The elephant in the room with any kind of fission reactor is that they are going to need a lot of security. Even when the fuel and waste product is not weapons grade uranium, it's still highly radioactive and a great source of material for a dirty bomb. Basically anything that goes boom combined with small amounts of radioactive material and a bit of wind is a great way to depopulate e.g. large cities. So, having lots of small molten salt reactors all over the planet, which seems like the key selling point, is not a great idea from that point of view. Having them in or near any kind of conflict zone would be super risky. And according to this article there is actually some weapons grade uranium being produced as well which makes this even more problematic.
The security aspect would make this a lot more expensive than it already is and cost is already on the high side even before you consider that. This is a problem with traditional reactors as well but they have the advantage that they are huge facilities and that there are only a handful of them; so securing them is relatively easy.
People are suggesting this as complementing renewables but the cold hard truth is that renewables are already dirt cheap and on track to continue to drop in price by magnitudes for the next decades. That includes battery storage as well. Already quite cheap, also dropping in price, and typically already factored into e.g. new solar bids that are killing competing bids for coal and gas plants (or in some cases shutting them down prematurely).
Even at the current prices, that's a problem for any kind of nuclear solutions being contemplated right now. At the low end of the spectrum, we are talking 2 cents per kwh currently. Imagine this dropping to something like half a cent or even less. At those prices, the security alone would make nuclear too expensive probably. A 1 mw facility would have basically be generating only about 500-2000$ worth of energy per hour but only at peak demand. There's no guarantee prices won't drop way below that either. Any kind of operational overhead would be a problem. Needing 24x7 intense security would be very undesirable.
The security aspect would make this a lot more expensive than it already is and cost is already on the high side even before you consider that. This is a problem with traditional reactors as well but they have the advantage that they are huge facilities and that there are only a handful of them; so securing them is relatively easy.
People are suggesting this as complementing renewables but the cold hard truth is that renewables are already dirt cheap and on track to continue to drop in price by magnitudes for the next decades. That includes battery storage as well. Already quite cheap, also dropping in price, and typically already factored into e.g. new solar bids that are killing competing bids for coal and gas plants (or in some cases shutting them down prematurely).
Even at the current prices, that's a problem for any kind of nuclear solutions being contemplated right now. At the low end of the spectrum, we are talking 2 cents per kwh currently. Imagine this dropping to something like half a cent or even less. At those prices, the security alone would make nuclear too expensive probably. A 1 mw facility would have basically be generating only about 500-2000$ worth of energy per hour but only at peak demand. There's no guarantee prices won't drop way below that either. Any kind of operational overhead would be a problem. Needing 24x7 intense security would be very undesirable.