The LFTR, How much will it cost?

I have spent a good deal of time and energy during the last couple of years, trying to find support for my conviction that the LFTR represents the most promising route to low cost carbon energy. ORNL, which undoubtedly employed many individuals who possessed far greater skills than I possess, reported some estimates of development and reactor construction costs. ORNL made several estimates of developmental costs for thorium molten salt reactors, and I believe that the last one translated into 2008 dollars came to somewhere close to $2.5 billion. In 1972, the AEC WASH-1222 report estimated MSBR development cost to be $2 billion, or about ten billion 2009 dollars. There is no suggestion as to how the AEC arrived at this figure, and no evidence that the AEC looked at ORNL reports before coming up with the $2 billion number. Wild guess comes to mind. The development cost for the civilian light water reactor appears to have run somewhere between $5 and $10 billion 2009 dollars. I suggested that the development of the Airbus 380 airliner was a task of comparable complexity to the development of a 400 MW unmoderated LFTRs that would be portable in several truck loads. The development of the A-380 cost about $13 billion. Finally the United States Government has invested somewhere close to $25 Billion 2009 dollars in the development of a Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor, with a conspicuous lack of success to date.

It does not appear that LFTR development will be anywhere as costly as LMFBR development has been. The technical challenges are far less daunting, and the consequences of an improbable LFTR accident would be far less serious. Political interest have not yet gathered to push LFTR development in ways that contradict good technological judgment. A good guess would be that LFTR development would cost between $5 and $10 billion 2009 dollars., or less than A-380 development costs. If this is the case, then the LFTR would be quite a bargain.

Nor would the LFTR be that expensive to produce. I have attempted updating old ORNL cost estimates for various LFTR designs. This would lead to an estimate that a MW of LFTR generating capacity would cost about half of what the equivalent LWR generating capacity would cost. Given numerous and significant potential savings that I have pointed out in Nuclear Green, LFTR costs might be lowered to as little as 25% of the capital costs for LWRs. Thus levelized LFTR costs might run as low as 25. No doubt far more work is needed before such a figure could be considered definitive.