Does Reading Nuclear Green Cause Swine Flu?

Unlikely, but put on your mask anyway before you read. I don't want to catch anything from you.

Update: The United States Center for Disease Control today announced a new flu that combines swine flu with bird flu. The new illness is called the flying swine flu. Fortunately it does not cause any symptoms of illness, but it does cause pigs to fly. Medical authorities express astonishment and offer no explanation.

Flying pigs pose a greater menace to air safety than bird strikes do.

The Future Cost of Renewables

Historians will look back on the renewable power movement as one of the great irrationalities of American history. Renewable advocates have simply failed to analyze how a renewable based electrical system could be implemented:

They have failed to provide cogent answers to questions about how the intermittency of renewables is to be managed.

They have offered a bifurcated account of the role of fossil fuel generation facilities on the 2050 grid. Claiming both that fossil fuel generator will provide backup for intermittent renewables in 2050, and that the use of fossil fuels will longer be used to generate electricity in 2050.

They have suggested that the problem of intermittency will be solved by "efficiency," "the smart grid," and "diversification" without supplying a detailed analysis of how intermittency will effect the grid, and how "efficiency," "the smart grid," and "diversification" will work separately or collectively to solve the various problems created by intermittency.

Renewables advocates have not recognized the problem of power facility construction inflation on the future costs of renewables, or on the ability of American society to afford proposed renewable power generating systems.

The renewables advocates have failed to notice the decline of the real wealth of American society, and the likely impact of this decline on the ability of American society to finance a high priced predominately renewables generating system.

Renewables advocates have made highly irrational and wildly inaccurate assessments of the costs and limitations of nuclear generating system.

Renewables advocates have failed to offer realistic comparative studies of the cost effectiveness of renewables and nuclear technology.

Renewables advocates have failed to take not of low cost alternative nuclear technologies such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. The LFTR can potentially generate electricity at a cost that is much lower than either renewables or conventional nuclear.

Renewables advocates have failed to assess the likely impact of renewables generated electricity on the economic competitiveness of the United States economy, especially in relationship with India and China. Both countries are currently planning large scale implementation of nuclear generated electrical systems before 2050, and at electrical prices that will be substantially lower than the cost of renewables generated electricity in the United States.

The LFTR, a short and simple account

Thorium is a very abundant mineral in the earths crust. The LFTR has a liquid fluoride salt core instead of the usual solid core. The liquid salt type of reactor was developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory between 1950 and 1976. The LFTR would use thorium 232 rather than uranium as a basis of its fuel cycle. Thorium is subjected to neuron radiation inside the core of a reactor, an then undergoes a nuclear transformation that produces fissionable uranium 233. The LFTR is 200 to 300 times more fuel efficient than standard reactors. Givrn the abundance of Thorium and the efficiency of the LFTR, the combination offered abundant energy it as long as people will want a massive energy source. Calculations, based on ORNL estimates from the 1970's, are that it will cost between $2.5 to $5 billion to develop LFTR technology to the point which where commercial prototypes can be built. Again based on ORNL cost estimates, plus known savings in the cost of labor, interest, and a standard calculation for the cost savings from the learning curve in serial production, the LFTRs will be between $1 and $2 per watt of generating capacity. The LFTR will be cheap enough to produce mid-load and peak power, And unlike the conventional reactors the LFTR can do dynamic load balancing for the grid. Why heck, the LFTR can even provide electrical backup for solar and wind, but why anyone would be so crazy as to install solar and wind generating facilities if they had LFTRs is beyond comprehension. The LFTR is very safe, can be designed to control itself without human intervention, produces little waste, and can destroy the waste from other reactors as it generates electricity. The LFTR can produce electricity for a cost that is lower than the cost of coal using carbon capture and storage, or the cost of wind and solar generated electricity.

LFTR Development and manufacturing costs

I was working on the question of LFTR costs. I had intended to review two documents:

ORNL-4812: Development Status of Molten-Salt Breeder Reactors
and
ORNL-5018: Program Plan for the Development of Molten-Salt Breeder Reactors

Those two documents offer a perspective on the cost of MSR developmental.

According to ORNL-4812, up to 1972 ORNL had spent $130 million dollars on MSR development. In 2009 terms this was less than than one billion dollars,

In 1980 the ORNL staff estimated that a commercial DMSR could be developed for $700 million (about 2.5 billion in 2009 dollars). Given another 2.5 billion for the development of the LFTR prototype we would have a total investment of between 5 and 6 Billion 2009 dollars investment. At that point there would be a product ready to go on the assembly line. Thus the total investment in the LFTR would be comparable to the Federal investment into the LWR. It would be one fourth the investment in so far unsuccessful LMFBR technology.

My analysis suggests that with factory production and by recycling coal fired power plants, modular LFTRs can come online for an investment as small as a dollar a watt. Let us assume that the actual cost is twice that. We still have a price for LFTRs that is lower than the 2009 price for windmills. even with a capacity factor no better than the windmills, the LFTR would be a fae better buy because of its superior flexibility.

It would be nice to imagine a private enter[rice investing in the LFTR. Is it possible? $5 billion would not be unreasonable for a private business invest in LFTR development. Consider the €11 billion plus that Airbus invested in the development of the A380. At a cost of $327 million the A380 would be if anything more expensive than the modular LFTR. In fact it is doubtful that Airbus will ever recover the Airbus 380 development cost, while the LFTR potentially could be quite profitable.

Further comparisons of the LFTR and the Airbus 380 might be in order. I suspect that the 380 would be far more complex, require far more labor input, require more exotic materials in its construction, require far more instrumentation and control, and take longer to build.

Such speculation should receive far more investigation than I have conducted, should be the subject of much more rigorous testing, and proof. I off these initial conjectures, in the hope that they will receive more investigation.

A pause

Ben Teague's murder has not been conducive to blogging although I continue to think about LFTR costs, and the cost of a development program. My post on Ben brought Nuclear Green a lot of extra traffic Sunday and Monday. Most I suspect were not interested in the energy and environmental issues that motivated this blog. Rebecca an old Oak Ridge friend contacted me after reading my post about Ben. She had been a classmate of Ben, and when she saw the name in connection with the Town and Gown shootings she wander if it was the Ben Teague she had attended school with. She googled his name, and happened on my post. It had been at least 30 years since we had had contact.

Rebecca reminded me of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church shootings last year, and I had in fact thought of that awful Sunday as well. I had blogged about it on my personal blog. As in the Athens shootings, I knew one of the victims, Joe Barnheart, a retired University of North Texas Philosophy Professor. Although seriously wounded, Joe had survived, but other members of his family had been senselessly murdered that day. The mentally unhinged killer, inspired by Rush Limbaugh's rants against liberals, had felt called on to do something to get rid of the Liberal menace in Knoxville. So he showed p at the Uniterian church, where the children of the church were performing scenes from the musical "Annie." Angered by this affront to everything loyal Americans hold dear, the killer started blazing away with high powered weapons provided him by members of the NRA. Ben's killer was probably armed by an NRA members as well. Do you get the impression that I am angry?

Ben was the third member of my family to die since last October. Of course, my brother Mike's death was not unexpected. He had a serious heart illness for 20 years, and the prognosis from the start had been that he would not live long. He had outlived medical expectations. I have a similar heart illness, no doubt hereditary. I will not say more. My father died in January. He had just turned 97, and lived on a diet of pills. Ben had health problems, but could expect to live for a long time to come. He was adored by dozens of young men and women to whom he taught the sort of life lessons that can be learned through acquiring set building skills in a community theater.

There is of course grief. Gaps have opened in my life as people die. Anna Kate said to me on Saturday that she missed my father, because she would have talked out her feelings about Ben's death with him. I would have done the same thing were he still alive.

Beyond grief for other's is the grief for my own mortality.

Ben Teague

Ben was a reader of Nuclear Green, so I will divert from my usual topics to mark his passing. Ben was for the last few years my step-brother and a friend. Ben had a long white beard, an eccentric beard that would have been at home in the foot-hills of the Smokies where our ancestors lived.

The first time I saw Ben was in the band room of Jefferson Junior High School, where we being held prisoner by band teacher/master terrorist Alice Lyman. I was a voluntary prisoner, since I could always quit band, but I believed then is suffering for art. Ben was still an elementary school student, but something of a prodigy. Word of his talent reached Miss Lyman, and she recruited him for the Jefferson Band. So Ben was allowed to walk from Pine Valley School to Jefferson for Band Practice. Ben quickly became a favorite with Miss Lyman, and in my eyes a teacher's pet.

Miss Lyman would ask Ben to perform a passage from the score the band was practicing, as an example of how to do it right. "Show the how to play that Benny," she would say. And then he would play it for us. Miss Lyman would smile and then return to her terrorist teacher mode.

