AXIL on Controlling Nuclear Proliferation

The discussion on the Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum is beginning to become an important contribution to the current discussion of energy on the Internet. Many of the discussions conducted on the Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum pages are conducted at a very high level, and worthy of being known outside the small EfT circle. This is most certainly the case for the currently excellent discussion of Nuclear Proliferation control issues.Since I have a blanket permission from AXIL to use his comments in my posts I will offer some quotes from his comments to illustrate why readers who are aware of the importance of the proliferation issue in the future of world energy should read this discussion.

Axil wrote:

In a nut shell, what Holden and his associates in the administration want to keep out of the hands of the proverbial rogue nation is highly enriched uranium, plutonium, reprocessing and enrichment.

In order to entice non-nuclear nations to abide by these restrictions, these nations are provided nuclear fuel or even small sealed reactors at no or low cost in exchange for spent fuel or decommissioned small reactors. This is guaranteed to all signatories to the non proliferation treaty by an international fuel agency that can not use access to nuclear power as leverage in political situations.

The goal is to remove the need for the rogue nation from developing a nuclear infrastructure and a large trained nuclear work force that could be used to develop nuclear weapons on the side and in the dark of night.

By so decoupling nuclear power from the ability to produce nuclear weapons, any nation that persists in acquiring and independent nuclear capability must by doing it to develop nuclear weapons.

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The NPT was conceived during the cold war. The current cooperation between the nuclear powers including Russia is a powerful facilitator to the internationalization of nuclear power.

One of the rights that a signatory nation currently has is the right to enrich Uranium. The US wants to remove this ability from the NPT participants. As a participant of the NPT, Iran has the right to enrich uranium. Iran has taught the US some lessons about the shortcomings of the existing NPT.

This current thinking on nuclear power still divides the world into nations that are fully nuclear capable and those that are not; this could be a fatal flaw in the new international fuel strategy.

Let us hope that the first world has matured and can control their use of power at least in regards to the international use of nuclear fuel. The main question is as follows: “are the current nuclear powers willing to cede their monopoly of nuclear power to the rest of the world”? The alternative is that tens of nations could produce bomb grade material and have the knowhow to construct a device with the number increasing each year.

Solving this dilemma is and important step in combating global warming.

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Thorium breeding is the possible technical solution to the nuclear proliferation dilemma as follows.

Uranium use would be phased out along with it associated fuel reprocessing or enrichment.

If nuclear power production is decoupled from nuclear weapons production by eliminating the uranium fuel cycle and uranium mining, reprocessing and enrichment, this would free nuclear power to grow unimpeded by proliferation fears.

Besides making the production of a plutonium bomb far more difficult, weapons would have nothing to do with nuclear power. Thorium would be the nuclear power paradigm. Uranium would be the nuclear weapons paradigm.

The technical challenge is to make thorium fuel in the form of pebbles near proliferation proof.

If a nation runs a thorium once through deep burn (<90%)> A blanket pebble is a ceramic coated graphite ball containing only a small amount of fertile thorium each. They are breed to contain fissile U233 in the blanket region of the reactor to form seed pebbles which support the nuclear reaction. The blanket pebbles can be spiked with Th230 to produce additional U232. The U233 content can also be easily denatured by dumping in some U238 (20%) to denature the thorium is the blanket pebbles. There is no such process available for denaturing plutonium..

A large number of seed pebbles (in the hundreds of thousands) would be required to construct a nuclear device enabled through U233 enrichment. Even a diversion of a small number of seed pebbles would cause a subcritical shut down the reactor. Reprocessing/enriching of U233 does not currently exit and would require a huge research and deployment effort by the proliferator.

Very little or a trace amount of PU239 (.001 of the amount contained in LWR waste) is present in the spent pebbles and the Pu238 would make it difficult for weapons construction.

The waste in the pebbles would be short lived (cooled in a few hundred years) and not capable of use in weapons development at any stage. The most long lived waste would be carbon 14 which can be sequestered by absorption in certain minerals at the bottom of a bore hole. Would this work?

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If nuclear power production is decoupled from nuclear weapons production by eliminating the uranium fuel cycle and uranium mining, reprocessing and enrichment, this would free nuclear power to grow unimpeded by proliferation fears.

Besides making the production of a plutonium bomb far more difficult, weapons would have nothing to do with nuclear power. Thorium would be the nuclear power paradigm. Uranium would be the nuclear weapons paradigm.

The only thing remaining is to make the seed thorium pebbles near proliferation proof; simple.

As I indicated there are other, equally worthwhile comments that I do not have permission to quote.

Water and wind

Although I am generally critical of the over hyping of renewables, I am quite willing to stipulate that there care cases and situations in which renewables work, and even work well. Geothermal often works in areas in which here are active volcanoes. There are limitations. There are not an unlimited amount of geothermal resources. Attempts to tap deep heat sources have as of yet not proven cost effective. Thus in the energy universe geothermal is not a big league player and probably never will be. Anyone who mentions geothermal as a part of the post carbon energy solution is fudging.

Wind works with hydro resources. Wind and hydro compliment each other because electrical output from hydro is easily controlled. Thus hydro can be shut down when the wind is blowing, and quickly begin output as wind drops. Water behind hydro dams is not an unlimited resource., Thus hydro power has to be rationed to conserve water. Water that is not used when the wind is blowing is available when energy consumers demand electricity and the wind is still.

The problem with the hydro wind marriage is the limitations on hydro resources. In the United States hydro resources have been largely developed. Future hydro sites have been marred by long standing controversies, often involving environmental concerns. In some areas like the Pacific North West, wind resources match hydro resources, but in others like TVA, wind resources perform very poorly during the summer period of peak electrical demand, rendering wind generation capacity redundant in any post-carbon electrical plan. Thus intensive development of wind resources would make since in areas where there were significant hydro resources, and reliable and complimentary wind resources. Thus it makes since for China which has significant hydro resources to develop complimentary wind resources. This is however a limited case. When Greens start talking about a hydro-wind partnership as a major key solution of the post carbon electrical problem in the United States, they are being obviously and hopelessly unrealistic.

I have reviewed the potential of paring pumped storage and wind, and have suggested that it is more expensive than nuclear while being less flexible.

The paradox of the hydro-wind pairing is that it produces an electrical generation system that is far less safe than nuclear generated power. Dams are vulnerable to to failure die to design flaws, due to poorly understood geological features of the dam setting, and to to unusual and unpredictable rain events. Both in terms of probability and in terms of potential causalities, dam failure constitutes a far more significant risk to neighboring populations than reactor accidents. "Greens" who are quick to point out and even greatly exaggerate the risks involved in reactor use, often ignore the potential risks involved in the construction of dams. Dams of course are renewables, and renewables according to "Green" dogma, are "clean" and "safe."

Finley, dam reservoirs can be a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane from decaying organic materials in reservoir waters, can decompose into methane, which is many times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 is.

The world needs greatly increased access to power, not a reduction

I liked this comment by DaveMart from the EfT discussion section, so I decided to ask his permission to post it. Dave has graciously complied with my request.

The world needs greatly increased access to power, not a reduction
By DaveMart

'Looking at the alternatives conservation will be very important - but although savings can be made on North American levels of consumption, the vast majority of the world needs greatly increased access to power, not a reduction.

The obstacles to providing this by solar are non-trivial, and at minimum involve vast power grids being built and depend on breakthroughs in generation and importantly storage.
Certainly for Europe the power would have to be generated in North Africa, which is not necessarily reliable, and even there sunshine is much lower just when it is needed in the winter so you either have to vastly overbuild or convert to hydrogen or similar which entails massive losses.

Wind power also needs a huge grid, and a debatable degree of back-up.

The issue with all of these power sources is that they are low energy, and widely dispersed. Very large amounts of materials, including rare earths, would be needed to build them, and they are often most available where they are least needed.

I don't mean to totally dismiss these power sources, as they and things like geothermal can help a lot, for instance in hot climes solar on the roof producing power right where it is needed, especially for the poor, or for the rich in air conditioning in Arizona.

It is just a tough call to see them running the whole of an industrial society, and even tougher to see them helping the world's poor to a reasonable standard of living.

Fusion sounds like an ideal counterbalancing power source, as it is very dense and you can make it where it is needed.

The problem is that we are still a long way from being able to do it, and it is much more than a simple engineering issue to get there,

If you look at most of the proposed ways of doing so, they are truly vast structures, and hardly hold out the hope of cheap power, even if we learn to do it.

The authors here point out the disadvantages of nuclear power as it is presently generated, pointing to the cost, waste issues and proliferation concerns.

