Nuclear power

An environmental site called OneEarth list seven reasons why nuclear power is not the answer. All seven can be debunked by small modular thorium plants. The first is the long time between planning and operation. Thorium power plants are build on an assembly line and transferred by semi truck to the site. Building time for one unit is 3 to 5 years but once underway production time would be much shorter as is the case with any assembly line. Cost of a new power plant using natural gas is $1,000 per kW, $2,000 for wind, $4,000 for solar and $4,000 for thorium nuclear. Once again the price per unit of thorium comes down drastically when produced assembly line style. Weapons proliferation. No weapons grade materials are produced from thorium plants. This is the reason why this type of plant was turned down in the 1950's. The government only wanted nuclear power plants so they would have a source of U 235 for bombs. Meltdown risk. Thorium plants cannot meltdown. They shut down automatically when power is lost. This feature is called walk away safety. The plant employees could all go home and the plant would shut down. Lung cancer risk from mining uranium. No such risk from mining thorium. There is considerable environmental damage from mining the rare earths needed for wind and solar. Carbon equivalent emissions from building plants. Once again damage to the environment is much greater mining and disposing of the rare earths needed for wind and solar vs the mining of thorium for a thorium nuke plant. Waste risk. Thorium plants produce far less nuclear waste then uranium plants and they even use up stored radioactive materials. In addition a 1000 MW thorium plants takes up one acre. The same power from solar uses 75 acres and wind needs 300 acres. Thorium plants are small and can be built near the use point eliminating the need for long power lines. Thorium plants produce power 24/7 whereas wind and solar only run when the wind blows and the sun shines so they need backup. Thorium is inexpensive to mine and is found all around the earth It would take 2000 tons of thorium to power the globe. Currently there are 6 million tons of known thorium reserves which is enough for 3000 years based on current usage.