Nuclear Now

Never heard of it. Here's wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Now

Nuclear is expensive. About $10B/GW. Wind and solar and batteries comes in at only $30B/GW of 24/7 power, although to be fair there is another 1.5 GW of 'free' power when the sun shines or the wind blows more than average, if you have systems that can use that.

Nuclear takes time to build. In China (or the UK) they can do it in 4 years. In UAE the first nuke took 8 years to build, with the rest of the complex coming in 1 year stages. But it takes about 5 years to get a windmill farm on-line in Australia, and they last for 26 years. A nuke will last for 60 years.
"In a first clue as to what might be the future for some ageing wind farms sites, renewable energy company Pacific Blue says it will not repower the country’s oldest commercial wind farm at Codrington in Victoria.

The 18.2 megawatt (MW) Codrington wind farm was commissioned in 2001 and will be decommissioned in 2027, a Pacific Blue spokesperson told Renew Economy on Monday."

Good riddance to that eyesore.

Free viewing on Roku.

Latest nuclear news. Germany has dropped opposition to nuclear as an approved power source for the EU.

Belgium has reversed tack on phase out of nuclear. Denmark investigates whether nuclear makes sense.
Belgium’s federal parliament has voted by a large majority to repeal a 2003 law for the phase-out of nuclear power and banning the construction of new nuclear generating capacity. Meanwhile, the Danish parliament has approved an analysis of the potential use of nuclear, which has been banned for the past 40 years. Belgium’s federal law of 31 January 2003 [has] require[d] the phase-out of all nuclear electricity generation in the country.

The obvious context for this other than common sense is the Iberian system black.

The Chinese are doing great things with Thorium...

Why not use the non polluting atomic?

It seems that thorium is expensive because it requires a lot of energy to extract and process...

Thorium is more expensive primarily because it requires a breeder reactor to make fissionable material from it. The safety advantages of this configuration, however, are significant:

The reaction is not self-sustaining, i.e. no core meltdown from loss of power.
Radioactive material for a 'dirty bomb' is inaccessible to thieves/terrorists
Breeder reactor can reprocess nuclear 'waste' from traditional Uranium nuclear plants.
Not suitable for production of weapons-grade Plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Thorium is also relatively abundant in the Earth compared to Uranium.

How is the accessibility of radioactive material correlated with the reactor type? Doesn't that ultimately fall on security?

TugboatEng said:

How is the accessibility of radioactive material correlated with the reactor type? Doesn't that ultimately fall on security?

Click to expand...

Traditional Uranium reactors only have a single reactor, where enrichment and fission take place. The breeder reactor for Thorium or reprocessing spent Uranium fuel is separated from the fission reaction chamber, so physical access to fission reactor is not necessary.

Some basics about Thorium vs Uranium nuclear:

Is thorium safer than uranium?