Hacker News Reader

Comment by driverdan | Hacker News Reader

> ThorCon can produce reliable, carbon free, electricity at between 3 and 5 cents per kWh depending on scale.

How does this compare to traditional nuclear power and other forms of power generation?

We expect to be around 1/8th the capital cost for the reactor itself. We plan to use off-the-shelf turbines&generators marketed for coal so those costs are pretty well known. You still have to add in the switch yard and transmission lines which we won't provide any advantage in. Overall, though we expect to come in below the cost of coal and natural gas including the cost of capital. One can always use the regulatory system to drive up costs like has been done in the US.

Hey Lars. Thanks for working on this! I used to work at Westinghouse and had a very similar concept of using thorium as the primary system and hooking it up to existing coal secondary systems. I really hope you find a way to easily get the material for the initial core.

Instead of shipping containers, my thought was on using the existing rail systems, although that's very US centric.

What's the next step? What can the HN community do for you?

Supposedly much cheaper than the coal one[1]. Although I don't know how representative this 1000 MWe coal plant is.

[1] http://thorconpower.com/costing/bottom-line

I pay around 7.5 cents/kWH for coal-based power. (+ $30~40/month in various fees and taxes.)

If one could sell one reactor's worth, a gigawatt, of continuous power at that price, it'd be 1,8 million dollars per day and over 500 million dollars per year. Over 30 years it'd be 15 billion dollars.

You have to put up quite a few windmills and solar panels to get to such numbers.

On the other hand, the Olkiluoto three 1,6 GW nuclear plant has taken more than a decade and countless billions and still isn't ready.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com