A dozen years later, I got to know Ben's mother, Anna Kate. Ben was in Texas then. He had graduated from Rice University with a BS in physics, and had gotten married. He was still in Houston as I recall, teaching school, and doing volunteer work for the local Pacifica Radio station. Later Ben's wife Fran finished her PhD in English and promptly went to the dogs. The University of Georgia Bulldogs that is. Ben, who was doing technical translation from German into English tagged along, and the two took up long term residency in the college town of Athens, Georgia.

There was no Pacifica radio station in Athens, but Ben found a new niche in the Town and Gown, a Community theater. Ben occasionally acted or directed, but more often he built sets, and he taught a generation of theater struck University of Georgia students how to build them. Fran whose scholarly interests included theater, sometimes directed .

Ben loved the people he worked with in the theater, and they loved him. Ben's mother became a widow, and eventually she befriended my parents. After my mother died, I encouraged my then 92 year old father to date her, but Anna Kate brought a gleam into Daddy's eyes and in September 2004 Daddy married her. With that the once hated Ben became my step-brother. By then I was prepared to like Ben, and I did. Ben and I were natural brothers. We had similar values. We chatted occasionally, sometimes on line. Facebook gave me another way to keep up with him.

Saturday my brother David sent me an email. He had been browsing the Internet, and had come across a story that Ben had just been murdered in Athens. It was true. The community theater group Ben was in was having a picnic, and a woman who was one of Ben's friends was having a quarrel with her ex-husband, a University of Georgia Professor. He left the picnic, but presently returned armed with two guns, and with the intent to kill his ex-wife. Ben attempted to protect his friend, and for his trouble he got shot, several times it would seem. I have not talked to Ben's wife Fran, but I have the impression that she witnessed Ben's murder. It would appear that a lot of people did.

Such a senseless death. I will miss Ben. I will miss his gentleness and kindness. Of course Miss Lyman made Ben play for the band because he was better than the rest of it. But Ben was modest, and never bragged about it. That was not Ben's way. Such a tragedy. I am selfish enough to wish that Ben would have been a coward yesterday.

Drought and Solar Generated Electricity in the Southwest

Green energy writer are strangely oblivious to environmental issues involving so called Green energy sources. One example is the effect of a Southwestern drought on the power industry. Imagine a coal fired steam plant. in order to operate the plant needs water, quite a lot of water in fact. Water and heat are the main ingredients in steam. Once the steam is run through the generator turbines, it is cooled in a condenser in a process that draws water from the environment and runs it through a heat exchange. Heat from the exhausted steam passes through the heat exchange, in which water is drawn from the environment and heat is exchanged between the purified boiler water and the ordinary environmental water from lakes, rivers and the sea.

In order for Rankine thermal generating plants to operate it has to have access to coolant waters. In fact there has to be quite a lot of coolant waters, in generating facilities that use the Rankine cycles for power. Thus coal fired steam plants typically are built by rivers, lakes or seas, in order to obtain access to coolant waters. The same is also true for nuclear powered steam plants. Occasionally the heat of summer will warm the coolant waters in lakes and rivers, until they are too hot to effectively cool the steam from Rankine cycle power plants. At that point the plant must shut down. Even more rarely extreme drought will cut the amount of water available until it can no longer sustain plant cooling. Again the plant must be shut down.

Climate scientists anticipate growing water shortages in the Southwest during the next decades. They note a long standing climate cycle that brings extreme drought to the American Southwest every few hundred years. Such droughts can typically last for a hundred years or longer. In addition to anticipated reductions in river water flow due to the drought, global warming is expected to decrease the amount of water entering the colorado river from the snow pack.

Now imagine, given these facts, how renewable energy advocates would respond to a plan to build 50 nuclear powered electrical generating plants in the Desert Southwest with cooling water to come from the drought stricken Colorado River and its tributaries. Suppose the plants were coal fired would environmentalist still object? You bet they would. If you asked them, would you object to any thermal plant, the answer would still be yes. Then ask them would they object to a solar thermal plant? The answer would be, "no way." Even if a solar thermal plant used as much water per kWh of electricity produced? The environmentalist are likely to tell you that it would be impossible for solar thermal plants to use as much water as nuclear power plants. Or they will tell you that ST plant's don't really use that much water, or that they can be cooled by air.

Of course, renewables advocates are in total denial about the use of water with solar thermal power. Did you ever read a discussion of solar thermal power in which the word water was used even once? The truth is that Solar thermal plants use as much water as nuclear plants do, and that it is improbably that a drought stricken Southwest could sustain as many solar thermal plants as say the Google or the Greenpeace energy plans call for.

In contrast, nuclear power plants do not have to be cooled by the waters of desert rivers. They can be built by the sea shore. The sea side location can facilitate the use of reactor waste heat for desalinization. Considering the potential water shortage in the Southwest, this production of water as a byproduct of the nuclear generation of electricity would no doubt be considered highly desirable.

Axil on the American Economy

Axil is a frequent contributor to the the Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum. Axil's contributions are of very high quality, and I have invited him to post on Nuclear Green on more than one occasion. Since I believe that Axil has things to say that should be read out side the EfT Discussion Forum, I have asked his permission to repost some of his comments as nI see fit. Axil views on the American economy are similar to my own:

On the job training is good for the worker but deadly for the job. A job gets done when there is a guy on it that has done it one hundred times before; he can do it in his sleep. That is how jobs succeed, on time and under budget.

All the money that will be spent on renewables is supposed to create lots of green jobs. Coal miners and auto workers will be retrained to make the promise of all the green technologies come true. The problem is that there are few capable engineers left to do all the work that is required. The youth of the country has opted for money making low stress jobs on Wall Street and in regional banking.

The only way to maintain competent engineers is through investment in technology research and development. Because of the parasitic business practices that have been pervasive since the 90’s, a destructive corporate attitude toward engineering has eaten a large hole in the nation’s science and engineering capability. American business has shipped its software, engineering and scientific base offshore primarily to Asia to reduce associated local wage rates.

Young people see what is going on and choose finance, law and other well paying but parasitic professions as their life’s work while the engineering profession withers on the vine.

Making things is out, making money is in.

American business has been eating the seed corn of its prosperity and now it is gone. The captains of American industry decry the lack of on shore US technical capability and at the same time outsource whole business lines to Asia. They then are surprised when Asia beats them to death through their own home grown engineering excellence.

Obama wants his green money to fund green American jobs, but that’s not how it works today in America.

The chickens have come home to roost. America is now an empty shell of accountants, lawyers and bankrupt financiers. A generation of profound pain, of relearning, failed systems, of reappraisal and of business evolution is ahead. A twenty year period of retrenchment will precede a philosophical shift and business readjustment before a rebirth of American engineering competence is common again in America. The smart grid won't happen anytime soon; but it might work if we off shore it to China.

- Axil

My Nomination for the Next Energy Czar

Barack Obama is a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln and just as Lincoln was loosing the civil war in the early months of his presidency, Obama is loosing the energy war during the early montha of his presidency. Unlike Lincoln who witnessed generals return to Washington with their defeated armies, Mr Obama does not know that his side is loosing the war. Like Lincolm, Obama has a bunch of incompetent generals. Eventually in 1864 Mr. Lincoln figured out which general to appoint. That was of course U.S. Grant. Grant knew what he was doing, and eventually won the war. Mr. Obama needs to get rid of the idiots and appoint someone who understands the problems an knows what he is doing. Fortunately however, fortunately for Mr. Obama and the country, I am available to advise the president on energy leadership.

My advice would be brief. We need someone who understands nuclear technology, not an an anti-nuclear lawyer, of failed physics undergraduate to be Energy Czar. The Energy Czar must understand the fundamentals of engineering, and of energy systems. He must be well educated and articulate, with real communication skills. He must have had hands on experience with real energy producing devices. A little business experience in the energy business would also help, although perhaps not experience with big energy businesses.

The Energy Czar should be very intelligent but down to earth. He should possess common sense. He should be able to distinguish between people who are well grounded, idiots and gifters. Finally, he should passionately care about the future of energy. In short we need a prince among men to provide us with national energy leadership.

Fortunately such a person exists. His name is Rod Adams! My advice to the president is to seek Rod out and beg him to take the job.

EEStory, new chapter but no prototype.

It has been a long time since I have written anything about EEStor. This week the true believers are in a new frenzie about EEStory. Yesterday EEStoroffered a press release.