Most of the cost of nuclear plants arises from regulatory issues, their custom build, and the fact that these huge installations have almost all their cost up-front, and it may take many years to build.

Liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR) can be built in all sizes from very large, and 100MW units can fit on the back of a lorry, so that they can be factory built and road delivered.

You can link several for generation of larger amounts of power - they can be modular.

Proliferation: the US had a demo molten salt reactor in the 60's. One of the main reasons it was killed was because it was not good enough at proliferation! It did not produce enough waste for the weapons program. Whilst we are talking about waste, not only would LFTRs produce far less and far less dangerous waste, but would be able to burn up present wastes, disposing of them without the need for Yucca mountain, so that is a multi billion gain to start with.

A 1 GWe reactor would need around 1 tonne of fuel per year, compared to 250 tonnes for a conventional reactor, and the tiny amount of waste produced decays far quicker.

They burn fuel at nearly 100% efficiency, compared to the 0.7% of conventional reactors.
That means a near infinite resource for practical purposes, and energy security.

The biggest difference between this technology and fusion is that it is a right now technology.
Of course there are engineering issues, but they are in no way on the same level as those needed for fusion, or even for the systems integration of a largely renewable economy.
The main one is dealing with corrosive salts at high temperature, in some design variants as high as 800C.

This was identified in the 60's, and even using the technology of the era was considered very doable.

There are a number of materials, including alloys and fibres, which should cope.
If that is more difficult than expected, there are also design variants of the basic concept which would operate at lower temperatures, or even variants which use solid thorium instead of liquid and so avoid the issue altogether.

So why aren't we doing it?

When it was being demoed it did not appeal for the production of weapons, as it is poor for this.

It did not appeal to much of the current nuclear industry, as they had a vested interest in LWR designs and made a lot of their money by the production of fuel rods, which is a cost that you avoid altogether.

It did not appeal to the miners, as the amounts needed are altogether trivial, and the coal industry would not like a technology which is likely to undercut them in cost before you consider the cost of carbon dioxide emissions or the huge wastes emitted by the coal industry, and which could even be fitted to coal stations, using all their generating equipment and throwing out the coal burn!

Supporters included Teller, and many of the founding fathers of the nuclear industry.
Here is the site for technical discussion of the technology:

'It's cheap, it solves the energy and global warming problems and throws in a solution of the nuclear waste issue, and the technology is right now.'

Oliver Tickwell discovers an X-file conspiracy at the WHO

Oliver Tickell is the son of a British diplomat, and a writer who has published a book in support of the Kyoto climate accord. He was a Green Party candidate for Membership in the UK Parlement from Henley in 2001, and received 2.58% of the vote. Tickell appears to have regular access to the Guardian's notorious internet Comment is Free pages. In addition to his climate concerns Tickell also runs tfX, the UK campaign against trans fats in food. Tickell's bio lists 4 years spent at Oxford during the 1970's, which would be consistent with a BA or BS level education. He is regarded by other Bristish journalists as having an association with the Guardian, but it would appear that he is at best a stringer. His very briuef biographies describe him as a campaigner, on environmental and health issues,

On May 28, Comment are Free posted an essay by Tickell titled "Toxic Link the WHO and the IAEA." Tickwell wrote

Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation's assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations "Atoms for Peace" organisation, founded just two years before in 1957. The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.

The agreement seems quite ordinary as Tickwell describes:

Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in which the other may have an interest, it "shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement". The two agencies must "keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all programs of work which may be of interest to both parties". And in the realm of statistics – a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk – the two undertake "to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest".

Tickwell thus would clearly be engaged in making a cause célèbre out of the ordinary. Interagency cooperation agreements are the rule rather than the exception, and surely the son of a diplomat would understand this. But Tickell claims that the WHO IAEA has had a sinister effect because

it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

This is quite a charge. And it would appear to be a rehash of charges made by Alison Katz, in Le Monde Dipolomatique. Katz is an ex-employee of the WHO. Katz had charged that the WHO and the IAEA were involved in a coverup of the impact of low level radiation on children who received some radiation as the result of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Epidemological research published to date suggests that the illness and death rate among people who were exposed to Chernobyl related radiation was far smaller than expected. This finding has troubled European Greens, because it is inconsistent with their "Nuclear is Evil" religious dogma.

In addition to an alleged IAEA orchestrated WHO coverup of the heath consequences of the Chernobyl accident, Tickwell charges, linking to a study by Dr. Keith Beverstock, that WHO is covering up evidence that soldiers exposed to depleted uranium suffer from radiation related illnesses.

At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident.

And as if all this is not bad enough, Tickwell adds:

the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times.

according to the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

For those who are familiar with the Guardian's Wacked out "Comment is Free" Tickwell's allegations were simply par for the course. Comments are Free is perhapse the worst possible example of the totally irresponsible abandonment of fact, practiced by 21st journalists. Rather than do any fact checking on its own, the Guardian now leaves fact checking to its readers. Fortunately CiF readers rose to the challenge. CommanderKeen stated:

So all those peer reviewed publications independent of the WHO and IAEA that have been published over the last 50 years are all part of the conspiracy of "to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation."?

If you want to make an argument about nuclear it helps not to lapse into crazy crank conspiracies and assert that the views of individuals are somehow on parity with the scientific consensus.

EvilTory checked out the Link to the Beaverstock study on depleted uranium exposures, and made a startling discovery.

God almighty, you linked to a scientific paper but obviously didn't read the thing.

he states and I quote "that this effect is mediated by radiation, but is rather a chemically mediated genotoxicity." In other words, radiation is NOT the hazard here, the toxic effects of uranium oxide are.

But of course, you are rather more interested in playing up scare stories of radiation poisoning, because you are opposed to nuclear power. (How that squares with your complaints about CO2 and global warming is another issue but we'll leave it aside for the moment.) . . .

Professor Baverstock is therefore entirely correct when he states "For me, as a scientist, it is the fact that this evidence is IGNORED, as opposed to being ADDRESSED and if appropriate discredited, through rational scientific debate that is worrying."

Your article is not, however, rational scientific debate.

EvilTory also stated

Chernobyl was a one-off, and the Greens have been trying to use it as a club ever since. But it was a consequence of poor design, appalling maintenance and overall ineptitude in a totalitarian state where no-one was allowed to question any practices that might be dangerous. This is hardly the same situation as applies in this country or elsewhere in the West.

So tell me, how many people in France have died from nuclear power? In the UK? Come on, how many are provably dead with exposure to nuclear power generation as primary cause?
And how does that stack up compared to other causes of death, even to those related to other forms of power generation? Because I agree, it is a decision that needs to be made, and that is the information we need. A rational assessment of risk.

Now, for the record, by exactly how much should we cut our energy use? 10%? 20%? More?

And what should we cut out to make those cuts? Hospitals? Sewerage? Water pumping? Transport? Heating? Manufacturing? Agriculture? Because they all use energy, and those requirements are not likely to decrease any time soon.

I'd really like to know exactly how you propose to run a modern industrialised country with major reductions in energy use. So, you want a debate, let's hear your argument. Prove to me it is possible. I'll listen; I may not agree, but I'll listen. If you have a rational argument, put your case. No scaremongering, no garbage about a one off accident that happened in a foreign country with a reactor type never used here, nor even considered as a possibility.

HowardD notes Tickwell's simplistic message

So... nuclear bad, windfarms good, eh?

Freeport applies a heavy dose of reality

Jumping past the X-Files stuff of its all a conspiracy....

The reality is that if we're going to deal with Co2 then nuclear is going to be a lot more important to us. Alternatively we could go back to the 18th century with horses, windmills and dying at 35. As that is unlikely to be popular outside of the nuttier end of the Green movement any time in the near future its probably best to go with reality.

Freeport added:

he major advantage the nuclear industry has is that its pretty much the only existing option for us to continue to remain a modern industrial power with such delights as being clean, eating decent food and heating (other than hoped -or options such as magical elves, fusion power, or Dr Manhattan from Watchmen making nuclear power less essential). The green alternatives offered all seem to rely on there being a lot less people doing a lot less of being alive or some major change in the laws of physics. I'd hope that neither is likely.

Any attempt to argue the risks of nuclear power has to factor in the discussion the problem that global warming is probably going to kill by starvation, thirst and weather a lot more people around the world, especially in Africa, than Chernobyl managed. This accident killed maybe 4,000 if we go really wild on the numbers (46 firemen for real, after that its educated guesses). Bhopal, a non-nuclear chemical accident, did eight thousand people for certain. Presumably we should ban chemicals - particularly pesticides - first. Starving to death is a good thing, right?

