This will be a great way to channel vast sums of money from the American taxpayer to rich elites, for which the taxpayer will see little or nothing in return. Something the US public are about to see a lot more of.
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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You've just described the US in general, no different from today or a hundred years ago.
Energy production is not the bottleneck. The real problem is transport. Our infrastructure cannot handle the demand. We desperately need to upgrade the grid.
Modular reactors help solve that in part by allowing much more local production. While we definitely need massive infrastructure repair and upgrades, we can start that while local reactors are being prepped and built.
I don't know the particular details of this plan, but the article you shared seems to focus on problems
with uranium. I don't see thorium as having any of these problems. I'm not a nuclear scientist, but thorium seems like a no-brainer. One of the main reasons we use uranium in the first place is just because that fuel cycle is more convenient if we're also making nukes.
You can make nukes with material (U-233) bred in the thorium fuelcycle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233
There are serious diverse problems with the thorium fuelcycle, including MSR. This is the reason it is not being developed vigorously. But China and India particularly are looking into it.
That's assuming we make it that long.