation of nuclear plant, or better, reusable energy. Unfortunately, said multinational also appears to have zero interest in investing in new power plants in Belgium.
You're right; it was my fault. I had the page zoomed to a point that it adjusted by omitting the time. And I thought it started happening earlier today because earlier articles didn't seem to be affected, but that's only because "Soulskill" is shorter than "samzenpus."
while nuclear is a great source of energy, it requires constant vigilant maintenance and an electrical distribution system. why not invest in solar+battery for your entire country? they are low maintenance power harvesting systems that use a naturally occurring nuclear power, a star. stars are fantastic power sources because one's like ours are stable for billions of years, require no maintenance, have perfect security and their own multi-planetary power distribution systems. making solar panels and sodium-ion batteries isn't beyond Belgium's capabilities and it would solve a lot of problems.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The reactor in Borssele is 3 years older than the ones in Tihange, and is built on the northern border (on the Schelde), the ones in Gravelines are not that old, but are built on the south border of Belgium.
First you concede that nuclear is a great source of energy, and then fail to elaborate on the obvious contrast with solar energy which IS NOT A GOOD SOURCE OF ENERGY.
Next you point out that nuclear power generation requires maintenance, as if that has ever been a good or practical reason to avoid doing anything with such a big payoff.
Then you assume for some reason that solar is not going to need an electrical distribution system, because everyone is going to go off the grid because... um... I guess because you are irrationally opposed to nuclear power and assuming that it will happen this way lets you make up another false reason that solar is somehow a better power source than nuclear.
Then you draw an irrelevant false parrallel between similarly named but otherwise practically unrelated natural nuclear fusion in stars and artificial nuclear fission in power plants, and waffle about the benefits on the false assumption that they are "fantastic power sources" which, again, for practical purposes, they ARE NOT.
Holy smokes slashdot, which of you upvoted this inane shite to visibility?
While the belgian reactors are old , I think the current worries are mostly a result of the tight regime they're being run at now. Strict safety procedures means lots of powerdowns and lots of news events. This constant media attention then leads the neighbors to start worrying. That's the main issue at work now. It's not due to inherent dangers becoming too high.
That aside, the fact that the reactors are old and still necessary is a symptom of the historical bad approach to nuclear energy that we had in the west. Nuclear energy boomed when the technology was immature, and lots of large scale plants were built with very long lifetime. This slowed down the evolution of the technology. For good evolution you need fast rotation of the plants and good diversity. Then enthusiasm waned and now the west is stuck with very old plants and no mature technology, and the technology here is as good as dead. We don't even have any experience in handling the end of the lifecycle of a plant. China, India and Iran are starting with better knowhow but the conditions are more dangerous (highly populated areas, earthquake prone..), so it looks like they have some disasters in the making too.
There is more to it with nuclear reactors and fear of them. It is indeed Greens stupidity to 'fear' all new development in any area they consider untenable. That is a politically motivated decision - they just want to force certain things. So far so good but the friendship of government with the drunken plumbers associations of nuclear industry means that to get what Greens want they have to agree with letting old plants run and for longer than planned times. Everybody is happy because they achieve their goals - Greens 'got rid' of the nuclear energy and nuclear energy industry can concentrating on profit from existing plants which is good because building new ones is proven to be complex and very very expensive. The policy does not make too much sense but if all actors are happy pretending they won there is no way anything will change.
and give them a valid reason to move away from these danger zones. Then give them cake! And let them eat it! Better than bread!
and thought "This looks like another post by user 'mdsolar' spreading FUD about alternatives to solar power".
And guess what, that's exactly what is was?
Why does Slashdot tolerate his continual shilling and trolling? Does he pay them?
and thought "This looks like another post by user 'mdsolar' spreading FUD about alternatives to solar power".
And guess what, that's exactly what is was.
Why does Slashdot tolerate his continual shilling and trolling? Does he pay them?
Age in itself isn't a major concern. The fundamental problem is that when these plants were built, aging of reactors simply wasn't well understood. In hindsight, sometimes the designers choose to massively overengineer certain components, in others the margins were far smaller. Still, decent engineering all around in the West; no plant failed due to underengineered components.
