Is thorium about to change the world?

 Here's a video from Matt Ferrell's YouTube channel, Undecided.  In it, he talks about Copenhagen Atomics' thorium SMR, and explains how it works and how it will be superior to conventional uranium-fired power stations.

It all sounds good, but nuclear proponents keep on making the case that new nuclear, whether it's Copenhagen Atomics, or NuScale and Bill Gates's Natrium reactor, or even Rolls-Royce's SMR, will be as cheap as chips, but keep on missing their target costs.   And the fact that nuclear waste from thorium reactors is only dangerous for 300 years compared with 10,000 years (or more) from conventional uranium reactors doesn't terribly reassure me.

In the sunbelt, between latitudes 35 or 40 north and south, wind, solar and storage will be enough to power our grid.  In high latitudes, north of 50 degrees, we will probably need nuclear, unless we build enough expensive long distance HVDC lines to bring power from sunnier/windier places. 

So is thorium about to change the world?  As my Scottish friends used to say, "I hae me doots."  But we'll see.

Thorium

 Here's an interesting video about using thorium instead of uranium to provide nuclear power.  Thorium is much, much cheaper than uranium, because there is more of it in the earth's crust and because it is 200 times more productive than uranium.  It is safer, and its waste is radioactive for only a few decades compared to 10,000 years or more for the waste from conventional reactors.  

The video gives no estimates of cost per MWh of output, so it's not clear whether it would be cheaper than conventional uranium-fired nuclear.  Demonstration power stations are due to start running next year (2025) and in 2026, so we shall see.  But don't expect it to make a difference over the next ten years, which is when we need to slash emissions as much as we can to prevent a 2.5 to 3 degrees rise in global temperatures by 2100.