Thorium is far from being ready to go. There are a large number of obstacles that have prevented it being deployed that have nothing to do with the bullshit ratioanlizing that it has been rejected because it isn't good for bombmaking.
Nuclear industry propaganda at its finest - or worst; depending on your point of view.
Russia, France, S. Korea, Japan, Canada, and indirectly the US are in a race to SELL NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY to anyone around the world stupid enough to buy it. If thorium was a good approach that could compete with renewable energy sources, don't you think these
for profit quasi-governmental entities would all have thorium projects in the pipeline?
Do they?
Nope.
Nuclear pushers rush from one discredited technology to another when trying to mislead a gullible public. Amory Lovins discusses what this circular race from one design to the next fails when they each are confronted with by reality of putting all the necessary components of cheap, safe, waste-free nuclear without proliferation risk into one design.
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library%2F2009-07_NuclearSameOldStoryPDF:
http://www.rmi.org/cms/Download.aspx?id=2583&file=NewNuclearReactors.doc&title=%22New%22+Nuclear+Reactors%2c+Same+Old+StorySee also:
RENEWABLE ENERGY WORKS NOWThe nuclear industry would have you believe that we NEED nuclear power as a response to climate change. That is false. We have less expensive alternatives that can be built faster for FAR less money. This is a good overview of their claims:
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-01_NuclearIllusionIn a comparative analysis by another well respected researcher nuclear, coal with carbon capture and ethanol are not recommended as solutions to climate change. The researcher has looked at the qualities of the various options in great detail and the results disprove virtually all claims that the nuclear industry promote in order to gain public support for nuclear industry.
Nuclear supporters invariably claim that research like this is produced because the researchers are "biased against nuclear power". That is false. They have a preference,however that preference is not irrational; indeed it is a product of careful analysis of the needs of society and the costs of the various technologies for meeting those needs. In other words the researchers are "biased" against nuclear power because reality is biased against nuclear power. We hear this same kind of claim to being a victim of "liberal bias" from conservatives everyday and it is no different when the nuclear proponents employ it - it is designed to let them avoid cognitive dissonance associated with holding positions that are proven to be false.
The nuclear power supporters will tell you this study has been "debunked any number of times" but they will not be able to produce a detailed rebuttal that withstands even casual scrutiny for that claim too is false. The study is peer reviewed and well respected in the scientific community; it breaks no new ground and the references underpinning the work are not subject to any criticism that has material effect on the outcome of the comparison.
They will tell you that the sun doesn't always shine and that the wind doesn't always blow. Actually they do. The sun is always shining somewhere and the wind is always blowing somewhere. However researcher have shown that a complete grid based on renewable energy sources is UNQUESTIONABLY SOMETHING WE CAN DO. Here is what happens when you start linking various sites together:
Original paper here at National Academy of Sciences website:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107.abstractWhen the local conditions warrant the other parts of a renewable grid kick in - geothermal power, biomass, biofuels, and wave/current/tidal sources are all resources that fill in the gaps - just like now when 5 large scale power plants go down unexpectedly. We do not need nuclear not least because spending money on nuclear is counterproductive to the goal of getting off of fossil fuels as we get less electricity for each dollar spend on infrastructure and it takes a lot longer to bring nuclear online.
In the study below Mark Jacobson of Stanford has used the quantity of energy that it would take to power an electric vehicle fleet as a benchmark by which to judge the technologies....
Much, much more at link.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x626150