On that basis the discussion of risk is completely in the "win" box for the nuclear industry.

Freeport then turned to Thorium:

its a lot more abundant than uranium and which would, when combined with the thorium energy amplifier reactor be a lot more efficient. If it works, known thorium reserves would run six to nine billion people at American levels for forty to sixty thousand years - slightly longer than human history. The other delights are a lot less waste and a complete inability for the reactor to go critical - if it goes bad we simply cut power to the amplifier and wait for the reaction to stop. The other plus side is that - in theory - we can set the accelerator to reduce plutonium (hence the reduction in weaponisation you mentioned), which eliminates a great deal of the long lived stuff.

Brollachain notes

The short point here is that no-one who has bothered to read the mountains of research on nuclear energy (or even tried to tackle a few of the foothills) could possibly fail to reach the conclusion that the original concerns expressed about it were grossly exaggerated. Nuclear power is by far the safest energy source in large scale use.

Opponents are therefore forced back onto a variety of conspiracy theories, of which this is just another example.

MrDismal points to radiation hazards that are unrelated to nuclear power:

It's not just nuclear power stations that occasionally pollute the environment.with radioactive substances. Fertiliser can do that too.

Danot commented:

What a bizzare article, conflating the military use of DU and civil generation of power. Then taking the flimsiest of "evidence" and the devastating revelation that the IAEA exists to promote the use of nuclear energy, which you can find in the first paragraph of their "about us" statement on their own web site. Finally we are informed that the accident at Chernobyl was a nasty one with long term consequences for the area which was news back in 1986 when it happened. This is why the Greens have never evolved beyond a minority political joke.

Eschew Chu: Building efficiency

His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through it.
- F. H. Bradley

Energy Secretary Chu is a myth waiting to be told. Chu has jumped on board the energy efficiency bandwagon. According to the latest department of Energy PR/Green propaganda spin

Improving energy saving and energy efficiency is one of the quickest, greenest, and most cost-effective ways to address energy security and climate change, and ensure economic growth.

This line is out of the Amory Lovins book of stories. Where is the proof? Well there is none, but

Secretary Chu has challenged Department of Energy researchers to help develop building designs that are far more efficient than current designs – and wants to pursue further research partnerships through IPEEC. The International Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that the world could reduce projected greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector by 30 percent by 2030 while producing a net economic benefit.

So we have goals that involved the implementation of undeveloped and unproven technology on a massive scale at a vast cost by 2030. This is the same Energy Secretary Chu who recently told us how problems solved by ORNL scientists during the 1970's somehow still impede the development of the LFTR in 2009. This is the same Steven Chu who recently told Senator Alexander that we could not possibly develop the industrial infrastructure to build 100 reactors by 2030, or to train their operators by that date.

has so little confidence in American science and technology that he doubts our capacity to do anything but improve builfing efficiency.

Welcome to Texas

Some recent views from my window.

The Thorium silver bullet.

A just released report of the Energy Information Administration, titled International Energy Outlook, 2009 highlights just how difficult the fight against AGW is going to be during te next 20 years. A press release which announced the prblication of the report states,

World marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 44 percent between 2006 and 2030, driven by strong long-term economic growth in the developing nations of the world, according to the reference case projection from the International Energy Outlook 2009 (IEO2009) released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). . . . Total world energy use rises from 472 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2006 to 552 quadrillion Btu in 2015 and then to 678 quadrillion Btu in 2030

The press release states:

Worldwide, industrial energy consumption is expected to grow from 175 quadrillion Btu in 2006 to 246 quadrillion Btu in 2030. Industrial energy demand varies across regions and countries of the world, based on levels and mixes of economic activity and technological development, among other factors. About 94 percent of the world increase in industrial sector energy consumption is projected to occur in the emerging economies, where—driven by rapid economic growth—industrial energy consumption grows at an average annual rate of 2.1 percent in the reference case. The key engines of growth in the projection are the so-called “BRIC” countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), which account for more than two-thirds of the developing world’s growth in industrial energy use through 2030.

The report contains very bad news on CO2 emissions:

n the IEO2009 reference case, which does not include specific policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise from 29.1 billion metric tons in 2005 to 40.4 billion metric tons in 2030—an increase of 39 percent. With strong economic growth and continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels expected, much of the increase in carbon dioxide emissions is projected to occur among the developing nations of the world, especially in Asia.

The report does not ignore renewables:

supported by high prices for fossil fuels and by government incentives for the development of alternative energy sources. From 2006 to 2030, world renewable energy use for electricity generation grows by an average of 2.9 percent per year (Figure 1), and the renewable share of world electricity generation increases from 19 percent in 2006 to 21 percent in 2030. Hydropower and wind power are the major sources of incremental renewable electricity supply.

Clearly then we can expect strong economic developments which will dramatically increase carbon based energy use outside the United States during the next 20 years, and this increase in greenhouse gas emissions will not be prevented by the increasing use of renewables technology. Only the rapid emergence of a new low cost, highly scalable post carbon energy technology could impact these adverse trends.

Thus given the current course of international energy demands, and the projected sources of that energy, the stress on global climate due to AGW will be increasing during the next 20 years and mitigation efforts will fail. The often cited climate tiping point of 450 CO2 PPM will come and go by 2030 without CO2 emissions still not under control.

Are there any solutions? Joe Romm recommends a world wide authoritarian system that will impose energy goals, and will ruthlessly enforce them. Call Joe's approach the Stalinist system. Are there any other alternatives?

Lets talk about nuclear. The rap on nuclear is that it is too expensive, takes too long to build, cannot be built in large enough numbers, is dangerous, leaves nuclear waste, and is not sustainable. What if all of these problems of nuclear could resolved within a ten year span of time? Impossible you say? Very possible would be my response. We just have to think of using a different nuclear technology.

We need a nuclear technology that is low cost, scalable, with the potential for very rapid wide spread deployment, is low costs, can provide most of the energy requirements of the planet, is sustainable for at least a million years, is safe, produces little waste, can be deployed anywhere, provides electricity day and night. Renewable advocates will answer with renewable energy scheme that are expensive and unreliable. With renewables out goose is cooked, and so is every goose on the planet.

The energy source has to be nuclear, and has to rely on breeding to provide sustainable low waste energy. I have repeatedly pointed to one nuclear technology, developed in Oak Ridge from 1947 into the 1970's, the Molten Salt Reactor and in particular the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. As I have argued on Nuclear Green for the last year and a half, the LFTR has the potential to be the low cost, scalable, with the potential for very rapid wide spread deployment. The LFTR has the potential to provide most of the energy requirements of the planet, provide that energy in a sustainable fashion for at least a million years, be safe, produce little waste, be deployed anywhere, and provide electricity under any climate conditions day and night. The LFTR then is the silver bullet.

Recent Wind costs

From: Finance and Commerce
Otter Tail Power seeks federal stimulus aid for 50-megawatt wind farm

Fergus Falls-based Otter Tail Power Co. has announced plans to begin a $110 million expansion of its wind-energy capacity by building the 49.5-megawatt Luverne Wind Farm in eastern North Dakota.

Otter Tail plans to install wind turbines for the project and build a 13-mile high-voltage transmission line, hooking the development’s power up to the electric grid by the end of 2009.

Nuclear energy kills people

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The cost of wind":

It`s plain stupid to not use windpower and instead create massive amounts of toxic waste which will cost much more to future generations than any other source of energy.

Stop beeing stupid for your childrens sake!

Nuclear energy kills people...thousands of maintanance workers have died since mankind startet to use nuclear energy for civil purpose.

France (and Europe) seems to be a little bit more educated on that issues than Americans who still claim nuclear energy to be anywhere near green.

There are other alternatives...dragonfly windturbines is a start.

TU Delft is working on the laddermill project to use jet streams.

In Italy they are investigating kite karusells www.kitegen.com.

Another alternative...for fuel, diesel and jetfuel is bio-oil.

The breakthrough was 2008 by a German biologist. The technology to breed plancton in open pools is available. phyto plancton is valuable biomass which can be burned or oil (70%!!!) can be extrated and refined to any product that can be made out of oil...cheaper than oil drilling too and contrary to nuclear energy it is safe, clean and co2 neutral.

You can feed it to life stock...it is more healthy than sojabeans...more productive for fuel than sugarcane and burns even more emission free.

Aquacultures can be cheap now...infact the biggest prawn producer uses the open pool design from the Germans to feed its fish.

Food will be cheaper and if it is done right the poorest countries in the world would produce this renewable ressource and trade it fair!!

BioGas can produce Energy.