As a result, it made a lot of sense to give these old plants a mid-life upgrade to replace the weaker components, and take advantage of the overengineering of the other parts. Borssele was upgraded in 1997. Tihange on the other hand did not receive such an update. So from a safety perspective, Borssele is just 19 years old.
"Doel, Tihange remain: Electrabel radiates, the citizen pays"
"The campaign manager of Greenpeace Energy, complains that the federal government (Michel I) failed, and will force obsolete nuclear plants to remain open.This choice creates new power shortages, it makes a transition to renewable energy impossible and offers Electrabel more profiteering that will be paid by the taxpayer. "
Mr Eloi names the Belgian minister of the Interior "Nuclear Ali". And given the state of the reactors, I fear this will turn out to be more accurate than intended. IMHO is it more to the point, already today, than the orginal nickname he's referring to.
Article (in Dutch)
http://www.dewereldmorgen.be/a...
Dodgy but serviceable Google Translation into English:
https://translate.google.com/t...
At this age of terrorism, the neighbors should bomb the scary facilities to lessen the concerns of the general public. It's the only way to be sure.
of the most efficient clean energy production we're aware of.
Wrong.
Sorry pal, nuclear fission is *not* efficient. It may be effective, but not efficient.
Mixing up those two on this matter is a recipe for disaster. Fukushima style, if you catch my drift.
If you factor out cross-funding of fission reactors with huge gobs of taxpayers money and factor in insurance for running the reactors including the timespan in which nuclear fission waste is dangerous and factor in human fuckups and their resulting disasters - which *do* happen btw. - nuclear fission turns in to a techno-romantics pipe-dream or, more precisely, an economists nightmare. No matter how new or old the reactors are.
If people would simply do the math this silly discussion could finally end and we could move on to doing useful things again.
At the current state of our knowlege and tech, nuclear fission does not work as a feasible energy resource. That's a simple fact.
It's only still around due to billions and billions of dollars, deutschmarks, euros, whatnot being pumped into it since the 70ies oil crisis.
We would be best of if we'd decommion that shit inmediately, globally, totally and finally. Germany - one of the most high-tech countries in the world, is doing it right now. It's only a matter of time that the rest will follow. I only hope it happens in an orderly matter and before we totally lose control of the waste problem or of some reactor near the place I live.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The real issue is Belgian politics, where no true statesman exists any longer, and even if there were, wouldn't get anything done because of it's convoluted and absurd political systems anyhow. Fact is, for decades they are in the inability to have a grand or even major energy-policy. They just muddled on and on. And they currently leaning towards an unrealistic 'green revolution" with windmills and solar - which recently saw the energy-bill rise with 80%, because of equally absurd subsidies by the state, of the state - but which, ultimately, now has to be paid mainly by those that couldn't afford those solar-panels in the first place. That, and other things, have led to a total non-policy on energy.
What SHOULD have happened, is that back in the 90'ies, a totally new 3gen nuclear reactor should have been built(and this time, not squandered away to a monopolistic private company which charges us much too much, because they can afford to.
Instead, we now keep open very old 2gen reactors, longer and longer - also because we can't afford anything else, due to the lack of political will and economic reality.
If one had done that, we would now possess far more reliable, efficient and safe reactors who could provide all our energy-needs (Belgium is a small country) for the next 40 years in all comfort. Instead, we choose to keep fairly unreliable reactors open way past there due time. It doesn't make sense. Saying we can close them and replace the 51% share of electricity with our windmills is as equally absurd and unrealistic. the only thing remaining by 2025 will be mass import of electricity from abroad, and classical oil/coal derived plants, with all the pollution and CO2 that come with it.
Our next-to-non-existent energy policy is a disgrace, and it has been for the past 30 years.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
It's fascinating how many people think the opposition is down to fear, and not money.
Take the UK as an example. The public doesn't seem to be afraid of nuclear power or nuclear weapons, based on two debates we are having about it right now. First you have the new nuclear plant being built. No-one is complaining about safety, it's all about the insane cost, and the fact that in order to get a French/Chinese partnership to build it for us we had to agree to pay them way over the odds for the power generated, for the lifetime of the plant.
