Andy SV said:
Whether or not you trust the website is irrelevant because that is a list of the papers and articles used by them.
The selection still matters. Do you pick only the papers with the most optimistic estimates? Do you show all?
Andy SV said:
You did not ask about over all cost you asked about the cost of electricity which is directly related to fuel
The cost of electricity is the overall cost. That includes everything necessary to get the electricity.
Andy SV said:
And as to risk well I did not say release of radioactive material just risk.
And where is the argument that all types of risk are low compared to uranium reactors?
Let's pick increasing construction costs as example. After decades of experience and hundreds of reactors built, they still can get much more expensive than planned. How can you expect that the costs of thorium reactors - without even a demonstration power plant - can be calculated more accurately?
Andy SV said:
Thorium fluoride is not complicated. Dissolve thorium in hot fluoride.
Seriously?
You have to remove fission products, for example. From a hot radioactive liquid. While the reactor is running. And without creating corrosive fluorine compounds.
You can also separate fission and breeding, but that makes the reactor design more complex, and you still need to get rid of the fission products.
Andy SV said:
It works at atmospheric pressure so a coolant containment vessel is not needed.
You certainly want to contain the fuel, although you don't have to design it for high pressures, fine. You have to be much more careful with leaks. A water leak in the primary cycle of uranium power plants is really problematic, but not directly a leak of reactor material. In LFTR it is.
If your salt freezes once in the reactor, you have a big problem - you need methods to keep it liquid all the time. That makes fixing leaks ... interesting.
And so on. LFTR comes with various advantages, but also with many disadvantages that all will need a lot of R&D to handle. And it is unclear how expensive that will make reactors because - as mentioned - there is not even a demonstration power plant.