People who talk about the awesomeness of Thorium reactors rarely mention the very real downsides and technical hurdles. Such as the gamma radiation issue, or the fuel processing difficulties, and so forth.
Moreover, aside from overcoming those issues building a suitable commercial power reactor will take a lot of time and investment. We're on the cusp of the 4th generation of Uranium/Plutonium fueled fission power reactors which represents many decades of improvement in safety, reliability, and efficiency. Whereas LFTR designs are in their infancy.
The design deserves research, probably even in the $1 bil/yr range or higher, but we're not going to be switching the base load power plants to LFTR technology in the next decade or even in the next three decades. At this point, from a practical standpoint it's only slightly farther along than fusion technology, if that helps put it in perspective.
Two nitpicks: LFTR would be much much further along if it had the interest and research that fusion has had. Plus, LFTR went undeveloped for 25 years for some very stupid reasons.
Fusion has the interest and research it does because solving it would solve our energy needs almost permanently. It has a far higher payoff than thorium. And it doesn't matter that thorium research was abandoned because we couldn't vaporize commies with it. It was abandoned, and is decades away from commercial use.
Moreover, aside from overcoming those issues building a suitable commercial power reactor will take a lot of time and investment. We're on the cusp of the 4th generation of Uranium/Plutonium fueled fission power reactors which represents many decades of improvement in safety, reliability, and efficiency. Whereas LFTR designs are in their infancy.
The design deserves research, probably even in the $1 bil/yr range or higher, but we're not going to be switching the base load power plants to LFTR technology in the next decade or even in the next three decades. At this point, from a practical standpoint it's only slightly farther along than fusion technology, if that helps put it in perspective.