Hi Frank, my pleasure! This is really interesting, I actually didn’t know about Thorium reactors—thank you for pointing that out(: Having just read the Wikipedia page it appears that Thorium offers some promising advantages. In hindsight I definitely would’ve touched on this in the paper. I think regardless, getting to net-zero in the next several decades will require all the technologies and innovation we can muster, so this definitely sounds like something we should be investigating and dedicating resources to. As far as an opinion on the development timeline: hard to say without further research I think. All new tech investments are obviously accompanied by a certain level of risk; I would be hesitant to attempt to replace one nuclear source with another for the same reason I wouldn’t replace nuclear with renewables, but as far as the potential to replace CO2-based energy sources in new regions or in places where the political situation favors the advantages of Thorium, it sounds like there’s a lot of promise here!
Hi Frank, my pleasure! This is really interesting, I actually didn’t know about Thorium reactors—thank you for pointing that out(: Having just read the Wikipedia page it appears that Thorium offers some promising advantages. In hindsight I definitely would’ve touched on this in the paper. I think regardless, getting to net-zero in the next several decades will require all the technologies and innovation we can muster, so this definitely sounds like something we should be investigating and dedicating resources to. As far as an opinion on the development timeline: hard to say without further research I think. All new tech investments are obviously accompanied by a certain level of risk; I would be hesitant to attempt to replace one nuclear source with another for the same reason I wouldn’t replace nuclear with renewables, but as far as the potential to replace CO2-based energy sources in new regions or in places where the political situation favors the advantages of Thorium, it sounds like there’s a lot of promise here!