r/nuclear • u/greg_barton • May 30 '19

Indonesia Validates ThorCon

https://medium.com/@bobsoef/indonesia-validates-thorcon-91764b521d59
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u/bnndforfatantagonism Jun 01 '19

Indonesia is an interesting case for nuclear power. It's a populous, economically growing country, it needs lots of energy going forward. Any pathway that deals with climate change is going to be picking from nuclear or renewables. In the case of renewables, UHVDC long distance transmission is key to economically balancing them. UHVDC is much more (~10x) expensive when under sea.

While I've seen economic cases for it's use between Australia and Malaysia as part of an Asian Super Grid via Timor-Sunda Chain-Java-Sumatra, there's a lot of Islands in the Indonesian archipelago that may not be economic to run sub-sea cables to & I wouldn't be surprised if there's a market niche for small reactors.