How does it come that all nuclear enervy supporting folks are old men?

Would it be uncool to depend on plancton product.

Dear Anonymous, windmills cost money and generate electricity on a part time basis. I have examined various solutions to the liability of wind, and have noted that the cost of reliable wind generated electricity will be higher than the cost of nuclear power. You have failed to note the depth of my argument, but you have misrepresented my conclusions and having created a strawman, have proceeded to descried it a s stupid.

You allege without evidence the death of thousands of people due to the operation of the nuclear energy industry. This is nothing more than a wild, unproven charge.

You claim that I am being stupid but offer no justification for the insult. You offer bio-oil and bio-gas as solutions, ignoring the fact that I have repeatedly argued that biological sourced fuels violate sound environmental principles. You ignore what I write and then you call me stupid.

Finally you ask. "How does it come that all nuclear enervy supporting folks are old men?"

Perhaps it is because older men do not get carried away by emotional arguments that are not fact based or logical.

Scalability and Breeder Start up

Scalability is a deal breaker in global warming technology. One of the nice things about the LFTR is that it is scalable. You can build them in factories ship them off to coal-fired generation facilities, dig a whole into the ground, plant them, hook um up to the Grid, and turn them on. And then stand back and let them work. Every now and then you might add some thorium and remove some U-233 that would be used to start a new reactor.

Basically you could build as many as you wanted too in the LFTR factory. You would need a start up charge of fissionable material - U-233, U-235, or Pu-239. The start up charge would initiate the chain reaction in the reactor, and begin the breeding process. Later fuel will be derived from breeding, so no further nuclear fuel from external sources would be required to keep the chain reaction going.

The number of start up charges, the material composition of start up charges, and the size of each charge would pose a potential limit on LFTR scalability. LMFBRs would also require start up charges.

Neutron speed would play an important role with faster neutron reactors requiring more fissionable materials to keep a chain reaction going. For example French researchers studying Molten Salt Reactors operating at various neutron speeds found that a Thermal TMSR requited a charge of 790 kgs of U-233 in order to maintain breeding in a 1 GWe reactor. An Epithermal TMSR required 2400 kgs to fulfill the same conditions. While a Fast TMSR required 5200 kgs of U-233. The French also reported that a standard fast neutron reactor - I assume a LMFBR -would require 12,25o kgs of plutonium.

An S PRISM related study "S-PRISM Fuel Cycle Study: Future Deployment Programs and Issues," suggested that as of the year 2000, four hundred tons of plutonium could be recovered from spent nuclear fuel. This in turn would provide enough plutonium to supply start up charges for twenty-two, 1520 MWe S-PRISM facilities with ab output of 33,440 MWe. That is about 12 tons per 1 GWe of reactor capacity.

Clearly then neutron speed has an adverse effect on reactor scalability.

On the other hand neutron speed also influences the fission rate per neutron absorption, this in turn influences neutron production. Pu-239 fissions 25% more often in a fast reactor than in a thermal reactor. On the other hand it still take more Pu-239 to maintain a chain reaction in a fast reactor than in a thermal reactor. Reactor physics tricks and fuel cycle also seem to influence start up charge size.

A recent discussion on the EfT form produced quite a lot of useful information. "Jagdish" reported that

Indian 500MW PFBR is designed to use only two tons of plutonium.

It should be noted that the PFBR uses both radial and axil thorium blankets.

"Honzik" pointed to French research of epithermal/fast Thorium Molten Saalt Reactors. The French, modeling the use of transuranium materials from spent nuclear fuel, in a 1 GB reactor had calculated a need for 7.3 tons of fissile elements (87.5% of Pu (238Pu 2.7%, 239Pu 45.9% , 240Pu 21.5%, 241Pu 10.7%, and 242Pu 6.7%), 6.3% of Np, 5.3% of Am and 0.9% of Cm). Alternatively the reactior would require a start uo charge of 4.6 tons of U-2330.

Lars reported that

The minimum for unity breeding from the French group is 1.5 tonnes u233 / GWe.

Alex P noted:

the french design has an only radial, not axial, blanket, so for comparison I'd think that the fissile start-up in a LFTR with a fully encompassing blanket can be at least one tonn of u-233 per GWe, or even lower

David LeBlanc noted:

The French TMSR design running without graphite moderator needs upwards of 5 tonnes of U233 or 8 or more tonnes of fissile Pu. They could drop this somewhat if they just wanted to barely break even but not very much since they'll start losing too many neutrons that would migrate into the axial reflectors. In designs in which the blanket is nearly fully encompassing you can get by with much lower fissile concentrations. It is only speculation for now but based on early Oak Ridge studies using sphere within sphere designs I think we could probably get things down to 500 Kg of u233 or maybe even lower but 1000 kg is a fine for a conservative estimate. These designs with lower fissile concentration would also be fairly soft spectrums since the salt itself can do a modest job at moderating the neutrons.

The problem of plutonium in nuclear breeding should be noted. In thermal breeders plutonium suffers from poor neutron economy, while in fast neutron reactors plutonium neutron economy improves but does not compensate for the added requirement for fissile material. Radial and axial thorium blankets in a breeder appears to lower fissile demand by as much as 300%.

The S-PRISM design would appear far less scalable than Epithermal or thermal MSRs. David LeBlanc's estimates are based on the use of blankets with Epithermal MSRs. If we estimate that 2 kgs of reactor grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel about 1 kg of U233, 500 kgs of U-233 would be a similar startup charge to a ton of RGP. Thus the same amount of RGP that will start 33 GWe worth of S-Prisim FBRs will also start 200 GWe worth of LFTRs. Clearly the LFTR offers scalability advantages over the IFR/S-PRISM.

The IFR information drought

I have no problem with support for alternative nuclear technology, but compared to the very teckie LFTR crowd, the IFR crowd offers far less technical information. This in turn makes verifying claims about the IFR far more difficult. Yesterday I wrote the following comment to Barry Brook's blog:

Berry, One of my complaints about renewable supporters is that they ignore potential debates among themselves. I think it is better for us to lay the cards out on the table, and let the public know that there may be choices to make. Part of the bitterness at ORNL stemmed from the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been spent or MSR development, was spent instead on the poorly designed Clinch River Breeder Reactor that was built in Oar Ridge, but was not an Oak Ridge project. There was also the feeling that Argonne and INL stabbed ORNL in the back as part of the IFR deal.

I am concerned that IFR advocates confuse inherent safety features, such as a negative coefficient of reactivity with inherent safety. LFTR advocates have no reason to assume that the LFTR is more likely to leak than IFR users do, yet we tend to discuss the barriers to FP escape in the event of leaks, while IFRs tend to think tell us that we need not be concerned about IFR leaks.

Beyond that IFR need to think about what are the problems of the IFR and how they might be solved. This is very much the focus of Energy from Thorium discussions. IFR advocates need to try to assess IFR costs, and focus discussion on how IFR costs might be lowered. If the IFR costs $3.00 per watt, and the LFTR costs $1.50 per watt, the IFR will be an also ran. So far IFR advocates have not offered us any reason to think that the IFR will be cost competative with the LFTR.

Tom Blees is the leading IFR cheerleader. Tom responded to my comment:

Charles, there was virtually no discussion at all about LFTRs since the Fifties. IFRs, on the other hand, proceeded with their development and carried it to the point of commercialization, where it’s now stuck. Much of the sort of discussion among LFTR advocates is the sort of discussion that was not only carried on by IFR researchers but which was tested at length and resolved.

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to find the time to create a discussion site for IFRs like Kirk developed with you and others for LFTRs. That would certainly be good for public education. I can tell you that much of the sort of discussion and openness about potential problems with IFRs has been going on, and continues every day, albeit not on a blog site. Barry and others have long been involved in such discussions with several of the developers of the IFR, which is perhaps why we’re more enthusiastic about it than you. I’ve been researching it for a decade, having started with no preconceptions whatsoever about nuclear power of any kind. As far as I can tell, nobody’s trying to sweep potential IFR problems under the rug. We’re just trying to get one built.

I just went back and read your page you cited above. I have no reason to doubt that if LFTRs and their related designs had been pursued we’d likely be seeing them running today, and I do believe we should pursue the research. But since the IFR is actually ready to be built and since the climate change crisis is at the door, if the IFR is safe to build we should build it and pursue LFTR research too.

On your page you wrote:
IFR concepts during the 1990’s included the notion of factory constructed modular reactors. But no assessment has been yet offered on possible interaction between IFR size and safety. Safety is a far more critical issue for the IFR than for a MSR for obvious reasons. The NRC has not yet developed safety concepts for either the LFTR or the IFR, but given the implications of major safety problems such as a coolant leak or a core rupture, IFR safety requirements are likely to be far more stringent, and costly to meet.