EEStor, Inc. Announces Relative Permittivity Certification of 2009-04-22 19:49:36.589 GMT
EEStor, Inc. Announces Relative Permittivity Certification of Their Composition Modified Barium-Titanate Powders
PR Newswire
CEDAR PARK, Texas, April 22
CEDAR PARK, Texas, April 22 /PRNewswire/ -- EEStor, Inc. announces relative permittivity certification of their Composition Modified Barium-Titanate powders. The third party certification tests were performed by Texas Research International's Dr. Edward G. Golla, PhD., Laboratory Director. He has certificated that EEStor's patented and patent pending Composition Modified Barium-Titanate Powders have met and/or exceeded a relative permittivity of 22,500.
EEStor feels this is a huge milestone which opens the advancement of key products and services in the electrical energy storage markets of today. The automotive and renewable energy sectors are a few of the key markets that would benefit greatly with the technology.
Company background
EEStor, Inc. develops solid-state electrical energy storage units (EESU's) in the form of batteries and capacitors. This technology has a wide variety of application use which includes with the added benefit of being longer lasting, lighter, more powerful, and more environmentally friendly than current technology in use.
SOURCE EEStor, Inc.
Contact: Richard D. Weir, President and CEO of EEStor, Inc., +1-512-259-7601, Info@eestor.us -0- Apr/22/2009 19:49 GMT

Stocks in ZENN Motors, an EEStor play, have surged this week, even before the EEStor press release. I am struggling to contain my excitement. So far, I must say, I am still calm. EEStor still has not done a 3rd party test of the dielectric strength of its technology, and we have yet to see a working prototype. In the face of doubts, EEStor still has not brought home the bacon.

As I have noted before, EEStor is over a year behind the promised delivery date of a working prototype, and I do not expect one will be delivered this year. Or the next for that matter. None of the Doubts abour EEStir are going to go away anytime soon if ever.

The LFTR and the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor

Bruce Hoglund has recently argued that there is no difference between the LFTR and the Molten Salt Reactor. Both Kirk Sorensen and I agree that the LFTR is a type of MSR, and we have always assumed this. Yet there is a set of ideas associated with the LFTR that is not characteristic of all MSRs. To understand what is unique about the LFTR I would like to point to some differences between the LFTR and the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor, a French reactor concept.

Both the LFTR and the French TMSR concepts draw heavily on ORNL MSR reactor research from 1947 and 1980. However, French researcher take as their starting point ORNL research on a 1 fluid 1 GWe, MSBR that was conducted from 1967 onward. Thus the French focus is on the design of a large MSR with optimal breeding characteristics. The French focus remains on large molten salt thorium breeding reactors, but unlike ORNL reactors they are interested in the design of graphite free MSRs. Thus French researchers have rejected the one fluid, graphite moderated approach favored by the ORNL MSBR.

There are a number of distinct ideas a bout the LFTR that appear to be entirely absent from French thinking about the TMSR. For example the LFTR is conceived of as a relatively small, portable, factory manufactured, modular thorium fuel cycle Molten Salt Reactor. The LFTR concept focuses on cost lower measures including labor saving in reactor manufacture. The LFTR concept includes a number of none traditional concepts about reactor siting, including underwater siting, underground siting, and the recycling of fossil fuel power plant sites as LFTR.

David Walters describes some of the potential cost saving available if power plant sites are recycled as new LFTR sites.

The BIG savings, IMHO, is not necessarily on the ability to using the existing turbine/generator set. It's on all the other BOP (Balance of Plant). What are we talking about?

1. siting. already done, obviously.
2. grid access...with almost NO changes especially if generator at the end of the LFTR is the same size or near it as the old stoker it's replacing. A little more if we want to upgrade the MWs.
3. licenses for everything: accumulation of standard hazardous waste, water usage, fire fighting equipment, water discharges, maybe cooling towers, air cooled condensers, once through cooling. The list is endless and it's all a *savings*.
4. plant access by road, rail and water. All these are nicely built in because of the need to transport coal and having built the plant in the first place.
5. lay down yard. As the coal is reduced by burning, more and more of the dozens of acres of land used by coal storage areas is freed up. Tons and tons of space.
6. Physical equipment: water lines to and around the plant, bus rooms and switching centers for plant auxiliaries, main and aux. banks *in place and ready to use*.

Probably the savings list is endless.

This is typical LFTR thinking, which focuses not just on optimal reactor design in the abstract, but in cost savings and carbon replacement, As David Walters noted:

The BIGGEST advantage we have for a LFTR-in-Coal-out scenario is just that. We when we go COD on the LFTR, the breaker opens for the last time on the stoker, and we closed out a coal plant. Let wind and solar advocates try to make THAT claim!

A second major keynote to the LFTR is its modularity. Contributer Axil notes:

In systems engineering, modular design, or "modularity in design" is an approach that subdivides a system into smaller parts (modules) that can be independently created and then used in different systems to drive multiple functionalities. Besides reduction in cost (due to lesser customization, and less learning time), and flexibility in design, modularity offers other benefits such as augmentation (adding new solution by merely plugging in a new module), and exclusion.
Modular design is much more difficult to design and implement then a custom build approach since it requires the systems engineer to examine the full range of possibilities of a product line and define modules and appropriate interfaces between these modules.

A key feature of a system is that it is modular, flexible and adaptable. In general, it is commonly recognized in systems engineering that the broader the range of adaptability that a system is, the more successful and cost effective that the system will eventually be. These characteristics of the system ensure that the system is responsive to the needs of its broad user base over time. A good system must meet or exceed the expectations of a large and diverse range of users.

For example, a computer is divided up into a mother board, disks, CPU, internet interface, etc. A computer that does not provide this level of modularity will be unsuccessful in the market place since it does not offer the possibility for upgrade.

IMHO, it would be a good thing if the Lftr were modular.

What will make the Lftr modular, and how is that modularity achieved? It would be valuable to develop a consensus that modularity of design is an important design objective and that it is worth the effort to make the design modular.

Some Energy from Thorium contributers are more influenced by French thinking on the TMSR. David LeBlanc suggests

A graphite free core design does not necessarily need a much larger fissile inventory to start up IF you have a nice fully encompassing fertile blanket around the core to catch leakage neutrons.

In reactors without graphite, the neutrons can travel quite a long way before they finally are absorbed (or lost to leakage). Thus in designs without a blanket or only a partial one (as is the French TMSR design) you need a lot of fissile material to make sure those neutrons are absorbed and/or cause fissions quickly. If you have a full fertile blanket as is the case in some other designs then you can actually get by with a much lower fissile starting load and still manage to break even on breeding.

So no graphite equaling much more fissile is not always the case (granted it usually is).

Also I would add that the positive temp reactivity problem with using graphite is not a problem for 2 fluid designs (as most know) AND it is also not a problem for Single fluid designs with U238 added to denature (which most don't know).

Alex P., quoting ORNL 4812 disagreed with him:

contrary to my previous belief, breeding gain in the epithermal spectrum is INFERIOR than in the thermal one.
Quite the opposite I believed it happened.

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/ORNL-4812_chap2.pdf
"In the early days of the Molten-Salt Reactor Program, serious consideration was given to homogeneous reactors in which the core contained nothing but salt. These ideas were abandoned after calculations showed that the limited moderation by likely fluoride salt constituents alone would result in a thermal reactor with inferior breeding performance. Breeding appeared possible in intermediate-spectrum reactors, but their gains were not high enough to compensate for their higher fissile inventories".

We thus have not settled yet if the core of the LFTR will contain graphite, but several of us are inclined to that view. Kirk recently posted Several sections of ORNL 4528 and related sections of ORNL-4119, These documents, dating from the mid to late 1960's point to point to ORNL thinking headed toward a modular direction. The turn toward a single fluid large MSBR seemed to have deminished ORNL thinking about modularity, although designs of two single fluid near MSR converter emerged from ORNL in the early 1970's.

The LFTR then is a small economical MSR, that can still breed at a 1 to 1 ratio or greater. It can be factory built and can generate base load electricity. Because of its low capital costs, the LFTR can be used to supply not just base load power but mid load and even peak load electricity. It has the potential of supplying industrial process heat, and can be used for desalination, either by using its waste heat, or by using all of its heat to desalinate water. It can be air cooled, and thus can be used in dry regions. I exhibits siting flexibility, and should not requite large expansions of the grid.

The TMSR is usually conceived of a large reactor, and little attention has been paid to the unusual design, construction and siting features that characterize LFTR thinking.

Windmills or LFTRs?

I have argued that in 15 years, per watt of rated generation capacity it could It can cost less to install Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors to generate post carbon electricity. There would be enormous advantages to the LFTR:

LFTR would generated power when needed. Windmills produce power when the wind blows.

LFTRs can be located near sources of electrical demand. Windmills have to be located where the wind blows.

LFTRs can be located near to the existing electrical grid, eliminating the need for expensive additions to the grid. A single new windmill facility may requite hundreds of miles of new electrical transmission line, costing hundreds of million or even billions of dollars.

