ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

France did it in 70/80 with technology not more advanced then what is available in the 60s.

They have not only proven that nuclear can do it, but also that nuclear scales amazingly well. There really is no technical question what so ever.

Any nation that wants to have a green grid could go to South Korea for example and if you tell them that you would like 20 or even 100 reactors and you are willing to pay, they would build you those reactors. Within 10 years you could likely finish 3-4 reactors a year.

Nuclear economics analysis shows that if you actually have a real industry with lots of people experienced in such plants, they become much, much cheaper and far more predictable on timeline.

Instead in the West every other nations has some unique plant design that they are only building once and its a totally new industrial project supported by an industry that barley exist anymore and had to shoestring since the 80s.

And we are no longer in the 70s, so unlike France with some small amount of effort we could actually avoid using 60s technology. Doing, and building modern plants (see Terrestrial Energy, Moltex Energy, ThorCon) would not only solve the Green energy problem. We could also eat up nuclear fuel waste and (hopefully) nuclear weapons material (as was done in the US with Soviet nukes). We could also produce far more medical isotopes and nuclear batteries for space exploration (and other uses).

We could also then use such plants to produce hydrogen (for chemical and industrial processes). Using highly efficient nuclear heat is a far better plan then electrolysis with renewables.

These modern plants would as be so much smaller that they could be produced in a factory that could likely produce 100s such reactors in a year, just like we can with airplanes or rockets. You transport them to the a prepared location and drop them into a big nuclear concrete reinforced hole and put a bit steel lid on top.

Nuclear is the lowest in land use, lowest in total resources mined, lowest in disruption to the environment and can be built pretty close to where people actually live, so its the lowest in required energy transmission as well. If you use modern nuclear its also doesn't use require water cooling anymore.

So, nuclear, even if you use shitty old nuclear would work and is proven to work. Using modern nuclear would improve on that 10-100x.

The only thing that prevented this from happening in the 70/80s is that coal was cheaper and the nuclear scare made politicians not interested in pushing it anyway. Today its totally clear that coal killed 100-1000x more people and we are actually willing to invest into clean energy.

[Citation required]

Grid-scale battery systems have fallen more than 70% since 2015.

> nuclear would be quite competitively priced

Nuclear is one of the most expensive and keeps getting more expensive; it's not competing against natural gas. It's competing against wind and solar, the two cheapest forms of generation. Solar is dropping ~10% per year...

Transportability of synthetic liquid storage media will make them attractive even where still more expensive than alternatives. Their cost will continue on down, too.

It surprises most people that low round-trip efficiency in a storage medium doesn't matter much anymore.

That tells you all you need to know. The people who make money off selling electricity are buying wind and solar.

Attention is focused on grid infrastructure improvements like HVDC, and battery storage systems. Battery systems are even being deployed privately; for example, it's a lot easier to locate an EV DC fast charging station if it sucks down a continuous ~20kW to charge its own power reservoir, than if it needs 300-400kW to directly charge two EVs at full speed.