Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Nicholas Pretzel's avatar

I was one of those respondents who enquired about Thorium, so thank you for your informative article. My limited knowledge of this subject stems mostly from two TED talks. The first was by Kirk Sorensen, a NASA physicist discussing power generation of future moon bases: https://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Bearing your caveats in mind, I didn't realise anyone had built a large scale reactor. In my opinion, the more interesting talk (not only because he's a better speaker: Kirk Sorensen is a somewhat dry and unengaging speaker and his talk is a little hesitant. I recommend reading the transcript) was by Taylor Wilson, who built a small Thorium reactor in his dad's garage at age 14(!). His idea, to use these small self-contained reactors to power individual households for 30 years+ struck me as a very exciting and interesting proposition: https://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_my_radical_plan_for_small_nuclear_fission_reactors

Anyway, thanks again for your article. I hope the links are of swine interest, if you're not aware of the talks already. They're not all that long, 9'49" & 12'39" respectively. There is also a much shorter talk by Taylor Wilson (‘Yup, I built a nuclear fusion reactor’ just 3'15").

Expand full comment
Richard Weinberg's avatar

I think the biggest problem with molten salt reactors is corrosion. Probably solvable, but nontrivial.

Expand full comment
9 more comments...

No posts