LFTRs could produce power at full capacity over 90% of the time. Windmills rarely can produce power at full capacity.

LFTR generation capacity does not change with the time of day or the season of the year. Windmills in many localities produce less power during the day than at night, and less power in the summer than during the winter.

LFTRs can produce power when electricity is most in demand. Windmills typically produce the most electricity when electricity is least in demand.

LFTRs require no fossil fuel backup. Many plans to increase wind generating capacity include increases in carbon-emitting natural gas backup generators.

LFTRs require no expensive and inefficient alternative backup systems. Some Windmill plans call for the use of expensive and inefficient Compressed Air Storage or Pumped Water Storage backup systems for wind generators.

LFTRs can be built at existing power plant locations, saving an enormous amount of money, and lessening existing power plant environmental impacts, while creating no new environmental intrusions. Windmill construction requires spending an enormous amount of money on new roads, electrical gathering capacity and electrical transmission lines. In addition there is the visual and sound intrusion of thousands of windmills which will blight the landscape.

LFTRs are consistent with the highest environmental values. Windmills kill birds and bats.

In short the LFTR is the preference of the true environmentalist. The Windmill is the preference of anti-ecological spendthrifts. Dollar for dollar the LFTR will produce much more electricity than the windmill, and produce it far more reliably. The Windmill will not produce electricity when consumers want it. The LFTR will. The Windmill will create far more environmental intrusions and will require huge expenditures in the construction of roads, electrical gathering equipment, and new electrical transmission lines. Windmills will require large numbers of CO2 emitting natural gas generating facilities, while LFTRs can be backed up by other LFTRs.

THE THORIUM MOLTEN SALT REACTOR: LAUNCHING THE THORIUM CYCLE WHILE CLOSING THE CURRENT FUEL CYCLE

French researchers of the Reactor Physics Group of the Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie Roepot very Promising results from their TMSR research. They are building a strong case for large non-Moderated Thorium Molten Salt Breeders. Such reactors would be very useful for Baseload power generators. The main draw back for a no moderator reactor would be the much larger starting charge required if TMSR/LFTR type reactors were expected to generate most electrical energy or to provide most energy for the national economy. A World Wide deployment by 2050 would creat a very large shortage of fissionable materials for start up charges even with graphite core reactors.

THE THORIUM MOLTEN SALT REACTOR: LAUNCHING

THE THORIUM CYCLE WHILE CLOSING THE CURRENT

FUEL CYCLE

E. MERLE-LUCOTTE, D. HEUER, M. ALLIBERT, V. GHETTA,

C. LE BRUN, R. BRISSOT, E. LIATARD, L. MATHIEU

LPSC, Université Joseph Fourier, IN2P3-CNRS, INPG

LPSC, 53, avenue des Martyrs, F-38026 Grenoble Cedex - France

ABSTRACT

Molten salt reactors, in the configuration presented here and called Thorium Molten Salt Reactor

(TMSR), are particularly well suited to fulfil the criteria defined by the Generation IV forum, and

may be operated in simplified and safe conditions in the Th/233U fuel cycle with fluoride salts. The

characteristics of TMSRs based on a fast neutron spectrum are detailed in this paper, focusing on

their excellent level of deterministic safety. We aimed at designing a critical TMSR able to burn

the Plutonium and the Minor Actinides produced in the currently operating reactors, and

consequently to convert this Plutonium into 233U. This leads to closing the current fuel cycle

thanks to TMSRs started with transuranic elements on a Thorium base, i.e. started in the Th/Pu

fuel cycle. We study the transition between the reactors of second and third generations to the

Thorium cycle in a European frame. -

------------------------------------------------

Conclusion

The Thorium Molten Salt reactor (TMSR) presented here with no moderator in the core appears as a

very promising, simple and suitable concept of molten salt reactor. The non-moderated TMSR

configurations considered in this paper, based on a fast neutron spectrum, present particularly

interesting characteristics. Their deterministic safety level is excellent. They can be started with a fuel

made from the TRU wastes produced in current LWRs. Their rather large initial fissile inventory does

not prevent fast deployment thanks to their good 233U breeding. The technology which in principle

does not involve the transportation of radioactive materials outside the reactor site as well as the

presence of 232U within the fuel can be considered as restricting proliferation risks.

The concept itself has some appealing aspects compared to earlier versions of MSRs. The reactor core

is extremely simple. Simulation calculations do not point to major reprocessing constraints. In

particular the fluxes considered should allow the batch mode reprocessing to be installed in the

vicinity of the reactor. Initial studies of the scientific feasibility of the on-line control of the salt

composition and of its chemical and physical properties have not unearthed a showstopper.

When it comes to Generation-4, it appears that the major nuclear energy powers have given a higher

priority to the SFR concept. This mostly reflects a justified confidence in a technology which,

although it has not yet reached all the performances expected for a GEN-4 reactor, has already been

successfully tested in numerous projects. But all the properties detailed in this paper, especially its

deterministic safety performances and its ability to reduce the radio-toxicity of wastes currently

produced, put the TMSR in a very favourable position to fulfil the conditions defined by the GEN IV

International Forum. Moreover this TMSR concept may be very appealing to countries which hold

important thorium resources and have some remaining adjustment margins in the definition of their

nuclear energy policy. The TMSR is thus an excellent candidate to produce the large amounts of

nuclear energy that the world will need in the near future.

The French View on Graphite in MSRs

The potential scalability of the LFTR is a powerful argument for its adoption as an energy solution or the energy solution. There are two primary limits of LFTR scalability. They would be

1. The ability to produce LFTR's with at leasr a one to one conversion ratio. That is the bility to produce as much nuclear fuel as they consume
2. The availability of as much fissionable start up charges as would be required by large scale deployment.

The conversion ratio would be a matter of LFTR design. But there is a potential constraint on the required input of fissionable materials to start the LFTR. In all reactors moderators act to increase reactivity. The best moderators are heavy water and graphite. Early reactors which used natural uranium as fuel required either graphite or heavy water as moderators. Light water is a significantly less powerful moderator than either graphite or heavy water. Graphite moderated reactors require a significantly smaller start up charge - perhaps 25% or even less fissionable material to achieve criticlity. Unmoderated reactors require far more fissionable material in order to maintain a chain reaction. It LFTRs the carrier salts function as partial moderators. Thus it is possible to operate a LFTR without graphite, but its opperation will require a far larger inventory of fissionable materials. That means more fissionable materials for the start up charge. Thus the use of graphite would be an emportant componant of LFTR scalability. It would be possible to build a large number of LFTR's without but that would require consideably more enriched U-235 or more U-233 or more Pu-239. Thus the use of Graphite in LFTR's would be highly desirable.

Recent French research, however, has pointed to problems or at least questions about the use of graphite as a moderator or structural material in MSRs. ORNL researchers were aware of the effects of neutron radiation on graphite. As The French researchers noted:

This concerns in particular how the graphite reacts to irradiation exposure. Beyond a certain degree of damage, it becomes the seat of swelling. Graphite’s life span is determined bythe time it takes to reach a fluence limit,

In addition to the well known problem with graphite swelling, French researchers (L. Mathieu,D. Heuer, R. Brissot, C.LeBrun, E. Liatard, J.-M. Loiseaux, O. Méplan, E. Merle-Lucotte, A. Nuttinand, J. Wilson, C. Garzenne, D.Lecarpentier, and E.Walle) believe that they had spotted another problem with graphite. They descrabed the classic ORNL graphite moderated MSBR:

Our standard system is a 1 GWe graphite moderated reactor. Its operating temperature is 630 C and its thermodynamic efficiency is 40 %. The graphite matrix comprises a lattice of hexagonal elements with 15 cm sides. The total diameter of the matrix is 3.20 m. Its height is also 3.20 m. The density of this nuclear grade graphite is set to 1.86. The salt runs through the middle of each of the elements, in a channel whose radius is 8.5 cm. One third of the 20 m3 of fuel salt circulates in external circuits and, as a consequence, outside of the neutron flux. A thorium and graphite radial blanket surrounds the core so as to improve the system’s regeneration capability. The properties of the blanket are such that it stops approximately 80 % of the neutrons, thus protecting external structures from irradiation while improving regeneration. We assume that the 233 U produced in the blanket is extracted within a 6 month period.

They note the importance of the size of channels in the graphite:
The size of the channels in which the salt circulates is a fundamental parameter of the reactor. Since the size of the hexagons is kept constant in all of our studies, the size of the channels determines the moderation ratio. Changing the radius of the channels modifies the behavior of the core, placing it anywhere between a very thermalized neutron spectrum and a relatively fast spectrum. The cross section resonances of the materials present in the corehave a strong impact on the neutronic behavior of the reactor.