I’ve gotten risk assessment studies for the PRISM reactor and provided them to Kirk Sorenson, the same ones that the NRC has already seen. There has indeed been an assessment of safety vs size in IFRs, which has guided the PRISM development to determine a 300-360 MWe size for reactor modules. The costs for this have been taken into consideration, with an estimated power cost for IFR-produced electricity coming in at about 4.6¢/kWh.

I agree with Barry that the hazards of sodium have been far overblown. It’s a relatively simple engineering problem, one that’s being dealt with in half a dozen countries that are building or planning to build sodium-cooled fast reactors. I also believe the cost and complexity issues are usually baseless. Certainly we could afford to build one to discover what the results are in this regard. If we develop both and the LFTR ends up proving to be a superior design, so be it. But forsaking one in favor of the other is a needless restriction on our ability to bring to a close the era of fossil fuels.

Tom's comments suggest good reasons why we should be having this debate now. From the very start Tom appears to be very poorly informed. For example Tom claims:

there was virtually no discussion at all about LFTRs since the Fifties.

This comment is astonishing. The EfT document archive contains links to hundreds of papers, studies and reports related to Molten Salt Reactor technology from 1960 onward. A simple review of ORNL study and report titles indicates that ORNL continued to offer new insights into Thorium cycle MSR technology unto about 1980. Numerous papers on Thorium/MSR technology regularly appear in professional journals from scientists in as many as a dozzen countries during the last 30 years. An appreciable literature in French and English has emerged from France during the last decade. And there is at present a far deeper, far more detailed discussion of LFTR yechnology on the internet than is the case for LMFBR technology.

Tom claims: Much of the sort of discussion among LFTR advocates is the sort of discussion that was not only carried on by IFR researchers but which was tested at length and resolved.
We of course have to take toTom's word for this because Tom acknowledges:

I haven’t been able to find the time to create a discussion site for IFRs like Kirk developed with you and others for LFTRs.

So we don't have access to the documents that might back uyp Tom's claims. My comment was that no risk assessment had been offered. A risk assessment that is distributed in private, which has as far as I know, no peer review, has not been offered. Tom tells us

I’ve gotten risk assessment studies for the PRISM reactor and provided them to Kirk Sorenson, the same ones that the NRC has already seen. There has indeed been an assessment of safety vs size in IFRs, which has guided the PRISM development , , ,

So we have assertions made on the basis of propriitary studies with no reference to peer reviewed publications of the findings. Now I have no reason to doubt that Tom and Barry are honest people, or that they have dilligently sought out information, but the private conversations with scientists and PR types working for commercial interests, the communication of privately held propriatary information that has not been peer reviewed cannot serve as a surrogate for the rest of us. My criticisms are nothing to those which Tom and Barry will face from the wildly misnamed "Friends of the Earth."

Alvin Weinberg once shared his views on LMFBR's. Weinberg summerized his observations:

although we cannot identify physical limits that make a world of 7,000 large LMFBR's impossible, one would have to concede that the demands on the technology would be formidable. Two issues appear to me to predominate: first, the acceptable accident rate will probably have to be much lower than the Rasmussen report suggests. If one uncontained core meltdown per 100 years is acceptable (and we have no way of knowing what an acceptable rate really is), then the probability of such an accident will have to be reduced to about one in 1 million per reactor per year. This is the design goal for the LMFBR project in the United States. Second, a nuclear world such as we envisage will have long since had to make peace with plutonium. Ten tons of plutonium per day is mind-boggling. It is hard to conceive of the enterprise being conducted except in well-defined, permanent sites, and under the supervision of a special cadre -perhaps a kind of nuclear United Nations.

Thus we can hardly escape the energy demands, if it is indeed to may be an attention to detail, and impression that the price nuclear become the dominant energy system, a dedication of the nuclear cadre that goes much beyond what other technologies have demanded. It is only when one projects to an asymptotic nuclear future such as we have attempted that one recognizes the magnitude of the social problem posed by this particular technology.

If, as Tom tells us, private business interests are seriously developint IFR technology, this is good news. We can expect the commercial developers to take responsibility for raising the funds required to see their venture through to successful conclusion. If the state of IFR technology is as advanced as Tom indicates, developers will not need to spend anything like the 2.5 to 10 billion dollars on R&D which I estimate will be required before a commerical LFTR prototype could be built. I am awaiting the announcement of the official beginning of IFR prototype construction.

The developers, will however, face significant public questions and should provide us with open, on line access to all technical data.

The IFR, The LCFR and the the LFTR

Barry Brook at BraveNewClimate.com is beating the drums for the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). I am ambivalent for a number of reasons, and will at least point to some. The IFR is not the only potential fast neutron reactor, and one fast neutron concept, the Liquid Chloride Fast Reactor belongs to the Molten Salt Reactor class. The LCFR offers significant safety, fuel processing and other technological advantages over the IFR, even though it has never been the subject of a serious R&D effort.

I represent the old ORNL tradition about nuclear technology. Oak Ridge scientists quickly rejected the idea of a sodium cooled reactor (1947 to 1950). Indeed Eugene Wigner who was the first post War research director at ORNL and who held the original patent on the Liquid Sodium Cooled Reactor, did not like his own invention. The original Oak Ridge air craft reactor was sodium cooled, but it was developed at K-25 rather than ORNL and the K-25 engineers who were developing the K-25 reactor project, quickly realized that the sodium cooled air craft reactor design had deep safety flaws including a positive coefficient of reactivity, and of course the insidious dangers of a liquid sodium coolant. Ed Bettis and his associates quickly bailed out on the liquid sodium cooled reactor design, and developed the Molten Salt Reactor concept. it was not by accident that the original K-25 MSR concept featured liquid fluoride salts, If K-25 chemists and engineers knew anything, they knew fluoride chemistry. Fluoride salts are, of course, quite safe compared to liquid sodium. The original MSR concept featured a negative coefficient of reactivity. Indeed if American Reactor development policy had been guided by strictly rational considerations from 1950 onward there would have been no more money spent on liquid sodium cooled reactors. As it is over 20 billion 2009 dollars has been spent on Sodium cooled fast breeder research without the development of a single American commercial Fast Breeder prototype.

By the early 1950's my father, C.J. Barton, Sr., was exploring the chemistry for a Liquid Chloride Fast Breeder that would have been safer, and far more practical than any LMFBR design concept. Had the LCFR rather than the LMFBR been chosen as the major direction for United States Breeder fast breeder research, and been supported at the level that the Liquid Sodium Fast Breeder was to receive, I have little doubt that an American Fast Breeder Reactor would have been developed during the 1960's. Unfortunately that was not the case, and instead over 20 billion 2009 US dollars were tossed by the United States Government down a rat hole marked Liquid Sodium Fast Breeder Reactors.

In addition to ORNL studies of the LCFR concept, a 1974 British study reached favorable conclusions about the LCFR concept, and a 1978 Swiss report indicated that the LCFB was a promising design.

In his 1982 UCLA dissertation by E. H. Ottewitte, who had participated in the Swiss study stated:

Molten salts compete favorably with liquid metals: they exhibit thermal conductivities intermediate to water and the poorer of the liquid-metal. Their specific heat capacities parallel water's. Furthermore, an intermediate coolant of molten salt should more closely match the primary salt in physical proper-
ties, thereby reducing freezing and thermal stress problems. They will cost far less then liquid metals.

Ottewitte concluded

Fast molten chloride reactors have been cursorily considered before but mainly for the U/Pu fuel cycle. The ORNL MSR program showed the feasibility of fuel salt circulation. The combination of that experience and MCFR research (out-of-pile experiments and theoretical studies, so far) provide a basis for believing the
concept will work.

Chemical stability and corrosion of molten salts are fairly predictable. Low vapor pressure of the salts enhances safety and permits low pressure structural components.

Molten fuel state and cooling out-of-core simplify component design in a radiation environment. They forego complicated refueling mechanism, close tolerances associated with solid fuel, and mechanical control devices. Molten state and low vapor pressure of the salts also offer inherent safety advantages.

