Nuclear Green and the Big Lots Reactor

I created Nuclear Green to voice things that need to be said. I had come to Nuclear Blogging through a long and unusual route that went back into my childhood. The route was part of the story. But there was more than that. I had concluded that we, as a civilization, faced a serious crisis involving future sources of energy. The term energy crisis is not new, and there would be no resolution of the energy issue until the human community could settle on a long term energy source that would not threaten life on this planet. I already knew the answer a long time before I started thinking about the problem in 2007. It was simply a matter of applying what I knew. The primary candidates for to replace fossil fuels were wind, solar and conventional nuclear. I asked the most simple and obvious question first. Where do you get electricity once the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing. Well after dark, electricity is suppose to come from wind, and the wind is only going to stop blowing only in the day time, renewables advocates like David Roberts and Joe Romm told me in 2007. Other renewables advocates told me that all of the problems would be solved with extra large rechargeable batteries, pumped storage and compressed air. When I read about those and other energy storage solutions I quickly concluded that they were not ready for prime time. That meant that renewables, always at the beck and call of mother nature, were not ready for prime time either.

The big complaint about conventional nuclear is that Light Water Reactors are very complex. It takes a lot of work to build them. Millions of hours of work. Millions of hours of work translates into building projects that stretch out for several years. Henry Ford has the solution to building reactors more quickly and with fewer hours of work a century ago. Reactors had to be built on the assembly line and made simpler. It was absurd to think you could transport a 1 GW light water reactor from a factory to its building site, but the Molten Salt Reactor was much smaller and lighter than a LWR. I knew about the MSR because my father had worked on it over a nearly 20 year period at ORNL. MSRs were also more efficient than LWRs. It was my idea then to build relatively small - small for the sake of easy transportation - Molten Salt Reactor (LFTRs) in factories. I do not claim originality for the factory manufactured small reactor idea. Later I was to add other unoriginal components to the mix, underground housing, and recycling coal fired steam plant sites, for LFTR localities. All in the name of cost lowering.

I also focused on cost lowering with the Big Lots Reactor. I do claim the Big Lots Reactor idea was original. The most important concept in the Big Lots idea is the notion that the LFTR is good business. A manufacturer can build thousands of them and make money on every one. Utilities that buy them will make money too, and the public will get low cost reliable electricity. No one loses. The best thing that could happen to the Big Lots idea is that someone will see it as an opportunity to get rich and take advantage of it. Not the government, but someone who wants to get rich can make the Big Lots Reactor happen.