They noted something that appeared to have escaped ORNL researchers. As the heat of graphite increases a positive coefficiency or reactivity effect,

comes from an energy shift of the thermal part of theneutron spectrum(around 0.2eV), due to heating of the moderator. This shift increases the fission rate because of a smalllow energy(0.3eV) resonance in the fission cross section of 233U. It simpact on the stability decreases as the amount of graphite in the core decreases and as the influence of th ethermal portion of the spectrum weakens.

Now if you are a really cool cat, you know that this means that there is a potential reactor safety problem related the heating of graphite in a reactor in which U-233 is being burned. Sacre bleu! But getting rid of the graphite helps. But what the French researchers are really trying to say is, if you build a 1 GW Graphite moderated MSR and run it at full blast, you are going to shorten the lifespan of the graphite moderator, by subjecting it to a lot of neutron radiation and heat. Furthermore heating the graphite creats an effect that makes the reactor less safe.

The French researchers tell us:

Since the safety aspect cannot be circumvented in the design process of a nuclear reactor, we consider that this constraint is necessarily satisfied. Moreover, we consider only those configurations whose total feedback coefficient, not just the salt feedback coefficient, is negative. Except in the case where the size of the reactor is reduced dramatically, leading to a significantly increased neutron flux, the total feedback coefficient is negative only for either very thermalized or fast neutron spectra. The first option implies a small fissile matter inventory and a weak neutron flux. When submitted to such a flux, the graphite undergoes little damage and its life span is reasonably long.

On the other hand, captures in the moderator deteriorate the breeding ratio significantly. If a reactor system does not need to regenerate its fuel, then this very thermalized configuration may be suitable.

Thus the French researchers tell us:

Decreasing the specific power of the reactor (by increasing its size and/or decreasing the total power generated) leads directly to a decreased flux intensity and, as a consequence, extends the graphite’s life span

They add:

This, however, increases in the same proportion the per GWe fissile matter inventory, without providing a very satisfactory solution.

Now ir sounds like the French want to get rid of the graphite real bad. But note that their study focused on a 1 GWe reactor - the MSBR - opearating at 630 C. But there is an exception if the reactor were dramatically smaller. I wonder if say 100 MWe would be considered dramatically smaller in France.

The French operate their electrical grid with a bunch of huge reactors. They do not run air conditioners in the summer, and if there is an August heat wave, a whole lot of old French men and women are going to die. In Texas we value our old people, and want to keep them around, so we have a big summer electrical reserve. I maintain that any acceptable solution to the energy crisis will keep my air conditioner running all through the Dallas summer. In Texas now the reserve power generators run on natural gas. it would b nice to switch that system to nuclear. Big French reactors won't do the trik, because they cost tooo much, but little LFTR's that generate 100 MWe would do the trick, and they don't have to run real hot for efficiency. It would be a blessing if Kirk Sorensen would design one that could be built and operated at a low price. Now Kirk has not spelled out details to me, but I'll bet he has got a few tricks up his sleave, that would give a graphite moderator a reasonably long life, and will take care of those safety issues that have so worried the French.

If you want to understand the writings of French scientists, you should read Bruno Latour. Latour notes that political elements are never very deeply burried in the text of French scientific papers. One always needs to look for wiggle room in reports of scientific research. The French have left wiggle room in their statements related to the use of graphite in small LFTR type reactors. Considering the advantages I for one am not ready to put paid to the graphite moderated Big Lots reactor yet.

‘‘Why wasn't the LFTR developed a long time ago?”

Two years ago I identified Molten Salt Reactor technology as a critical key to the world's energy future. My knowledge of the MSR goes back to my childhood when my father was a pioneer researcher on MSR chemistry. ORNL where my father worked, built two MSR prototypes in the 1950's and 60's. Both were successful and meet all of their research goals. ORNL scientists and engineers were making steady progress toward developing a large MSR to produce electric power when Washington shut down the project. Scientist involved in the project continued to believe in the MSR concept. In his memoirs Alvin Weinberg asked, "Why was MSR research terminated?" His answer was

"the fast breeder arrived first and was therefore able to consolidate its political position within the AEC. But there was another, more technical reason. The molten-salt technology is entirely different from the technology of any other reactor. To the inexperienced, molten-salt technology is daunting. This certainly seemed to be Milton Shaw's attitude toward molten salts—and he after all was director of reactor development at the AEC during the molten-salt development. Perhaps the moral to be drawn is that a technology that differs too much from an existing technology has not one hurdle to overcome—to demonstrate its feasibility—but another even greater one—to convince influential individuals and organizations who are intellectually and emotionally attached to a different technology that they should adopt the new path. This, the molten-salt system could not do. It was a successful technology that was dropped because it was too different from the main lines of reactor development.

There were lots of reasons why this was a mistake. The particular form of Molten Salt Reactor which I saw as promising for the near energy future was a form which used fluoride salts as coolants and fuel carriers and which operated on a thorium fuel cycle. That sort of reactor is called the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor in Europe, and the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) in the United States. There were as I said a lot of reasons why I thought that the LFTR was the solution to the World;s energy problem in 2007. The were as follows:

1. The LFTR would provide sustainable energy. There is enough recoverable thorium in the earths crust to provide the human population of the world its energy needs for millions of years.

2, The LFTR is safe.

3. The LFTR is produces a tiny fraction of the nuclear waste produced by ordinary reactors.

4, The LFTR produces either little or no plutonium.

5. Plutonium produced by the LFTR would not be explosive.

6. TheLFTR can be used to dispose of nuclear weapons grade fissionable material.

7. The LFTR can be used to dispose of nuclear waste.

9. LFTRs can be built at very low cost. Perhaps as little as $1.00 a watt of generating capacity, a cost far less than competing renewables.

10. The LFTR can be mass produced. Enough to supply the world's energy needs can be built in 30 years.. Carbon energy sources can be replaced by LFTRs by 2050 given a concerted effort.

11. LFTRs can produce industrial process heat

12. LFTRs can be operated as co-generators.

13 LFTR's can supply district heat.

14 LFTR waste heat can be used to desalinate sea water.

15, LFTR can provide mid load and peak load electrical generation capacity.

16. Instead of producing nuclear waste, the LFTR will produce rare and valuable minerals.

I realize that the above list sounds as if I was formerly employed as an Indian River Snake Oil salesman. But these claims can sustained by in a variety of ways as has been argued on Nuclear Green and Energy from Thorium. As for the Snake Oil let me assure you that I never sold it, but I drink it every day, and that explains that I am hale and hardy even though I looked forward to celebrating my hundred and thirty-eighth birthday in July. I guess the joke means that I am not going to write about my intended topic this morning. I really do want to compare the modular two fluid reactor of ORNL-4528, with ORNL single fluid small reactors designed in the 1970's. That will have to wait for another day.

David Ahlport's anti-nuclear fiction

In Tuesday the Wall Street Journal's online edition, Keith Johnson blogged about an interview with Greenpeace honcho Phil Radford, who is your usual garden variety Greenpeace anti-nuclear fanatic. Rod Adams has already don a good job of responding to Radford's anti-nuclear line so I will only note in passing that Radford, allegedly a PhD, recited the usual litany of Greenpeace anti-nuclear bumper sticker lines:

"Nuclear plants are sitting ducks for terrorists.
It’s the most expensive way to essentially boil water.
There’s the waste issue,
there’s nuclear proliferation,
the subsidies".

You see there, either the fellow is not very smart, or he thinks that the readers of the Johnson's Wall Street Journal are not very smart. Needles to say Redford ran into a buzz saw of criticism from WSJ online readers who commented on the post. But David Ahlport, a self styled progressive who has offered a guest post on Joe Romm's Climate Progress offered the classic counter-factual ant-nuclear arguments:

A. The federal money spend on nuclear waste and anti-proliferation, gigantically dwarfs all total federal spending on Energy

Oh wow David, I thought that the reactor operators were were paying the Federal Government to take care of their nuclear waste, and that the government wasn't living up to its end of the deal. So the reactor operators are not paying a second time to store the same waste they are paying the government to store. Now is David confused or is he lying about who pays for nuclear waste?

Now the government does spend money on nonproliferation programs, but not a gigantic amount as Ahlport suggests. Further it is not clear what this has to do with the use of nuclear generator electricity in the United States. The last time I checked, no one had used an American power reactor to assist in building a nuclear weapon. The American anti-proliferation does things like trying to prevent Iran form using Pakistani technology it acquired from Pakistani gangsters to build nuclear weapons. Ahlport is just over the top when he claims that non-existent federal spending on nuclear waste and the modest federal anti-proliferation effort "gigantically dwarfs all total federal spending on Energy." Maybe David has mixed up waste and non-proliferation with weapons spending. The United States Government pays quite a lot to maintain its nuclear weapons and nuclear armed forces. The British American Security Information Council tells us that last count the United States spent $7.5 trillion in developing, producing, deploying and maintaining its nuclear weapons (2006 dollars) between 1940 and 2005. Compared to what it has spent for its nuclear weapons, what the United States spends to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons or to support the use of nuclear power as an energy source is very modest.

