Thesis on environmental impact: thorium vs current power stations (in Ireland)

Hello Reddit,

I am a university undergrad with my thesis on the environmental impact of a thorium power station in comparison to current stations running in Ireland, coal, peat, hydroelectric, wave and wind (possibly natural gas also).

My current approach is to come at the project by collecting all the data on the waste streams of the facilities you can assess various areas of which are affected and resolve a rating system. The environmental system could be a matrix comprised of a probability/frequency of harmful activities vs. cost/time of repairing negative waste effect.

It becomes quite clear that this system will have its flaws because comparing various types of power plants because you are not always comparing like with like. Also making a new system from scratch to judge how damaging a waste stream is to a certain aspect of the environment will be extremely difficult.

Imo the system mentioned above would have to be broken into various sectors of the environment and will have different factors facing the grading, meaning different multiple models defining the impact of one type of plant. When you factor in the amount of types of power plants being analysed the workload becomes very abundant, very fast.

So I have come here to the brains of Reddit in search of possible new proposed models, improvements on the current model, or any input of any kind.

If I cannot fine tune this and the workload appears to much by December I will be switching the focus of the project to an economic viewpoint and the environmental aspect will only be a side note.

Thanks and I look forward to your ideas.

Edit: Thanks for the great responses and although people are discussing the merits of thorium reactors and my original model discussion has been neglected i have learnt a great amount and got some fantastic links that will really help me out. Redditors i am in your debt.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8nknbns2mom4dim