Then you have the debate over our nuclear weapons system, Trident. Again, few concerns over the safety of the thing, it's all about the cost and if we really need it for defence.
The UK has a pretty terrible record on nuclear safety, but most people don't care. They just want cheap power, and nuclear doesn't offer it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I hope you meant "France, the Netherlands and Germany" :)
I wouldn't consider Luxemburg as one of the alternatives.
But you are right: Belgium is two and a half countries. It used to work well when it was still one (that's when those power plants were built), but today, our government structure is a dragon.
Two and a half times the original number of seats, spread out over 4 governments (1 national and 3 regional). Renaming some positions from "minister" to "secretary of state" and similar tricks to hide the truth, fool nobody.
And like 250 monkeys in a tree, try to get 150 of them to saw off the branches they're sitting on (and more importantly, feeding from, financially as well as in status) to return to the workable structure of lore.
Apparently, physical security is poor. Bad for a place with active terrorist cells. 'And the Doel 4 reactor was also shut down urgently in August 2014 after a leak in the turbine hall, caused by tampering, gushed out 65,000 litres of oil lubricant. Belgian prosecutors told AFP the investigation into who was responsible is continuing, and they do not rule out terrorism or an "act of vengeance".'
It's not about the cost. It's just that Corbyn and his CND allies have 'cost' as their only seemingly rational argument.
The fact is, they're unreformed communists who want to drop our defences against a resurgent Russia and side with them against the USA, as their forbearers did in 1945.
Since all fuels except biofuels and deuterium run out, and deuterium tech is still undeployed, the green solutions are the only practical plans out there. http://thesolutionsproject.org...
A plan for wind and solar has been worked out for Belgium: https://100.org/wp-addons/maps...
https://100.org/wp-addons/maps... Just adopt it.
Here is a plan worked out for Belgium: https://100.org/wp-addons/maps...
Obsolete reactors + Islamic terrorists = really bad situation
Unless you're the CIA, then it's a truly great opportunity: you can blow them up under false flag with much less effort, and blame it on teh terrists.
Land of the Fee!
Home of the Slave!
captcha: 53+9=62
There is about 80 years of economically viable uranium left at the current rate of use. But it is only going to get more expensive going forward. Better to go with lower cost alternatives. https://100.org/wp-addons/maps...
https://100.org/wp-addons/maps... This not the only one.
This post reeks of contamination by the Flemish nationalists.
> an artificial country created by the imperial powers of the 19th century
First, every country is "artificial", that does not make it any less real. The Flemish nationalists have managed to frame the debate around language, but the fact is that when surveyed on their world views Belgians have a lot more in common with each other than within most other European countries. The story of Belgian creation goes back much further than the 19th century and has a lot to do with the common Catholic identity forged from the Reformation through the 19th century, back when people cared about that.
> t that dissolving is met with fierce resistance from the French-speaking part of Belgium
Wrong. A lot of us would love nothing more than to be rid of the Flemish nationalists and if the Flemish as a whole decide to go the nationalist route, they are welcome to leave. The issue is that they want to claim large swaths of wealth that would rightfully belong to those of us left in the rump state. For example, Brussels is by far a dominant-French speaking city, which is set within the borders of the officially Flemish speaking part of Belgium. The border around the city was drawn in the 1960's, and the Flemish nationalists have resisted any attempt to recognize the simple fact that all cities in Europe have grown in the last half century. As a result, many of the wealthiest members of our community live outside of Brussels' technical border and pay their taxes to the Flanders. You can imagine the havoc that wreaks on our economy: we pay for all of the economic services (offices, factories, transport, hospitals) that support the surrounding parts of Flanders region, but see none of the tax revenue.
Currently, Belgium repatriates a lot of this French-speaker's tax money to the French speaking community through assistance programs. This is far from an optimal solution, but I find it to be a fair compromise. Unfortunately, nationalists have managed to paint this as the "industrious" Flemish giving money to the "Lazy" Walloons.
The French-speaker's preconditions for an independent Flanders are clear: we want protections for the French speaking minority in Flanders, a tax regime that will repatriate funds earned in Brussels back to Brussels and a land route between Brussels and Wallonia. Then you are welcome to piss off.