Next Ahlport tells us:

B. Nuclear can’t provide it’s own private capital financing

last time I checked every wind and solar project in the United States receives federal and state subsidies, including in the case of solar projects rather large very large federal subsidies for investments. In contrast, the nuclear investors receive loan guarantees that do not cost tax payers money unless the investors default on their borrowing.

C. Nuclear provides very little of it’s own R&D financing

fact research and development for the current generation of nuclear plants was paid for by the reactor manufacturers, not the federal government. At any rate all the reactor manufacturers are foreign owned, and of course if the governments of those countries pay for reactor R&D why then Americans get the benefit without paying anything.

Ahlport tells use:

The citing + construction of Nuclear power plants is very slow (i.e. Next batch of US reactors aren’t expected until 11 years from now, at the earliest.)

The 11 year perspective is a little long, but it does take the NRC 42 months to approve a nuclear license, and Westinghouse estimates that it takes 3 years to complete construction of an AP-1000 Reactor. We are not going to see any reactor construction begin before 2012 or be complete before 2015, but this is hardly disastrous. The last time I checked there was a five year backlog on new windmill orders, so that means that a wind project that is put on the drawing boards today is not going to get built until 2015. So when Ahlport tells us:

Nuclear is only a viable option if Time and Money aren’t considered to be important.

he ignores the fact that renewable energy generation sources cost money too, and do not appear when his fairy godmother waves her magic wand.

The Energy Black Swan at a Dollar a Watt

In some respects the LFTR does not qualify as a black swan. Certainly not by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's standards. Its emergence was far from random. There could scarcely be a better provenance for a reactor idea than to have been first proposed by Eugene Wigner, Alvin Weinberg and Gale Young in 1945. To this we have to add the contributions of Harold Urey. Raymond C. Briant, Ed Bettis, and many others. I would also add my father, C.J. Barton, Sr., to the list. An idea whose fathers included to Nobel-prize winning scientists and the patent holder for the light-water Reactor can hardly be considered highly improbable. It was however, daring, and once Alvin Weinberg's other invention, the light-water reactor, entered popular culture, along with the reactor dome and cooling tower, the liquid core reactor concept became something of an aberration in the folk concept. After all the worse thing could happen to a reactor was a core melt down, and now those crazy Oak Ridge scientists were trying to melt the reactor's core deliberately.

The Molten Salt reactor was a black swan in the since that it violated a common public perception of what constituted order. A liquid core reactor is inherently disorderly concept in a folk universe that desperately wants reactor core's to be solid and not melt.

"It came from Oak Ridge" could have been the title of a 1950's horror movie, in which a humble beast is accidentally radiated in Oak Ridge, and is transformed into a giant mutant monster that has it in for a large city. Late in my father's scientific career, he was asked to write a report for the National Academy of Science. Reviewers complained that my father had referenced too many ORNL researchers. My father's response was that the best research in the world for his topic - the environmental transport of radioisotopes - was being done in Oak Ridge. When I was a quasi intern at ORNL in 1971, the Laboratory was buzzing about CO2 and anthropogenic global warming. ORNL was the first scientific institution in the world to take the danger of AGW seriously. In the 1970's ORNL researchers were warning of about the environmental dangers of burning coal. So called "environmental experts" like Amory Lovins decided that they knew better than Oak Ridge Scientists who were in their estimation "shills for the nuclear industry." Thus, so called environmentalists ignored the problem of CO2 emissions and Anthropogenic Global Warming. After all, "it came from Oak Ridge."

The Molten Salt Reactor was brilliantly conceived by Oak Ridge scientists and engineers in the 1940's and 50's. By the end of the 1950's the AEC was beginning to recognize that the Oak Ridgers were on to something. But ORNL's MSR had a rival, the fair-haired boy from Chicago, favored by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor. With its promise of almost unlimited Plutonium, the LMFBR was not the best candidate to provide American power reactors with a sustainable fuel supply, but it did assure the Atomic Energy Commission of a steady stream of nuclear weapons stretching into the distant future. That Plutonium was not a good nuclear fuel for Light Water Reactors was never a matter of concern.

The LMFBR had the potential to breed more fissionable material than the MSR, but plutonium could never break even as a nuclear fuel in a light water reactor. Thorium could, if the reactor used U-233 it could produce as much U-233 from thorium as it burned. But the Atomic Energy Commission did not think that U-233 was good for making bombs, so the LMFBR got most of the money. Argonne knew that no matter how dangerous sodium was, the Atomic Energy Commission wanted plutonium, and so its LMFBR always had the inside track. inevitably as the Vietnam war ate into the capacity of the the United States Government to to finance science research. Alvin Weinberg had made himself to a target of AEC wrath by being too out spoken about nuclear safety. So Weinberg had to go, and it was easy to get rid of the MSR at the same time. With Weinberg out of the way, the MSR became an impossible sell. It came from Oak Ridge, and was not useful in making nuclear weapons.

It is of course an improbable story that the solution to the global energy crisis was identified by Eugene Wigner and his associates during World War 2, and that the plans or solving the problem have existed in government archives since the 1970's and continues to be ignored. This is a far more bizarre story than Nassim Taleb's account of problems being solved by unexpected random mutations of ideas, Yet when I looked at the question of how much it would cost a few days ago, the answer that i found was perhaps as little as a dollar a watt. That was less than I had expected, a lot less. It was a exciting, but frightening too. None of us wants to look like a fool. The answer that it would cost as little as $1 a watt seemed almost too good to be true.

The Road Not Taken

The idea of a fluid fueled thorium breeder was first proposed by Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner, together with Wigner's protégé Alvin Weinberg, and highly regarded engineer Gale Young in 1945. Between 1945 and 1958 Wigner and Weinberg who rose to be director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory had focused on a heavy water fluid fuel reactor the aqueous homogeneous reactor. But in 1948, an young Oak Ridge engineer, Ed Bettis, invented a second type of fluid fueled reactor, the Molten Salt Reactor, which was to demonstrate far greater potential as a thorium breeder and power production reactor.

Between 1950 and 1976 Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed the revolutionary Molten Salt Reactor concept. R. C. Briant and Alvin Weinberg explained in 1958 that there were

Two very different schools of reactor design have emerged since the first reactors were built. One approach, exemplified by solid fuel reactors, holds that a reactor is basically a mechanical plant; the ultimate rationalization is to be sought in simplifying the heat transfer machinery. The other approach, exemplified by liquid fuel reactors, holds that a reactor is basically a chemical plant; the ultimate rationalization is to be sought in simplifying the handling and reprocessing of fuel.

Briant and Weinberg added:

At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory we have chosen to explore the second approach to reactor development. . . . it has long been recognized that a liquid fuel which did not require high pressure, in which thorium or its compounds could dissolve, and which did not decompose under radiation would indeed be a major invention for the reactor art. . . .

we have been investigating another class of fluids which satisfies all three of the requirements for a desirable fluid fuel: large range of uranium and thorium solubility, low pressure, and no radiolytic gas production. These fluids, first suggested by R. C. Briant, are molten mixtures of UF4 and ThF4 with fluorides of the alkali metals, . . .

Many scientists are still convinced that

intrinsic [Molten Salt] reactor characteristics address current concerns about waste management, fissile resources, safety, and economics.

Scientists have pointed to the ability of the MSR to not only largely eliminate the problem of nuclear waste from its on spent fuel, but to make the nuclear waste of other reactors, largely harmless. In addition the use of MSRs to destroyed plutonium extracted from dismantled nuclear weapons has been proposed by scientists in Russia and the United States.

The Molten Salt Reactor was developed

During the 1960's, scientists and engineers built and tested an experimental Molten Salt Reactor that served as a proof of concept. They also worked on the design and development of a 1000 MWe MSR, and more briefly on a 250 MWe MSR design. At that time the estimated cost of a MSR was roughly equal to the cost of a light water reactor. Beginning about 1970 the cost of Light water reactors began a dramatic price rise that far exceeded the rate of inflation. Among the factors driving the price increase were increases in reactor size and complexity, as well as added safety features. The design of the MSR actually shifted toward greater simplicity in the late 1960's and remained relatively fixed in the 1970's. The safety issues that plagued the Light Water Reactor in the 1970's were not problems with the MSR, because many of the LWR safety problems were simply not present in the MSR design. Although an AEC document WASH-1222 complained that the MSR was a less mature technology than either the Light Water Reactor or the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor. In fact the LWR suffered from such serious design instabilities that last minute design alterations cost LWR purchasers tens of billions of dollars. Oak Ridge MSR designers reported that highly detailed $700 million development program - $2.4 Billion in 2009 dollars - would produce a viable commercial reactor - while the supposedly mature Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor ended up costing over the United States government over $20 billion in 2009 dollars without ever producing a viable commercial prototype.