In 1992 Ottewitte listed some of the advantages of the LCFR:

Some salient advantages of the MCFR concept are :
1. Simplicity : no control rods, fuel handling mechanisms, fuel elements or associated structures . Very uncluttered: should maximize test space and facilitate access thereto . Fluid fuel can be transferred remotely by pumping through pipes connecting storage and reactor .
2. MSRs don't refuel or reprocess, just add fuel and process out wastes . Continuous
processing and refueling would minimize reactor downtime . Can usefully consume all fuel forms, simplifying fuel supply while simultaneously solving other people's
problems.
3. MSR is the safest concept of all due to very strong negative temperature coefficient. No gaseous hydrogen can possibly evolve from fuel or primary coolant . Fuel already molten and handled by system . Simple design technique makes boiling impossible. Continuous removal of fission products reduces their heat source by two orders of magnitude: consequently, natural circulation suffices for emergency cooling, thereby greatly reducing the designated evacuation area . Also, under any off-normal conditions, the liquid fuel can be channeled to a continuously cooled drain tank, in a short time.
4. Very fast neutron spectrum in an annular core engenders high neutron fluxes, driving inner and outer thermal neutron flux traps, each variable in size and neutron energy spectrum by means of molten salt composition. Elimination of fuel cladding and structural material significantly improves the neutron economy of the reactor: more neutrons are available for applications.
5 .Elimination of pressurized and pressure-evolving components inside the containment, reducing risk of containment failure.

The American energy establishment, never looked seriously at the LCFR as a viable alternative to the liquid sodium fast breeder. If it had there is a likelihood that the LCFR would fave compared favorably to all LMFBR concepts including the IFR. The question would have been if a fast breeder reactor was needed at all. The LFTR offers sustainable breeding with the advantage of operating in the thermal/epithermal neutron range. The availability of a slow neutron breeding process potentially offers an enormous scalability advantage. A limited nuclear fuel supply would pose a far more serious challenge to the scalability of the IFR or a LCFR than it would to a two fluid LFTR with or without graphite.

IFR concepts during the 1990's included the notion of factory constructed modular reactors. But no assessment has been yet offered on possible interaction between IFR size and safety. Safety is a far more critical issue for the IFR than for a MSR for obvious reasons. The NRC has not yet developed safety concepts for either the LFTR or the IFR, but given the implications of major safety problems such as a coolant leak or a core rupture, IFR safety requirements are likely to be far more stringent, and costly to meet. NRC safety requirements will probably include the sort of massive safety related site construction requirements that favor economies of scale.

Compared to both the LFTR and its chloride salt cousin the LCFR, the IFR would pose significant safety hazards, and would be larger and probably more expensive to build in a factory setting. It would also pose significantly more control issues, and a system of defense in depth against sodium related safety concerns is likely to add to reactor complexity and cost. The IFR would require over 10 times as much fissionable materials as a graphite moderated LFTR making the LFTR a far more attractive candidate for the role as a mass produced, widely deployed global warming fighting technology. Indeed, factor produced small LFTRs may offer significant cost advantages over all other post-carbon energy technologies.

Politicians and scientists often feed each other's insecurities. Since the 1972 firing of Alvin Weinberg for political reasons that included his MSR advocacy and criticism of the safety of LMFBRs the American scientific community has been cowed by the orthodox dogmas of the US Department of Energy. The US government did supply limited support to the concept of a thorium fuel cycle thermal molten salt breeder from the 1950's to 1970's, and although that reactor concept received no more than 4% of the money wasted is such a profligate fashion by on the liquid sodium breeder reactor concept, that project proceed in an outstandingly successful fashion, and would have become the crowning success of the United States nuclear program if Washington had been willing to back it with even 25% of the money it wasted on the LMFBR concept.

Lorna Salzman

One of the common cognative errors of selfstyled envirinmentalists, is adoption of an attitude of histile biase against nuclear power. This biase seldome reflects even a ssuperficial understand of the nature and history of nuclear reactor technology. Nuclear critics, for example, present themselves as qualified to make expert judgements about nuclear safety, while at the same time they do not appear to have familirized themselves with even the most fundamental concepts of nuclear safety. One such nuclear critic is environmental activist and writer Lorna Salzman. Salzman was a onc time associte of the godfather of environmental anti-nuclear ac tivitism, David Brower. Salzman is a founding mother of the United States Green political movement.

Salzman is what I call a pseudo-liberal. Am individual who pretends to sympathize with the desires of the poor, the disadvantage and minorities, while offering them dashed hopes for a better life, via a Brower-Club of Rome ideology of scaricity and poverty for all.

minority leaders like Ennis and Jones are not aligning themselves with those demanding real solutions to slow down and mitigate global warming through DRAMATICALLY REDUCED CONSUMPTION OF ENERGY AND GOODS is truly tragic. That their followers are being duped into supporting the American Dream of increasing consumption of energy and goods – Compassionate Capitalism – including a demand for cheaper oil, is testimony to the tragic gullibility that characterizes all Americans, not just the poor and the minorities.

In a nutshell, we don’t have a tough uncompromising movement or leadership with curbing global warming as its focus. We have anti-poverty and social justice groups and campaigns posing as green but with a “plentiful lack” of serious proposals to overhaul the entire capitalist/consumer society. It is quite clear that marginal and incremental economic reforms will not slow down the economic growth beast much less threaten its existence.

It appears that even those members of society who have lived at the bottom are not ready or willing to admit that this society is neither sustainable nor reformable. Perhaps they are whistling in the dark. But it is more likely that these reformist groups are being encouraged in their schemes by funders and forces cemented to the concept of economic growth and to capitalism at all costs who welcome the emphasis on jobs and renewable energy as a distraction from the daily reports of accelerating climate change. The revolutionaries, however, are nowhere to be seen.

I’ve got news for them. Nature doesn’t distinguish between rich and poor.

Needless to say Salzman regards anything that might actually improve the material well being of the poor and minorities, like nuclear power as an outrageous horror. During the 1970's and 80-'s Sazman wrote and delivered lectures on a number of nuclear power related issues, none of which reflected an in depth understanding of nuclear technology. For example, Sazman does not refer to fundamental nuclear safety concepts in her discourse. Sazman's discourse is, however, littered with anti nuclear myths

commercial nuclear power development quickly diverged and accelerated, with the help of vast Federal subsidies, tax benefits, economic incentives, and exemption from liability; according to a Battelle Laboratory study, these subsidies total to date well over 40 billion dollar, even though nuclear energy provides at this moment less energy than firewood in this country.

In fact much of the money from the so called subsidy did not flow from the treasury to the civilian nuclear industry. In fact most of "subsidy" did not go to help power reactor manufacturers, electrical utilities, or electrical customers of civilian nuclear power. Much of the so called subsidies went to support research that was not related to the technology used to generate electricity using light water reactors.

Salzman offers us a stunt often seen from anti-nuclear advocates, of attributing to the civilian nuclear power industry as subsidies, large amount of money spent for purposes that had nothing to do with civilian power reactors. In other instances nuclear critics coult theoretical obligations which have never cost the tax payers a dime of money, as if they are benefits flowing from the treasury to nuclear plant owners. It is probably the case that the actual subsidy for civilian nuclear power was a little more than 1o% of the $40 Billion dollar figure which Salzman mentioned. Nuclear critics like Salzman prefer to toss around words like huge subsidies but the reality is far more modest, and the anti-nuclear types come close to outright lying with their claims about nuclear subsidy.

My problem with Salzman and other followers of David Brower including Amory Lovins is that they do not write and speak as members of reality based communities. I believe that Ron Suskind's famous interview with a Bush aid put a finger on the central problem of knowledge in the 21st century. The Bush aid was nothing if not post-modern, and what he said to Suskind faithfully reflects not only the belief system that dominated the White House between 2001 and the 2006 election but the belief systems of numerous social and political communities that are interesting in controlling reality, not understanding it:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

We can see how far Salzman has departed from the standards of a reality based community in a recent comment on Gristmill:

The coven of disgruntled witches is reconvening over the black kettle marked ""4th Generation Reactors". Not being content with the witches' brew of radioactivity released by Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the reconstituted nuclear gang is now repackaging their poison just like Philip Morris did by changing its name to Altria. But instead of rehashing the dangers of nuclear power, we need go no further than the issue of cost and time. A new reactor will cost, minimally, $10 billion, hence the witches' beseeching of congress to grant them loan guarantees, since Wall St. is shunning them as it does all purveyors of voodoo. To replace all our existing coal plants with nukes would not only take decades (when we have only a handful of years to fend off the worst impacts of global warming) but would cost trillions of dollars that could be spent on wind turbines and various forms of solar power and which could be producing power in a few years. It is not surprising that nuclear engineers have pounced on the uninformed public and media, who are desperately looking for a silver bullet that will enable them to continue using energy in the same way and to the same extent as the last fifty years. They are looking in the wrong place, as usual. Energy efficiency , if mandated, could reduce our energy consumption by 30% within a few years, and thus buy us the time to seriously convert to a renewable energy economy. But the nuke nuts don't think in these terms. And neither does our government, sad to say. So we are doomed to useless schemes like Waxman/Markey and unachievable ones like nuclear power. As the late John Gofman said when told that coal plants were worse than nukes: I prefer a choice that doesn't offer me death by guns or death by knives. We need to make this clear to the nuclear gang too.

