Reply To: Competition from the Thorium reactor

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Rematog wrote: Yes, but……Economies of scale apply to maintenance and operations as well as capital cost.

Seems like in every city I’ve been to there is an endpoint where long distance powerlines enter the city from outside, and there is a big plot of fenced off land where the voltage is stepped down, and from there distributed throughout the city.

Why not locate the FF 5M right there, or however many are needed? The idea of replacing a giant 600MW coal burning plant yet leaving all those powerlines there…seems so wasteful.

All you’d have to do is find a few cities willing to give it a try, so safety and reliability can be demonstrated. Then you wait for the cities to come beg you to install units. The city hires local talent to maintain / monitor the infrastructure, and this keeps money in the local economy. Also distributed power means no nationwide power outages.

The power lines are copper, right? And copper is valuable stuff. Thousands of miles of high voltage power lines can be recycled… The towers can be recylced. And the freed land can be sold off.