Thus in 2009 the 1970's to 1980's 1 GWe MSR would have cost about half the current cost of LWRs, while offering superior technology, and decreased operating expenses. The MSR would have cost less, because it was simpler, required less materials and fewer labor hours to build. The MSR had many inherent safety features that were absent from LWRs. Thus money does not have to be spent compensating for inherent safety defects in MSR design.

In addition to the savings from shifting from LWRs to MSRs, shifting from large reactors, to small, modular, factory built reactors offered an opportunity for significant construction savings. Researchers found that work disorganization was a significant cause of conventional reactor costs. Over 25 percent of workers time in reactor construction projects was wasted by work disorganization. Shifting labor from a construction site to a factory would help to solve the work flow problem. in addition building a large numbers of of small reactors in a factory, increases the rational for the use of labor savings devices on assembly lines. A rapid construction cycle, means less money would be spent on accrued interest. The small rapidly manufactured, low cost MSR is called a LFTR, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, In addition to the cost saving options already mentioned, other options are possible. It is at least conceivable that LFTR costs as low as 1 Billion Dollars per GW are possible. This is a very preliminary conclusion, but I believe that much more research should be undertaken. However, It is safe to say that some tentative evidence suggests that LFTR capital costs may run as low as $1 billion per GW, and that is a fair likelihood that LFTR costs will run below $2 Billion per GWe. Furthermore, LFTR research that would be preliminary to building pre-production prototype could run as low as $2.4 billion, and we could say that $5 billion is a not unreasonable estimate of the required research investment. Again further research would be desirable and would probably add to our certainty about cost estimates.

Streaming Opera from KING FM on Nuclear Green

Nuclear Green is the first, and so far only Energy/Environment blog to bring you streaming opera from KING FM. I hope you enjoy. I suspect that linking to porn would bring me more hits, but might get me kicked off Blogger!

1959 Met Broadcast "Don Carlos" by Verdi

Verdi: Don Carlo (April 4, 1959) by Giuseppe Verdi

Conductor Fausto Cleva - 1959(LI)

Orchestra - Metropolitan Opera

Chorus - Metropolitan Opera

Don Carlo - Giulio Gari

Filippo II - Jerome Hines

Rodrigo - Robert Merrill

Il Grande Inquisitore - Hermann Uhde

Un Frate - Louis (Luigi) Sgarro

Elisabetta di Valois - Leonie Rysanek

La principessa Eboli - Blanche Thebom

Tebaldo - Madelaine Chambers

Il Conte di Lerma - Robert Nagy

Un Araldo Reale - William Olvis

Una voce dal cielo - Martina Arroyo

An old man with Ada

ORNL-4528 and the two fluid modular MSR

Kirk and I have been separately looking at ORNL-4528, a document that sets out ORNL thinking about a modular two fluid, graphite moderated MSR project. This concept was developed at ORNL between 1966 and 1967 and ORNL-4528 documents thinking about the concept during that brief period. This design work is of current interest because of interest in small factory build LFTRs in the Energy from Thorium community. ORNL's interest in modular MSRs was motivated by somewhat different concerns. For ORNL scientists, the lifespan of a MSR Graphite core was am issue of major concern. The limited lifespan of the graphite core necessitated periodic reactor shutdown for core replacement. The use of small modular reactors allowed a generation plant to continue operating at 75% of capacity while one core was being replaced. The replacement of the smaller chore of the modular reactor would also have been a somewhat easier task.

The basic purpose of ORNL-4528 differed from other MSR designs between 1962 and 72. Unlike other reactor system design projects ORNL-4528 was not written to as a part of an ongoing development program. Rather it was written after the two fluid line of development it represented had been dropped in favor of a single fluid design. ORNL-4528 was one of five 1 GWe MSR designs developed between 1961 and 1971 by ORNL or by associated engineering firms. The purpose of the other 4 designs was explained by ORNL-5018:

The objectives of this activity are: (I) to develop the conceptual
design for a commercial 1000 MW(e) MSBR in sufficient detail to identify the major areas im which additional technology development is required and to produce meaningful estimates of the nuclear and economic performances of this reactor type, (2) to develop the design criteria and conceptual design for a molten-salt demonstration reactor that will provide the information necessary for construction of commercial MSBRs in sufficient detail to identify additional technology development which is required for construction of the demonstration reactor and to provide improved estimates of the capital and operating costs for the demonstration reactor, (3) to develop the design criteria and conceptual design for a molten-salt test reactor in sufficient detail to identify additional
technology development which is required for construction of the test reactor and to provide improved estimates of the capital and operating costa for the test reactor, and (4) to develop the design criteria and conceptual design for a molten-salt teat reactor mockup in sufficient detail to identify additional technology development which is required for construction of the test reactor mockup and to provide improved estimates of the capital and operating costs for the mckup.

An additional important objective of this activity is the examination of alternate reactor types such as molten-salt converter reactors using uranium or plutonium fuel makeup as well as uses for molten-salt reactors other than large central station electric power generation in sufficient detail to assess the likely economic importance of alternate molten-salt reactor types. Limited conceptual design work would be carried out on alternate reactor types which show promise.

Because the line of research document led by ORNL-4528, its intent was not to offer clues for future development, but to document a terminated line of research. Many ORNL scientists, including my father, were not in agreement with the decision to abandon the two fluid approach, their continued believe in the soundness of their views, may have motivated the desire to document the modular two fluid design.

At any rate the design documented by ORNL-4528 is far from mature and contains flaws. I would encourage readers to find flaws and comment on them.

ORNL-4528
UC-80 - Reactor Technology

TWO-FLUID MOLTENSALT BREEDER REAmOR DESIGN STUDY
(STATUS AS OF JANUARY 1, 1968)
R. C. Robertson
R. B. Briggs
O. L. Smith
E. S. Bettis

ABSTRACT
A conceptual design study of a 1000 Mw(e) thermal breeder power station based on a two-fluid MSBR was commenced in 1966 as part of a program to determine whether a molten-salt reactor using the thorium-U-233 fuel cycle could produce electric power at sufficiently low cost to be of interest and at the same time show good utilization of U.S. nuclear fuel resources. This report covers the progress made in the study up to August 1967, at which time the two-fluid MSBR work was set aside in order to study a single-fluid MSBR concept. The latter became of interest at that time due to the discovery that protactinium and other fission products could be separated from a uranium-and-thorium-bearing fuel salt by reductive extraction into liquid bismuth.

The two-fluid MSBR is graphitemoderated and -reflected, with a 'LiF-BeFz-UFe fuel salt circulated through the core and a 'LiF-ThF4-BeF2 blanket salt circulated through separate flow channels distributed throughout the core, as well as in a surrounding under moderated region. The fissings raise the temperature of the fuel salt to about 1300 F and that of the blanket salt to about 1250 F. Heat is removed from the salts in shell-and-tube heat exchangers to raise the temperature of a circulating NaBF4-NaF coolant salt to about 1150°FbThe co$ant salt transports the heat to steam generators and reheaters to provide 3500-psia 1000 F/l000 F steam for a conventional turbine generator.

The conceptual design was based on use of four reactors and the associated heat transfer systems in a socalled modular arrangement to supply steam to a single turbine-generator. This made it practical to consider replacement of an entire reactor vessel assembly after the core graphite received its allowable exposure to neutrons. The total fluence at which it was thought that additional graphite dimensional changes would become excessive was taken as 3 x neutrons/cm2 (E > 50 kev), or about eight years of full-power operation.

All portions of the systems in contact with the fluoride or fluoroborate salts would be fabricated of Hastelloy N that has a small amount of titanium added to improve the resistance to radiation damage. The graphite would be a specially coated grade having low gas permeability to xenon and better resistance to radiation damage than conventional material. The two-fluid concept involves joining graphite core elements to Hastelloy N tubing using a brazing process developed at ORNL.

The reactors and associated systems would be housed in concrete cells to provide biological shielding and double containment of all radioactive materials. Plant flowsheets and layouts were developed sufficiently during the study to give an indication of feasibility and to give a basis for cost estimates, but no optimization studies were made. Safety aspects were considered throughout the design effort, but no formal safety analysis was completed.