Note that that Salzman does not begin with facts and proceed to draw logical conclusions. She resorts to Karl Roves's tactics, name calling, mud slinging, demonization of nuclear supporters, fear mongering. Salzman is looking for someone to hat, and rather than rational argument, and her entire effort is designed to encourage hate for nuclear power and its supporters. Salzman's statement drew two very powerful responses from the reality based nuclear community Rod Adams who is always the master of fact and reason observed:

James Hansen is far more correct than Al Gore on this issue. Perhaps that is because he is an honest scientist with an impressive record of achievement who reveres the truth rather than an opportunistic politician/businessman/salesman who appears to revere financial rewards here on earth. Hansen is a career government scientist with a modest middle class lifestyle while Gore lives an expansive, carbon intensive lifestyle with major investments in the kinds of energy companies that will directly benefit from the bill. It is no surprise to me that a number of "environmental" groups and spokesmen favor the Waxman-Markey bill in its current form. They have been representing the interests of companies like GE, Siemens, Shell, and Vestas for decades.

I am one of those witches who is "desperately" looking for a silver bullet. I strongly believe that supplying clean, reliable, affordable energy is a respectable calling. I have dedicated a significant amount of time to sharing what I know about the amazing, natural qualities of heavy metal fission.

It is a process that produces vast quantities of controllable heat with tiny material inputs and almost miniscule waste volumes. It is well known that we can turn that heat into electricity, but we have also proven that we can used the heat directly for industrial processes that otherwise would consume gas, oil or coal and we have shown that we know how to push very large ships around the ocean using the same kind of heat to power conversion process. Those ships would all otherwise be burning oil and creating a greater demand for that already high demand, high profit product.

In the fifty years that the US has used commercial quantities of atomic fission, we have produced a grand total of 60,000 tons of waste material. A single coal fired power plant takes about 2 days to produce that amount of material.

All of the atomic fission byproducts are carefully stored and inventoried in containers that keep the material out of our common environment. Coal power plant waste is immediately released via tall smokestacks to our shared atmosphere or piled up in enormous, unrestrained piles or uncovered ponds with earthen dams that have a history of failure.

In just a brief period during the 1960s and 70s we started enough nuclear projects to eliminate coal from the US electrical power market. Unfortunately, about 60% of those projects were cancelled, partially as a result of pressure from people like Salzman and partially as a result of protective action by the coal and gas industries that pointed out an "oversupply" situation that was threatening their very existence. Fortunately, we did complete enough of the started projects that we now produce more than 800 terrawatts-hours of electrical power each year with fission, more than 20 times as much as wind and solar combined.

By the way, Salzman, I have never worked for the nuclear industry. I learned my nuclear trade as a professional naval officer and continue to work for all of you. My career has no dependence on the success or failure of the commercial nuclear power industry, but I believe that the future prosperity of the nation for my children and near future grandchildren is very dependent on expanded use of heavy metal fission as a fossil fuel replacement.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast

Kirk Sorensen tagged Salzman's irrationality:

What a hateful and utterly inaccurate comment, Ms. Salzman.

You'd be harder pressed to find a technology that has done more to reduce CO2 emissions over the last fifty years than nuclear power.

Your characterization of nuclear engineers as "witches" over their "black kettle" waiting to release their "brew of radioactivity" is absolutely the opposite of what nuclear engineers do. We work to protect the public from dangerous levels of radiation while releasing the awesome power of the atom to drive our modern society in an environmentally friendly way.

The fission products generated from fission are very radioactive but decay quickly to stable nuclides. I've modeled this process extensively myself and it is quite remarkable just how quickly most fission products achieve complete stability and harmlessness.

Fourth-generation nuclear reactors like the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) are specifically designed to improve public safety (by making an exceptionally improbable event essentially impossible) and to reduce the amount of long-lived radionuclides generated through energy generation.

It would behoove you to learn more about something this important before you belittle and insult the very people who are doing the most to save the planet we all love.

(note that I said "dangerous level of radioactivity"--because radioactivity is natural and all around us, and was here long before man ever learned anything about the atom)

I doubt that Salzman will learn anything from this exchange or give up on her goal to persuade the poor to go along with the anti-nuclear environmentalist intention to oppress them with even greater poverty.

Waxman-Markey

I an probably the only energy writer who has absolutely no interest in the debate over the Waxman-Markey climate change bill,. I concluded that even if I put a labored effort into understanding the bill, its complexity would defeat my efforts. The bill is not a serious attempt to mitigate global warming, if it were, it would be a whole lot simpler. Complexity means lining a lot of pockets.

The Waxman-Markey Bill is undoubtedly an insult to the intelligence and education of intelligent and educated people, who cannot possibly know what the Waxman-Markey Bill is about. It does give Democratic politicians, most of whom are not interested enough in energy issues to informed themselves, cover on AGW issues. As long as Democrats can tell voters that they voted for Waxman-Markey, they don't need to do any serious research or thinking about energy issues. The fact that bill sponsor Waxman, is still carrying on a faux-liberal quarrel with nuclear power is evidence enough that there is nothing serious here. Once Democratic politicians like Waxman stop writing nuclear power off, it might be time to pay attention. There are two other signs that the Waxman-Markey bill is an exceedingly bad piece of legislation. First it is 900 pages long. No one has read it, no one understands it, and in the end the Waxman-Markey is a waste of time, a vacuous political exercise that will accomplish nothing in the effort to mitigate AGW.

The Waxman-Markey bill is so bad that even certifiable environmental crazies like Greenpeace are opposed to it. However, some for some "Progressive greens", say for example Joe Romm and David Roberts, it is impossible to be too crazy on AGW related issues.

We have Joe Romm huffing and puffing in favor of Waxman-Markey, and Joe is nothing if not consistently wrong about AGW mitigation. David Roberts is also in favor of Waxman-Markey. I realized a couple of years ago that David Roberts is a few rocks short of a full load on mitigation issues. What more proof do I need about Waxman-Markey?

Even without reading a paragraph on the controversy, I already know that Waxman-Markey is going to be a perfect storm of stupidity and wasted effort.

We are going to endure at least two more years of confusion, before people start getting serious about mitigation, serious enough that the lies of greedy and corrupt solar and wind interests start being a matter of concern for Democratic members of congress, and people start asking intelligent questions about renewable technology, instead of simply mouthing the word renewables with pseudo-religious reverence.

When public pressure to take decisive action becomes sufficiently powerful, the lobbyist will lose their say, and Congress will start to inform itself. We are not there, and can only expect bad legislation.

Gloria-

For me this is a moments of greatest joys in life. When we were parted I wrote her, "i will always love you." Now nearly 40 years later, and after so many tragidies, we have found each other at last. Tears of joy express what is beyond words.

Becky, may I ever rest in your shade. May our joy never cease.




Let the bright Seraphim in burning row,
Their loud uplifted Angel-trumpets blow:
Let the Cherubic host, in tuneful choirs,
Touch their immortal harps with golden wires.












You are blessed, Lord our God, the sovereign of the world, who created joy and celebration, bridegroom and bride, rejoicing, jubilation, pleasure and delight, love and brotherhood, peace and friendship. May there soon be heard, Lord our God, in the cities of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem, the sound of joy and the sound of celebration, the voice of a bridegroom and the voice of a bride, the happy shouting of bridegrooms from their weddings and of young men from their feasts of song. You are blessed, Lord, who makes the bridegroom and the bride rejoice together.

Dedicated to Becky

“Renewable”

Through Nuclear Power

For the greens, the word “Renewable” is a holy word; a sacred word; consecrated by the high priests of environmentalism to evoke the divine. It has taken many years of political Spin Meistering to impart this divine connotation that green energy must instantly evoke in the minds of men. To be Renewable is to be close to the divine. The angels are totally renewable. Doesn’t renewable connote life after death; resurrection, life without end? Yes, Renewable is a powerful word. The advocates of nuclear energy have the audacity to hijack this blessed word; what a sacrilege for the greens. Nuclear energy is the fiery breath from hell; a radioactive maelstrom of evil, of hellish heat, that only means death and destruction. Nuclear cannot ever be renewable. Renewable nuclear power is blasphemy, a perversion of the holy and the sacred, profanity of the most high. It would be the ultimate high sacrilege to the followers of the green religion.

