Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors: An old idea in nuclear power gets reexamined
Robert Hargraves, Ralph Moir
American Scientist, Vol. 98, No. 4 (July-August 2010), pp. 304-313 (10 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27859537

By Robert F. Hargraves, Ralph Moir

An old idea in nuclear power gets reexamined

What if we could turn back the clock to 1965 and have an energy do-over? In June of that year, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) achieved criticality for the first time at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee.

ThorCon generates reliable electric power cheaper than coal, competitive with natural gas, cheaper than LNG, cheaper than storage-buffered wind and solar. //

• 1 GW ThorCon: 280 tons fuelsalt every 8 years
• 1 GW coal plant: 10,000 tons coal every day
  ...
  Overall the resource cost of the ThorCon is half that of the coal plant. Assuming efficient regulation, ThorCon capital cost will be cheaper than coal.