Fuel and blanket salts would be continuously processed in a nearby cell to remove fission products and to recover the bred product. The processing rate would correspond to removal of uranium and protactinium from the blanket on a 3-day cycle and rareearth fission products from the core on a 6-y cycle. Since no conceptual designs for the chemical plant were completed, cost estimates could not be on a definitive basis. The tentatively estimated fuel cycle cost is about 0.5 mill/kwhr, which includes the fixed charges and operating costs for the processing equipment, the fuel inventory charge, and the credit for bred fuel. Graphite replacement costs, which are not included, would add about 0.2 mill/kWhr.

The tentatively estimated total construction cost of a 1ooo-Mw(e) MSBR station, based on the early 1968 value of the dollar, is about $141 per kilowatt. The power production cost for a privately owned station, based on fixed charges of 13.7% and 80% plant factor, is about 4 mills/kwhr. The net thermal efficiency of the plant would be about 44.9%. The off-gas, fuel processing, afterheat removal, and maintenance systems needed further investigation at the time the study was suspended, and the limited performance of the graphite undoubtedly restricts the design and imposes a maintenance penalty, but the study did not disclose
any aspects which indicated that major technological discoveries would be required to design a two- fluid molten-salt reactor power statiohThe major concern was whether mechanical failure of graphite tubes in the reactor core would cause the effective lifetime of the core to be significantly less than the eight years imposed by the effects of irradiation on the graphite.

Update 4/16/09: Kirk is publishing sections of ORNL-4528 on Energy from Thorium.

LFTR Cost may run as low as 1 Billion per GWe of generating capacity

Yesterday I argued that a klawed 1970s computer model for Light Water Reactor costs had mislead the ORNL staff members who fail to see the competitive cost advantage of MSR technology over LWR technology. I argued that the technological advantage of the MSR still held. ORNL-TM-7207 assumed that the cost relationship between MSRs and LWRs assumed by ORNL-4541 (1971) was still valid, but the estimated cost of LWRs offered by ORNL-TM-7207 is far lower than what was actually the case in the index year of 1978. ORNL-TM-7207 stated that its cost estimates were based on computer modeling of reactor costs, rather than actual construction costs. However, it retrospective it is obvious that computer models of 1970's reactor costs used by ORNL was seriously flawed, and failed to capture reactor price increases between 1970 and 1980. The MSR design indexed for the DMSR was based on the the 1970 MSBR, and unlike LWRs had not undergone significant evolution. Such was not the case for the LWRs of the 1970's. And indeed in 1980 when ORNL-TM-7207 was published, the design of LWRs was continuing to evolve as the result of the Three Mile Island accident.

Thus the comparable price of LWRs and MSBRs ca. 1970 could not and should not be assumed for 1978 and even less so for the post Three Mile Island environment. The reason for this lack of evolution in MSR design can nor be fully explained by a lack of MSR design research. At least one major MSR design study emerged after the publication of ORNL-4541. But it should be noted that the MABR design had been relatively fixed at ORNL during the 1970's. There were obvious reasons why this was the case. Compared to the LWRs of 1970, 1978 or for that matter 2009, the MSBR arguably represented a significantly better form of nuclear technology. The evolution of the LWR since 1970 represents an unsatisfactory attempt to bring the LWR up with the potential of the MSBR. The MSBR was under no pressure to evolve, because it set a mark which the LWR could not equal at any price.

I believe that the case I make about the post 1978 relationship between MSBR and LWR costs requires more proof. As I noted the cost relationship between the two, set out in ORNL-TM-7207, is based on a data set found in ORNL-4541. An alternative approach to verifying the cost relationship I suggested yesterday, would be to reprice the ORNL-4541 cost estimates by determining 2009 prices. This would be a serious project, and would require much more that my once over lightly approach, but it would yield a far more definitive estimate of 2009 LFTR costs.

I believe that it is this cost advantage that lies at the heart of the case for a LFTR based energy future, I believe that this argument can and should be subjected to further tests. In particular fairly detailed design studies of two and one fluid MSR designs published by ORNL in 1979 and 71 contained fairly detailed cost information.

Until 1967 ORNL had envisioned a two fluid commercial MSR design. However, that year ORNL Reactor chemist discovered the Bismuth Protactinium recovery process which allowed thorium breeding in a single fluid core reactor. The single core reactor approach was considered advantageous By ORNL because it eased core graphite problems. The improvement in graphite performance was considered desirable enough to justify a switch from a one fluid 1 GWe commercial design.

ORNL MSBR had considered the possibility of both 1 GWe and 250 MWe modular two fluid designs. Both contain data that is relevant to LFTR costs. ORNL-4528 is especially interesting because it describes a facility powered by 4 250 MWe MSRs. In addition we have the 1962 Sargent & Lundy Report CAPITAL COST EVALUATION, 1000 MWe MOLTEN SALT CONVERTER REACTOR POWER PLANTS. This study was prepared under contract from ORNL. Unfortunately the Sargent & Lundy report was the most detailed, and it was perpared when thinking about large MSR power generation projects was thew least evolved. I am pointing these studies out because they serve as good starting points for determining LFTR costs.

Sargent & Lundy estimated the construction cost of the MSR to have been $65,481,000 1962 dollars, say 460 million 2009. No one who knows about power generation capitol cost would take that figure seriously. ORNL-3996 suggested 103 million in direct construct costs and another 30 million in indirect costs, and $110 million in interest, all in 1966 dollars. ORNL-3996 appears to have attempted to find a more realistic picture of commercial MSR costs., and we get a total cost of $243 Million 1966 dollars, or 1.6 billion 2009 dollars.

ORNL-4528 estimated facility costs to run to $146 million, about the equivalent estimate for a 1 GWe LWR facility was estimated to cost in 1967. ORNL-4541 estimated capitol costs for a 1 GWe MSR was 202 Million 1970 dollars, including 30 million accumulated interest during construction. Assuming another 200 million in interest we get a total price tag of 400 million to tax payers. That translates to 2.64 billion 2009 dollars. I take note of the fact that my Thursday calculation of MSR cost were off by a billion dollars or so, no doubt because the DMSR study did not include the cost of interest in their calculations. So we have a little reason for confidence in our ORNL-4541 cost estimate. There is also egg on my face as a consequence of my little calculation error of Thursday. I don't suppose you would believe me if i said that it was the first time I had ever made a mistake? The second time? Oh well.

ORNL-4528 looks like it calculated contingencies too low, way too low probably and underestimated interest accumulated during construction. That gets us a figure that is about 10% less that the ORNL-4541 cost estimate. There are other ample opportunities for fudging on the 1967 cost estimate, thus ORNL-4528 and ORNL-4541 are assuming the same universe of capital costs. This is not terrribly shocking since Roy C. Robertsons name went on the front cover of ORNL-3996, ORNL-4528, and ORNL-4541, and Ed Bettis's name went on the front cover of the first two.

I realize that I am pushing my analysis to a level of obtuseness that has long sent me readers packing, but there is a point here, and one that would make a nice master's thesis for a nuclear engineering student. That point is that in the 1962 to 1970 ORNL cost estimates for MSR power plants were not just off the top of the head guesses, and thus would be serious starting points for for attempts to better determine LFTR costs.

Lets go back to the 2.64 billion calculation, the inflation adjusted costs of the 1970 ORNL-4541 cost estimate. Let us assume that factor production decreases overall cost by 20% and that the rapid manufacture decreases accumulated interest by 2/3rds. Further let us assume that by recycling old power plant sites we are able to save 5% on capital costs. Finally assume a 30% cost savings due to the learning curve enjoyed by serial manufacturing of hundreds of LFTRs. That brings our capitol costs down to the neighborhood of 1.2 Billion dollars. This is lmost too good to be true, and needs more work,

I do see my goal, however. Lets see what we can reasonably say. First that ORNL made a realistic study of commercial MSR and noted that MSR costs at that time would have been similar to LWR costs. That during the 1970;s LWRs underwent design changes that made them more expensive, but there was no similar design change for the MSR. That given inflation in 2009 the cost of MSRs would probably run about half what LWRs cost if the LFTRs were built in the same way LWRs are built. However factory built LFTRs would cost significantly less than custom built MSRs because of the labor cost advantage of factory manufacture, the decrease of accumulated interest because ofrapid manufacture, the cost savings of recycling old power plants and the finally the learning related cost savings related to serial manufacture. Taken all together, we have a potential power generating product that appears may cost less than 2 Billion dollars per GWe of generation capacity, and it is not impossible that factory built LFTRs might cost as little as one billion dollars per GW of generating capacity.

There is a well documented data set derived from research don at ORNL in the 1960's. Further research using the ORNL data set and recent materials and manufacturing cost data, might refine the potential LFTR cost picture.

I intend to clean up my analysis, and make it a little easier to read, and present the repackaged text very soon.