- Axil

Renewables without nuclear will bring

Arktika

I recently started collecting Vostok Europe watches. These very unusual watches celebrate Soviet technology, which is, to say the least not your ordinary watch theme. This is a picture of my prize Vostok Europe watch, the Arktika, a watch that is named for the Soviet ship Arktika, a reactor powered ice breaker, that sailed to the North Pole. The Arktika was the first ship to sail to the North Pole on the surface, and this is considered quite rightly to be a major accomplishment of Soviet technology.

Vostok is Russian Watch manufacturer that had its origins in the evacuation of Soviet industries from Western Russia during the early days of the German invasion of Russia in 1941. During the cold war era the Vostok factory made watches for the Russian military. While many Soviet consumer goods were shoddy, this was not true of Russian military watches. After all, watches are useful military instruments, and keeping good time is something that any Army or Navy would value.

In a war the Vostok watches can be regarded as very good time pieces for people who may need actuated time pieces on important jobs. Vostok watches are relatively impervious to environmental insults. Most can be used as divers watches. The Vostok Europe Arktika will remain water tight at 150 feet of water for example. Water tightness is, of course, a desirable military quality, and is useful for all sorts of situations including conducting military operations in the mud, or simulating an invasion of Camp Lejune. The Soviets did not develop the sort of low cost, accurate quartz watch mechanism they became common in the West during the 1970's. Thus Russian watches tended to be very good quality mechanical watches. And while the Russians did not develop outstanding quartz mechanisms, Vostok developed a very good automatic watch mechanism.
An automatic mechanism is a descendant of the self winding watch concept. Rather than winding a spring, the automatic mechanism runs a tiny generator, and electricity is transferred to a capacitor, which stores it. The electricity then operates a quartz mechanism. All this sounds very complex, and it is. To accomplishes with a great deal complexity what a battery does for an ordinary quartz watch. Of course the battery has to be replaced every couple of years, And that means finding a jewelry store that does watch repairs. The automatic watch mechanism does not last forever, but it will keep going a lot longer than the battery powered quartz watch. Of course you have to wear the automatic mechanism watch and be at least a little active. Wearing a Vostok watch in bed and tossing and turning seems enough to keep the juice flowing. No doubt Vostok watches with automatic mechanisms were highly prized by Soviet military officers, a class of customers who expected much higher than average Soviet quality from their watches. You did not get to be the official watch manufacturer for the Red Army by selling Red Army Officers shoddy watches.

So Vostok had a high quality automatic watch mechanism, a watch mechanism that delivered the goods to a group of tough customers, and stood up to the stress of military use. The Vostok automatic mechanism is extremely unobtrusive. It is quiet to the point of silence, and imparts no feelings to the wrist as it operates. Unlike the classic Swiss 21 jewel movement, the Vostok mechanism featured 32 jewels. I did not wind the first Vostok watch I ever wore, or even do more that shake it a few times before setting the time and putting it on. It ran unerringly and I wore it when I went to bed. When I woke up it was still running and the time was accurate.

Vostok still manufactures watches that are sold in the Russian equivalent of the PX, and their watches are now prized by collectors in the west. The Vostok 32 jewel automatic movement is a real prize in terms of quality and it is not surprising that Vostok decided to develop a line of Luxury watches for the European market. The Vostok Europe Company is based in Lithuania, and thus has access to the EU market. In addition to the Vostok automatic mechanism which is probably the quality equivalent of the Swiss automatic movements that go into thousand dollar watches, the Vostok Europe company has managed to produce watches with attractive designs. There are hints that the cases are manufactured in China, and if so this would not compromise Vostok quality.

Vostok Europe watches are men's watches. They are big, and suggest a self confident assertiveness that is consistent with their Soviet military origins. They say, if you mess with me, I will invade Poland. At the same time they are handsome. The case and band are stainless steel, but this Arktika is plated with a copper alloyed gold, that adds a stunning luster to its appearance. The watch is beautiful, and is a fitting tribute to the nuclear powered Arktika's voyage to the North Pole.

Advanced nuclear technology and CO2 mittigation

Large scale production of post-carbon energy technology is a key to CO2. The post-carbon technology must must be producible in sufficiently large numbers to have a significant impact on of CO2 emissions, yet have low capital and operation costs. If capital costs foe a carbon replacement technology can be paid for our of fuel cost savings and other efficiencies, so much the chances of successful GHG mitigation will be greatly improved..

Massive deployment of post carbon energy technology would almost certainly mean reliance on commodity materials such as stainless steel, and cement. A really desirable post carbon technology would contribute those those processes which produce raw materials needed for its own production. Thus it would be highly desirable for a post carbon energy technology to contribute the heat needed to produce steel and cement, either directly or through providing heat input into a chemical process by which high temperature fuel is produced. Thus if a reactor provides the heat needed to produce hydrogen gas, and burning the hydrogen provides the heat needed to make cement, the nuclear technology may be self sustaining, in a way which renewable technologies is not. Consider the issue of a material like neodymium in LFTR generators. What might prove interesting about this pairing is the potential of the LFTR to produce neodymium. Neodymium is a fission product, and LFTRs would produce about 150 pounds of neodymium for every billion watt years of electricity they produce. This is the essence of green technology, the ability of a technology to produce the resources required to implement the technology on a massive scale.

Windmills can’t do that. Windmill designers might choose to use neodymium in their generators, but they can never produce neodymium from the normal operation of their windmills. If neodymium has to be used in the manufacture of windmills, it has to be dug up from the earth. From the viewpoint of the production of scarce raw materials, the LFTR is simply “greener” that the windmill. From the viewpoint of Energy returned from Energy Invested the LFTR wins over the windmills hands down. From the viewpoint of carbon emissions per kWh of electricity generated, the LFTR wins over the windmill hands down.

Meier calculated that in 1998 conventional nuclear generated one GWhe for every 18 tons of CO2 emitted. Wind generated 14 tons of CO2. http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/pdf/fdm1181.pdf

Technological options played a very large role in the calculated CO2 emissions for nuclear. Were the analysis to focus on alternative nuclear technologies like the LFTR, the IFR, or the Indian FBR. the comparison between nuclear and wind would greatly favor the advanced nuclear technology. For example in American conventional reactors 3/4^th of the associated CO2 emissions were from coal fired power plants that supplied electricity to uranium enrichment facilities. Thorium does not require enrichment. Hence the switch to a thorium fuel cycle produces a 75% decrease in CO2 emissions from the Uranium fuel cycle. Thorium is already mined at uranium mines, rare earth mines, and phosphate mines. Hence no added emission of CO2 would be produced in order to mine thorium. This produces a further reduction of CO2 emissions related to mining thorium. Thorium can be prepared for use in reactors using low cost, low CO2 emission fluoride chemical processes. Thus the CO2 emissions of of a LFTR would easily be 10% of those from a conventional nuclear plant ca. 1998.

Now the LFTR uses mined nuclear fuel form 200 to 300 times more efficiently than a conventional nuclear power plant. Thus the CO2 emissions of a LFTR in producing electrical energy is perhaps 0.05% of the indexed conventional nuclear power plant. This would give us a figure of about 18 pounds of CO2 per GWhe. Quite obviously the LFTR and other Generation IV breeders far outperforms the windmills as a carbon mitigation measure.

Reactors like the LFTR are highly scalable. They can be rapidly built, in large numbers and rapidly deployed. The LFTR is highly stable. Its operation does not require staff intervention, because it will shut down automatically before it over heats. Its core already molten so core melt down is not a problem, and passive safety features automatically dump the core into safe holding tanks in the event of an emergency. The IFR also has very advanced automatic safety features. Thus a requirement to hire and train a highly able, highly skilled and qualified staff, will not be an impediment to the deployment of advanced nuclear technology. Factory production, advanced labor savings technology, simple design, the use of common low cost materials all make the massive use of advanced nuclear technology a major route, and arguable the major route to CO2 mitigation during the next 40 years. What is required is a social commitment to advanced nuclear technology. Ironically India alone among nuclear capable nations has made that commitment and stands in another generation to begin reaping the reward for its courage and foresight. The United States has, in contrast, followed a nuclear policy shaped by nearsightedness and fear. Advocates of a policy informed by cowardice are welcome in the inner chambers of of the Obama administration. If our national nuclear policy does not change, if we continue to follow those who would shape our nuclear policy by appeals to cowardice, we will pay a high price. A nation of ignorant cowards cannot be great. Nor can such a country hope to successfully expect to mitigate CO2 emissions.