393
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
393 points (97.6% liked)
Technology
59161 readers
2183 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Wikipedia has a good discussion, if you don’t need technical detail. They’re fairly optimistic, but do note difficulties. It actually looks more positive than I expected, with the number of demonstration reactors in the last decade or so. Note: “demonstration”. I don’t think there’s anything actually blocking use of Thorium, but some unresolved issues for commercialization, plus it’s not clear the actual results are better, or that nuclear is any longer a good place to invest. It’s more of: at this point, why would you go down that road?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
At least ten years ago I first read about thorium reactors on 4chan, I believe, and how it will be the next big thing. Back then someone countered that he first heard about thorium reactors several years ago that they will be the next big thing, but they are never production ready and always experimental because they are so hard to contain. And so the story continues about thorium reactors and how they are just around the corner.
Not that I'm against it, I just think it's a little funny.
Sorry, can't find the stuff I read about it a while back when I was interested about it, or was it a YouTube video?
Anyway, here is what I remember: having the radioactive fuel as a liquid makes it easier to leak, and once that's happened, the environment damage will spread faster to ground water. Also sodium salt is liquid at high temperature, at which it will spontaneously catch fire in contact with oxygen (air), so any leak will cause a catastrophic fire, and this is what caused the demise of the French prototype "Projet Phénix" in the 70s.