I'm not sure our shore line is big enough for the amount of wind turbines we might need.
(a) might happen since it's been championned by a broadly respected economist, even though his socialist party (SPA) is part of the opposition now.
Belgium has a tradition of wind energy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... Hydro is also much cleaner than nuclear.
That's only true if you (intentionally?) misunderstand the meaning of the terms resource and reserve.
Vermont Yankee was cracking up all the time and Massachusetts was concerned. http://nepr.net/news/2015/10/1...
Seem renewables work for Belgium https://100.org/wp-addons/maps...
Oh, so now we have "peak uranium" being offered as a potential crisis? They said the same thing about oil 50 years ago, and here we are, still going strong with a glut of oil. Stop with your propaganda please. Here's the facts on Uranium as a power source: " Uranium-235 is a finite non-renewable resource.[1][3] However, the current reserves of uranium have the potential (assuming breeder reactor technology) to provide power for humanity for billions of years, until the death of our sun, so nuclear power can be termed sustainable energy.[4] " - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sounds like Quebec in Canada.
I saw the title of this story and had to comment. This is exactly what I remember seeing in the Sim City games (outside of the name being exact of course) and actually got a good laugh at it
If techs didn't disagree with each other, then Microsoft would rule the world.
How about we stop using and wasting so much energy in the first place?
Oh, you'll hear the Americans complaining that using less energy equals a "lower quality of life", of course. But my DEL "bulbs" give me a lot more light than my old CFL or the even older standard ones, at a fraction of what both of these require. I cook my meals using a tiny rice cooker and a toaster oven. It doesn't make sense to use a full-size oven to cook for a single person. My TV isn't a power-sucking 50" plasma either, it's a 23" LCD. My computer isn't a quad-core i7 because I don't need that much power. When doing basic tasks, my computer requires less than 40W, including the display.
What I'm saying is, stop trying to have bigger and better things than your neighbour and learn to live with what you actually need to live in a modern society.
However, breeders are not practical.
Hydro has rendered more land area uninhabitable, and killed more people and wildlife, than any other energy source, even if you include strip-mining for coal (which is what we fire up when we shut down nuclear plants).
Except on industry funded shill sites.
Turns out that batteries are not much needed for a stable RE grid: http://livestream.com/unfounda...
Hydro is usually a bonus from flood control and irrigation projects. Those make more land habitable, not less.
We're basically at peak Hydro, and while you are correct that it is 'cleaner' the enviros will still bitch and moan because of the fish kill and reservoir flooding.
I know people here on Slashdot love to bring up Thorium-based reactors, but has anyone ever actually built one and turned it on? Even Wikipedia only has mention of research projects that have yet to go critical, with plans to scale to a tenth of what a traditional Uranium PWR can do, but not a single one has been built, much less taken critical.
There may be promise to the technology, but you need it to mature to something useable at a commercial scale. LFTR isn't there yet.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You keep trotting out this utter nonsense, and it isn't any more true today than it was last week. Nuclear has problems, but every power production technology we have today does. Focus on the real challenges, and stop posting idiotic FUD.
In case you forgot, 80 years of Uranium is still longer than the entire history of commercial nuclear power, and increased usage means that there will be increased interest in discovering new sources. Right now there is so much nuclear fuel already available that nobody is looking for it, because they're better off finding new bauxite mines, or some other mineral that needs exploration. And even then, they're still finding Uranium deposits by coincidence - the amount of discovered uranium has actually increased by 25% in the last 10 years while looking for 'not Uranium'. And that's not even talking about taking the thousands of metric tons of depleted uranium just laying around from past enrichment programs and 'breeding' it into fuel. Or Thorium.
This is absolutely the dumbest argument you could come up with against nuclear power.
Red Book would point out the that you misunderstand the situation.
Tell Germany at the least to stop 'belching unseen black soot' in to the atmosphere as they are contributing to killing thousands of people a year...a far greater problem then imaginary 'melt down' scenario's...
Seriously tell them all to go F themselves.
One of the rare times where, after many users have provided counterarguments against mdsolar's negative posts in the past, we as a group need to resort to directly attacking the character and motive of all posts by mdsolar.
http://slashdot.org/submission/5458403/20-nations-nuclear-facilities-said-to-be-vulnerable-to-cyberattack
http://slashdot.org/submission/5439281/why-james-hansen-is-wrong-about-nuclear-power
http://slashdot.org/submission/5415059/portions-of-land-at-san-onofre-nuclear-plant-may-be-contaminated-navy
http://slashdot.org/submission/5373577/the-attack-of-the-nuclear-hucksters
Why are we still accepting such biased submissions from mdsolar?
... Belgium's Doel nuclear power belch thick white steam into a wintry sky, people [...] are on edge
I honestly can't take the fears of steam vapour, containing nothing more than water, that serious.
Riggghhttt...because 'mdsolar says so'...I guess you're a nuclear engineer or physicist at a minimum with heavy leaning in research of uranium & breeder reactors right?
Stop already you're making a fool of yourself & contaminating /. with your idiocy...
Student newspapers are fun, but look at peer reviewed publications if you want to avoid your kind of confusion. http://m.pnas.org/content/112/...
It is common knowledge that they are more expensive.
It is also common knowledge that solar is even more expensive. It is also common knowledge that the wind is not reliable, and therefore not a good source of RELIABLE energy production. Now please stop trolling /. Most of us are smart enough to know the difference between facts and propaganda. You, however, are not.
Big Deal. I want to know what Cosmo says about it.
Actually, no, you are mistaken. Both wind and solar are less expensive and some Midwest nuclear plants are becoming impractical owing to this.
How ignorant....
http://science.slashdot.org/co...
The UK has a pretty terrible record on nuclear safety, but most people don't care.
Do we have a bad record on nuclear power safety? There have been no accidents above level 4 (local consequences) related to nuclear power and not many of them either.
The worst accidents (Windscale fire) have nothing to do with nuclear power and should not therefore be lumped in with it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No, I'm not mistaken. It's common knowledge that solar is much more expensive than nuclear. You can refer to Wikipedia or the EIA for specific numbers. Now go away troll.
Average price for utility scale solar is $0.05/kwh and still dropping. http://www.energybiz.com/magaz... Less than nuclear.
Sorry, I'm not going to trust a Renewable Energy Shill as a source. Here's some real numbers... Levelized Cost of Electricity for new generation sources entering service in 2020: Advanced Nuclear: $95.2/MWh Solar PV: $125.3/MWh Solar Thermal: $239.7/MWh source: https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/... And this is ONLY cost, it doesn't factor in that Solar is restricted to sunlight hours, is variable and unpredictable, and therefore it's not a reliable source.
I'd keep my eye on China. Their project on the linked page sounds quite viable. According to the references, 2020 is the target date now, all though that was pushed back from 2017. Undertaking new research is like that: unknowns. Don't expect an ROI. This is why the West will never do research like this any more. It's actually kind of amazing to me that we still bother running particle accelerators and doing fusion research. Must be how much more attractive the promise of the nebulous miracle technology or discovery is over practical research that has a good chance of steadily advancing the technology. Tortoise vs. hare, etc.
There may be promise to the technology, but you need it to mature to something useable at a commercial scale. LFTR isn't there yet.
That's true. I'm glad that somebody has started maturing it. The future is with China and India. I'm not personally worried about learning one of their languages, because I'll be long gone by the time the shift happens. If I were in high school today, I'd definitely be.
I also love the people here posting hand wringing about the cost of nuclear power. Oil is running out. The age of easy, centralized power generation is coming to an end. Solar and wind are good and all, but in particular the sun pretty much goes away during the time of the year I need to heat my house and wind is plagued by rich asshole NIMBYs (who think their backyard is 50 miles long).
Captcha: capacity
I know people here on Slashdot love to bring up Thorium-based reactors, but has anyone ever actually built one and turned it on?
Yup, in 1965.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
The main obstacle in building a modern MSR plant is lack of funding and hostile regulation environment (the NRC's rules are tailored to LWR plants, so everything else is not allowed to be built), not technological challenges.
And the news differs from government projections. Never happened before. That's why oil us over $80/bbl these days.
Makes a ton of sense, bro.